The fiddle’s powerful wail and banjo’s excited chittering conjure specters of mist-draped mountains, worn shoes slapping against well-trod boards, and — for the lucky initiates — grandma’s wild strawberry preserves; then, the lead singer steps up to the mic and a cognitive dissonance joins the ensemble.
“אֶשָּׂא עֵינַי, אֶל-הֶהָרִים, מֵאַיִן יָבֹא עֶזְרִי”
In English: “I will lift my eyes up to the mountains.”
By P.B. Cooley
Jewish liturgical poetry sung to Appalachian Mountain music may sound like something out of a Christopher Guest film. But for more than a decade the amalgamation of Jewish identity and old-time musicality has been growing. “Jewgrass,” a tongue-in-cheek name for the burgeoning subgenre of bluegrass, old-time, and roots musical styles, does not require — though often features — use of Hebrew language (or a blend of Hebrew and English). It does, however, require a clear sense of Jewishness, embodied by such bands as Rocky Mountain Jewgrass, Jacob’s Ladder (formerly, Kol Kahol), and Nefesh Mountain. Some listeners may wonder how Jewish musical culture and Appalachian musical culture have combined.
To answer that, one must first ask the question, what is Jewish music? Am Yisrael, the Jewish people, have contended with the realities of what it means to be “a landless people,” and a nation among the nations, potentially dating as far back as the Babylonian Exile, and certainly since the destruction of the Second Temple and the rise of Rabbinical Judaism. Navigating this challenge while assuaging simultaneous accusations of dual loyalty and replacement theory — from Eastern Europe to Iberia, from across North Africa to as far as the Indian subcontinent — was not merely a matter of personal comfort, but of cultural and literal survival.
As early as the 17th Century, C.E., Jewish musicians began introducing secular elements into sacred spaces. This was accomplished by arguing that the incorporation of music — even contemporary, popular music — was more akin to the Temple period than the methodic chanting that had become common practice in Ashkenazi Synagogues across Europe. As Judah M. Cohen explains in his essay “Exploring the Postmodern Landscape of Jewish Music,” musicians argued that incorporation of extra-Jewish modes ensured the continuation of, rather than the corruption of, Jewish culture. They reasoned that only that which is not alive can remain permanent and unchanging. Two centuries later, the changing winds of Appalachia would carry a new wave of European and Jewish immigration to North America.
DNA analysis performed in 2019 and published in the Ethnic Studies Review (Vol 42, issue 1) could indicate a Jewish settlement in Central Appalachia as early as the mid-to-late 1500s. The largest wave of Jewish immigration to the Southern Mountain region began with the rise of the coal industry in Appalachia. Chronicled in her acclaimed book, Coalfield Jews: An Appalachian History (2006), Deborah R. Weiner lays out the chronology, conditions, and community dynamics of this period. While it’s true most Jewish immigrants at the time settled in large, metropolitan hubs, roughly 30 percent of Jewish immigrants (60-70 percent from those who made their “old country” homes in rural settings) actively sought a reprieve from the crowding and competition of congested city life, trading the Shtetls of the Pale for the Hollows of the Hills.
Following the familiar trajectory of their ancestors, the freshly minted Appalachian Jewry found its niche in the role of the middleman, moving in and — quite literally — setting up shop in towns centered in coal work. Counter to presumptive narratives and thanks to the robust diversity of the coal boom, Appalachian Jews were generally a welcomed and integral part of coal-town life. Not only did many of the Jewish residents offer an alternative to the notoriously exploitative company store scheme, but the nature of Jewish culture complimented the regions’ previously established residents. Contrary to Protestant temperance, Jewish custom regarded denial of life’s pleasures as a sin. The concept of tzedakah (often reductively translated to “charity,” a moral and financial obligation to care for one’s community) extended to non-Jewish community members, especially in the form of public works, resulting in many buildings in southern Appalachia bearing the names of prominent Jewish families.
Given their position as merchants and the travel requirements inherent in such trade, Jewish residents presented a rare and unique opportunity for the infamously isolated mountain towns, bringing back from their travels a myriad of social capital, including music and dance. Prominent Jewish community members, such as Harry Schwachter — who came to America from Hungary at age 16 and ran a clothing business in Williamson, West Virginia, before his death in 1966 — would set up schools for contemporary dance lessons. Jewish residents were largely positioned comfortably within the middle class and often sent their children to study musical instrumentation with their gentile neighbors.
One such Jewish Appalachian is Mickey Grossman. Raised in Asheville, North Carolina, Grossman has lived in the Tri-Cities area of East Tennessee for 48 years and still serves as an active member of the local Synagogue — the B’nai Sholom Congregation — and its Sisterhood. Asked how she distinguishes between Jewish music and music performed by Jewish people, she said, “Jewish music, I would relate more to the services and the dances.” Grossman referenced the late Dr. Richard Blaustein, who served as a professor of Sociology & Anthropology at East Tennessee State University, where he was director of the Center of Excellence for Appalachian Studies and Services, and co-founder of Now & Then magazine, the print forerunner of Appalachian Places. Grossman found it difficult to think of anyone other than Blaustein.
“There’s so few of us here, and it’s gotten fewer and fewer,” Grossman said about the place of Jews and Jewish music in the region today. “When we moved here (to Johnson City), there were about 75 families in the hall. And now, maybe if we have 25 we’re a lot. It’s a big shift,” she said, shaking her head with a sigh. “Big change in that.”
The story of communities lost to out-migration is all too familiar to southern Appalachia, and its Jewish residents are no exception. And yet, Appalachia’s cultural influence on Jewish communities persists. The Folk Revival, which saw the popularization of Appalachian folk music far beyond its regional borders, gave rise to such iconic acts as Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger. Debbie Freedman and Jeff Klepper, who arose not directly out of the Folk Revival but were heavily influenced by many of its key artists, are equally familiar names to Jewish youth who attended reform summer camps in the 1960s and onward. One would be hard pressed to enter a Synagogue — Reform and Conservative in particular, but even many Orthodox temples — and not hear a cover of Debbie Friedman’s Hebrew-and-English folk-rendition of “Mi Shebeirach” (the “Prayer for Healing.”) Though the Folk Revival’s popularity peaked in the 1960s, Friedman’s popularity swelled from the 70s into the 90s, and the reverberations echo through today.
A contemporary of Friedman’s, Henry Sapoznik, might not be a familiar name to Folk Revivalists and other enthusiasts, but he is a central figure within the Klezmer Revival of the 1980s and ’90s. Klezmer is a secular, folk music style rising out of Eastern European Jewish custom, blending European and Southwest Asian musical modalities. Sapoznik, however, was drawn to old-time music, one of many young Jews of his generation to seek out and train with masters such as lifelong Appalachian, Tommy Jarrell. As recounted in the documentary Jumpin’ Night in the Garden of Eden, Jarrell’s earnest question, “Don’t your people got none of your own music?” would send Sapoznik on a quest of cultural (re)connection that would alter the trajectory of Jewish musical history. From this seemingly innocuous interaction between a Jewish apprentice and his Appalachian Banjo master rose the Klezmer Revival, resulting in acts such as The Klezmatics, Punk-Klezmer band Golem, Cabaret-Klezmer group Daniel Kahn and the Painted Bird, and Sapoznik’s own Kapelye.
The question of what exactly defines Jewish music continues. Judah M. Cohen, a professor of musicology at Indiana University Bloomington’s Jacobs School of Music, asserts that the secular-meets-sacred Jewish music of the mid-17th century, “represented both a rupture and a unity: new music that simultaneously broke with current usage yet aimed to instill a heightened sense of authenticity.” Echoing this sentiment, Turia Stark, a student Cantor and one-half of Jewish folk duo, Dahlia Road, says she chooses modalities based on time and space — influenced by Jewish tradition with modes relating to time of day, time of week, to season and holiday cycles. Stark’s Cantorial work aims to balance contemporary Jewish life by including popular songs while also reincorporating traditional modalities (such as the “Ahava rabba” or “Great love”): “We’re signaling to the ear,” Stark said, “but I also think it’s signaling to our souls, … It’s like the soul is waking up hearing that melody.”
Perhaps the simplest and best answer comes from musicologist Curt Sachs, that Jewish music is “music by Jews, for Jews, as Jews.” So, whether born and raised along the southern range, descended from coalfield merchants, or simply inspired by those summer camps of their youth, American Jewish music is— more and more often — tied to Appalachia.
P.B. Cooley is an Appalachian and Jewish writer, producer, and director whose work draws from his Scots-Irish and Ashkenazi backgrounds. He is pursuing a Master of Arts in Appalachian Studies and a Graduate Certificate in Film Production at East Tennessee State University.