When I was 8 years old, I asked for tickets to see Itzhak Perlman perform with the Philadelphia Orchestra. My parents, who were never fans of classical music, took me to see the Israeli-American violin virtuoso and politely tolerated the concert while their young daughter was spellbound, swept away by the music. Several years later, I learned of another Perlman concert in Philadelphia. Unable to convince my parents to allow me to miss school to attend, I lay under my duvet, listening on my clock radio as a performance from his In the Fiddler’s House tour was broadcast. I remember the commentator describing people dancing in the aisles and the feeling of breathtaking awe I experienced at the music filling my childhood bedroom.

By the mid-1990s, Perlman’s In the Fiddler’s House, brought together a collaboration of leading musicians to bring klezmer, Eastern European Jewish heritage music, to wider audiences. Though not trained as a klezmer violinist, his involvement helped amplify a revival already underway since the 1970s, driven by community-based performers and scholars. The project—documented in a 1995 PBS special and album—was distinct from his classical work: ensemble-driven, participatory, and rooted in Jewish tradition. Touring with groups such as Brave Old World, The Klezmatics, and The Klezmer Conservatory Band, Perlman helped introduce klezmer to audiences who might not otherwise have encountered it.

For his 80th birthday in 2026, Perlman revived this landmark project in a tour which brought In the Fiddler’s House back to the stage. I drove from southern Virginia to Philadelphia to attend. No longer an introduction, the performance was a celebration of the klezmer revival, of Jewish musical life, and of a tradition that had not only endured but flourished.

Despite orchestral playing into adulthood, I never made a true career of music. The little girl who once sat spellbound in that concert hall, instead, grew up to become a Jewish folklorist. Folklore is the study of tradition—stories, music, rituals, customs, and everyday practices—and how communities create, sustain, and transmit meaning across generations. In addition to my own scholarship and teaching on Jewish folklore, I also proudly serve as the co-chair of the American Folklore Society’s Jewish Folklore and Ethnology Section and as an associate editor of the academic journal Jewish Folklore and Ethnology. My work, like that of my colleagues, depends on engagement with communities, with archives, and with scholars across borders.

It is precisely that kind of engagement that is now under threat.

Within folkloristics, ethnomusicology examines music as a........

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