“The Soul Seeks Its Melodies”: Music in Jewish Thought. Dov Schwartz. Translated by Batya Stein. Brookline, MA: Academic Studies Press. 2022.

Reviewed by Aubrey L. Glazer

When we listen deeply to music, we realize the truth that “[e]very musical phenomenon points to something beyond itself by reminding us of something, contrasting itself with something or arousing our expectations.” [1] Such a reflection from German Jewish philosopher and pianist Theodor Adorno’s prolific musical thinking appears in a 1963 essay collected in the book Quasi Una Fantasia. Adorno was a prolific Jewish thinker who spent a lifetime reflecting on how music is itself a thought process by which content is defined “not because its particular elements express something symbolically” but through a paradoxical process of “distancing itself from language that its resemblance to language finds it fulfillment.” [2] To enter into the realm of analyzing music in Jewish thought, one would therefore expect these kinds of approaches to musical thinking to be engaged as a starting point. It is striking, then, to suggest that music can be a power to “communicate without words,” as Dov Schwartz concludes in his recent book “The Soul Seeks Its Melodies”: Music in Jewish Thought, writing that this is “one of the deepest meanings of music as a language” (299). The contrast between these distinct approaches to musical thinking and its language in Adorno and Schwartz would have been a natural starting point to fill an entire book. However, Adorno’s absence from this monograph reveals much about the foundations of Dov Schwartz’s philosophical approach. 

Schwartz grapples with the philosophy of music in his focused analyses of “a corpus created over centuries,” which he refers to as “systematic Jewish Thought,” and which first appeared in the Medieval period (7). His analysis extends to modernity as well. As both a philosopher and a musician who plays violin and classical guitar, Schwartz maps out a sophisticated correlation between music, Zionism, and religion through theological and philosophical lenses. Schwartz is exacting in his methodological approach that, to his mind, is necessarily redressing the terra incognita in the field of Jewish music, which is often limited to historical description of Jewish music and the place of music in Jewish texts, the exposure of musical texts in manuscripts, and analysis of their conceptual aspects. Schwartz’s analysis specifically addresses the lack of consistent relation “to the presence of music in Jewish philosophical and mystical thought” as well as the lack of any critical analysis of this presence (3). He articulates this at the outset, writing: “the musical aspect of systematic Jewish thought, however, has not drawn scholarly attention” with the exception of Israeli scholars, Moshe Idel and Amnon Shiloh (4). The question he proposes to answer is: why this apparent lack of scholarly attention?

The trajectory of Schwartz’s thinking through this gargantuan task is systematically organized as follows: (1) Methodological Aspects; (2) Assessing the Role of Music; (3) Music and the Jewish People; (4) Music as a Tool; (5) Toward Music as an Independent Field: Representation, Language, Dialogue; (6) Music, Zionism, Religion; (7) Summing Up. The monograph is framed with helpful introduction and a personal epilogue that extends an invitation beyond specialists in Jewish Thought or musicology to also include curious non-specialists on the journey that touches all souls. In what follows, I briefly address some of the salient issues and insights that emerge within this systematic analysis.

In the opening chapter, “Methodological Aspects,” Schwartz cautiously defines Jewish Thought by at least one of two characteristics: (1) special interpretation; (2) a context of reference (9). Regarding the first characteristic, Jewish Thought refers to canonical texts or to their contents, with an inner order and “acceptance of revelation as authoritative, by the texts it cites, and by a tradition of commands transmitted through it.” (9-10) Schwartz opines that the first two characteristics are absolute while the third is relative, and that context refers to the contemporary Jewish environment as well as continuity of referencing that thinking in later sources (9-10). In so defining Jewish Thought, Schwartz then shows how “most of the questions concerning Jewish thought in general are also pertinent to its components, such as music.” Both interrogate conceptions of music as particularly Jewish, whether such influences turn thinking about music into a component that is Jewish or philosophical, and to what degree cultural-musical climate influences thought (10). Given the broad range of possible analysis, Schwartz seeks a meeting midway between the musicologist and the philosopher and thus focuses on “only the philosophical and mystical value of music” (11-12). Moving seamlessly from Mordecai Breuer’s musicological analysis of Hasidic music (highlighting another glaring absence discussed below) (12) to Peter Burger’s avant-garde theory (14), Schwartz maps out a subtle structuralist hermeneutical lens that seeks to close the gap between theory and praxis with the fourfold claim that: (1) music reflects practical life and molds it; (2) thought reflects practical life and molds it; (3) music is a specific component of thought; therefore: (4) the musical component in thought reflects practical life and molds it (14). 

In the second chapter, “Assessing the Role of Music,” Schwartz proffers an insightful analysis of the tendency for “the standing value of music often [being presented] as an independent and at times also scientific (mathematical) domain that enters the religious world” (90) which he seeks to redress through understanding the concept of peoplehood in the next chapter, entitled, “Music and the Jewish People.” His flow of thinking into and reliance upon “[t]he uniqueness, ascendance and advantage of the Jewish people” serves in his argument as “a central issue in Jewish thought” (91). If “Jewish tradition was indifferent to composition and musical performance,” then, for Schwartz, this explains why assimilated German Jewish composers, such as Mahler and Schoenberg, failed to integrate their identities into German culture even though their musical thinking shaped it. The result is “Jewish tradition’s alienation from music as an aesthetic and a culture” (131), which may explain Schwartz’s refusal to engage Adorno, whose musical thinking focused on these very composers. The fourth chapter, “Music as a Tool,” focuses on the complex relationship between music and religion revealing music’s powers in the magical and psychological realms that reach cosmic consciousness. 

Here, the reader might expect some minimal engagement with the musical thinking of one of the major visionaries, Rabbi Nachman of Bratzlav, and Chani Haran Smith’s pioneering study of how this expression of Hasidic religiosity reveals music’s powers in the magical and psycho-spiritual realms that cultivate cosmic consciousness. The glaring absence of any analysis or acknowledgment of Smith’s work on how musical thinking and feeling plays a foundational role as a spiritual process in the teachings of R. Nacḥman of Bratzlav reveals either another of Schwartz’s blind spots or a further narrowing of his canon of authentic Jewish thought. Avoiding engagement with one of modernity’s giant Hasidic musical mystics on the topic of music as both a means and a metaphor for spiritual transformation also misses the critical contribution to modernity that is ever-present in R. Nacḥman’s perception of different types of messianically inspired “tzadiqim” (religious leaders), including himself, and the unique purpose that music plays in their redemptive leadership. [3] To skip over this precursor in musical thinking and then over-analyze Rav Kook in later chapters occludes the influence upon this creative renewal in the messianic process that places both music and compassionate living at the core of Rav Kook’s teachings. The limited consideration of Jewish thinkers who engage in Critical Theory or Hasidic psycho-spirituality is a great shortcoming of this monograph.  

The foundational argument for Music in Jewish Thought reaches its apogee in the sixth chapter, entitled, “Music, Zionism, Religion,” wherein Schwartz masterfully analyzes the evolution of religious Zionism’s embrace of the truth that “the most precise symbolic expression of the divine immanence is aesthetic” (276), even venturing into its Nietzschean foundations. The degree to which religious Zionists were drawn to Nietzche’s model of the Apollonian-Dionysiac dialectic is not always entirely evident, but once this truth is seen hidden in plain sight, it sheds further light on why the “glimpse into the darkness leads to anxiety and the shattering of Apollonian optimism.” (263) The power of the aesthetic as the veiled Dionysian ecstatic impulse –whether manifest as poetry or song—reveals itself through the way we feel “rhythm, harmony and dance” in its presence. According to Schwartz, reading music as a tool serving religious, psychological, and instrumental goals until it develops into an independent aesthetic experience enables a deeper appreciation of how we arrived at this post-secular moment in musical thinking. Given Schwartz’s preliminary methodological acknowledgement that “[t]racing the course of the musical motif, then, largely reflects the conceptual leanings of Jewish thought” and that “an element that is not central but derives from its inner fabric, may reveal the authentic character of Jewish thought” (15), I return to his intentional lack of critical engagement with Adorno’s precursor aesthetic theory and musical thinking, having already rehearsed a deeper analysis elsewhere. [4]

While Schwartz is willing to reflect upon how “music embodies the thing in itself” and how, in the context of post-Kantian philosophy, music actually becomes a “copy of the will [embodied by the world] itself,” he quickly pivots to refocus his extensive analysis of the “musical substrate in Rav Kook’s thought,” all the while conflating the musical thinking of Richard Wagner with Theodor Adorno and dismissing both as having “endorsed these radical views of music” (250). This is an atypical claim by Schwartz insofar as it is completely unsubstantiated by any reading of a primary Adorno source, and all the more concerning given that Adorno dedicated an entire monograph to his critical musical thinking, called, In Search of Wagner. [5] Scholarship must acknowledge its precursors, especially in musical thinking, even when disagreeing or seeking to deconstruct it. One can only imagine the further nuances Schwartz’s analysis in this apogee chapter would have gained from engaging in Adorno’s critique of Wagner’s Gesamtkunstwerk, or “total work of art”— in light of its  ultimate assimilation into the official culture of the Third Reich. 

In critiquing any nationalist ideology, including Zionism (and especially the mystical Zionism of Rav Kook), the musical thinker cannot avoid analyzing how the aesthetic and the ideological and the political are often subtly interwoven. Perhaps Schwartz excluded Adorno’s musical thinking for aesthetic reasons, given that Adorno studied under Alban Berg in Vienna, or for ideological and political reasons, given his central role as founder of the Frankfurt school of German Marxism. Adorno’s musical thinking is sober enough to smash the icons of inauthenticity and courageously address failures and the innovations of Wagner’s aesthetics, as well as his dangerous urge to self-destruction along with his utopian intimations. The reader is left to assume that, given Schwartz’s aforementioned articulation of Jewish thought as referring to canonical texts or to their contents, with an inner order and an acceptance of revelation as authoritative, this justifies Schwartz’s excision of Adorno and R. Nachman from the discourse on musical thinking altogether, even if Adorno’s musical thinking fulfills the first two absolute characteristics while not necessarily accepting and integrating the third. The seventh and final chapter, entitled, “Summing Up,” recounts the argument and leaves the reader with the question: “Will music become an essential element of religion and philosophy in Judaism?” to which Schwartz responds: “No clear-cut answer is available, only time will tell.” (294).

In light of the current waves of death and destruction underway in the war in Israel, where Schwartz lives and writes, time is already telling that popular music on the radio continues to serve as the barometer of the Jewish people in a time of war. While only prophets can foresee such occurrences, a third glaring absence from Schwartz’s insightful correlation between music, Zionism, and peoplehood is the curiosity to critically engage the ways in which popular music has served as the soundtrack to every Israeli war from 1948 up until the present day. Adorno’s musical thinking suffered from the same blind spot as Schwartz’s—namely, a discerning focus on high culture alone as being worthy of analysis from a philosophical perspective. However, the theological perspective on how music continues to serve as a dirge amidst destruction and its aftermath remains worthy of further reflection, especially in light of Adorno’s musical thinking that: “[w]ith music intentions are broken and scattered out of their own force in the configuration of the Name.” [6]

Aubrey L. Glazer (Beth Abraham Synagogue/Panui, Dayton, Ohio)

[1] Theodor W. Adorno Quasi Una Fantasia: Essays on Modern Music (London: Verso, 1998), 6.

[2] Adorno, Quasi Una Fantasia, 6.

[3] See Chani Haran Smith, Tuning the Soul: Music as a Spiritual Process in the Teachings of Rabbi Naḥman of Bratzlav, (Leiden: Brill, 2010).

[4] See Aubrey L. Glazer, A New Physiognomy of Jewish Thinking: Critical Theory After Adorno As Applied to Jewish Thought (New York: Continuum, 2011).

[5] Theodor W. Adorno, In Search of Wagner (London: NLB, 1981).

[6] Adorno, Quasi Una Fantasia, 5. For further analysis on this musical thinking related to the nuanced challenges in (re)configuration of the Name, see Glazer, A New Physiognomy of Jewish Thinking, esp. pp. 49, 52, 54, 56, 60, 62, 129.