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12

FRIDAY, APRIL 13, 1990

Pianos

Continued from preceding page

observes: "With so many
Soviet Jews at the gates,
there will also be lots more
kids taking up the piano, be-
cause there will be many
music teachers among these
olim, to say nothing of pro-
fessional musicians and ac-
complished school-age vir-
tuosos. Russians love music,
especially classical music. I
also think the country will
again resound with soulful
folk melodies. Even Russian
rock music is softer on the
ears, being more sentimen-
tal.
"I predict we will begin to
hear different tunes on the
airwaves. Tastes are bound
to change if there are hun-
dreds of thousands of Jews
from the corner of the world
where I was born."
She has no doubt that "a
huge Soviet aliyah will in-
crease the numbers of con-
cert-goers and will by sheer
demand force down the costs
of concert subscription fees.
Moreover, if so many olim
indeed arrive, there will be
dozens of new orchestras.
Symphonies and chamber
ensembles will just
mushroom."
Tatiana Mendchik, who
came to Israel from Minsk in
1977 and now teaches math
in a Holon high school, goes
even further in her vision of
what awaits Israel if Rus-
sians indeed become its
largest ethnic group.
"It will just be a different
society. In many ways it will
be a cultural revolution. The
Oriental vogue will be
superseded and 'so will the
more strident discordant
imports" from what Mend-
chik calls "the decadent
West. You must understand
that for all the hankering of'
Eastern Europeans for they
good life and freedom of the
West, they tend to be con-
servative in their tastes.
"I can foresee an opera and
ballet revival here, a greater
accent on more realistic art
and something other than
Palestinian themes in
Israeli art, film, literature
and especially in the
theater. We Russians love
the theater, but I don't see
Soviet Jews going in for the
Israel-bashing that is so
typical of the theater here."
Mendchik, who with her
husband and two older sons
is part of a small Russian-
language amateur theater
group, argues that "if
predictions for an enormous
Soviet aliyah are not
frustrated, the effect of the
olim on the mood in Israel,
on the arts and tastes is
bound to be felt, even if at
first their own muses are si-
lenced by the stresses of ab-

sorption. Sooner or later,
their cultural impact will be
unavoidable. If the local
avant-garde snubs them,
they'll set up their own
theater troupes."
"If indeed hundreds of
thousands of Jews come from
the USSR," says Leon
Pepkovitch, a 60-year-old
civil engineer who came
from Lvov in 1974, "they
will acculturate to Israel,
but they will also change it. I
can even see it modifying the
sense of humor into some-
thing more like subtle East-
ern European irony instead
of the coarse, vulgar, local
jokes. This will be a more
Ashkenazi country again,
but of course it won't be like
it once was because these
olim are not fiery Zionist
pioneers, though they are
still a very positive, produc-
tive element."
Pepkovitch doesn't see any
reason why a change in the
demographic balance in
favor of the Ashkenzim
should lead to conflict with
the Orientals. "After all, the

"We come from a
country that taught
us that land won
from an aggressor
in a just war is a
strategic asset
which is not to be
handed back."
Ze'ev Rudkiner

plain fact is that there are
many more Ashkenzi Jews
than all others in the world
and this is the aliyah reser-
voir. This aliyah will do all
Israelis good and raise
everyone's standards.
"In the end," he continues,
"we and the Sephardim will
have offspring in common."
Pepkovitch's daughter
Marina has already given
him two sabra half-Libyan
grandsons whose surname is
Mansour. The mother of his
other grandchildren is a
sabra of Egyptian and
Turkish parentage.
In the short run, he says,
"The new aliyah won't com-
pete with the Orientals be-
cause the Russian
newcomers are not unskilled
laborers or small en-
trepreneurs, but a group
with proportionally more
academics than any other
aliyah we have seen. We are
talking about the
technological elite of the
USSR. If anything, they'll
create jobs for the others.
"The only danger is that
rabble-rousers could inflame
passions out of fear of losing
political influence."

