Halberstadt

manifestation The devastating impact of the Enlightenment on the European Jewry was the utter collapse of the traditional yeshivot almost overnight.

The famous yeshivot of Metz, Frankfurt, Mannheim, Fjorda, Merz, Karlsruhe, Alpenhamburg, Halberstadt, and Prague were flourishing in the middle to the late 18th century.

By the beginning of the 19th century, all were in a precipitous state of decline.

Students were no longer

In 1795, the first Orthodox Jewish day school, and by

Jewish day school I mean an elementary school, combining Jewish and secular study under one roof, whose express purpose was the perpetuation of traditional Judaism.

The first such day school was founded by T. Hirschhausen, a Jew in Halberstadt.

Originally a school to the poor, Ashtahat Svi, that was the name of the school, eventually became an engineering school, produced second classes for girls in 1827, and a high school in 1866, and continued to thrive until the Nazis destroyed

You don't feel it all the time, but in those moments where you feel it, it's so magical and powerful it's like as if time stopped yes and um it's in the process of writing music that the wisdom exists and this is actually something um Philip Roth said in an interview that really stayed with me and he's like once once you stop writing it's like you don't have that wisdom anymore but like as you start writing in that process there is this sort of wisdom and There is something special that's happening there, and I definitely feel really grateful to have that connection and be inspired by it every day.

In this next segment, I shared some other music on long timescales, starting with a clip from my 2021 interview with Dr. Rainer Neugebauer, the curator of the As Slow As Possible John Cage Organ Project in Halberstadt, Germany.

so so

In 1998, there was a conference of new organ music in Trossingen.

And then there was a question, what does it mean as slow as possible by an organ? And then one of the participants knows this empty church where we are in now in Halberstadt.

And this was something like a pig stall and something like a farmhouse, yes.

So first was found the place.

to play this piece very long.

Always dependable, since 1900.

[instrumental music] Let's travel to Halberstadt, Germany.

It's the gateway to the Harz Mountains, a city with approximately 40,000 residents.

A place with rich history that dates back to medieval times.

It's got a gothic look, suited to film a Dracula movie with their cobblestone streets and some timbered houses.

If you're driving with a car to, to Halberstadt you see a lot of church towers.

It's actually a, a city which is like, um, how you imagine it from some cliched pictures of European cities [laughs] with a lot of churches and high spires and that kind of thing.

But there's one particular church that attracts thousands of visitors today.