Jewish dance refers to dance associated with Jews and Judaism. Dance has long been used by Jews as a medium for the expression of joy and other communal emotions. Dancing was a favorite pastime and played a role in religious observance.
Dances associated with Ashkenazi and Sephardi traditions, especially Jewish wedding dances, are an integral part of Jewish life in America and around the world. Folk dances associated with Zionism and the formation of the State of Israel became popular in the 1950s.
Read more about Jewish Dance: Hasidic-style Dance, Israeli Folk Dancing, Ballet, Modern Dance, Flamenco
Famous quotes containing the words jewish and/or dance:
“For every nineteenth-century middle-class family that protected its wife and child within the family circle, there was an Irish or a German girl scrubbing floors in that home, a Welsh boy mining coal to keep the home-baked goodies warm, a black girl doing the family laundry, a black mother and child picking cotton to be made into clothes for the family, and a Jewish or an Italian daughter in a sweatshop making “ladies” dresses or artificial flowers for the family to purchase.”
—Stephanie Coontz (20th century)
“Ah, it is sweet on the hills,
to dance in sacred faun-pelt,
to dance until one falls faint,
to beat the sacred dance-beat
until one drops down
worn out.”
—Hilda Doolittle (1886–1961)