Who Are These Miserable Jews?”: Text, Translation, and Analysis of a Transnational Cantorial Polemic in Eighteenth-Century London

Abstract

Current scholarship concerning Ashkenazic music in early modern England is quite limited. While recent studies have given attention to the late eighteenth-century musical figures of Myer Leon and John Braham, very little has been written concerning the first half-century of musical life among London’s Ashkenazim. This article expands this limited soundscape by offering the text, translation, and analysis of a polemic against Ashkenazic cantors written down by Portuguese Jew in early eighteenth-century London. This polemic shares features with contemporary continental discourse regarding Ashkenazic cantors and their meshorerim, a controversial musical ensemble which spread from East-Central Europe to Western Europe across the seventeenth century. With copies in both Amsterdam and London, this polemic further reflects the cultural tensions between the incumbent Sephardic Jews and their poorer, immigrant Ashkenazic counterparts, revealing the role of music in protecting —or threatening—the provisional presence of Jews in English society.