ENGLISH CORNER, CON LINDA JIMÉNEZ – This week’s trivia question:  Why do Hasidim dance only to singing, without instruments?

Rabbi Sruli Dresdner grew up in a Hasidic family in New York and has been performing and teaching Klezmer and Hasidic music for over twenty years. Together with his wife Lisa, Sruli has appeared on PBS-TV and National Public Radio and internationally at Jewish festivals in the United States, Poland, Israel and Canada, among others. Sruli was extensively quoted as a primary source of Hasidic music and philosophy in the Journal of the Society of Ethnomusicology, and was profiled as a contemporary Jewish educator for the Wexler Oral History Project at the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Massachusetts. Sruli is currently rabbi of the Temple Shalom community in Auburn, Maine.

This summer he brought his expertise in Hasidism and Jewish music to Yiddish Summer Weimar, where he gave a workshop in Hasidic music.