About Jonathan L. Friedmann

Jonathan L. Friedmann, Ph.D., is Professor of Jewish Music History and Dean of the Master of Jewish Studies Program at the Academy for Jewish Religion California, Community Leader and Education Director of Adat Chaverim – Congregation for Humanistic Judaism, Los Angeles, President of the Western States Jewish History Association, and Director of the Jewish Museum of the American West. Jonathan is the author or editor of thirty books, including Music in Our Lives: Why We Listen, How It Works (McFarland, 2015),  Jews, Music and the American West: Portraits of Pioneers (Gaon, 2016), A City Haphazard: Jewish Musicians in Los Angeles, 1887-1927 (Academica, 2017), Qol Tamid: The Shofar in Ritual, History, and Culture (Claremont School of Theology Press, 2017), Musical Aesthetics: An Introduction to Concepts, Theories, and Functions (Cambridge Scholars, 2018), Cantor William Sharlin: Musical Revolutionary of Reform Judaism (McFarland, 2019), 100,000 Ways to Spell Hanukkah (Utnapishtim, 2021), Songs of Sonderling: Commissioning Émigré Composers in Los Angeles, 1938 – 1945 (Texas Tech University Press, 2021), Music in Human Experience: Perspectives on a Musical Species (Cambridge Scholars, 2022), and Goliath as Gentle Giant: Sympathetic Portrayals in Popular Culture (Lexington, 2022).