Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies

While many associate the prewar Ashkenazi community with Fiddler on the Roof’s “Tradition,” Joann Sfar’s Klezmer: Tales of the Wild East (2006) disrupts this comforting image of community with internal violence, crises of faith, and individual isolation. By redefining nostalgia in Svetlana Boym’s terms of “restorative nostalgia” and “reflective nostalgia,” this essay explores how Sfar’s work challenges restorative methods while embracing reflective nostalgic impulses, valorizing the culture of Diaspora within Judaism. Klezmer music, then, becomes a site for Sfar to examine the Ashkenazi past while questioning the role of Zionism in Jewish identity. Is Jewish identity primarily to be found through communal unity and strong shared objectives? Or is Jewish identity more closely related to the tensions and uncertainties of a Diasporic condition?