#  Uri Schreter Awarded Harry and Cecile Starr Prize in Jewish Studies 

 





October 02, 2025

 

 

- [ Department News ](/news-categories/department-news)
 
 

 

The Department of Music is thrilled to share that Uri Schreter ('25) has been awarded the Harry and Cecile Starr Prize in Jewish Studies by the [Harvard University Center for Jewish Studies](https://cjs.fas.harvard.edu/2025/10/06/2025-harry-and-cecile-starr-prize-winning-theses/) for his doctoral dissertation "The Jewish Beat: Klezmer, Culture, and Community in Postwar America."

The Prize is awarded by member nomination only, for an outstanding senior thesis or Ph.D. dissertation in Jewish and Hebrew studies by a Harvard student. Uri was nominated by Professor Kay Kaufman Shelemay. Congratulations Uri!

**Abstract**:   
Scholarly accounts of this period have often described klezmer, the traditional instrumental folk music of Yiddish-speaking Jews, as virtually absent until the 1970s. This study argues, however, that klezmer not only endured but provided the foundation for postwar American Jewish dance music: although its traditional repertoire receded, its style merged with Israeli and American popular genres, giving rise to a new hybrid form—the “klezmerized” Israeli folk song—that remained widely performed and deeply meaningful for postwar American Jews. This analysis reframes the relationship between Yiddish and Hebrew popular music, reading against their presumed opposition to reveal an ongoing dialectical exchange that persists to this day. The study further demonstrates the crucial role of music in sustaining diaspora identities and communities, showing that Jewish dance music remained central to postwar weddings across social, cultural, and demographic lines, even as other rituals faded. Drawing on archival materials, sound recordings, and more than eighty oral history interviews with postwar wedding musicians and couples, it challenges prevailing narratives about Jewish music in this era, exposing how political ideologies shape perceptions of music and how music, in turn, constructs collective memory.



 

 

 



 

 

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