Those noisy barbarians
Dov Lior, the chief rabbi of Hebron, doesn't want Jews to take on boogie-woogie from the jungle.
By Noam Ben Ze'ev Tags: Israel news
Dov Lior, the chief rabbi of Kiryat Arba and Hebron, head of the rabbinical committee in the territories and a power broker in the halls of government, is this country's real prime minister, writer Sefi Rachlevsky said in an op-ed in Haaretz's Hebrew edition last week.
Some of Lior's doctrines, which made headlines in the wake of his refusal to be interrogated by police in an incitement case, were revealed in Rachlevsky's piece: permission to spill Arab blood, praise for the murderer Baruch Goldstein and spiritual support for extreme right-wing Jewish terrorists. In addition, Lior is suspected of involvement in the rabbinical condemnation of Yitzhak Rabin before the prime minister was assassinated in 1995. A check of the Hebrew website Arutz Meir (www.meirtv.co.il ), which offers some 11,000 recorded lectures on Jewish topics, reveals that, somewhat surprisingly, the fundamentalist rabbi also has firm opinions on something else: music.
A year ago, Lior was the guest of an educational institution whose name is not stated on the recording, but which appears to have been a music school, to judge by the excited questions of the musicians who teach at the school: How should one view music composed by non-Jews? Is it permissible to set biblical verses to the melodies of non-Jewish songs?
If the questioners had turned to up-to-date studies in musicology, they would have been introduced to exactly these questions, at the core of which lies a dialogue from ancient times that relates to the very nature of music. Is music abstract, and can therefore express nothing but itself, as 19th-century thinkers would have it? Or, as the movement of new musicology sees it, does it demonstrate extra-musical content, even in works as seemingly neutral as a symphony by Brahms or Beethoven?
As Dov Lior asked: Do we go by the approach that music should be taken at face value, or do we look into who created it, who composed it? Does that matter?
Pop as paganism
In Jewish law, as in Islamic law, music can pose problems. The Hasidim, for example, place a high value on their melodies, when sung in the proper circumstances, but not on all music. Jewish men are prohibited from hearing women sing, according to halakha. On the other hand, the Levites in the Temple, and King David himself, used music for higher purposes. In one of the recordings, Lior encourages those present to learn how to play all the instruments, saying the Levites will need to know how when the Temple is rebuilt. "We need to nurture, train, raise God-fearing people who specialize in this field," he says.
The rabbi sometimes seems open to non-Jewish music and willing to have Jews engage with it, but at other times talks about banning it. "Until 400 years ago there were composers among non-Jews, but they all focused on church music and pagan music," is his simplistic approach. "But since a rebellion occurred, they started creating humane music that expresses positive sentiments. There are some honorable people among the goyim. A few, but they exist. I think that even in Hebron there are a few who are human beings - which doesn't mean I'm saying they shouldn't all be sent to Saudi Arabia. They should all be sent to Saudi Arabia!"
According to the rabbi, this good period among non-Jews has ended: "There has been a downfall since World War II. ... I call this boogie-woogie and they call it pop. It expresses people's animalistic and lower urges. This noisy, fast rhythm is unlike that of the Hasidim, who sang with devotion and could do so for hours. Its very basis is improper: urges without any elevating principle. It must absolutely be avoided. ... That kind of thing is in the jungle."
Lior says that music reflects the nature of a people, and gives the Arabs as an example. "Whoever is more barbaric is noisier," he says. "Have you noticed, for example, when [Arabs] have weddings, the [Israeli] left has taught them to shoot these fireworks in the air, and they blend in real gunshots, and sometimes shoot each other. It is part of the amusement at their weddings. They cannot live without noise. And pop as a whole... there are those who worship this kind of god. Clearly this does not belong at all to Judaism, and not to composers who know how to express good and tender feelings and aspire to values for all humanity."May one take non-Jewish music and sing prayers to those tunes? Lior: "Music can get contaminated. Experts will investigate and see if the tune is 'kosher,' if it expresses an aspiration to goodness, or if it is taken from the jungle and stimulates negative emotions. With pop, you can see clearly that it's negative. Something that belongs to the rhythms of kushim [a derogatory term for black people] isn't part of our world. In America, Rabbi [Shlomo] Carlebach matched melodies to prayers, and what he made into something Jewish is all right. But not everyone can just take from this sewer of pop, from the world of lies."…