Klezmer is an instrumental musical tradition of the Ashkenazi Jews of Central and Eastern Europe. The essential elements of the tradition include dance tunes, ritual melodies, and virtuosic improvisations played for listening; these would have been played at weddings and other social functions. The musical genre incorporated elements of many other musical genres including Ottoman music, Baroque music, German and Slavic folk dances, and religious Jewish music. As the music arrived in the United States, it lost some of its traditional ritual elements and adopted elements of American big band and popular music. Among the European-born klezmers who popularized the genre in the United States in the 1910s and 1920s were Dave Tarras and Naftule Brandwein; they were followed by American-born musicians such as Max Epstein, Sid Beckerman and Ray Musiker.
The roots of the culture of Israel developed long before modern Israel's independence in 1948, and traces back to ancient Israel. It reflects Jewish culture, Jewish history in the diaspora, the ideology of the Zionist movement that developed in the late 19th century, as well as the history and traditions of the Arab Israeli population and ethnic minorities that live in Israel, among them Druze, Circassians, Armenians and others.
Shtetl or shtetel is a Yiddish term for the small towns with predominantly Ashkenazi Jewish populations which existed in Eastern Europe before the Holocaust. The term is used in the contexts of peculiarities of former East European Jewish societies as islands within the surrounding non-Jewish populace, and bears certain socio-economic and cultural connotations. Shtetls were mainly found in the areas that constituted the 19th-century Pale of Settlement in the Russian Empire, as well as in Congress Poland, Austrian Galicia, the Kingdom of Romania and the Kingdom of Hungary.
Hora, also known as horo and oro, is a type of circle dance originating in Aromanian and Romanian communities, especially in Romania and Moldova. It is also found in other South East European countries and culturally adopted by ethnic minorities such as the Ashkenazi Jews and the Roma.
Anna Sokolow was an American dancer and choreographer. Sokolow's work is known for its social justice focus and theatricality. Throughout her career, Sokolow supported of the development of modern dance around the world, including in Mexico and Israel.
Jewish culture is the culture of the Jewish people, from its formation in ancient times until the current age. Judaism itself is not a faith-based religion, but an orthoprax and ethnoreligion, pertaining to deed, practice, and identity. Jewish culture covers many aspects, including religion and worldviews, literature, media, and cinema, art and architecture, cuisine and traditional dress, attitudes to gender, marriage, family, social customs and lifestyles, music and dance. Some elements of Jewish culture come from within Judaism, others from the interaction of Jews with host populations, and others still from the inner social and cultural dynamics of the community. Before the 18th century, religion dominated virtually all aspects of Jewish life, and infused culture. Since the advent of secularization, wholly secular Jewish culture emerged likewise.
Israeli folk dance is a form of dance usually performed to songs in Hebrew, or to other songs which have been popular in Israel, with dances choreographed for specific songs. Israeli dances include circle, partner and line dances. As almost all dances are intentionally choreographed, and the choreographers are known and attributed, the reference to these dances as "folk dances" is sometimes controversial among the general folk dance community. The recent trend of dances becoming much more complex and "professional" has led some to use the alternative term "Recreational Israeli Dancing".
Budapest has long been an important part of the music of Hungary. Its music history has included the composers Franz Liszt, Ernő Dohnányi, Zoltán Kodály and Béla Bartók and the opera composer Ferenc Erkel.
Giora Feidman is an Argentine-born Israeli clarinetist who specializes in klezmer music.
Simcha is a Hebrew word that means gladness, or joy, and is often used as a given name.
A Jewish wedding is a wedding ceremony that follows Jewish laws and traditions. While wedding ceremonies vary, common features of a Jewish wedding include a ketubah which is signed by two witnesses, a chuppah or huppah, a ring owned by the groom that is given to the bride under the canopy, and the breaking of a glass.
Yiddishkeit literally means "Jewishness". It can refer broadly to Judaism or specifically to forms of Orthodox Judaism when used particularly by religious and Orthodox Jews. In a more general sense, it has come to mean the "Jewishness" or "Jewish essence" of Ashkenazi Jews in general and the traditional Yiddish-speaking Jews of Eastern and Central Europe in particular.
Since Biblical times, music has held an important role in many Jews' lives. Jewish music has been influenced by surrounding Gentile traditions and Jewish sources preserved over time. Jewish musical contributions on the other hand tend to reflect the cultures of the countries in which Jews live, the most notable examples being classical and popular music in the United States and Europe. However, other music is unique to particular Jewish communities, such as klezmer of Eastern Europe.
Jewish music is the music and melodies of the Jewish people. There exist both traditions of religious music, as sung at the synagogue and domestic prayers, and of secular music, such as klezmer. While some elements of Jewish music may originate in biblical times, differences of rhythm and sound can be found among later Jewish communities that have been musically influenced by location. In the nineteenth century, religious reform led to composition of ecclesiastic music in the styles of classical music. At the same period, academics began to treat the topic in the light of ethnomusicology. Edwin Seroussi has written, "What is known as 'Jewish music' today is thus the result of complex historical processes". A number of modern Jewish composers have been aware of and influenced by the different traditions of Jewish music.
Dance in Israel incorporates a wide variety of dance styles, from traditional Israeli folk dancing to ballet, modern dance, ballroom dancing and flamenco.
Gertrud Kraus was an Israeli pioneer of modern dance in Israel.
Baruch Agadati was a Russian Empire-born Israeli classical ballet dancer, choreographer, painter, and film producer and director.
Yaron Margolin is an Israeli dancer and choreographer.
Ze'eva Cohen is an Israeli American dancer and modern/ postmodern dance choreographer who founded and directed the dance program at Princeton University between 1969 and 2009.
Leah Bergstein of Galician Jews origin was among the first choreographers in Mandatory Palestine who created festival dances at kibbutzim. Bergstein is considered one of the "mothers" of early Israeli folk dance, inventing a new style of movement and laying the foundation of folk dance emerging as an Israeli cultural tradition. She was the only professional dancer to work in the original folk dance movement at the time.
