My research examines the role of sound and music in the negotiation of Scottish-Jewish identity during a period that saw the largest Jewish migration to Scotland and the consolidation of significant communities in Edinburgh and Glasgow. My project is the first detailed study of Scottish-Jewish music and makes full use of a valuable and underused archival resource. I am seeking to understand how Scotland’s Jews used music to navigate both difference and acculturation, with specific attention to religious music, jazz and classical music, representations of Jewish sound within Scottish culture, and points of linguistic hybridity. I also examine what the wider historical Scottish-Jewish soundscape can tell us about patterns of exchange and dialogue between host and immigrant communities. This study of Scotland’s rapidly changing Jewish history presents important alternative narratives of British-Jewish life. It is also a timely opportunity to document one aspect of a dynamic but shrinking community.
