Returning and Leaving
Starting with the reinauguration of Westend Synagogue with organ, choir, and cantor, the Jewish community of Frankfurt am Main and its music practices during the 1950s serve as a case study to show a continuous dialectic between cultural change and persistence, which marked Jewish life in the Federal Republic at large during the postwar period. As such, the community provides an example of the threefold process of returning, rebuilding, and redefining which affected the establishment of its cultural life. This can be observed in several areas of musical practice. In synagogue service it pertained to the role of the cantor, choir, and the organ as an artifact most closely associated with liberal German Jewry. Outside of service, it concerned musical programs in the context of communal events and to a lesser extent commemoration. Each uniquely embodies and exemplifies facets of cultural mobility and its others.