Last night about 300 pro-Israel protesters gathered on Broadway opposite the Metropolitan Opera in New York to denounce the opening of the opera, The Death of Klinghoffer, which deals with the murder of Leon Klinghoffer, a disabled American Jew, in 1985 by Palestinian militants.
Three speakers at the rally blamed Jews for fostering anti-Semitism by producing the opera. Though these speakers were themselves Jewish, they ascribed a new wave of anti-Semitism to American Jews. Another speaker, a Modern Orthodox rabbi, rose to deplore this theme, saying that it was itself anti-Semitic. But two of the speakers ignored him, as they followed him to the microphone with statements blaming Jews.
Let’s hear their words.
First, Leonard Weiss, a former patron of the Metropolitan Opera who helped fund the demonstration, singled out the Jewishness of some of those supporting the production, which he said was blatantly anti-Semitic:
I could not believe that [Met general manager] Peter Gelb himself a Jew would have chosen that opera to appear at the Met… I assume the Met’s Music Director James Levine, another Jew, approved this decision, although Levine has been strangely silent about this choice.
Weiss also slammed the opera’s librettist Alice Goodman, “an apostate Jew, who has been viciously anti-semitic and anti-Israel.”
Though Weiss did not mention their Jewishness directly, his roll of shame included: the Sulzberger family, owners of The New York Times, who “have a history going back to World War II of ignoring anti-semitic activities worldwide, including the Holocaust” and whose new corporate headquarters is reminiscent of the “Goebbels and Stalin propaganda ministries;” and Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League, who Weiss said has forgotten that his organization was set up to “prevent defamation of Jews in all times and all places.”
Soon after that, Rabbi Yaakov Kermaier of the Fifth avenue synagogue came to the stage and began his remarks by objecting to what Leonard Weiss had said:
Since I’m standing here, I feel an obligation to say that highlighting the Jewishness of individuals whose misdeeds have nothing to do with their Judaism is something that antisemites do. I think that we should refrain from doing so at this rally, as well.
But after him, Lauri Regan, a leader of EMET, the Endowment for Middle East Truth, spoke, and she hopped right back on blaming Jews:
We are also mourning the death of the saying Never again, for when Peter Gelb, a Jew, chooses to produce an opera in the city with the largest Jewish population outside of Israel… we should all mourn the sad state of our people.
Regan said that Gelb was no different from Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas in glorifying terrorists who murder Jews, and that “Israel is demonized the world over by anti-Semitism couched as anti-Zionism” and that this represents a physical threat to American Jews. “Peter Gelb,” she said, “is no different from pre-World War 2 German Jews who enjoyed attending concerts listening to the anti-Semitic Wagner,” whose influence led to murderous anti-Semitism pervading the arts.
And Regan related that when her son wrote a paper in 8th grade denouncing Palestinian terrorists, “his teacher Mr Friedman circled the word terrorist.”
He said, “Be careful with your word choice, one country’s terrorist is another country’s heroes.” This is what our children are being taught by fellow Jews.
The lesson? Anti-Semitism wasn’t just a problem in the Mid East and Europe, “it is being mainstreamed, it is flourishing” — because of the actions of American Jews.
Regan was soon followed by Beth Gilinsky of the Jewish Action Alliance. She called on the demonstrators to shame Abe Foxman and Peter Gelb as “arrogant” men. Gelb, she said, knows how dangerous the world is. She also singled out Alice Goodman, librettist, who was born Jewish but is now a rector in the Church of England.
I’m talking about the so called librettist that freak Alice Goodman. She’s a Jewish girl from Minnesota, she became a cleric from England now… This class act will probably arrive tonight maybe in her clerical collar… whatever will get her the most attention…Mazel tov, Alice Goodman, you became famous glorifying the murder of an elderly disabled Jewish man, … carelessly concealing your seething contempt of Israel by putting your hatred into the mouths of characters on stage…
Killers of Jews, Gilinsky said, are indebted to Goodman “for all you have done for the cause.”
I, a Jew, think that the Mondoweiss editors should make sure always to include the phrase “, a Jew” after naming any Jew.
Disclaimer: I haven’t seen the play.
That said, what a lather these folks live in (save Rabbi Kermaier, apparently). They seem to me like people who don’t spend much time stepping out of their inner circle of like-minded followers. There isn’t just a presumed disagreement over policy, but only a seething contempt of Israel. Why have a prelude when you can open the show with your amp cranked to 11?
I like this line:
Israel is demonized the world over by anti-Semitism couched as anti-Zionism” How the hell do you tell the difference? Killing 500 children isn’t supposed to elicit a negative reaction in a normal person? Only a pre-disposed hatred of Jews could account for it? That’s crazy talk. And the idea that this sort of truncated mentality is pulling the reins of our government’s ME policy is infuriating.
I don’t know the opera, I probably shouldn’t ask, but I’m confused…
How is the opera ‘anti-semitic’?
A family friend of ours converted to Judaism to marry his sweetheart. Would the speakers at that rally have denounced his conversion in the same way that they denounced the conversion of a woman to the C of E?
Anybody who thinks the New York Times ignored the Holocaust during World War Two should read Edwin Black’s IBM and the Holocaust, which cites in detail many times that the New York Times did report on it at the time. Black’s point is that IBM CEO Thomas Watson, in New York, had to have been aware of the Holocaust. But the point stands for other purposes too.
Alice Goodman refused to write the libretto for Adams’s Doctor Atomic because it was originally conceived (the conception was later dropped) with Oppenheimer being a latter-day Faust, and she thought that any opera along those lines would have to be anti-Semitic. I’m not sure that I agree. To me, that sounds like a very interesting idea for an opera.