Vive la France!

I spend part of my summers in France, I have relatives and friends who live in France and I am a great admirer of France and (almost) all things French.

So it was with considerable interest and not a little trepidation that I followed the course of the first round of elections for the position of President of France. The vagaries of the French political system are something of a mystery to me, but it soon became clear that the unknown maverick, Emmanuel Macron, was a strong contender for the position. Several candidates representing a wide variety of political views were vying for election but only the top two would be able to go on to the next, and final, round.

The fact that Marine le Pen, the extreme right-wing candidate and daughter of the anti-Semitic founder of the National Front party, managed to attract a large number of supporters was very worrying. It was pretty certain that she would manage to get through to the second round, but the crucial question was: who would be standing against her? She claimed that she was not anti-Semitic, though she was definitely against immigration and, worse still, against the European Union. If she were to be elected and France was taken out of the EU that would spell the end of the Union and any number of complications would arise in consequence.

If the leader of the Republican Party, Francois Fillon, had got through to the second round that would have presented a dilemma for voters who tended to support the right wing. Fillon has been advocating views and policies that have not differed very greatly from those of Marine le Pen, and although his rhetoric was convincing his record was not very good. His misuse of public funds in order to pay his wife and children fat salaries for doing virtually nothing managed to reduce support for him, although the tide seemed to be turning in his favour just before the election.

Jean-Luc Melanchon, a socialist who was also against the European Union, had almost as much support, according to the polls, as Fillon. Here, too, if he had managed to get to the second round, probably to go head-to-head with Marine le Pen, the prospect of him winning would also be dismal. As the country went to vote it looked as if all four of the candidates mentioned had more or less similar chances of going to the next round. It was a time of great anxiety for anyone like myself who cares about Europe and is still reeling from the thought of England leaving the European Union.

As polling day drew near and the results predicted by the opinion polls seemed to indicate that anything could happen my nerves became increasingly frazzled. From posts put up on Facebook by expat British citizens living in France I could see that they were also extremely worried.

On the evening of election day, as I was watching the evening news on television, I was pleasantly surprised by the sight of M. Fillon giving his concession speech. That was the moment I had been waiting for! That meant that Emmanuel Macron was through to the second round, and would stand for the principles of the European Union and a sound economic policy that would bring France’s finances into a better state than they had been for the past ten years at least.

Now the run-off is between Macron and le Pen, but it is pretty much a foregone conclusion that the former will win as not many people who voted for any of the other candidates will contemplate voting for the extreme right. Macron claims to be neither left nor right, but centrist, and in favour of improving France’s economic situation. Let’s hope he can pull it off. I can’t vote, so all I can do is keep my fingers crossed and hope that reason will prevail in what purports to be the most reasonable of countries.

Musicophilia, Tales of Music and the Brain, by Oliver Sacks,

 

The author, who has written several books about various aspects of psychology, among them ‘The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat,’ and ‘Awakenings,’ has extensive experience of working with individuals who have developed illnesses akin to Alzheimers, or who have been born with some brain disorder causing what appears to be mental retardation or abnormality of any kind.

Whether by chance or intention, Oliver Sacks embarked on courses of treatment involving music of one kind or another. The book begins with a series of case studies describing individuals whose treatment for mental disability has involved  music or for whom music has become a significant aspect of their life. In between these individual instances Oliver Sacks mentions his own experience of music, whether his regret at being unable to sing in key or his affection for certain kinds of music. He is able to enjoy listening to music but is frustrated by being unable to join in when others sing.

But that is a minor irritation compared to the deeply-ingrained incapacity of some of the patients he describes to function on what we would call a ‘normal’ level, i.e., communicate with others via speech, attend to matters of daily toilet and routine, and so on. Yet somehow in many such cases these people are able to conduct themselves in an acceptable manner if they are singing or whistling or listening to music. He describes individuals suffering from brain damage of various kinds who are able to relate to the material world only if they are able to hear music.

Sacks hypothesizes that music, which is found throughout all human societies, may somehow be a more basic function of the brain than speech, and accompanies this with a detailed analysis of the parts of the brain involved in the various human functions. This concept is occasioned by the fact that singing, dancing, and listening to music seem to stimulate the mental faculties of people who have lost the ability to communicate normally through speech.

On the other hand, he points out, there are some highly musical individuals who are unable to listen to music as a background to work, as the music demands their full attention. Personally, I don’t fall in that category and in fact feel sorry for those individuals, as I know that I function better, whether I’m at the computer,  in the kitchen, driving or anywhere,  if I can listen to music at the same time. This has become something of an obsession with me, and every room in my house, including the smallest, must have a radio in it, and the radio must be tuned to the classical music programme. Luckily for me, my close family don’t seem to object to this, though their attachment to music is less intense than mine.

So in a way I’m somewhere on the spectrum of people who find that music helps them function on something near normality. In fact, I found it very consoling to read that patients with various forms of dementia are able to perform the tasks involved in conducting daily life if they hear music. Unfortunately, as soon as the music stops their mental state reverts to what it previously was. However, the concept of music therapy has been developed in recent years, and much is being done through this to help people in various stages of mental confusion. I only hope that if and when I find myself in that state someone will have the sense to let me listen to music.

Passing Over Passover

No matter how hard I try, and believe me, I have and do try, passing over Passover is very hard to do if you live in Israel. The countdown to the festival begins for some people one month beforehand, namely, as soon as the previous festival is over and done with, and these preparations involve intensive and extensive cleaning operations. In Gentile lands this is known as ‘spring cleaning,’ and seems to be taken with only slightly less seriousness than the all-encompassing scrubbing, washing, sweeping and dusting that pre-Passover cleaning involves.

The problem with the Jewish festivals is that they all seem to involve special foods, eaten in a special way, and at Passover this also involves special dishes  from which to eat them and special pots and pans in which to prepare them. In my parents’ home, and doubtless in their parents’ homes, too, the days and nights before the first festive Passover meal, known as the Seder, or ‘order’ (not of the military kind), involved endless trips up and down stairs to attics and closets where the special dishes and pots and pans were kept throughout the year. It also involved stowing away the everyday dishes and pots and pans, making the final days before embarking on the extensive cooking undertaking a logistical nightmare.

Luckily, my immediate family doesn’t bother about such niceties, and I am free to make my own arrangements. When my parents were alive and would spend part of the festival in my house I made a huge effort and made our crockery ‘kosher’ for Passover, and even used special pots and pans for preparing the Seder meal. I’m not glad that my parents are no longer with us, but it does certainly let me off the hook when it comes to religious observance. My sisters’ obscenely high level of religious observance won’t allow them to set foot in my house during this or any other Jewish festival, and perhaps it’s just as well.

But some token level of observance seems to be incumbent upon even the most atheistic and unbelieving of souls, such as myself. It is a time of family gatherings and as usual food occupies pride of place. So in addition to some pathetic attempts at cleaning my house, I prepared lists in the time-honoured tradition of my mother, and her mother before her, presumably. The Seder meal, with most of the family present at our table, was due to be held on Monday night. This meant that the count-down would have to leave two whole days beforehand for cooking and baking, a day before that for final cleaning operations and getting the guest beds ready, and a day before that for last-minute shopping, the meat for the Seder having been bought a week before that and placed in the freezer that had been specially cleaned to receive its precious contents.

Everything went according to plan. The daily schedules were carefully read and adhered to, and quantities of roast beef, cooked tongue, chopped liver, chicken soup and other traditional foods were prepared well in hand. The trusty Jewish cookbook first put out by Florence Greenberg in 1947 (my edition is from 1968, and was professionally rebound by my father’s friend, Moshe Tiefenbrunner after it literally fell to pieces in my hands) still serves me for the recipe for matza balls (kneidlech), as well as reminding me what symbolic items to put on the special Seder plate, and I was feeling pleased with myself as the night of the Seder approached.

But lo and behold, both husband and I came down with bad coughs and colds. The idea of cancelling the whole affair was out of the question, so we soldiered on, accompanied by boxes of tissues and a cacophony of coughs and sneezes. The family did their best to ignore our infirmity, lending a hand where they could, and carrying on regardless as far as possible. After the meal it is customary to sing jolly songs, sometimes accompanying them with funny actions, and in order not to disappoint our grandchildren this was duly done. After we had finished, including going through the weekly general-knowledge quiz provided by the ‘Haaretz’ newspaper, I had to choose between falling asleep at the table or taking myself off to bed, and I opted for the latter, leaving the debris and detritus to whoever felt up to dealing with them.

When I got up the next day some of the decks had been cleared, but there were still a few jobs to be done, and in the morning light I felt recovered enough to tackle them.s

 

 

Handel’s ‘Messiah’ in Hebrew

Over the years I have attended many performances of Handel’s Messiah, but no matter where it was performed (England, America, France, Israel) it was always sung in English. George Frederick Handel wrote the oratorio
using the text devised by Charles Jennens, based on the King James Bible and the Book of Common Prayer. These texts were translated from the Latin Vulgate and German translations in the sixteenth century rather than from the Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic texts. Most of the passages in the oratorio are taken from the book of Isaiah, Psalms, and the New Testament.

My curiosity was aroused when I saw that the notice advertising the performance at Jerusalem’s YMCA one evening last week stated that the Messiah would be sung in Hebrew. This struck me as very strange, since in my mind, and on the basis of the dozens if not hundreds of performances of the oratorio I have attended, the music is inextricably allied to the text. It’s true that Mozart produced a re-orchestrated version to fit a German translation of the text, but this doesn’t seem to have caught on.

On the night of the performance the hall was almost full, and from overhearing several conversations I suspect that many of those in the audience were drawn from participants in one of the several Christian conferences held in the YMCA building that week. That suspicion was further reinforced when the moment came for the Hallelujah chorus. In England it is the custom for the audience to stand for this, apparently because King George II did so when he attended a performance of the work. In other countries the practice has not caught on, and here in Israel I only once saw one lone individual stand up, and remain standing on his own to the end of the chorus. But yesterday, as if impelled by a common motivation, the entire audience, consisting mainly of Americans and Israelis, got to its feet and stood until the chorus was over. Some people even joined in the singing, but the pleasant atmosphere prevailing in the hall seemed to make even this departure from the concert-going norm acceptable.

Another reason why I was eager to attend the performance was the statement on the advertisement that the proceeds of the concert would be donated to help Syrian refugees. And indeed, before the performance began, two members of the Musalka organization, which seeks to bring together the hearts and minds of Israelis and Palestinians, spoke briefly about their work. The spoke briefly in Hebrew, English and Arabic, also mentioning the fact that some students from the Bethlehem Bible College who intend to cross the border in order to further their cause, were present in the audience. One of the projects that Musalka sponsors is what is known as the ‘Syrian Refugee Challenge,’ whereby for a given period of time, in order to show solidarity with the plight of the refugees, an individual undertakes to live for a week on what a Syrian refugee is given. The contents of the bag containing the food items, consisting of half a kilo of rice, a kilo of chickpeas, a tin of sardines, and various other items, were on display during these speeches. It was, indeed, a very restricted diet, though the lady who had attempted the challenge didn’t seem very much the worse for wear as a result.

However, coming in the week when Syrian civilians were subjected to chemical attacks the evening acquired additional significance, though there was no mention of this in the speeches. At a time when barbarism and belligerence seem to be the order of the day in our region, it is some consolation to believe that we can unite the hearts and minds of people who are forced to live side by side but have not yet managed to find a peaceful modus vivendi.

The evening ended, as is always the case with this oratorio, with the uplifting display of choral singing embodied in the ‘Amen’ section. The conductor departed from tradition by giving the first few ‘amens’ to each soloist by turn, and only subsequently bringing in the whole choir. ‘Amen’ and ‘Hallelujah’ are among the few Hebrew words that have found their way into the English language. When I asked the conductor, American-born David Loden, why he had decided to perform the text in Hebrew he explained that it was so that the audience would understand the words, in keeping with Handel’s original intention.

I’m not convinced that that was what Handel wanted to achieve, nor that much of the audience at the YMCA could understand Hebrew. In my opinion, the original language of the oratorio, the language in which it was written, suits the music better than the Hebrew phrases, however close to the original verses of the Bible from which they may have come. I must confess that hearing the soprano sing ‘Gili’ instead of ‘Rejoice’ grated on my ear and disturbed my sense of the continuity of the piece. But the soloists, choir and orchestra all played their parts with supreme musicality and attention to diction, creating a refreshing new take on the familiar oratorio.