Welcome to The Hub for online Jewish classes and events. Find an upcoming event hosted by Jewish organizations across the world, or explore our on-demand section to view recordings of past events.

Loading Events

It Could Lead to Dancing

Hosted By: KlezKanada

Dances and balls appear throughout world literature as places for young people to meet, flirt, and form relationships. The popularity of social dance transcends class, gender, and ethnic and national boundaries. In the context of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Jewish culture, dance offers crucial insights into debates about emancipation and acculturation. While traditional Jewish law prohibits men and women from dancing together, Jewish mixed-sex dancing was understood as the very sign of modernity, and the ultimate boundary transgression. As a result, mixed-sex dancing became a powerful way for writers to depict the dramatic cultural changes Jews negotiated in the period between the Enlightenment and the Holocaust, while at the same time entertaining their readers.

In this presentation, Sonia Gollance will trace the history of the Jewish taboo on mixed-sex dancing and share some of the main arguments from her new book, It Could Lead to Dancing: Mixed-Sex Dancing and Jewish Modernity. The first book to focus on European Jewish social dance, It Could Lead to Dancing was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Awards (USA).

The event listed here is hosted by a third party. My Jewish Learning/70 Faces Media is not responsible for its content or for errors in the listing.

Host

KlezKanada

KlezKanada was founded in 1996 to teach, nurture and present to a broad public the best of Jewish traditional arts and Yiddish culture, fostering Jewish cultural and artistic creativity worldwide as both an ethnic heritage and a constantly evolving contemporary culture and identity. From its start as a small summer festival, KlezKanada has become one of the leading Jewish cultural organizations in the world.
See all events from this host
Advertisement

Discover More

Leonard Michaels

The stylistic evolution of the late great short story writer.

Jewish Ethical Principles for Business

The principles of ethics embodied in Jewish legal and ethical writings apply explicitly to business situations.

1950s Jewish Humor

The 1950s: Reiner & Brooks, Sid Caesar, MAD, and Lenny Bruce

Advertisement
Advertisement