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Music In Haredi Jewish Life: Liquid Modernity And The Negotiation Of Boundaries In Greater New York, Gordon A. Dale

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this dissertation I seek to understand tensions regarding boundary maintenance, music, and cultural continuity among the contemporary Haredi (“Ultra-Orthodox”) Jewish community of Greater New York in the context of sociologist Zygmunt Bauman’s theory of liquid modernity. While Bauman suggests that modernity has melted familiar institutions and created an unstable and rapidly shifting world, I argue that for Haredim, the non-liberal religious community and its cultural productions solidify social bonds. While many Haredi Jews strive to continue the musical practices of pre-WWII Europe, some Haredi musicians push or disregard the boundaries of accepted practice by experimenting with Western popular music …