Project report:

The project “Challenging the Theater of Memory. Yiddish Song beyond Kitsch and Stereotype” attempts to explore and deconstruct the ways that Jewishness is portrayed and embodied in the performance of Yiddish song through ethnographic research and musical performance.

In Germany and in Austria, there are scores of expectations regarding performer, repertoire and the type of Jew represented on stage. Sociologist Michal Y. Bodemann has called this phenomenon, in which Jewish participation in public life fulfills a role on the German post-Nazi national narrative, the “Theater of Memory” (Bodemann 1996). In the Theater of Memory the diversity and complexity of Jewish life is instrumentalized and reduced to a supporting role in the German or Austrian political narrative. The performance of Yiddish song and more broadly the cultural heritage of Ashkenazi Jews, are not exempt from this phenomenon. Often Yiddish culture and music is portrayed through the nostalgic tropes of traditional shtetl life, stereotypical images of “Ostjuden” and the destruction of the Shoah. Such performances of Yiddish music often reinforce hegemonic narratives rather than creating empowerment for Jewish minorities in Germany and Austria.

In this artistic research project Yiddish musicians and researchers Isabel Frey and Benjy Fox-Rosen reflect on their attempts to challenge the “Theater of Memory” in Austria and Germany in their artistic practice. Drawing from their experience of past performances, theory from both performance and Jewish studies as well as ethnomusicology, they developed a lecture performance which weaves together music, texts and visuals. The lecture performance was presented in multiple settings including at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, mdw (2022), the Jewish Museum Hohenems (2022), Klezkanada’s Summer Retreat (2023), and co-presented at the Center for Jewish History New York by the Leo Baeck and YIVO Institutes (2024).  The project was documented through auto-ethnographic research methods and audio/visual recordings, published in the Research Catalogue. Fox-Rosen and Frey are currently developing a multi-year artistic research project which builds upon this body of research.

 

Bodemann, Y. Michal. Gedächtnistheater: die jüdische Gemeinschaft und ihre deutsche Erfindung. Hamburg: Rotbuch-Verlag, 1996.

 

Project lead: Isabel Frey and Benjy Fox-Rosen

Funding: AR-Pilot Call 2022 of mdw, Austrian Science Fund FWF Grant-DOI 10.55776/Z352