The sixth and final episode of Season 4 of The Sounding Jewish Podcast features Dr. Sarah Ross. We explore her entrance into academia, interest in Jewish women's music-making, and her recent work on Jewish music in heritage studies.

Guest Bio:

Prof. Dr. Sarah M. Ross is a scholar in Jewish Music Studies. Since 2015, she has served as Professor of Jewish Music Studies and Director of the European Centre for Jewish Music (EZJM) at the Hanover University of Music, Drama and Media. Since 2022, she is the speaker of the Priority Programme "Jewish Cultural Heritage" (SPP 2357). Her major publications include A Season of Singing: Creating Feminist Jewish Music in the United States (Brandeis University Press, 2016) and The Moralization of Jewish Heritage in Germany (Lexington Books, 2024).

Sound Clip Citations:

SOUND CLIP #1: Credit for the intro and outro music belongs to rosegoldglitch, May 22, 2020, freesound.org, https://freesound.org/people/rosegoldglitch/sounds/519176/

SOUND CLIP #2: “The Meron Tragedy – ACHEINU at the Kotel,” posted May 5, 2021 by Will Wolfowich, https://www.youtube.com/shorts/KQVAqxXlvb0

SOUND CLIP #3: “Rosh Chodesh Moon,” posted on November 11, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QNUsRjasj4&list=RD0QNUsRjasj4&start_radio=1.

SOUND CLIP #4: “Shechinah, My Light – Rabbi G. Rayzel Raphael,” posted by Rabbi Geela Rayzel Raphael on December 16, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNmKg5qZrYs&list=RDkNmKg5qZrYs&start_radio=1

SOUND CLIP #5: “Gates of Justice – Chana Rothman – 3 Songs for Justice,” posted by Chana Rothman on October 22, 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUiLSBFaWpc&list=RDVUiLSBFaWpc&start_radio=1

SOUND CLIP #6: “Sing Unto God – Debbie Friedman & the Highland Park Senior High Camerata (1973),” posted by bran on December 16, 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BF2u7AFPPMo&list=RDBF2u7AFPPMo&start_radio=1

SOUND CLIP #7: "Hine Ma Tov" performed on Alphorns by Swiss-Jewish musician Martin Mürner and his colleague Mike Maurer in the synagogue in Zurich, recording provided courtesy of Sarah Ross.

SOUND CLIP #8: “Louis Lewandowski - Ma Towu (Leipziger Synagogalchor gemeinsam mit dem Kammerchor Josquin des Préz),” posted by the Leipziger Synagogalchor on September 9, 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgRi8azXJRg&list=RDCgRi8azXJRg&start_radio=1

SOUND CLIP #9: “Chorkonzert UNESCO-Welterbetag "Hashiwenu" mit jüdischer Synagogalmusik - Deutscher Kammerchor,” posted by Dommusik Speyer on August 10, 2021,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKperNin2F8&list=RDdKperNin2F8&start_radio=1

The fifth episode of Season 4 of The Sounding Jewish Podcast features Dr. Árni Heimir Ingólfsson. We explore the unexpected start of his book Music at World's End, which focuses on the lives and careers of three exiled musicians who made their way from Nazi Germany and Austria to Iceland, and revitalized Iceland's classical music scene in the process.

Árni Heimir Ingólfsson is an Icelandic musicologist and holds a PhD in historical musicology from Harvard University. His primary area of interest is the history of Icelandic music from the Middle Ages to the present. He is the author of several books, including Jón Leifs and the Musical Invention of Iceland (2019), which was listed as one of that year's best books on music by Alex Ross of The New Yorker. His most recent book, Music at World’s End, is a study of the Jewish musicians who fled Germany and Austria to Iceland in the 1930s, and their significant and lasting contribution to the music scene there. The book was nominated for the 2024 Icelandic Literary Prize (non-fiction category)—Ingólfsson’s third nomination for that award.

Ingólfsson has given lectures and pre-concert talks throughout the world, including in Europe, Asia, and the United States. He was a special guest speaker at the LA Philharmonic’s Reykjavík Festival in 2017, an Erasmus guest lecturer at the Vienna Conservatory of Music, and has held visiting fellowships at Oxford, Harvard, and Yale Universities. In spring 2026, he is Visiting Research Fellow at the Herzog August Library in Wolfenbüttel, Germany. In Reykjavík, he is Senior Researcher at the Reykjavík Academy, working on a book project on modernism in Icelandic music, ca. 1950-1980.

Ingólfsson has wide-ranging experience as performing musician. As conductor of the vocal ensemble Carmina, he is a two-time winner of the Icelandic Music Award, and their CD Melódía won rave reviews, including an Editor’s Choice in Gramophone magazine. He has been interviewed by international media such as The New Yorker, Gramophone, and BBC Radio 3, and has held advisory posts for international foundations such as the Nordic Culture Fund. He is also an active pianist and harpsichordist and has performed on a number of CDs, including Nico Muhly’s Mothertongue (2007).

The fourth episode of Season 4 of The Sounding Jewish Podcast features Dr. Sarah Bunin Benor. We discuss her establishment of the Jewish Languages Project, the connections between language studies and sound studies, and her ongoing research in the field of Jewish language studies.

Sarah Bunin Benor is Professor of Contemporary Jewish Studies at Hebrew Union College and Adjunct Professor in the University of Southern California Linguistics Department. She received her B.A. from Columbia University in Comparative Literature in 1997 and her Ph.D. from Stanford University in Linguistics in 2004. She is the author of Becoming Frum: How Newcomers Learn the Language and Culture of Orthodox Judaism (Rutgers University Press, 2012) and Hebrew Infusion: Language and Community at American Jewish Summer Camps (Rutgers University Press, 2020), as well as many articles about sociolinguistics, Jewish names, and Jewish languages (especially Jewish English, Hebrew, Yiddish, and Ladino). Dr. Benor has received several fellowships and prizes, including the Dorot Fellowship in Israel, the Wexner Graduate Fellowship, the Sami Rohr Choice Award for Jewish Literature, and the National Jewish Book Award in Education and Jewish Identity. In 2024 she was elected a fellow of the American Academy for Jewish Research. Dr. Benor is founding co-editor of the Journal of Jewish Languages and co-editor of Languages in Jewish Communities, Past and Present (De Gruyter Mouton, 2018) and We the Resilient: Wisdom for America from Women Born Before Suffrage (Luminare Press, 2017). She founded and directs the HUC Jewish Language Project, which runs the Jewish Language Website, the Jewish English Lexicon, and the Heritage Words Podcast, which Dr. Benor hosts and produces. She is currently working on a project analyzing the names Jews give their children and their pets. She and her husband live in Los Angeles and have three young adult children.

Please visit the Transcript to view this episode's Show Notes, including sound clip citations and a full episode transcription.