Blog

Jubilee and the Concert of Lights, how can we remit the debt for living generations? 

For years and years, the music lay hidden, hidden in the minds of people who lived through hell. Hidden in the attics of homes, storage long forgotten. Hidden from the living as a reservoir of creation from the dead. The music was hidden from the world, from performance, from the living. Last week we were blessed to hear and experience some of this hidden and lost music. Music which, because of where it was written and who wrote it, may never have been heard by free people, until Francesco Lotoro went looking for it. We were blessed to revive the lives and legacies of people and the creations they made. 

Our Torah portion of Bhar teaches of the Jubilee year. The parallel to the notion of Jubilee was striking to me, from a fallow land comes the remittance of debt, the return of property and the prosperity of another harvest with a land renewed. For decades the music written by concentration and death camp victims, by prisoners of war, and prisoners of politics lay fallow, forgotten to the living from a time we must never forget.  

Last week we were able to be part of the story of reviving this music and the lives of its authors. We revived stories of death camps we were likely familiar with; in names of Auschwitz, Majdanek and Mauthausen, and those we likely were unaware of, such as the Bataan death march, and prison camps for soldiers captured by the Japanese. We revived the idea that even small acts, such as the creation of music, may be great acts of freedom. That small puns and a mixture of languages may allow for political satire in a space where none is permitted. And we learned that the act of remembering, of sharing a story a melody, and putting it to paper could be an act of healing from the trauma of its writing.  

I asked Francesco Lotoro about the music we didn’t hear. Has he collected music written by Japanese-American citizens imprisoned in America? Has he collected music written by German POW’s held in France and Great Brittan? Yes, he told me, but the audience is not ready to hear this music. It made me think, is it the same? There seems to be something categorically different about being a Prisoner of War than being a prisoner of Auschwitz, and yet we heard the music written by British and American Prisoners of the Japanese War, and of Italians imprisoned by Germany? What is it that encourages us to connect with Prisoners of the Reich, and Japan and Stalin. But discourages us from connecting with German soldiers captured by the British or citizens of the US of Japanese origin being imprisoned by their own government? To the musicians, it was the same act of defiance, of finding freedom from a space with none. But are we, the modern audience, prepared to be moved by their stories and their music? Are we prepared to feel a connected sympathy with those who were our enemies or with those our own government was responsible for traumatizing?  

In the Jubilee year, we remit our debts the land is returned to its “original owners” the Judah property reverts to Judah tribes; the Dan properties to Dan tribes, Ephraim to Ephraim etc. the division of the land is considered permanent by God the eternal inheritance of each tribe but during the 50 years between Jubilees, it could be on loan with the price accounting for the number of harvests before the next jubilee.  

What is owed to the authors of this music? Is it a continued life of music not viewed as “exceptional” because of its very existence, or is it the natural cycle of music elevated in its time for its musical beauty and artistry and forgotten when it is passe making space for the new creations of new artists? What of the music intentionally archived but hiding, the music of German soldiers or Japanese interment victims, the music more complicated, not in its musicality but in its politics, will it find its time to be returned to the public space, to be judged for its musicality and not for its exceptional provenance? What do we learn beyond the story of musicians and their freedoms? Can we perhaps learn a more humane detention? Can we conceive of jails, prisons, refugee camps, POW containment where we sublimate the fear of the enemy, the criminal, the illegal, and elevate the humanity, where nourishment, art, music, education are encouraged and accessible, where humanity is the expectation, not the rarity. Could we use the stories of the Concert of Lights not just to remember the horrors of the holocaust and all who lost freedoms during WWII, but to remit the debts of the past by shining a light on those still suffering today?  

What is the song you wish to hear? What is the lesson needed to be learned? What is the human story that must be recounted and remitted again and again? How can we properly return land, return resources, return freedom, return life to all caught up in degradation? To all imprisoned? To all for whom a scrap of paper and a pencil are the only form of freedom they can envision. 

The song sung at the end of the sermon is Uv'tzeil k'nofecho, written by David Grunfeld and Siegmund Schul in Theresienstadt 1942. 

--

Watch the entirety of Friday’s service here. 

Temple Talk is a recap of sermons given from the Bimah for those who missed a Sermon or who wanted to revisit the words spoken at a previous sermon.