This Is How You Defy Being Erased

    It was a cultural and musical moment that deserves to be remembered. On Thursday evening, November 6th, the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra performed in Paris. Suddenly, several members of the audience deliberately disrupted the concert, setting off enormous flares in the hall. One might have expected, at that moment, that the rest of the event would be cancelled. The Israeli musicians, however, were undeterred, and the music continued. The concert concluded, in a striking and stirring scene that must be viewed online, with every member of the orchestra rising to their feet, while simultaneously launching into Israel’s national anthem, “Hatikvah,” as the audience, in unison, rose as well and launched into applause.

    This is more than a story of cultural courage; it is an embodiment of the miracle that is modern Jewish history itself. In order to understand why this is so, one must return to the tale of this philharmonic’s founding—and the man who brought it into being.

    The story is told in a 2012 documentary titled Orchestra of Exiles, which centers on a man by the name of Bronislaw Huberman. A Jew born in Poland, Huberman was immediately recognized as a musical prodigy and, as a young man, was gifted a Stradivarius by a Polish count. It was in 1929 that Huberman, an ardent Zionist, was suddenly seized by what might seem a musical vision: He would recruit gifted Jewish musicians from across Europe to move to the Holy Land, thereby bestowing on the pioneers a cultural institution of their own.

    At the time, Huberman’s vision must have seemed mad to many. Why would a musician performing in Europe, the center of culture, agree to leave all that he or she had known to take up a career in a backwater in the Middle East? Yet Huberman would not be deterred, scouring the European musical scene for Jews that he might motivate with a sense of mission. He found 72 gifted musicians who embraced his cultural cause. By 1936, the orchestra that would become the Israel Philharmonic debuted in Tel Aviv before an audience of 3,000. Conducted by the visiting celebrity Arturo Toscanini, the performance was rapturously received. At the time, of course, few of those applauding the orchestra members appreciated the immensity of Huberman’s achievement: Had the musicians onstage not risked their careers in service of a Zionist dream, they would almost certainly have ended up slaughtered, with their brethren, in a concentration camp in Europe.

    Yet despite his triumph, Huberman himself, during his endeavors, suffered a setback and heartbreak. While tirelessly performing to raise money for his cause, his own Stradivarius was stolen from his dressing room. Interviewed in the documentary, Joshua Bell, today one of the most celebrated violinists in the world, explained how this must have felt: “The connection between violinist and violin—it becomes almost like your soul mate. Some people compare it to getting married.” Bell continued, “Huberman formed so much of his career on this violin, so it must have been devastating to come back to his dressing room and to know that your soul, your voice is missing.” 

    Huberman continued to bring musicians from Europe until 1939. He died without ever finding his violin; and it was only 50 years after the original robbery that it surfaced once more, when the thief made a deathbed confession. The violin was going to be purchased by a wealthy German collector, who was going to keep the instrument as a museum piece. For Joshua Bell, the notion of Huberman’s “soul” staying unplayed in Europe seemed contrary to all that the musical visionary embodied. “‘It made me nauseous, the thought of that,” Bell later reflected. “I said, ‘You cannot take this violin.’” Bell sold his own instrument—also a Stradivarius—in order to purchase Huberman’s. Soon after, he brought the violin to where it truly belonged. “Coming to play for the Israel Philharmonic was very special to me,” Bell said. “I had just acquired the Huberman violin.” At the original premiere of the Philharmonic in 1936, “my own relatives might have been in the audience on that opening night, as my grandfather was born there,” Bell said. But what is certain, as Bell himself understands, is that there are multitudes of Jews alive in Israel today because of the decision those musicians made and because of the offer Huberman made to them:

    It is a resonant symbol: The violin, the soul of Bronislaw Huberman, was brought home to the orchestra he founded, an orchestra whose founder had inspired so many Jewish musicians to find their way home, saving them from the flames that engulfed European Jewry. And it allows us to appreciate that, in truth, the title Orchestra of Exiles is an apt description of Jewish history: the story of a people who loved the music of life and endured all attempts to destroy them, ultimately returning, and flourishing, in the land of their forbears. More life, into a time without boundaries. 

    I thought of all this as I watched the clip of the Philharmonic’s performers fearlessly playing an anthem titled “The Hope,” utterly undeterred by the literal and figurative fire of hatred that they had just encountered. The anti-Semitism from which Huberman had saved a myriad of musicians was still to be found in Europe; but while their musical successors may have been playing in Paris, they were no longer members of an “Orchestra of Exiles.” The courageous, concluding “Hatikvah”—“The Hope”—of the uncancelled concert was a transcendent moment that captured the miracle of the Jewish story. And when it comes to fortitude such as this, we can only hope that there are many more encores yet to come. 

    I am thankful for much this holiday season. However, because it is so rare (and necessary) in these times, I am especially grateful for the pure, unadulterated joy of music, and the message it can send as a representative of high culture and Western civilization standing tall and not giving an inch against the seemingly rising tides of darkness and barbarism. 

   L’chaim, my friends. And Happy Thanksgiving. 

Write to Peter: magtour@icloud.com