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PURELY COMMENTARY
PHILIP SLOMOVITZ
Piety As A Human Concept That is Never Merely Seasonal
At the approach of a much agonized ending for an extremely controversial year in the
experience of this nation, a question inevitably arises regarding the piety that marks the
sanctity of the religious factors. Is there a piety that may exercise influence upon the nation
during the holy periods of the year's closing months?
• This is the holiest period of the year for Christians, a sanctified month for the Jews, and
piety is on the agenda. Will it be power-influencing, or will it be a seaonal escape of a
self-comforting nature in a time of the people's travail?
Many polls are presently being conducted as tests of the nation's attitudes towards
leadership and policies. The meaning of them could influence public opinion, when it is
necessary as means of informing legislators how their constituents expect them to cleanse
political impurities. Perhaps, in holy periods on the calendar, piety could be applied to tested
polls as means of influencing policies so vitally needed to create the wholesomeness that is
vital for good government and the people's self-respect.
Since the current holy season induces thoughts about piety, it is well to qoute from the
Sayings of the Fathers — Pirke Aboth: "Without wisdoni there is no piety, without piety
there is no wisdom." If piety and judgment of polls can be fused in thought and action,
perhaps they can exert the forcefulness so necessary to affect public opinion. But this
becomes possible only if the piety is a year-long devotion and not seasonal. The trouble with
public reactions usually is that piety becomes seasonal, and therefore results in a temporar-
iness that develops into hypocrisy, people generally therefore abandoning their duties to self
and society.
Baruch Spinoza paid us this tribute: "With Jews .. .
In Theological-Political Treatise,
piety meant justice; impiety meant injustice and crime."
Because we are in a period when piety is treated as a duty by many, at a time when the
nation is truly in political distress, the Spinozist definition beckons for application to all
people. The moment piety becomes a seasonal devotion, it becomes an hypocrisy. If treated
as a duty, it will accomplish the need to create a public opinion for justice.
This is a time to abandon whatever trends there may be leading to the hypocritical in
public life. There is need for a devotion to duty, self-respect and justice. This is where the
public opinion obligation arises in citizenship duties.
It would be impiety if the concerned citizens did not dedicate themselves to the basic
current obligations. When fulfilled they must lead to the highest idealism citizens can
attain.
Dominant as a duty is to strive, unitedly, for the alleviation of the rising tide of racism.
Race hatred has not vanished. There is evidence of it on such a degrading scale that it must
not be condoned.
The most optimistic must also recognize that anti-Semitism has not subsided. It exists
and it must be merged with the tides of racism for rejection by all decent people in our midst.
Then there is the new ghost of racial impurity — an element that would inject a
Christian partisanship that is really anti-Christian in the American way of life. Under the
title "Christian Identity," a new bigotry has arisen. It is to the credit of all good Christians
that Catholic and Protestant leaders of all denominations have joined with a Jewish human
relations agency in denouncing the "Christian Identity" group as "a threat to a pluralistic
and democratic America, a perversion of authentic religious values, and a source of bigotry,
racism, and anti-Semitism."
The emergence of the new group has properly been defined by the representatives of all
major religious groups in this country as "a special danger to Christians of good will because
it claims' to base its racism beliefs on the Bible, and make sham connections between its
bigoted, often violent ideas and the sincere religious concerns of many -Christians."
It is apparent, without going into other details, that what has happened, the very
existence of even a miniscule group calling itself "Christian Identity," is a menace to our
Americanism and must be eradicated from the American ethos.
It is good for America that Christians are taking the lead to condemn such bias blinded
by the ignorance of the American way of life. The battle against such occurrences must be
fought to a finish.
People of all racial, national and religious backgrounds must align themselves in the
battle against the religious as well as racial bigotries.
Most compelling is the duty to have a role in ending the deplorable situation that ha:
created agony for the nation.
If public opinion can be mobilized, as it should be, to demand an end to the confusion
that has embraced the nation, then every citizen is obligated to demand of the executive
branch of our government, of Congress and the judiciary, not to drag the trying events int(
greater headaches for all.
When the Presidency is tested, the entire nation is tested. When the White House staf
is under scrutiny, all of us are under scrutiny.
The clarifications and solutions of the exasperations must be speeded. Every citizen ha
a share in demanding it.
We won't miss 1986. May its villainies vanish speedily. May they be replaced with th
vastly needed blessings for a Happy 1987.
An Encyclopedic Anthology Of Musicians
Isaac Stern
Carnegie Hall: Music.
Citadel And *Platform
For Jewish Activism .
.
`
Carnegie Hall functions again and
will continue as the citadel for music and
musicians.
Isaac Stern, the great violinist who
provided courageous leadership in pre-
venting the transformation of the historic
musical fortress into a parking lot, added
to his glory as an inspirer of the world's
greatest musicians with the act of retain-
ing the hall's fame for posterity.
Isaac Stern figures prominently in the
accompanying review of Great Jews in
Music by Darryl Lyman. His Carnegie
Hall venture has added immensely to his
glory.
Carnegie Hall has to its credit addi-
tional historiography. For half a century it
was the major platform for Jewish ac-
tivism. The most important rallies for
Zionism and Jewish statehood were held
there.
Stephen S. Wise utilized Carnegie
Continu e . d on Page 20
An encyclopedic work on Jews as
musicians serves interestingly to rein-
troduce the discussion on "Who or What is
a Jew?" Few other discussions on per-
sonalities in the limelight are as applicable
to the basic evaluations which often de-
velop into disputes.
In Great Jews in Music (Jonathan
David Publishers), Darryl Lyman, author
of numerous books on drama, the movies
and music, approaches the subject with an
impressive interest.
Lyman's compendium includes more
than 100 major articles about the most
noted Jews in music, and more than 200
more thumbnail sketches of musicians on a
world scale.
It iS not a complete assembling of the
eminent in their spheres. There are some of
'special Jewish interest. The name
Seymour Lipkin is missing, as are a few
other Detroiters who have been and re-
main prominent in music. On the whole, it
is a noteworthy book.
This introductory comment by the
author summarizes the results of his many
years of studies which resulted in the pre-
sent large assembly of musical notables:
For many centuries musicians
in the Diaspora had , only two pri-
mary roles available: cantor and
klezmer (an entertainment in-
strumentalist, often itinerant and
usually poor, who specialized in
playing at weddings and bar
mitzvahs). Entry into the non-
Jewish music world was extremely
difficult and rare. Perhaps the
most notable achievement before
the year 1800 was that of the
seventeenth-century composer
Salamone Rossi, whose works
were historically important for
both. the Jewish and the non-
Jewish communities.
In the nineteenth century
many parts of western and central
Europe granted Jews a certain de-
gree of emancipation, including
,
the right to enter various profes-
sions and the right to reside out-
side the ghettos. To facilitate their
assimilation into non-Jewish cul-
ture, many Jews left their faith
either tacitly or through formal
baptism into Christianity. In some
cases the baptism was performed
in childhood at the instigation of
the parents. The composer Felix
Mendelssohn became a Christian
in that manner. In other cases an
adult converted merely to obtain a
certain professional post in a loca-
tion where Jews were unofficially
but routinely excluded. Such was
the case with the conductor-
composer Gustav Mahler in Vie-
nna.
Assimilation took another
form as well. The emancipation
helped to propel the Jewish Re-
form movement, which remodeled
synagogal music along the lines of
non-Jewish church-music and
'art-music practices. The great
Viennese cantor Salomon Sulzer
was among the leaders in that
endeavor.
Through assimilation many
talented musicians were able to
emerge from the ghettos. Jewish
singers, conductors and
musicologists tended to spring
from cantorial and rabbinical
backgrounds, while most in-
strumentalists and popular com-
posers inherited the klezmer tradi-
' tion. Symphonic composers and
piano virtuosos often came from
nonmusical backgrounds.
Even the less emancipated
European Jews benefited from the
' new social conditions in the west-
ern areas. The nineteenth-century
rise of the middle class in Europe
created a huge market for interna-
tional musical interpreters, that is,
for traveling virtuosos. Many of
those virtuosos came from the
Russian Jewish Pale (the limited
parts of Russia, mainy in•the Uk-
raine, where Jews were permitted
to live). Russian Jews, rooted in a
universal philosophy and ambiti-
ous for liberation, readily de-
veloped their folk-music tradition
into concert-halrvirtuosity. Their
specialty was the fiddle, and from
their ranks came such outstanding
violinists as Mischa Elman, Jascha
Heifetz, Nathan Milstein, Alexan-
der Schneider, and Efrem Zim-
balist. Innumerable others were
born in Russia but left as infants
(such as Isaac Stern) or were born
elsewhere of Russian immigrants
(such as Yehudi Menuhin).
Of course, the emancipation
did not end the hostility toward
Jews. In his pamphlet Das Juden-
thum in der Musik ("Judaism in
Music"; 1850, revised 1869), the vic-
ious anti-Semite Richard Wagner,
blinded and. deafened by his
paranoid belief that Jews were be-
hind the early negative reception
to his music, led the chorus of those
who claimed that Jews, such as
Felix Mendelssohn and Giacomo
Meyerbeer, were, precisely, be-
cause they were Jews, incapable of
profundity. In his essay, "Erkenne
dich selbst" ("Know Thyself,"
1881), Wagner praised the Russian
massacres of Jews and suggested
that the Germans should do
likewise Cosima Wagner, his wife,
once quoted him as uttering the fol-
lowing "vehement jest": "All Jews
should be burned!"
Fifty years later came Adolf
Hitler. In March 1936 the once re-
spectable German magazine Die
Musik ("Music"), by then an official
organ of the Nazis, issued a
number featuring anti-Semitic an.
.
Continued on Page 20