Beethoven - Piano Concerto No 5 - Krystian Zimerman
Not for those who are obsessed with anti-antisemitism since the orchestra is the Hamburg Philharmonic, the pianist is Polish, and the composer is German. Obsessed means that one cannot say anything about Poles without mentioning antisemitism and same with the Germans and French. I often play a game where any time I am with frum people and anything about France enters the conversation I tell them how much I enjoy the French language. And every time, 100% of the time thus far, one or more people will make some disparaging comment about the French and about how antisemitic they are. (I know several French gentiles who are not antisemitic at all.)
I think it shows what sheep we are, how conformist, that every person responds in exactly the same way and a way that's uncalled for. Is is a sin to enjoy a language? Who creates languages anyway? I would think HaShem guides their creation. And how did the topic of antisemitism find its way into the conversation? Can we give it a rest and enjoy life a little?
By the way, I find the same thing when I complement almost any gentile place. Oh, you are from Belgium, what a lovely country. Oh, you are from Florida; I have always enjoyed Florida. An alarmingly high percentage of the time the person just can't accept the complement and goes on to say something negative about the place. Or they just look very uncomfortable. After all, I complemented something that has nothing directly to do with Jews. Evidentially, we are not allowed to enjoy the planet earth. Recently, a man told me he was from Los Angeles. I said, Oh, I spent a month there once. He said, did you hate it. I said, no. I liked it. I liked the ocean, the mountains, the laid back feeling. (Obviously I didn't like the tumah). These are not Torah Im Derech Eretz people. A Torah Im Derech Eretz person enjoys parts of the planet earth even the parts with gentiles. Oftentimes, it's the gentiles that make those parts enjoyable. I didn't say they make it holy. But they can build nice cities. HaShem helps them to do that. Rabbi Avigdor Miller says when a town has city ordinances and inspectors, HaShem made that happen. Rabbi Miller also said, we don't hate goyim, we just don't mingle with them. We are not obligated to hate everything.
Anyway, this performance of Beethoven's 5th piano concerto is impeccable. Even Bernstein who conducts takes the back seat and to his credit lets the pianist shine. I try not to share videos of non-religious Jews but I couldn't resist here and the star of the show is not Jewish. What a performance. And since it took place in 1989, the orchestra was dressed modestly. Imagine that! Today, one cannot go to a symphony hall.
But that works the other way,too. For some people, whenever the topic of mainstream, typical Torah-observant Jews comes up, they seem to always have to throw in "but they do too much of X!", or "they don't do Y enough!".
ReplyDeleteI play a game with myself: when I catch myself criticizing typical Torah-observant Jews, I try to ask myself whether I'm criticicing for something that in others, I'd accept as par for the course for us highly flawed human beings. Most of the time, the answer is yes.
Obviously you are talking about Jews because the average gentile is either too polite for that or has little idea what an Orthodox Jew is anyway. So maybe the problem is that too many Jews have big mouths and are hyper-critical. And why? Because we are given a special ability to find fault that is supposed to be used to perfect our own character. We are giving an energy and a boldness that is supposed to be used to keep mitzvos when the world does not and to resist the trends of the world. To the extent that a Jew is lacking in his religious devotion, he becomes a very annoying person.
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