Maybe had we not been so tired, from the day , and from the year, we would have enjoyed Mahler’s ninth symphony more.  But we have been so surrounded by death this year, so tired of heroic funerals, so fearful of death to come, that Mahler’s absorption in his own coming death spoke less to us.  The death of tonality as well, as much as I mourn it, is not as painful to me as the death of so many people.  As much as the Gazans enjoyed inflicting pain and torturel on us, as much as the Hizbullah tried to torture us, I weep their deaths amost as much as I weep our own people – the elderly as much as the beautiful youths – rhose dead and those suffering in the tunnels of Gaza.  

So we left while the audience was going wild in praise of the orchestra and the conductor, and went to visit the grandchildren whose lives have been turned upside down by the war, the uncertainty of their future, the fear that they might have saved themselves had they given up on the dream of living in peace…