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The Jewish Quarterly Review, XCIII, Nos. 3-4 (January-April, 2003) 627-628 Na'ama Sheffi. The Ring ofMyths: The Israelis, Wagner and the Nazis. Translated from the Hebrew by Martha Grenzeback. Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2001. Pp. ? + 182. In late May 2001, newspapers all over the world reported that an Israeli arts festival had dropped plans to stage an opera by Richard Wagner. A public outcry had prevented the performance, as the composer, as well as his opera, were understood to be antisemitic. The director of the festival, Daniel Barenboim, after much discussion and debate, agreed to conduct Igor Stravinsky's Rite ofSpring and some of Robert Schumann's music instead of the Wagner opera. What began as a seemingly normal planning procedure concerning the repertoire and the practicalities of an arts and music festival erupted into an emotionally loaded political debate. The organizers of the festival wanted to break a taboo against the playing of Richard Wagner's music, but were immediately put under pressure by parliamentary groups, political organizations , and cultural officials. Eventually, they had to abandon their plans. Barenboim's statement that the time had come to perform the works of the 19th century German composer in Israel caused an uproar. His intentions were intolerable, and the mere suggestion exploded in the midst of a country that had been shaken by political and civil unrest. Na'ama Sheffi's study explains the origins and unfolding of the taboo against Wagner's music, its impact on cultural thinking, and the public dimensions it has reached over the last several decades. Anyone who would like to understand why Stravinsky's or Schumann's music is readily played today although both men were anything but philosemites, while most of Wagner's compositions are not played, should read this book. Sheffi, the editor of Zmanim (Time), a historical journal published by Tel Aviv University, offers a comprehensive and thorough collection of data and analyzes the process by which public opinion on Richard Wagner and his works evolved. In her study she traces the emergence of a cultural taboo and links it to the cultural policies of Israel. In ten chapters the reception of German culture in general and Wagner's music in particular is traced to show how the taboo developed alongside the collective memory of the Holocaust. Sheffi begins in November 1938, when performances of Wagner's music were abruptly stopped. The Palestine Symphony Orchestra refused to play the prelude of the Meistersinger von Nürnberg in its first concert of the season as a protest against Kristallnacht. But from then on, "no professional musical body in Israel could play works of this celebrated German composer without creating an uproar . . ." (p. 1). Richard Wagner turned into Adolf 628THE JEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEW Hitler's favorite composer and nothing else. Sheffi, who is "concerned with the way social and governmental norms are established . . . ," sees the "polemic raging around the Wagner issue as a microcosm of the profound discord that rends Israeli society" (p. viii). For her, the dilemma around Wagner reflects the situation of the state of Israel as a whole. She takes the musical debate, which she regards as a "pseudo-musical controversy" (p. viii), and uses it as a mirror to reflect Israeli society today. Her "integrated" study explores the three sides of the triangle involved in the Wagner affair—"the state, society, and culture" (p. 3)—in order to offer a wider range of understanding: "The Wagner affair reflects certain aspects of the formation of a modern civil-secular Israeli nationality that has, to some extent, cut itself off from the obsolete habits of the Diaspora" (p. 142). Wagner became the epitome of Nazism, antisemitism and Hitlerism; in Palestine and Israel, he became the musical symbol of the Third Reich and thus of the Holocaust. Why only Wagner, when others, including Stravinsky and Schumann, could easily be granted the same honor, not to speak of some of Hitler's musical contemporaries in Nazi Germany—Strauss, Egk, or Orff, for instance? Why were they sanitized, yet Wagner remained a symbol of evil? What did it mean for a young society to link its existence and self-identity to a...

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