The seventh and final episode of Season 3 of The Sounding Jewish Podcast features Dr. Ruth HaCohen. We discuss her early encounters with Ashkenazi liturgy and Israeli soundscapes. We then explore her ongoing work on music in the Book of Job, as well as the powers and dangers presented by certain historical and contemporary "vocal communities."

Dr. Ruth HaCohen (Pinczower) is the Artur Rubinstein Professor Emerita of Musicology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. HaCohen is the author of award-winning books and articles that illuminate the role of music in shaping and reflecting broad cultural, religious, and political contexts. Her work explores how artistic languages—especially musical ones—construct imaginative and sacred worlds that invite us to willingly enter artistic illusion or inhabit a holy sphere. She focuses on both Christian and Jewish communities and their creative expressions. Her early work, in collaboration with Ruth Katz, include the volumes Tuning the Mind: Connecting Aesthetics to Cognitive Science (2003) and The Arts in Mind: Pioneering Texts of a Coterie of British Men of Letters (2003). Her central work, The Music Libel Against the Jews (Yale UP, 2011, The Otto Kinkeldey Award) delves into the accusation of Jews as creators of noise in a harmonious Christian universe. In Composing Power, Singing Freedom (2017, Hebrew), co-written with Yaron Ezrahi, the authors discuss the interplay of music and politics in the modern Western world.

Ruth HaCohen has led major programs at the Hebrew University and served as a visiting professor at prominent institutions worldwide. In 2022 she was awarded the Rothschild Prize in the Humanities. She serves as a corresponding member of the American Musicological Society. Currently, she is finalizing a comprehensive study titled Listening to Job: Men of Sorrows in Jewish and Christian Sonic Traditions.