Jewish Sound in 4 Objects

The first event of the 2025-26 Frankel Institute "Jews & Media" theme year will be a roundtable titled Jewish Sound in 4 Objects. The engaging and interactive event will feature special presentations on Jewish musical objects by visiting scholar Assaf Shelleg and Frankel Fellows Jeremiah Lockwood, Uri Schreter, and Tamar Sella.

Indicate your interest in attending by completing this registration form: https://myumi.ch/VVg1X

Assaf Shelleg (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem) studies modern and contemporary musics with a particular interest in art music written by and about Jews. Shelleg is the author of the award-winning book Jewish Contiguities and the Soundtrack of Israeli History (Oxford University Press, 2014), in addition to Theological Stains: Art Music and the Zionist Project (Oxford University Press, 2020) and The State of Afterness: Contemporary Music in an about Israel (Oxford University Press, 2025). Previously the director of the Cherrick Center for Israel Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem between (2021-24), Shelleg has also served as a curator for the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra (2020-22), and a music contributor for Haaretz. His new book Jewish Art Music as Art Music is forthcoming with Cambridge University Press in 2026.

Jeremiah Lockwood is a scholar and musician, working in the fields of Jewish studies, performance studies and ethnomusicology. He is a Research Fellow at the Lowell Milken Center for Music of American Jewish Experience at UCLA. His work engages with issues arising from peering into the archive and imagining the power of “lost” forms of expression to articulate keenly felt needs in the present. His first book, Golden Ages: Hasidic singers and cantorial revival in the digital era, was published in 2024 by University of California Press. Jeremiah was a 2023-24 UPenn Katz Center Fellow, and a 2022-23 Yale Institute of Sacred Music Fellow. As 2024-25 Frankel Center Fellow he is writing his second book project, a cultural history of the cantorial phonograph era. Lockwood has recorded more than a dozen albums over a music career that spans decades, with his band The Sway Machinery, the Khazones Underground, and other projects.

Tamar Sella is a scholar of music and performance cultures. She is currently working on her first book, Unsettled Sounds, which proposes a lens for understanding the political meanings of Arab-Jewish cultural inheritance in the wake of its dislocations. Her work has been published in journals including Women and Music, American Music, and Ethnomusicology. Before her current position as assistant professor of ethnomusicology at the University of North Texas, Tamar held a postdoctoral fellowship at Rice University. She holds a PhD from Harvard and a BA from UC Berkeley, both in music.

Uri Schreter is an interdisciplinary musicologist, composer, performer, and filmmaker whose work bridges scholarship and creative practice. He holds a Ph.D. in Musicology from Harvard University, as well as an M.A. in History and a B.A. in Music from Tel Aviv University. His research focuses on twentieth-century Jewish history, with particular attention to Yiddish language, music, and culture. His work has been supported by the American Musicological Society, the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, and the YIVO Institute, and has appeared in the Journal of Synagogue Music and In Geveb: A Journal of Yiddish Studies. Beyond academia, Schreter collaborates with artists across Jewish cultural spheres, including Shane Baker, Anthony Russell, Isabel Frey, and Judy Bressler. In 2025–2026, he will serve as a Fellow at the Frankel Institute for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan and as the Bader Postdoctoral Fellow in Jewish History at Queen’s University.