Performing the Homeland: Contesting the Boundaries of Moroccan Jewish Identity

Samuel Torjman Thomas

The role of music has been central to defining a new diaspora identity within the Jewish community. For Moroccan Jews in one synagogue community in Brooklyn, the performance of liturgical, para-liturgical, and folk repertoires memorializes the homeland and galvanizes the boundaries of a distinctive Jewish ethnic community. The freedom or freedom space (as well as time) produced by the concentrated context of ritualized performance encourages a social experience whereby community members are actively joining up  (Turino 2004:7). Musical expression successfully transmits emblems of identity – through icons and indices (ibid.:13) – precisely because the concentrated setting of ritual demands group consciousness.  

Different constituencies within the community represent generational and cultural distinctions – immigrants from Morocco, Israel, and France – with similar ideas about what constitutes a Moroccan Jewish identity. Members of these constituencies are employing musical expression as a means for contesting the boundaries of Moroccan Jewish identity, including the juxtaposition of additional Jewish identities (Orthodox Jewish, Israeli, and Sephardic). This presentation focuses on approaches to liturgical practice in the synagogue, including communal prayers for Shabbat (Jewish Sabbath) and the Yamim Nora’im (High Holy Days), and includes analyses of approaches to melody, vocal and rhythmic aesthetics, learning practices, leadership methods, and interactions between community members.

This session is rebroadcast with thanks from the ASJM Jewish Music Forum. Dr Torjman Thomas will join us for Q&A after his talk.

Samuel Torjman Thomas, a graduate of Berklee College of Music (BM Jazz Composition; BM Performance) and the City University of New York, Graduate Center (MM, Ph.D Ethnomusicology), researches and performs North African, Middle Eastern, and jazz traditions. He has published in the fields of ethnomusicology, religious studies, Jewish studies, and diaspora studies, and has recorded several albums as bandleader and artistic director of ASEFA and the New York Andalus Ensemble. 

Dr. Torjman Thomas teaches music, interdisciplinary studies, and Sephardic studies at the City University of New York (Hunter College, John Jay College, and Brooklyn College) and online for Montclair State University. He lectures on a variety of topics, including Muslim-Jewish intercultural exchange in music, philosophy, theology, and poetics; American popular music, jazz history and improvisation; religious studies, diaspora studies, and protest music. He also directs several student ensembles.

Dr. Torjman Thomas is a frequent guest speaker, at cultural institutions, universities, and in ecumenical spaces. He also leads weekend retreats as a chazzan and facilitator of Jewish song traditions – Sephardi poetry, Chassidic niggunim, Klezmer music, and chazzanus – and presents formal talks on Sephardi-Mizraḥi historical and cultural topics.