Are we getting bombed tonight? Orit and I discussed this as just another consideration about whether to go to the concert last night.  An amazing program, a wonderful escape, but then there are the threats.  

But we all went, and there wasn’t an empty seat in the house.  

And to hear amazing antithetical music.  I hadn’t thought of the fact that Mendelson and Mahler were two Jewish composers – both of whom had to convert in order to be accepted in their profession. 

What a concert and what contrasts

https://www.ipo.co.il/en/program/lahav-shani-bouchkov/?event_id=51322

The Jewishness of it came to me at the beginning when we stood up with entrance of the conductor to sing HaTivka, an anthem I often regret.  So outdated, so exclusive against the Christian and Moslem population – about how long we have longed to return to Jerusalem to be a free nation.  I’m often embarassed  – but last night I wept – because we’re still fighting for it.  Maybe I’d change a few words and take out the Zionism and bring in freedom for all people in a jewish state…

Anyway I started the concert in tears.  Even though I remembered the question we always ask, “where are we going to draw the line?  What other country lets everyone in?” 

And then there was Mendelson and the conductor Lahav Shani and the violinist Marc Bouchkov played the violin concert without notes  – so beautifully I cried,  And I know Mendelson had to change his religion to get a career in music.   But I tried not to put Jewishness into the concert.  But then Marc Bouchkov came out for an encore and played a melody he remembered from his great grandmother Dina Weiss, and we all melted.  Even though I know that what he was playing couldn’t have been a Yiddish melody – Yiddish words wouldn’t fit into the melody…

At the break our friends told us they had come for the Mahler, and I was expectant – I didn’t remember the 6th symphony.  But as soon as it began I turned off.  It wasn’t a voluntary action – I couldn’t hear it.  

So I spent the time reading about Mahler  and his conversion and his antisemitic wife who almost always married Jews.  The music with its antithetical emotions and their lack of fusion seemed to me again – a sign of  his Jewishness.  

It was probably me and my fears.  We seemed to be all in the same basket in that concert hall and I kept remembering Mark Twain: