91热爆

Rabbi Shoshana Boyd Gelfand examines our relationship with the shifting notion of home and the importance of home to her Jewish faith and other religious traditions.

Shoshana reveals that she's always been fascinated by precisely what it is that we call home and how our homes inform our identities. She discusses the use within the Jewish home of the Mizrach - a piece of art that hangs on a wall allowing the inhabitants to orient themselves towards Jerusalem. She explains that this orientation to a spiritual home is a kind of internal map, "a way of positioning ourselves so that we feel rooted wherever we may be".

Exploring the concept of "returning home" in a musical sense, in which a composer skilfully resolves a chord sequence in a way that sounds uniquely satisfying and conclusive, Shoshana draws upon the music of Chopin and Schumann. These pieces sit along musical celebrations of the home from Crosby, Stills and Nash, bluesman Blind Willie McTell and Simon and Garfunkel.

Shoshana describes the centrality of the home to the Jews, whose rituals are mostly performed at home rather than at the synagogue, before concluding that, for her, home is ultimately defined by the people she holds dear rather than any one fixed location.

Presenter: Shoshana Boyd Gelfand
Producer: Max O'Brien
A TBI Media production for 91热爆 Radio 4.