“The coming to San Francisco of the world-famous Israel Philharmonic Orchestra is being awaited with intense interest. Not only our Jewish community but music lovers the city over are keenly concerned over this unusual musical treat.… Music is a universal language and with it the musicians of Israel will tell their story to the American community.”
That was written in the pages of this publication back in 1951. However, the idea that the arts transcend national boundaries has been severely tested as of late.
The recent San Francisco appearance of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra on March 23 was marred by disruptions, as anti-Israel protesters got in the faces of attendees outside Davies Symphony Hall and disrupted the concert itself several times.
This is not the first time that the orchestra and other Israeli cultural groups have faced the wrath of protesters, especially anti-Zionist groups that oppose Israel’s existence. But it comes at an especially fraught time, some 18 months after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas massacre in Israel that spurred a war and a spike in antisemitism, leaving many Jews feeling unnerved, frustrated and frightened.
Cultural boycotts and protests of so-called artwashing have been widely deployed by anti-Israel protesters, including at a February performance by Israel’s Batsheva Dance Company at UC Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall — and back in 2022 at an Israel Philharmonic performance, again at Davies Hall.
The rationale behind cultural boycotts and protests is that a country engaged in reprehensible behavior can use art as a propaganda tool to deflect attention from its actions, and that attending a cultural event with artists from such a country is akin to condoning the government’s actions.
The argument against cultural boycotts is that art occupies a space that’s separate from politics and governments. Even if you disagree with the policies of a country, confronting artists is not only less effective than an economic boycott, it erodes sympathy for your cause, the argument goes. It also flattens discourse into a two-dimensional, good-versus-evil discussion that allows for no nuance — when art itself is all about nuance and interpretation.
Cultural boycotts are broader than the current conflict, and American Jews have engaged in related actions over the decades.
Our publication carried a 1955 article from New York about a boycott of the Berlin Philharmonic over the fact that conductor “Herbert von Karajan, and its business manager, Gerhart von Westerman, were members of the Nazi party.”
“Interviewed here, von Karajan said that he had been a member of the Nazi party only because he had to be to keep his job. Echoing a statement made by von Westerman earlier in the week, that he had no interest in politics and that he lived in the world of music alone. Despite his disclaimers. pickets paraded before Carnegie Hall during the orchestra’s opening concert here,” the article stated.
In 1971, Harold B. Light, founder and chairman of the Bay Area Council on Soviet Jewry, said that pressure on the Soviet Union to allow Jews to leave the country should be “augmented by direct ‘confrontation’ of all visiting Soviet official groups,” including “cultural and athletic” groups.
The Israel Philharmonic, founded in 1936 as the Palestine Symphony Orchestra, traces its own origins to the hatred of Jews. “Hail Palestine Symphony As Triumph For Israel’s Spirituality,” wrote Reuben Rinder in our pages in early 1937.
“The personnel of the orchestra consists of 60 highly-trained musicians, mostly first-desk men, who had been dismissed from German orchestras since Hitler’s coming to power,” he wrote. “What was a year ago only a dream, a vague idea in the mind of one man who conceived the project, became with the first beat of [conductor Arturo] Toscanini’s baton, a living reality in the life of Palestinian Jewry.”
A 1951 article in our pages about the orchestra was headlined: “Every Man a Virtuoso in Israel’s Philharmonic: Soloists and Composers from 20 Different Lands.” It, too, waxed about the talent found in the orchestra’s ranks and the reasons for that.
“The Israel Philharmonic is known as the ‘orchestra of soloists,’” we wrote. “Most of the members came to Israel from war-torn Europe, and among their number are not only some of the topdrawer orchestra men from the cultural capitals of the world, but a large group of former topnotch soloists. In fact, there are so many eminent musicians in the orchestra, an unprecedented rotating system of five concert masters has been employed.”
The orchestra has regularly toured the U.S., including repeated appearances in San Francisco, and has long had supporters here. In 1953, local real estate developer Ben Swig raised money to donate a grand piano to the orchestra. (Before that, we wrote, the orchestra had to borrow one from Haifa for every concert in Tel Aviv.) And in 1954, Ansley Salz of San Francisco donated 14 violins worth tens of thousands of dollars to the orchestra.
“Musicians from 20 different countries are members of the Israel Philharmonic orchestra,” we wrote idealistically in the 1950s. “But there is no trouble about language difficulties. At least 50 per cent of the musicians speak English, in addition to two or three other tongues. And anyway don’t they say that music is the universal language?”