From the Shtetl to the Gardens and Beyond: Identity and Symbolic Geography in Cape Town’s Synagogue Choirs

With data drawn from a fieldwork visit to South Africa (February 2012), I set out the different ways in which the two remaining Ashkenazi Orthodox synagogue choirs in Cape Town’s Jewish community have engaged in innovative strategies to encourage greater service attendance in new and existing members. Using a variety of methodologies, from interviews with singers to internet-based research involving social media websites, I show how a community with apparently common origins expresses a range of conflicting identities, and constructs multiple and apparently contradictory symbolic geographies that emerge as manifestations of a variety of historical and contemporary aspects of globalization.