Opening the Work

This chapter examines the composition of Rudolf Borchardt’s poem as an oratorio and the translation of the poem’s accompanying debates into the realms of music and theater. It studies the oratorio Joram (1932) by the composer Paul Ben-Haim against the tradition of the oratorio in Germany using the passions of Johann Sebastian Bach as the genre’s exemplary model. The chapter begins by outlining the oratorio’s affinities with the German Trauerspiel following Benjamin’s understanding of the form. Like the Trauerspiel, the German oratorio encapsulates the condition of modernity expressed through the absence of a firm notion of collectivity and a fragmented, open-ended view of the “work” itself. Having established the oratorio as a musical-dramatic—and, indeed, theatrical—form that undermines the Wagnerian view of the artwork, the chapter assesses how this opposition operates more specifically with regard to the question of Jewish difference. It shows how Joram is embedded in and responds to a German oratorical tradition that boasts a history of confounding the identities of various religious and national communities and specifically the difference between German Christian and Jewish collectives.