Still Small Voices: The Prevalence and Practices of Haredi Women in the Musical Soundscapes the Postwar Era

This paper recovers Haredi women’s musical presence in the 1940s-1960s in Israel and the United States. Via two case studies, I delve into Haredi women’s listening and performative practices, and their appearance within the music itself, enabling an understanding of the musical panoply that played a formative role in modern Haredi identity. First, I analyze the presentation of women in the lyrical narratives of post-war Haredi singer Yom Tov Ehrlich. In the 317 original songs released publicly by Ehrlich, women are featured in significant proportion, and are portrayed on equal par with, if not superior to, their male counterparts. Physical descriptions, both of women’s dress as well as their demeanor, proliferate within the music, and women and young girls are often described as beautiful. By analyzing Erlich’s music, I demonstrate that women were seen, heard, and reckoned with in Haredi life before the war. Women were valued as religious and Hasidic actors, and served a vital if not precisely equal role to that of their male counterparts.

Alongside women’s predominance within Ehrlich’s music, Haredi women often absorbed secular music within their listening repertoires in the 1940s-1970s. Filling in for the meager offerings available in popular religious music, Haredi women followed and incorporated artists such as Bob Dylan and Simon and Garfunkel, and they sang their songs at women’s gatherings. In Israel and in Eastern Europe, and later in the United States, Hebrew songs produced by nonreligious singers were performed informally by women, even in the most Hasidic circles. As Iris Parush explains in regard to the access and immersion of Haredi women in modern literature, women’s exemption from certain halakhic obligations enabled their immersion in secular culture. My research demonstrates how women enjoyed the freedom of expression afforded by their liminal position within the Haredi world.