AFTER A CENTURY AND A HALF OF NEGLECT, BYRON'S HEBREW MELODIES began to attract renewed interest in the last quarter of the twentieth century. In 1972, Thomas L. Ashton published his comprehensive edition of the lyrics, with an introduction that discusses the collaboration with Isaac Nathan and the picture of Byron's spirituality that emerges from the collection of poems, as well as annotations that contain reprints of Nathan's later comments, from his Fugitive Pieces, about his interactions with Byron during the process of creation. (1) In the 1980s, Frederick Burwick and Paul Douglass expanded the perspective, filling in the musical component of the project with their facsimile of the first edition of the Hebrew Melodies, including a critical introduction and notes on the origins and musicality of the songs. (2) The result is a fairly comprehensive picture of where the Hebrew Melodies belongs within the context of British culture. Missing, however, is a discussion of the other context, Anglo-Jewish culture in the early nineteenth century. Given the fact that the project originated with Nathan, an English Jew who apparently never resolved his own conflicts about his ethnic heritage, it seems reasonable to infer that just as Byron's lyrics can be seen to reflect an attitude toward religion, so, too, would Nathan's choice of music, especially since a significant portion of the first group of songs is known to have been taken directly from the Jewish liturgy. (3) In fact, when Byron's poetic sentiments are juxtaposed against their Jewish settings, ironic comments on contemporary controversies in the Anglo-Jewish community emerge. The Jewish community in England was in a unique position in the early nineteenth century. (4) Although they were not citizens, English Jews experienced less overt anti-Semitism than did their counterparts on the continent, and therefore, they did not feel as strong a need for reform. As a result, religious authorities exercised proportionately greater control, and resisted the pull towards modernization, retaining Orthodox modes of worship. As aliens, the Jews had no recourse but to conform to traditional modes of behavior if they wished to remain within the Jewish community. Their only other alternative was what Todd M. Endelman has called "radical assimilation," leaving the Jewish community altogether. (5) While a number of English Jews did convert to Christianity, some, like Isaac Nathan, resisted apostasy, seeking a middle ground, a compromise between Jewish ethnicity and British nationality.
