It was probably inevitable. When the Eretz Israel Orchestra announced plans last month to hold a concert of works by Richard Wagner in Tel Aviv it was likely that somebody would find a way to cancel it. The music of the great anti-Semite has not been played in the country since the 1930s, and the ire of Holocaust survivors as well as the often-hypocritical efforts of those attempting to enforce the informal ban on Wagner was bound to generate pressure to spike the event.
The ban is hypocritical and foolish. Yet the cancellation of the concert planned by the Israeli Wagner Society is interesting not so much because preventing Wagner from being played live in the territory of the Jewish state is ridiculous, but because it was the result of a decision by Tel Aviv University, whose auditorium had been rented for the occasion. TAU revoked its permission for the concert because it claimed the sponsors had not revealed their purpose when they paid for the hall. True or not, it showed that there are just some things the university will not allow to take place on their property. But coming as it did less than a month after the same institution granted its approval for anti-Zionist students to hold a “Nakba Day” commemoration in which the founding of Israel is treated as a “disaster,” it does call into question the judgment of those at the school about what is truly offensive to Jewish sensibilities.
Many denounced the decision to allow an event devoted to trashing the existence of the State of Israel (and, by extension to the existence of both the university and the city in which it is located) as treason. But TAU defended its approval for a gathering where activists read Yizkor (the prayer of mourning) to denote Israel’s founding as an expression of the country’s democratic values. The result was a travesty that speaks to the sickness at the heart of the country’s intellectual elites. By the standards of America’s free speech practices that are defended by the First Amendment, such a demonstration would not be noteworthy. But in Israel, holding such a demonstration at a state-funded institution was a big deal and rightly shocked many citizens. Nevertheless, so long as it was just talk, opposition to Zionism and sympathy with Israel’s enemies can be defended by democratic values even if cannot be justified morally.
But apparently, when it comes to the mere playing of compositions that are more than 130-years-old and are part of the standard classic repertoire wherever music is played around the world, TAU has more stringent standards. For the school, the sound of those denouncing the existence of the country that gave it life is more melodious than Wagner’s tunes.
It bears repeating that the arguments for Israel’s Wagner ban are based in emotion and do not stand up to intellectual scrutiny. I’ll reiterate some of what I wrote here last year about this touchy subject:
The question of whether or not it is appropriate to perform Wagner’s music is a complex one. There is no doubt he was an anti-Semite. His essays about the supposed role Jews had in undermining higher art and music are utterly despicable. They are even worse when you consider that far more people were exposed to them in print than probably heard live performances of Wagner’s music during his lifetime. To say he inspired a subsequent generation of Germans (the composer died in 1883) to think ill of Jews is probably an understatement. But that is not quite the same thing as saying he was a Nazi. The same cannot be said for his widow, children and grandchildren, some of whom allowed Hitler and his followers to hijack the Bayreuth Festival and turn it into a prop of the Nazi regime.
Yet to assert, as some do, that Wagner’s operas are anti-Semitic is simply not true.
While Wagner’s anti-Semitic screeds are today read only by scholars, his life-affirming music dramas continue to be enjoyed by audiences around the world who know little or nothing of his politics. Those who seek to project the composer’s racial and political opinions onto the broad canvas of his myth-based theater works are inevitably reduced to strained analogies and symbolism that never holds up to scrutiny. Attempts to classify any music as intrinsically good or evil always fail.
It is understandable that those who lived in Germany during the 1930s might think there was something about Wagner’s compositions that inspired mass murder. But the power of music is ethically neutral. As evidence, I would note that Theodor Herzl, the founder of the Zionist movement, was himself a great supporter of Wagner’s music. Herzl confided to his diary during the period when he was planning to write The Jewish State, “Only on those nights when no Wagner was performed [at the Paris Opera] did I have any doubts about the correctness of my idea.” He later insisted that music from Wagner’s “Tannhauser” be played at the opening of the Second Zionist Congress in 1898.
No one should be forced to listen to music that conjures up terrible associations with the Shoah for them, and it is likely the informal ban on the performance of Wagner in Israel itself will continue for a while. But this is not a restriction that can last. … Wagner is not the only great artist who can be credibly labeled an anti-Semite. So long as the work itself is not something that promotes hatred (as can be said of a play such as The Merchant of Venice even though we do not ban Shakespeare), those who love music must separate the man from his art.
The planned concert and discussions that were part of the event would have explored some of these ideas as well as the love of Wagner’s music on the part of Herzl and the anti-fascist conductor Arturo Toscanini who presided over the founding of the Israel Philharmonic.
The concert would have done no harm to anyone in Israel, and those who would have been offended by Wagner need not have attended. Its suppression will achieve nothing other than to satisfy a rule that honors neither the Holocaust nor Israel’s culture.
Can the same cannot be said for the Nakba event? It was part of a concerted campaign for whose adherentsthe goal is nothing less than the end of the State of Israel. One has to wonder about the sanity of a university or a country that would move heaven and earth to ban music but would allow the enemies of their existence free rein to advocate their destruction.
excellent–and disturbing–article. what is it about the Jewish persona that hates itself so much? why are we so compelled toward suicidal behaviors? why are we always so willing to believe we are at fault? n none quibble with the post: "[Wagner's] suppression will achieve nothing other than to satisfy a rule that honors neither the Holocaust nor Israel’s culture." it'll achieve one other thing: yet more bad press for Israel. "THIS is the free and open democracy you're always talking about?" the lefties will say to us. and we will have no response.
Why not play Deutcheland Uber Alles in its place.
The difference here is that Wagner is dead. There isn't any opposing group to tolerate or even honor their right to dissent (or maybe it's hubris, like asking, "Aren't we good people to allow those who want to destroy us to have their say anyway?"). I don't know! That is, this makes sense to me (allowing a hate group a platform and denying Wagner's music) — but I don't understand it. The ACLU here, same thing to me, goes completely nutso at the prospect of a nativity scene on public property … but will use up all of their resources to defend the right of Neo-Nazis to march and chant their hatred.
Wagner might well have thought that Jews should never be given the opportunity to perform of enjoy his music. Performing Wagner's operas in Israel can be interpreted as an insult to Wagner.
I think you are going the right direction here. By playing Wagner's music in Israel, the separation of the music from Wagner could be advanced. The Germans in his time may well have interpreted his music to be an anti-Semitic anthem just as "Dixie" has been associated in the US with sympathies for the old Southern confederacy. Part of discrediting and defeating the negative undertones could be to adopt and redefine the music with a new and more positive association. Christianity did this by co-opting the two pagan holidays that now are known as Christmas and Easter. Wagner is no longer with us and the anti-Semitism he was part of has been largely discredited. At some point the Israelis can drive another nail in the coffin by claiming power over the music rather than continuing to allow the music to have power over them.
Hmm. Except of course that ol" Ricky had some of the Juden performing some of that there Musik. nLike Herm Levi conductin' the Premeer of Parzival.
“Wagner might well have thought that Jews should never be given the opportunity to perform of enjoy his music.”r nr nHe most certainly did not feel that way. Proof is almost too numerous to list here: famed soprano Lili Lehmann(her mother was Jewish therefore she was Jewish too according to Jewish customs), his “Parsifal” conductor Hermann Levi, bass Julius Leiban, son of a synagogue cantor, who played Mime in the 1881 staging of The Ring in Berlin, his personal pianist Joseph Rubinstein who arranged piano scores for his works and so on.
Tobin's piece is a perfect example of the neocon's creed: working himself into a sweat by mindlessly overlaying an American template on Israel's particular Jewish characteristics, and then find Israel lacking. But anything associated with Hitler, even his tailor, deserves to be shouted down in the Jewish state.
Garbage. Everything "lawful" is NOT needful, welcome, or tolerable, or healthy. n nThere are limits to how much good people should be pushed by pure trash, in the ABUSE of something which to THIS degree is FALSELY called "freedom". n nBy this definition promoted by the ACLU, it is only ~"freedom of expression"~ that Nazis and Communists alike filled gas chambers and ovens with Jews and Christians. n nThere is nothing REASONABLE OR ~REFINED~ in expecting the victims of such murderous garbage to be tolerably disposed towards the ramping up of such political philosophies within their own home. n nAnd the preposterous BLINDNESS of declaring all these "OLD" sentiments to be NON-EXISTENT in these days in view of daily headlines to the contrary is exceptionally offensive. n nGeorge Washington: Arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of Liberty abused to licentiousness.
TAU isn't confused, they just make a distinction between people who inspired the Holocaust and people who are inspiring a holocaust.
Bravo, Mr. Tobin! Wagner's music is wonderful. His political and racial opinions were detestable. But he is not the first, nor will he be the last, talented artist whose character and opinions are objectionable. We definitely have to distinguish between the part of the glass that is half full from the part that is half empty, and you have done yourself and Commentary proud.
nSome of you don't like what I said – funny how those who think that Christians and Jews need respect more than Nazis etc are always mean and hateful and out of order, while all you broadminded folks who fall all over yourselves catering to bloody murderers are "just being tolerant and well-behaved".
Valkyrie Washing.
This is a sad comment on the state of Judaism today… n nWhile we can all agree that the Holocaust was bad, we can't seem to agree that the founding of the state of Israel was good. <shaking head>
Hitler often said he found Wagner's WRITINGS inspiring, not just his cacophonous ''music,'' which is built on violent and anti-Semitic German mythology. I lost family in the Holocaust and if I accidentally happen upon Wagnerian ''music'' on the radio or TV I immediately change the station since I associate it with the odor of the gas chambers. n For the life of me I don't understand what anyone sees in the lunatic operas. They are extremely kitschy, and Israelis are missing absolutely nothing by not being exposed to them. n I find it instructive that Israeli defenders of Wagner include people like Daniel Barenboim who often feels the need to slander the country, even when abroad. He's a disgrace to our People.
“Hitler often said he found Wagner’s WRITINGS inspiring”
Please provide source for this claim because such statements completely escaped Ian Kershaw, Richard Evans, Saul Friedlander and other eminent historians and biographers of Hitler.