I will build on prior ethnographic research conducted on Hasidic communities by ethnomusicologists such as Ellen Koskoff and Zachary Klein, who have dissected the role that nigun plays as a device for negotiating boundaries and representing mystical practice. The first chapter will examine how nigun resembles the values of hasidism and how the compositional methods for nigun solidify boundaries with the secular world. The second chapter will dive specifically into melodic composition and its relationship with Jewish mysticism and folk tradition. The third chapter will attempt to answer the question, why has Hasidic influence spread into secular realms and reform Jewish communities? Particularly, what does the inclusion of nigunim into the repertoire of reform Jewish communities that are not Hasidic say about nigun’s capacity for community building and cultivation of a contemporary jewish identity?