BENJAMIN FOX-ROSEN ORAL HISTORY

NINA PICK: This is Nina Pick, and today's date is July 22nd, 2019.  I am here at Yiddish Summer Weimar in Weimar, Germany, with Benjy Fox-Rosen, and we're going to record an interview as part of the Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project.  Benjy, do I have your permission to record this interview?

BENJAMIN FOX-ROSEN: Yes.

NP:  Thank you.  So you were interviewed for the Wexler Oral History Project at KlezKamp in 2010, nearly a decade ago.  Since then, you've released two of your own albums, performed and taught all over the world, and moved from New York to Vienna.  I'd like to talk about how your connection to Yiddish language, music, and culture has evolved since the last interview, your current projects, and your reflections on klezmer today.

BFR: Okay.

NP:  So to start off, could you tell me about your move to Austria?

BFR: Well, I didn't actually move to Austria first.  In 2012, I had a Fulbright research grant to go to the Republic of Moldova, and I was there from late August 2012 until June 2013.  And there, sort of, the idea was a little bit of a nostalgic idea of, I'm going to go to Eastern Europe and interview Yiddish speakers.  But pretty much within a month of arriving there, I discovered that there were five or six Yiddish speakers, none of whom really sang.  I was looking for songs and to find some sort of an informant who could give me some 2:00repertoire information about regional styles.  But I realized -- everyone said, Oh, you should speak to Mrs. -- what is it?  Yeah, Cohen?  But she moved to Baltimore.  Was it Baltimore, or was it Israel?  No, she's in Be'er Sheva.  No, you know, I don't know.  Maybe Montreal?  She's in Montreal.  You should contact her children.  And that's what -- pretty much was the answer that I got.  I met a few people who gave interviews in Yiddish, but they didn't sing, and I was interested in music, and I wasn't so interested, actually, in just, sort of -- I mean, I met a few amazing Yiddish speakers.  But the musical fieldwork aspect was -- what I had proposed was actually just impossible chronologically.  I was much too late.  There was massive emigration from Moldova from the '70s on, and then especially since the '90s.  But what I did 3:00do there was, I studied Moldovan singing, so Romanian vocal music, with a wonderful teacher named Ioan Paulencu, who was from Cernăuți, from Czernowitz, from outside of Czernowitz, from a Romanian village there, which is presently in the Ukraine.  And also with Efim Chorny, who is here at Yiddish Summer Weimar teaching, and Efim is a wonderful singer who, I think, is a very interesting mix of Yiddish revival -- like, the influence of the American klezmer revival on the Soviet, Russian-speaking world.  And he's a fabulous singer.  I got to spend a lot of time with him and with Susanna Ghergus, his partner, and learned a lot of Romanian music, and Romanian language, and Romanian songs.  And it was a pretty 4:00formative experience, I would say.  So that was in 2012 to 2013.  Then the summer of 2013, I came to Yiddish Summer Weimar for the first time.  I was teaching there.  The theme was new Yiddish music.  I was here for a few weeks.  And then I went -- I don't know what I did.  I went to Canada after -- yeah, I think I was in KlezKanada that year.  And then I moved back to New York.  My wife and I got married that fall, and then moved to Vienna in February, because my wife has a long-term research project in Romania -- or had a long-term research project.  It just finished now, so six years later.  So that's why we were in -- that's what brought us initially to Vienna.  But then my wife became pregnant, which wasn't planned, and she had this long-term 5:00research project in Romania.  The plan was for us to be in Vienna, to have a small apartment, to slowly get established professionally there, and then she would go back and forth to Romania.  But what we ended up doing was staying in Austria for about a year, and then moving to Romania for about a year-and-a-half with the whole family, so when my son was about eleven months old.  So Julie was working in Romania, and we were moving all the time.  (Laughs) We were in four different cities.  We were in Târgu Mureș, Bucharest, Cluj, and Timișoara, for about four months each.  Is that -- wait, hold on.  Let me check my math.  Yeah, for about four months each.  And then we moved back to Vienna in -- that would have been October 2016 was when we -- that's when we've really been back in Vienna, since then.  And then professionally, I guess, while our family was in Romania, I was with our son, and I would go off and play 6:00gigs a little bit, but I wasn't doing so much working.  I was doing a little bit of composing and a little bit of research, but didn't really have time, being with my son most of the time.  And then we moved back to Vienna in October 2016, and, yeah, freelancing there as a musician.  And then I got the job that I have now as the choir director of the Wiener Stadttempel, of the Vienna main synagogue.  I've been doing that since December -- almost.  Since December 2017.  And so that's been, actually, since then, basically my main focus, certainly professionally.  I've also been studying, been doing a master's degree in musicology at the University of Vienna, which I'm doing sort of slowly, part-time, while working and while having young kids.  So just now 7:00it's sort of, like, balancing everything.  So that's the quick summary of everything.  I would say, generally, I've been doing -- in terms of my own projects, I released a couple of records in -- so, let's see.  In 2011, I think, my first record came out, "Tick Tock."  In 2014, my second record came out, which were compositions that -- a song cycle that I composed to the poetry of Mordechai Gebirtig, and also the Yiddish Art Trio record came out that same year.  And then since then, I've been doing commission work in Vienna for -- I've been working with the choir quite a bit, composing for them.  I haven't done anything Yiddish for them.  I've been writing in German.  And then I had a piece -- my most recent commission was from Ensemble Wiener Collage, which is 8:00a new music ensemble, and that was a piece called "Nitl iz a beyzer layd," "Christmas is a Wicked Burden," where I took medieval anti-Semitic texts that were written by Jews who had converted to Christianity, and set those in a short piece, about seven-minute piece, also with some Yiddish poetry from Morris Rosenfeld, which is actually quite anti-Christian.  So I put those pieces together, which were thematically about what Jews do on Christmas.  And that was, I think, my most recent composition.  Yeah.

NP:  So in your prior interview, you talked about being a composer who likes working with texts.  And it sounds like that's still very much a theme in your work.

BFR: Yeah, that hasn't really changed at all.  I mean, and I think it's also one of the things that I realize when I'm teaching.  Here, for example, at Yiddish Summer Weimar, I'm here for the advanced instrumental week, but I think what I was starting to specialize in -- like, I play the double bass.  Like, what am I supposed to do, play sixteenth notes and play klezmer melodies?  It's going to sound bad, even if I'm a virtuoso, and I'm not even close to a virtuoso on the double bass.  So (laughs) it's, like, I play with a lot of great klezmer musicians, and I know the structures of a hundred or something klezmer tunes, so I can play with anybody.  But in terms of my own expertise, being an expert on playing the bass in klezmer music isn't a very -- I don't think it has so much depth to it.  That's just a very small part of the musical culture.  And I think what I really realized since, especially, starting to work in liturgical music, so having a day job accompanying a cantor, is that what I find quite 10:00absent from a lot of the Yiddish culture stuff is an understanding of the relationship between liturgical music and klezmer music.  Like, people say, Yeah, that's important, that's important, there's a relationship, there's a relationship.  But the fact is that you have to have so much fluency in the religious material to access it even musically.  It's a really interesting point.  These things come from the same musical culture, but they're not the same genres.  So understanding -- I guess what I'm trying to offer this week, for example, for students, is, like, a window into liturgical music that most other klezmer musicians aren't really -- don't have the language skills or the liturgy skills to be able to communicate. 

NP:  So if someone, say, is educated or has a background in liturgical music, 11:00what would they be hearing in klezmer?

BFR: Well, it depends.  I would say a couple of things would be -- the question is, what liturgical music?  Because when you talk about liturgical music in the present -- let's see.  How many years ago did Hebrew Union College change their name of their cantorial school to the Debbie Friedman School of Cantorial Music, or Debbie Friedman School of Liturgical Music?  Which signifies a very, very significant shift in aesthetics, which you've seen in the American Jewish community, especially in the Reform movement, since the 1960s, especially, with Debbie Friedman and the post-hippie aesthetic of -- you see this also in contemporary Christian music.  And I think in the Reform movement, it's been a major cultural force, also, that a cantor should play the guitar.  So that's one liturgical music, but that liturgical music doesn't -- I don't think that 12:00that liturgical music comes from the same musical culture as Ashkenazi music.  I don't think that that's related to Yiddish.  I think, actually, ideologically, it's a complete rejection of Yiddish -- of Yiddish -- yeah, tropes.  Like, literally, you can use that word in a number of different senses.  But that sort of aesthetic revolution, I think, really severed the ties of the majority of American Jews with Eastern European Jewish music, or European -- I wouldn't even say Eastern European music.  I would say European Jewish music, because like what happened in liturgical music in the nineteenth century -- when the Reform movement started, there was another aesthetic revolution, and it replaced hazanuth with -- so, cantorial music that was, sort of, traditional -- with a much more formalized tradition that was imitating 13:00church music quite explicitly.  So I think that, yeah, we can say it's a trend.  You know?  Like in the mid-nineteenth century, the leadership of the Reform Jewish community tried to imitate Schubert, and in the 1960s, the leadership of the Reform movement tried to imitate the Weavers.  And it shifted music.  I would say what happened in the nineteenth century had a lot more to do -- or it had a major influence in a way where it eventually came to coexist with traditional nusach, so traditional prayer melodies.  And I think that happens a little bit.  Like some of Debbie Friedman's melodies, you hear in an Orthodox context.  But they're aesthetically shifted, like they've been made 14:00into something more Ashkenaz.  So I would say, like, what does somebody with liturgical -- I mean, if somebody who grew up in an Orthodox religious context may have the musical vocabulary to identify, like, "Oh, that ornamentation.  The cantor does that all the time."  Or things like that.  But I think it's just a question of cultural fluency generally.  And I also don't really know if the klezmer revival exists within the context of Ashkenazi culture, anyway.  Like, I think it's something parallel.  I think it's something parallel, and it's, sort of -- I wouldn't say it's rootless, but it's just a -- it's a different -- I mean, like, this is a community of artists and creative people, and academics, in a lot of ways.  But it doesn't really have a -- I don't know 15:00if it has, like, a multigenerational -- will have a multigenerational span, or if it does, if that multigenerational span is related to Jewish life.  I think it's something parallel.  And that's good.  Or, who cares if it's good or bad?  I think it's just different.

NP:  And does your engagement with liturgical music dovetail with your own sense of spiritual identity or Jewish identity, or are they separate?

BFR: I'm not very -- I mean, I put it this way, in a sort of crass -- yeah.  I could frame it this way, which is that I've been really interested in learning about hazanuth and learning about cantorial music for a long time.  But to do it, you have to go to the synagogue regularly, and I don't go to the synagogue regularly unless I'm getting paid, like unless it's my job.  So there's no -- 16:00like, it's my job.  I'm not particularly -- I don't really have any religious feelings about the music, except for that it's fabulous music, and it fits into a religious culture, absolutely.  But I don't think of it as prayer.  I think of it as music.  You know?  The cantor who stands next to me, he believes in this stuff.  That's great.  I don't not believe in it, but it's just not my -- it's not what brings me in.  Yeah.

NP:  So in your previous interview, you described studying Yiddish.  How would you describe your relationship with Yiddish today?

BFR: Yeah, I would say my Yiddish has been, sort of -- yeah, I haven't been focusing on Yiddish very much, largely because I learned German in the meantime.  So (laughs) I learned German really -- since 2014, I was dabbling a 17:00little bit, but really, since 2016, I really sat down and studied German, and now I can speak in it, and go to graduate school in German, primarily.  And so now when I'm in this context where there are some Yiddish speakers around, and people chitchat in Yiddish, my Yiddish is very Germanic, like it's inflected with a lot of German.  I still read Yiddish, and I still think that Yiddish is a really interesting language to produce artistic works in, particularly -- I mean, one of the things that I've been interested in, especially living in the German-speaking world, is how much German speakers can understand Yiddish, and particularly misunderstand Yiddish, and how much different feelings of nostalgia, or apologism, or sentimentality, or any existing stereotypes about 18:00Jewish culture really inform what somebody who speaks German can understand of Yiddish.  And so that's something that I was interested in, sort of, an academic context, also, and I delivered a paper about that at a Yiddish language conference, about translation, that was in Vienna in February 2017.  And it will be published in the "In Geveb" journal of Yiddish studies website sometime in the next, like, two years, or something.  That's what they've been saying for the last two years, so it should be published sometime soon.  But the central question of that was, like, how much do people actually understand in Yiddish?  Because when you're in the Yiddish cultural world, you don't perform for people who have linguistic fluency or cultural fluency.  The best you can 19:00hope for is, sort of, like, a room of German speakers, who are the most engaged linguistically, (laughs) somehow, and there are certain songs that you can perform for those speakers that you can't perform for people who don't have as much access to a Germanic language.  Yeah.

NP:  From your perspective, what is the relation between Yiddish language, like studying Yiddish or knowing Yiddish, and playing klezmer?  Do you think that klezmer musicians should have or would benefit from having a background in Yiddish language?

BFR: No, I don't think so.  I mean, I think very basic things, like -- I mean, yeah, it helps, but it doesn't help you -- it helps you understand the cultural context that klezmer used to be played in.  But it just depends how deep you 20:00want to get.  A lot of the people who are professional klezmorim certainly have studied Yiddish, but the best of them may or may not.  I think it's sort of irrelevant, in terms of their musical fluency.  You know, the people who are doing academic research or more scholarly work, I would say, almost all of them certainly can read Yiddish.  And I also think being able to read and understand Yiddish is also really important for understanding the cultural context.  But being able to go to a Yiddish language conference and chat with other people in Yiddish, that's a different thing.  That's a different use of the language.  And that, in and of itself, is its own sort of exercise.  Whether -- whatever you call it.  I mean, people call it a lot of things.  It's a post-vernacular 21:00use of the language.  You can call it performative.  You can call it just, like, a subculture of people who like to speak a language that isn't used for vernacular purposes.  But I don't think that that relates to being a klezmer musician.  I think, you know, it's part of the same musical culture.  It was part of the same musical culture.  I don't know.  What's the culture of people who go to klezmer festivals?  I don't know.  (Laughs)

NP:  You know, after your Yiddish studies, have you read much Yiddish literature?  Is there anything in particular that you've enjoyed?

BFR: Yeah, I read Yiddish literature with semi-regularity.  But actually, in the last few years, I haven't been reading so much Yiddish literature.  Like, I have things around the house, and sometimes I'll pick something up and read it, 22:00just to sort of also keep my -- I mean, one of the funny things, also, that I've found about working in a synagogue is my Hebrew reading has become much, much faster.  So actually, as a result, my Yiddish reading is much better, and my German has gotten -- like, I haven't studied Yiddish at all in the last four years, really.  But because my German is decent, and I can read Hebrew much faster, then I can pick up a Yiddish book and really, actually, read it without constantly having to access a dictionary or something.  So it's been, sort of, a funny irony, actually, I would say.  I wouldn't say it's an irony, but it's just a coincidence, really.

NP:  And what's currently inspiring you as a musician?

BFR: Well, um, yeah.  I mean, cantorial music, I think, is really one of the really interesting sources right now for me.  In the work that I'm doing in the 23:00synagogue, there's not very much creative work there.  A lot of it is -- I mean, it's managing a -- it's leading a choir of semi-professional singers who have been singing their repertoire for a long time.  But they're not professional singers.  Like, there's very much a limit to what they can do.  And I love working with them.  I really like working with nonprofessionals.  But it's not my artistic -- it's not giving me the artistic satisfaction, I would say.  And right now, I don't really have so many other projects.  I have projects on the back burner that I would love to do, but I'm working, studying, and have two kids who are five and two-and-a-half, so it's, like, that's it.  I mean, that's, sort of, where I'm at right now, trying to make money, finish a master's degree, play gigs, keep people healthy.  That's where it is.  I have 24:00some projects that I would really like to do, and I have some directions that I would like to explore, particularly a project that I started working on a few years ago that I really couldn't continue working on, which was about lullabies from Transylvania, so from northern Romania, which was very much a multiethnic region.  It still is a multiethnic region, but had German-speaking, Yiddish-speaking, Romanian, and Hungarian, and a lot of Roma-speaking ethnic groups.  So I wanted to do a project that was looking at lullabies from -- instead of organizing things based on ethnographical categories, I wanted to look at things based on geographical categories, and just say, Okay.  Within 25:00this territory, what are the musical cultures that are existing, not necessarily even interacting with each other, just existing geographically in this area?  Is there something interesting that could happen by putting them with each other?  And so that's a project that I was thinking about, and I've collected a few songs for it, and particularly was looking a number of years ago quite intensively at Romanian lullabies from that region.  And I collected a few.  Did an interview with was a very interesting Yiddish speaker in Cluj-Napoca, who -- I interviewed her twenty years too late, really.  She had dementia and could only remember fragments of songs.  But she remembered an amazing lullaby sung from the perspective of the father saying that their mother had died.  Which is 26:00very -- I've never seen that in any other lullaby, actually.  And I found it very interesting.  I thought, Okay.  This would be -- so I'm just collecting some of that type of repertoire.  So I'm thinking about it, actually, more as a solo project, in some ways because in Vienna -- I like living in Vienna a lot.  There are a lot of wonderful things to offer.  But I haven't found a crew of musicians who I really love to play with.  So I thought, Okay, I just need to develop something solo.  And that's, sort of, the direction that I'm looking at, is developing some of this lullaby material for solo base with electronics, and trying to figure out if there are tasteful ways of incorporating some of these field recordings into performances.  But I don't know.  We'll see.  That's what I would love to work on in the next year.  I think I'm going to be 27:00able to make physical space to do that.  (Laughs)

NP:  So you've, as a performer, toured around the world.  And what have you found to be the reception to Jewish music, and does it differ in the various countries you've played, or various cities?

BFR: Yeah.  You know, I think it just depends on what kind of Jewish music you're performing.  I did a project earlier this year.  I guess it's a project that I haven't mentioned, but it took up a good amount of time this year, with a band from Maramureș in the Ukraine, which is the southern region of the Ukrainian Carpathian mountain range, just by the Romanian border.  And there is a group of musicians there who I played a gig with in Kyiv a few months ago.  28:00And the idea was to look at repertoire from that geographic area, like Jewish repertoire from that geographic area, and to play with them.  They play tunes from different ethnic groups there, mostly Ukrainian mountain music, but also there are a few other ethnic minorities, Ruthenians, Hutsuls.  There are Hungarians.  There are Roma.  There are Romanians in that area.  And in that area used to be really significant Jewish populations with a lot of (UNCLEAR) shtetls [small towns in Eastern Europe with Jewish populations], which had majorities of Jews.  So they really wanted to look at that.  But we threw this program together kind of quickly, and couldn't really -- I didn't have the time and they didn't have the time to really properly research repertoire that would fit.  But nonetheless, we put together a pretty nice program of mostly, sort of, Moldovan, so not so far away, but still, it's not exactly what came from there.  But finding exactly what came from there is, in some ways, impossible.  So that project -- we performed in Kyiv.  I think it just has 29:00more to do -- it's, like, it's a klezmer festival if you're paying up-tempo things, and people, kind of, like it.  (Laughs) If you're playing outside, then you play what's appropriate to play outside.  You're not going to play more intimate stuff.  You just do what's appropriate for the gig.

NP:  And you're also a teacher of Jewish music.  Could you describe some of the joys and challenges of teaching?

BFR: Sure.  I hadn't taught for quite a while, actually.  I think maybe the last time that I had taught at one of these klezmer things may have been, actually -- you know, probably KlezKamp 2013 or something like that.  Is that right?  So I haven't taught for a long time at one of these institutes.  And in the meantime, I haven't had so many students.  But I do have a private 30:00student now, and it's been really nice.  She's been interested in, sort of, Yiddish songs, and just having a base knowledge about Yiddish songs.  And I feel like this is actually one of the main things that I would say has shifted since the last interview, is that now I feel, like, a little bit less green, I would say, a little bit less like a young person who just discovered Yiddish and is really enthusiastic.  Now I know a lot of things about Yiddish that most people don't know or don't really care to know about.  (laughs) And I'm, sort of, like, Okay.  I have that.  Does anybody really care?  And then now I have this student who really does care, and it's actually really particularly nice.  So that, I would say -- most of the time I don't have students, and I don't really like teaching individually.  I don't really like teaching the double bass at all.  I like studying the double bass, like taking lessons.  I like taking voice lessons, don't like to teach voice.  I like to teach Yiddish song 31:00repertoire.  Like, that's, kind of, the only thing that I like to teach.  (Laughs) And so what I've been trying to do this week with the students is have them sing liturgical music and a little bit of Yiddish songs, too.  Which, I think, for the instrumental week, they don't -- I think a lot of them aren't really interested in it, actually, because I think a lot of instrumentalists are -- they don't like to sing, sort of reasonably.  And also the other people on faculty this week are thirty years older than me.  So if I were there, then I'd be, like, Why would I take a class with this guy who is thirty-five?  What does he possibly know?  Because these people have been doing this for decades.  So I just have a few students.  (Laughs) But they're interested in learning how to sing some of this stuff, and it's been really great.  What I like about teaching here is that the students are really quite advanced, so -- I'm looking 32:00at really, really complex cantorial improvisations and compositions, and you can just really take time and look at it, which is great.  Even looking at pieces that, like, my cantor with whom I work weekly sings a lot, and we rehearse a lot, and the choir sings.  But when you're doing something for your job, you cannot possibly take the time and spend an hour looking at two measures of music.  You know?  So that's been a real pleasure, to have students, and I say, "Okay, guys.  Let's really analyze everything.  Let's analyze it melodically from a classical perspective, from a Jewish modal system perspective.  Let's look at the harmony."  So it's been really nice, actually, to slow down, and also to think about explicitly what some of these compositions were doing that we're looking at.

NP:  And as a musician, what's your growing edge?  What are you --

BFR: My what?  What do you --

NP:  What are you shedding?  What are you practicing or working on improving?

BFR: Yeah.  Well, the main thing, actually, in the last period of time has been conducting, because I've been conducting this choir.  And yeah, conducting is something I never cared about before.  I was never interested in being a conductor.  I had no ambitions.  Most of the people who are conductors, like, they've been wanting to stand in front of an orchestra their whole life.  I do not want to stand in front of an orchestra.  I stand in front of these, like, ten singers, and they don't even look at me.  I mean, this is, like, the classic conundrum of a choir director, or of any conductor or director.  Nobody looks at them.  But figuring out how to conduct has been really the main -- figuring out how to conduct, how to communicate with the people who I'm 34:00conducting and who I'm rehearsing.  I think the challenge there, in the choir that I'm the director of, is that I'm the youngest person there, except for one other guy who is two or three years younger than me.  Everyone else is in their sixties, seventies, and one guy is eighty years old.  So there's this, like, kind of, very funny -- I felt like, for the first year, it was just me learning, Okay, I have to wear a suit and tie, and I have to dress up.  Even for rehearsals, I have to put on slacks, because people don't -- because I'm a young person.  These grumpy old men are not going to take me seriously.  And a lot of that also has to do, I think, with the physical posture of conducting.  And the main challenge of that, I'm finding at this point in time, doing the job -- I know the music now.  I know how to conduct it, more or less.  But I'm finding, actually, that the singing and conducting simultaneously is really a 35:00tremendous challenge.  So that's been, I would say, in terms of when I'm practicing, when I'm preparing music, that's the main focus, is really figuring out how to communicate to the singers who I work with.

NP:  And what are you listening to at the moment, in general?

BFR: Cantorial music.  That's it.  Yeah, basically.  Yeah, mostly cantorial music.  Like, not even such a huge range of cantorial music.  I've just been listening closer to, particularly, Samuel Malavsky, who is the cantor who I like a lot.  The cantor at my synagogue, Shmuel Barzilai, is a wonderful, world-class cantor.  I don't really listen to his records, because they're with orchestra, and I find the arrangements to be not to my taste.  But I listen to our rehearsals.  I mean, there's a lot of preparing for that job.  And, let's 36:00see, what else am I listening to these days?  Nah, not so much, actually.  Yeah, mostly cantorial music.  I listen to pop radio a lot.  Like, I really -- I like to listen to shitty music, particularly in an automobile.  I find it very relaxing.  So, yeah.  (Laughs)

NP:  And what of your relation to Jewish culture, or your own Jewish identity, do you consider most important to transmit to future generations?  I know your children are quite young still, but, you know, to them as they grow older, or to your students?

BFR: (Sighs) Yeah, I don't know.  Like, I have a complex relationship to my own Jewish identity.  I mean, in some ways, it's a relief to work in a synagogue, because then I have to go to the synagogue.  I don't have to choose to go to the synagogue, which is a different thing.  And particularly in Vienna, the 37:00options for religious observance are quite limited.  So the synagogue where I work is one of fifteen or sixteen Orthodox synagogues, most of which are very small.  [BREAK IN RECORDING] So transmitting musical -- so transmitting Jewish stuff.  I mean, I feel like because I am required to be in a synagogue because of my job, it makes it a lot easier.  The diversity of choices in Vienna is extremely limited, basically.  There are Orthodox synagogues, fifteen of them or sixteen of them, mostly very small.  The one that I work at is the most liberal of those, and it's still an Orthodox synagogue.  Women aren't allowed to sing in the choir.  And I find those religious rules to be really not where I feel comfortable religiously or culturally.  But I'm also beginning to 38:00understand that, actually, the cultural context in Vienna is quite different.  Everyone -- the people who go to that synagogue, to the Stadttempel, most of them are not religious.  Most of them are really not religious.  And they go there because it is the most liberal synagogue that looks religious.  (Laughs) Like, there's something about the way that it looks, and also simply that there's not really a tradition of Reform Judaism in Vienna like there is in Berlin.  Vienna never really had a Reform -- didn't have, in the nineteenth century, a Reform movement like Berlin did.  I think in the twentieth century, it certainly did, but it didn't survive.  So there is one Reform -- sort of, one liberal synagogue in Vienna.  But I've also been there, and aesthetically, it doesn't do anything for me, because aesthetically, if I'm going to a synagogue, I want to have a good cantor.  And if I can have a good cantor and a good choir, great.  Or even not a good choir.  Great.  You know?  But I feel 39:00like I'm in this sort of funny position, because I'm aesthetically a snob.  I want a good cantor.  But the only place you get a good cantor in Europe, certainly, is in an Orthodox synagogue.  So you just have to compromise.  I mean, my kids -- my wife and I, it's very important to us that questions of limitations of gender are -- that gender is not a big fucking -- it's not a big deal.  We don't want them to think that they can't do things because they're in an Orthodox synagogue.  So I think that's going to become some kind of an issue, definitely, as my kids get older and they start to observe, like, Why is it that you are here, and our mother is there?  That's pretty strange.  And I think there's a degree of tension that you can live in when you're part of a 40:00culture, and you sort of agree that this is a space where we behave in this way, and we don't believe that men and women are unequal, but in this space, men and women are unequal.  For me, that's very difficult.  My mother was a Reform rabbi.  Like, (laughs) you know?  I grew up in a very, very different context.  And I think that will be a source of tension, particularly as my kids get older and start to assert themselves.  And I hope that they do -- are able to speak about that.  Yeah.  Or we're able to make a space that everybody can feel comfortable in.  But on the other hand, it's my job to be there.  You know?  It's funny to say, Well, this is our synagogue.  My son speaks, and he says, "That's our shul, that's our synagogue."  But I sort of feel like, yeah, it is, but yeah, I guess it's the best we can get in this town. 

NP:  So in your last interview, you talked about, from your perspective, you thought klezmer was in the process of transitioning to becoming concert music.  And do you think that that has happened?  And also, where does cantorial music stand in that?

BFR: Yeah.  I wouldn't necessarily say that klezmer music is chronologically, from the 1950s until the now, undergoing a process of becoming concert music.  I would say it's sort of constantly a negotiation of -- when you're taking music from folkloric sources and presenting them on a stage.  Some folkloric sources are performative, and some of them are not.  So for example, a lot of the klezmer repertoire is functional music, and functional music without a cultural function, at this point.  Right?  So the multiple functions are very important 42:00functions in terms of the dramaturgy of a Jewish wedding that the klezmer is responsible for communicating.  Those we don't have anymore, even at religious weddings.  They're just not really as defined.  Their traditions don't really work anymore.  Also, a lot of the traditions that are seeming that the klezmer revival talks about as important or that people -- they actually really weren't such a big deal.  They didn't do them everywhere.  This transition, I think, it's a constant thing.  Like, when you're taking a dance tune, and you're trying to play it on the stage, it's a really interesting question how to do it.  I think it's a process for every piece.  I think cantorial music is somehow different, because it is -- as much as if you talk to a cantor and you say, Are you performing, or are you davening?  And they'll say, Oh, we're davening.  But they're performing.  And when cantors perform on a stage, then 43:00they don't say God's name.  They replace other words for God's name.  But I think it's a performative tradition, even in the folkloric context.  Even when it's not a professional trained cantor and it's just somebody leading, it's a performative element, and it's -- yeah.  I mean, you have to be good at it to perform it, but I don't think the composition itself has to be changed, whereas I would say with a klezmer dance tune, it does.  You have to think about how to develop it in a very different way than when you're playing for dancers.

NP:  And currently, are there shifts or developments happening within cantorial music that you're observing?

BFR: No, I don't think so.  No.  I mean, I'm pretty new to that scene.  And I would say, I work in a synagogue, but I don't work -- there is a whole scene of 44:00accompanists and arrangers who work with cantors, and the aesthetics of that scene is pretty fascinating.  You hear some of those orchestral arrangements, and you're, like, Is it the overture to "Mary Poppins," or is it the beginning of this piece of cantorial music?  The aesthetics are very, very -- present their own challenges.  And it's interesting that it's developed that way.  But yeah, a lot of it is the influence of one Israeli arranger named Mordechai Sobol, who passed away this last year.  And he, since the 1980s, has been a really dominant force in liturgical music.  He writes orchestral arrangements and records them, and then then the cantors go to a recording studio, and they sing along with the prerecorded orchestral arrangements.  And so a lot of cantors have their CDs of Mordechai Sobol's orchestral arrangements, and they 45:00all overdub their own voices.  It's a very fascinating model for producing culture.

NP:  And what do you imagine will be the future of the Yiddish language?

BFR: Oof, I don't know.  There are enough Hasidim that Yiddish will continue to develop in a lot of ways.  I mean, probably in ways we're -- (sighs) yeah, I don't think the language is going to produce great works of literature like it did, but I don't know.  I mean, I don't know how Yiddish will survive outside of the religious context, is the central question.  I mean, Dovid Katz seems to think that Yiddish will survive, because the Hasidim are having enough children.  But whether that will produce, like, a literary culture, I don't think so.  I mean, it has produced a literary culture.  There are people 46:00writing, like, spy novels in Yiddish for Hasidim of Brooklyn to read.  But yeah, it's a very different cultural product than, you know, other things. 

NP:  So we're nearing the end of our time, and I'd like to ask, do you have a word of advice for young musicians?

BFR: Yeah.  I mean, it's funny.  So before, I said that it's not really important for klezmer musicians to understand Yiddish.  But if you're interested in the music, then you have to learn something about the culture.  And I think there are a lot of different ways to learn about the musical culture.  But I would say the things that I learned while learning Yiddish, like in Yiddish-language classes from teachers who teach Yiddish language, were 47:00things that I didn't learn when I was learning Hebrew in a Jewish day school.  They're not things that I learned taking classes about Judaism in a university level.  I haven't really done so much of that.  They're not things that I learned going to synagogue.  Those things about Yiddish civilization, you don't really have a broad access point to.  Like, Yiddish language is really the most empowering tool to be able to access that.  So it's a -- try to have an understanding of the musical culture and the linguistic culture, which are very deeply intertwined.  Yeah, that would be my advice.  I guess, what did I say ten years ago?  Something like, just, you know, take it, and do what you want with it, because it doesn't belong to anybody?  Is that what I said?  You 48:00watched my interview, right?  Something like that?  Because that's what Adrienne Cooper said to me, like when she -- she was very influential for me, especially at that time.  And, let's see.  Yeah.  And she was such an amazing matriarch to have in the Yiddish scene, because she said that to young people.  She just said, "It's your culture.  Just take it.  Do what you want with it."  And I would say, yes, coupled with, be a serious scholar and try to learn as much as you can in a holistic way.

NP:  Great.  Is there anything else you'd like to share before we wrap up?

BFR: Should I say hello to Christa right now?  Hello, Christa.  Yeah, I think that's about it.  Um, yeah.  That's more or less it, yeah.

NP:  Great.  Well, thank you so much.  I'd like to thank you both personally and on behalf of the Yiddish Book Center.

BFR: Great.  Thank you, Nina.

[END OF INTERVIEW]