re: Jews and Christmas music

[Peter Hollo <raven...>]

Well, Wolf Kratowski has caused me to make my first post to this list.

> In her book, "Auschwitz: True Tales from a Grotesque Land", she
> describes how, at Christmastime, the S.S. officers would sing "Silent
> Night" and other Christmas Carols in the shadow of the crematoria.
> 
> Where are your warm and fuzzy feelings at now?

I think this is totally irrelevant. I don't know what other people
think. OK, I hate Wagner and I hate Richard Strauss, but I can honestly
say that it's the music that makes me dislike it rather than their
underlying anti-semitism that I know about - after all, I don't like
Schoenberg's Transfigured Night very much either (late romantic in the
extreme), and he was Jewish...

The fact that some Nazis liked singing Christmas Carols has nothing to
do with whether Jews should be involved in sacred Christian music
whatsoever. As it happens, I dislike Christmas Carols intensely too, but
that's mostly just my taste, and the fact that I resist the way they're
shoved down our throats at this time of year by the
Americanised-commercialist culture we are part of.

To wish to deny Jews the pleasure of participating in, for instance
Faure's Requiem (which is to me one of the most beautiful pieces of
music ever written, and I'm not the only person (or only Jew) to think
so), because certain parts of Christianity have viciously persecuted
Jews, and still do, is completely perverse. My grandmother survived the
holocaust in Hungary solely because of protection given to her and other
Jews by a Christian family. By condemning all Christianity, and
everything associated with it, because of what an admittedly large
proportion of Christians have done, is tantamount to becoming our enemy.
Bigoted Jews terrify me - it shows me we're just as bad as everyone
else. Oh well...

Warm and fuzzy feelings indeed! Listen to the music, man! That's what it
comes down to. I love Jewish music, and listen to more and more all the
time - klezmer, Zorn's Radical Jewish stuff, Ofra Haza, other
contemporary stuff... But Kol Nidrei (written by a gentile wasn't it?)
does nothing for me - I'm a cellist, and have been made to learn it; I
know it inside out, and I still think it's a boring unmoving piece of
schlock. On the other hand Faure's Requiem, parts of Mozart's Requiem,
and plenty of other music based on Christian texts can move me deeply.
It's got nothing to do with the words they're singing, or spirituality
(which I don't believe in anyway), or anything. It's just the music.

Sorry for the rant, but I just had to say something,
Shalom,
Peter.
-- 
Peter Hollo  raven (at) fourplay(dot)com(dot)au  
http://www.fourplay.com.au/me.html
           FourPlay - Eclectic Electric String Quartet
                    http://www.fourplay.com.au
"Of course, dance music can be a music where you lie on your back and
your brain cells dance" -Michael Karoli of Can, quoted in Wire mag.