A Scrolls-Based Reading of Jewish Text, Voice and Exile

Lecture Produced by the American Society for Jewish Music’s Jewish Music Forum Co-sponsored by YIVO Admission: Free

Sephardic Jewish history is shaped by cases of population transfer across and around the Mediterranean. When Jewish populations migrated, they carried with them traditions and customs, and objects that embodied those traditions, like the Torah scroll. Venerated and anthropomorphized, the Torah scroll commemorates the past as a remnant of communal life in one place and points to a future in which it transforms a new space into a synagogue. The scroll is referred to as the “tree of life,” a life-giving force that affirms a future for Jewish communities even as its text is rooted in the past. The text that is embodied and vocalized gives life to the community, just as voicing the text brings the scroll to life. This presentation considers the different ways that a Torah scroll gives voice to the experience of exile for communities on the move, considering the ways that Jewish communities use the scroll as a life-giving force in their chanting and veneration practices.

In this lecture, Ilana Webster-Kogen will consider ethnographic material from across North African ritual, particularly the ways that congregations in France adjust the customs of Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia as they navigate their communal voice. Considering Jewish migration from the perspective of the Torah scrolls that move with populations, Webster-Kogen proposes a reading of exile that centers mystical and postcolonial thought, Jewish-Muslim intimacies, and the power of giving voice to text.

This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council. 

About the Speaker

Ilana Webster-Kogen is an ethnomusicologist and Jewish/Middle East studies scholar working on diaspora, migration networks, and gender in ritual. She is the Joe Loss Reader (associate professor) in Jewish Music at SOAS at the University of London, supported by the Jewish Music Institute. Her first book, Citizen Azmari: Making Ethiopian Music in Tel Aviv (2018, Wesleyan University Press) was awarded the Society for Ethnomusicology’s Jewish Music Section Publication Prize.