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 Over the weekend I read with interest that Wagner's opus Siegfried Idyll was played in Israel by the Rishon Letzion Symphony. The playing of Wagner has produced intense emotions in Israel among Holocaust survivors: it is a painful reminder of the abandonment and desolation of everything that was beautiful in the world; to the survivor, Hitler's favored composer set the cacophony which for years was background music for the dying of mothers and children and other loved ones. Wagner's music was the orchestration of the Shoah, of its enslavement, cruelty and death: of the utter theft, even of the identity of 6 ˝ million Jews; 2 million children, millions of
Lame, ill impaired, elderly and prisoners of belief.So, it is no surprise that in the nation of Israel: where freedom is understood and cherished that The performance of volkish brutal, German anthems cuts bitterly at the heart of the freedom of the arts in a promised land of wounded but healing people. The conductor , in his freedom was a Jewish holocaust survivor; so was the man who swung a noisy rattle in protest: a metaphor of his remembrance of the music in his Mordecai stance against the music of Haman. I wish instead it had been A singing of Maoz Tsur ( Rock of Ages) . Should Wagner's music be allowed in Israel? In freedom, yes. To dispel tyranny. Butshould it be played by an Israeli orchestra? Probably not---in response to tyranny. Freedom to play Wagner And freedom to refrain in mercy; and freedom to protest when we stand out beyond mercy. How little value freedom on the edge of this election in our country. We will go to church or synagogue; we will listen to Wagner or Mendelssohn; Meyerbeer or Mahler: and we can debate with our hard hearts whether Wagner should be performed as art in an auditorium of holocaust survivors. We never think of freedom. Until it is gone. Ask Israel if freedom is a prize. Ask Israel what freedom costs when it is gone. Ask Israel if the words from Maoz Tsur hold true: ..................... "…that the time is nearing .....................which will see, all men free .....................Tyrants disappearing…"
We must learn to balance our mercy with grace: our mercy with freedom, that liberty is learned.
Elizabeth Kirkley Best PhD
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