There is No Klezmer Guitar, Part 4
17-18th century: Enter the Naked People
Oy where to start with this one? Let's just dive in. January 1756, Lanckoronie, Poland:
And they took the wife of a local rabbi, (who also belonged to the sect) a women beautiful but lacking discretion, they undressed her naked and placed the crown of the Torah on her head, sat her under the canopy like a bride and danced a dance around her. They celebrated with bread and wine of the condemned and they pleased their hearts with music like King David… and in dance they fell upon her kissing her… (Mixed Multitude, p. 23, quoting Rabbi Emden, a hostile witness of sorts)
How did we get here?
About a century before this, an wave of heresy began to sweep over the Jewish world, changing it forever. It’s leader was Sabbatei Zvi, but the movement outlasted him and continued with Jacob Frank, whose adherents were the participants in the ceremony above. These movements were very sensational so its easy to either get overly enthusiastic or cynically dismissive by their extravagances, but even very sober historians of Judaism admit they had a pivotal role in its history.
The Big Picture
Two events:
The Chelminecki massacre of 1648/9 was a devastating event to Jews in Eastern Europe. I'll let better sources than me do the factual work, but for now, understand that it threw normative Ashkenazic Judaism at the time into a complete crisis.
At the same time, by the 17th century, the diaspora of Jews from Western Europe to the East was well along. Gershom Sholem, in his groundbreaking work on Sabbateanism, thinks that these Western migrants brought mystical notions (specifically Lurianic Kabbalah) to the East, which then began to ferment. He cites this as the primary cause of the heretical trends, perhaps sparked by the horrors of Chelminecki.
As often happens in the wake of a crisis, messiahs appeared. 1n 1666, Shabbatei Zvi (1626-1676), a charismatic and promising rabbinical student was declared to be the messiah by good friend and all around swell fella, Nathan of Gaza.
What follows next is various adventures, hi-jinks, a conversion, hanging out with dervishes, a death, followed by another messiah, super weird sexytimes and the eventual petering out of these heretical antinomian movements (although importantly, remnants of them are still very much alive today). But I want to focus the conversation on the parts that are important to our discussion.
Three Big Points
First, the movement was huge.
We know it from diplomatic records, from ambassadors of countries who sent records to their government describing what happened throughout the Jewish world. Sabbatai Zevi was not just a Jewish phenomenon, but an international one. His arrival affected the economy and politics of all Europe.
This was not a freak show designed for the few. The Sabbatean movement spread far, all over Western and Eastern Europe and affected every strata of Jewish (and even some Christian) society. Rich and poor, city and country, all became involved. (This is one reason why Sholem discounts the importance of the massacres of 48/49 in the origin story).
Second, the movement centered around a redefined role for women and the feminine in general. Interestingly, women, like Zvi’s wife Sarah, were prominent members of the movement, but “rank and file” women were also given the same rights as men, including reading from the Torah. This is as shocking at it sounds today. These attempts at equity were not always pretty. Similar to what happened in the 1960s, some of the liberating concepts, like free love, were male fantasies filtered through female stereotypes.
Third, their rituals included a lot of music and/or dance. Zvi himself “had a gift for music and loved music and song.” (Sholem p.304) Reports of the early years feature dancing and swooning and singing and speaking in tongues. And the focus on song and dance continued into the Frankist era. These rituals were often domestic when they needed to be secret, but could also be very public. This led to a constant state of tension with the burgeoning ecstasy:
Sasportas describes the scenes at the synagogue with biting sarcasm: the believers danced with such enthusiasm that everything was thrown into confusion and the rabbi, R. Moses Israel, had to mount the pulpit and call for more comely conduct. (Sholem, pg. 880)
Guitars?
We have slight evidence that these rituals sometimes included "lutes" and other musical instruments. The inclusion of the lute is not surprising. As we've seen earlier, it was associated with romantic love and was consistent with the movement's preference for exotic Sephardic signifiers.
Every night grandees and rabbis gathered by the hundreds to him. They would hear the glories of God from him and sit around him singing the songs and praises of Shabbatai Zvi, strumming lutes and playing other musical instruments. In the midst of all this R. Moses would begin to dance like a lad, and in the middle of dancing he would fall to the ground like one in the grip of epilepsy, may God preserve us. He would twitch for a moment, then begin to speak, and they would place a handkerchief over his face. He spoke clearly...and revealed innumerable secrets, all in the language of the Zohar, though not a word of what he said is found in the Zohar. ... He would immediately rise from the ground, wash, and bow to the Shekhinah. The Sabbatean Prophets
Here we find some of the elements. The lute, the ecstasy and the feminine, in this case, not in the form of sexual interest, but in the inclusion of the shekinah, a female spiritual principle in Judaism. Nor was this a single instance:
They enticed a young man from Brussa to Constantinople, whose name was Moyse Suriel, a scholar of the Kabbalah... The next morning, upon hearing singing and the playing of instruments he fell into a Pythonian fit. He fell to the ground foaming at his mouth, and a voice issued from him with such rapidity that the scribes could hardly follow. When his spirit returned to him after this simulated ecstasy, they showed him the text of what he had said in his trance, but he pretended not to understand his own words because of the excellence of their style and the depth of their wisdom. The Sabbatean Prophets
There is no mention of lute here specifically, but whatever it was would have had to be used as an accompaniement to singing. The connection of the Sabbateans with their romantic lute playing was enough of a "thing" to be used by the famous Isaac Cardoso against his Sabbatean brother Abraham, who "sang love-songs with the guitar under the balconies of fair ladies."
Isaac Cardoso warned and ridiculed him, asking him ironically if he received his gift of prophecy from his former gallantries and from playing the guitar for the fair maidens of madrid.
Years later, during a ceremony for the second major false messiah, Jacob Frank, we would see the same image, "They play guitars and flutes under the window of their beloved" (The Mixed Multitude pg. 239) We should be careful to note that all except the Frank anecdote were not in Ashkenaz Europe.
The image of the guitar strumming lover is, of course, a cliche. It conjures up the courtly romantic minstrels that would have been already old news by the 17th century. This was consistent with the fairy-tale like nature of these movements, where antinomian sexual transgressions were paired up exotic and romantic "oriental" costumes, ceremonies and processions. Sabbatei Zvi himself once even invited all the prominent Rabbis of the time to a ceremony where he married the Torah itself, which he called "A lovely lady" and then sang the 12th century Sephardic song Meliselda.
The Pre-False Messiahs False Messiah
There was also lute playing by Jewish women in mixed gender settings before these two messiahs. This story features another messiah, if you can believe it! This time it’s in the 16th century, before Zvi and Frank.
Before the false messiahs of Shabbatai Zvi and Jakob Frank there was David Reuveni, an African-Jewish figure who also had mystical overtones and liberal progessive relationships with women. Musically, this all seems to overlap during his stay in Italy. The book above mentions the use of the lute (cittern) several times played by women and also featuring dancing. “It is noteworthy that in these pious homes hospitality sometimes included women of the household dancing in front of and playing music for guests.” (see Diary of a Black Jewish Messiah)
And there were also prohibitions on lute playing right around this time and place specifically associated with its female and romantic aspects.
Religious songs arose the communion with God, but the songs that women sing, with their frivolous lyrics and dirty language, cause the separation between soul and body and even if [the lyrics] do not use corrupted words, all these are lyrics without substance, and people of low stature are attracted by the lyrics of these cheap songs, and they loose their soul, and about them the prophet said: "Spare Me the sound of your hymns, and let Me not hear the music of your lutes" [Amos 5:23]. Seroussi
FAKE!
The musical aspect was, like everything else in this story, self consciously fake! The Sabbateans were very much inventing, if not a new religion, entirely new rituals, much as the Hasidim would do a century later. That doesn’t make it any less meaningful. The lutes and guitars fit in because of their associations with romantic love, women and the East. There isn’t much evidence at all of guitars, and I don’t want to pretend there is, but (1) they were there and (2) they disappeared shortly after the heretical movements disappeared. I don’t want to make too much of this, but I think it bears consideration, since it (1) coincides with a general crackdown of ecstasy that was female, “homegrown”/domestic in general and (2) fits in with larger narrative that saw the guitar as pagan/female.
The Need to Dance in the 17th Century
It is very tempting to get into more details about these movements, because they are fascinating, but it's important to focus on what's relevant.
The key element of these heretical ceremonies was characterized by “singing songs,” but also included “religiously charged music and dance.” Strangely, the world of Jewish music and dance scholarship very rarely discusses these folks or their impact on Jewish music and dance. This explosion of music, dance and ecstasy in the 17th century took place in a context that included tumultuous events in the cultures of neighboring Christian (see also) and Islamic/Sufi communities as well, and beyond!
In short, it was a pressure cooker. And something had to blow. The success of these nutty false messiahs just show that people were desperate for such a thing. However, because these movements burned so brightly, they failed to sustain themselves. As the movements rolled into the 18th century, it was clear that their moment had passed. But the needs they revealed remained, and they would be resolved by two emerging movements: the Hasidic and the Haskalah movements.
The Split
The Hasidim preserved ecstasy, but they tightly channeled it into their own conservative ethical system. This meant that the crucial feminine dimension of the Sabbateans was entirely thrown out (Jay Michaelson’s amazing account of the Frankist movement deserves mention here- he contends the sexy stuff was exaggerated but that the female liberation was absolutely intolerable to the status quo, his phrase that Hasidism “domesticated” Sabbateanism is too good to not steal). The Haskalah, like enlightened folks everywhere, decided against going “medieval” and relegated music and dance to the restraints of reason, moderation and self-expression. Their arts existed in a realm of achievement, status and moral betterment.
Neither movement, for better or worse, was able to integrate that combo of the feminine, domestic and ecstatic. In the late 18th century, while these movements were becoming popular, the domestic open-tuned steel strung guitar was just beginning to trickle into Eastern Europe from Bohemia. By the end of the century, it would be advertised as an instrument for amateurs, including women, to be played in the home, but its reputation as an instrument of ill repute would last into the 20th century.
Shame and Strings
Martin Kalinsky, a mandolin player, said that playing the mandolin (and he seemed to imply this was true for other non-violin string instruments) was "disgraceful." This was echoed by Matanya Ophee, who bought a guitar when he couldn't afford a violin, and was worried that his father would have disapproved. Why?
Masha was one of her girls. Masha was a Russian- Jewish girl who was blind. She had lost her eyes and her family in a Russian pogrom. How she had drifted into the “business” no one ever learned. She had a meek face, and was always quiet. She played songs of Kiev, and accompanied herself on a seven-string guitar.
So says Micheal Gold about a prostitute in NYC in the early 20th century.
Many nights I fell asleep to the melodies of Kiev she sang to her seven-string guitar. We could hear it in our home. She sang between “customers.”
The association of the stringed lute with women, and licentiousness goes back to the very origins of these instruments.
When the Israelites arrived (in 16th century B.C. Egypt), they found the harp already in Egypt, but they may have brought with them a gift that the Egyptians were to like even better. This was the lyre, which in the New Kingdom (1580 B.C.) became a favorite not only among the common people but also in fashionable circles, where ladies embraced a small five-stringed variety...The lute, carried west from Babylonia about the same time, also became an overnight favorite, especially with women." (David's Harp, Sendrey, 1964, see also Joachim Braun’s lute essay for the super early history of lute as a non-Jewish pagan instrument).
And continued to the present era
Sephardi female instrumentalists were not restricted to playing percussion instruments only. The traveler Victor Guerin, for example, witnessed in mid-nineteenth century Rhodes how Sephardi girls and women used to meet regularly at the fountain in the calle ancha ("wide street") and noticed that most of them knew how to play "a guitar that resembled a Spanish mandolin and accompanied singing and dancing at celebrations" (1856, quoted in Angel 1987:100). Weich-Shahak (personal communication) reports that the playing of string instruments, the ‘ud, the mandolin, and even the qanun, was customary among Eastern Sephardi women in the early 20th century. Seroussi
Let's be clear- I'm not saying every Jewish person saw these instruments as explicitly sexually immoral because of some Egyptian women 32 centuries ago! But there was a background hum of general unease about instruments for use in domestic spaces and by women.1Around the same time, in Lvov, “In 1629, a Jewish music guild in Lvov (Lwow) played violin, zither, lute, cymbalom, bass and drum. Only ensemble musicians joined the guild; thus Yitzhok the zither player and Yoysef the harpist remained outside the guild." (page 72 Zev quoting Beregovski). If you compare that list with a klezmer ensemble one hundred years later, of all the ensemble instruments, only the guitar would be left in the dust.
Amongst the enlightened haskalah folks, who encouraged music, instruments like the violin would be okay because they were, ideally, meant to be practiced at home but ultimately played in legitimate status-y settings (they also made singing, the real shonda, impossible at the same time.)
Mandolins and guitars, as we saw earlier, were widespread, but had to be played in large official settings to be accepted. The deliberate absence of them in other contexts was not an accident, as I'll show when we look at how they were used by their Greek, Ukrainian and Russian counterparts.
Sigh, this has gone on too long. Weather changing goat bladders up next...
One example amongst many, this time in America, “Given that women were also seen to share an innate sensibility and sensuality with these Latins, we should not be surprised that they, too, seemed inherently linked to the guitar…S.S. Stewart asserted in 1885 that “the guitar, as a ladies’ instrument, when compared with the banjo, is decidely vulgar”. from The Guitar in America