Edwin Seroussi

Musica mizrakhit: ethnicity and class culture in Israel

Expressive forms of culture offer a look into changing social phenomena that have not yet crystallised into clear patterns or accepted categories. Accepting the view that music is embedded in the wider culture system, we use a particular form of it – popular music – as a means of investigating class and ethnicity in Israeli society. At the same time we attempt to deepen the understanding of the place music plays in society, and of societal influences on music.

More on Maimonides on Music

Many outstanding Jewish scholars from medieval Al-Andalus treated music as a subject of theoretical inquiry as well as in relation to its practice.1 Due to his influential stature as poseq (rabbinical arbiter) and philosopher, the rulings of Maimonides and his ideas about music have been scrutinized more frequently than those of his contemporaries, especially after the modern publication of his responsa and commentaries of the Oral Law from the eighteenth century on.2 Towards a more comprehensive appreciation of his thought about music, this modest contribution analyses another passage by Maimonides on music, contextualising it in the framework of the musical culture of the Andalusian Jews during his lifetime.

Between the Eastern and Western Mediterranean: Sephardic music after the expulsion from Spain and Portugal

(1991). Between the Eastern and Western Mediterranean: Sephardic music after the expulsion from Spain and Portugal. Mediterranean Historical Review: Vol. 6, No. 2, pp. 198-206.