Edwin
Seroussi

Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Ellie and Herbert D. Katz Distinguished Fellowship  Roberta and Stanley Bogen Visiting Scholar

Research Topic

German Jewish Sacred Musical Intersections at the Eric Mandell Collection of Jewish Music in Philadelphia  

Bio

Edwin Seroussi is the Emanuel Alexandre Professor of Musicology and director of the Jewish Music Research Centre at Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Born in Montevideo, Uruguay, he immigrated to Israel in 1971 where he completed undergraduate and graduate degrees in musicology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, continuing on to receive his Ph.D. from the University of California at Los Angeles in 1987.  He has taught at Bar-Ilan and Tel Aviv Universities in Israel, and has been a  visiting professor at universities in Europe and North and South America. He has published on North African and Eastern Mediterranean Jewish music, on Judeo-Islamic relations in music, and on Israeli popular music.  

Selected publications

Sonic Ruins of Modernity: Judeo-Spanish Folk Songs Today (Routledge, 2022).   

Popular Music and Israeli National Culture, with Motti Regev (University of California Press, 2004).

Fellowship

2018–2019

Delving into the meaning of modernity beyond the European, American, and Israeli contexts, looking instead to North Africa, the Levant, the Arabian Peninsula, and Central and South Asia.

2023-2024

This year is devoted to the study of sound and music as a part of Jewish life, and we are delighted to announce the cohort of scholars who will join us for a year of research, conversation, and engagement with the Penn community and with the public.