This year’s Jewish Music Festival will begin almost six months after the terrorist attacks on America, amid increasing violence in the Middle East.
It couldn’t come at a better time. Now more than ever we need to find ways to enliven our spirits and celebrate our culture. And as our psalms remind us, one of the best ways to lift our spirits and rejoice is through music.
But Jewish culture, like our music, “does not survive in a vacuum,” as festival co-organizer Ellie Shapiro so aptly reminds us. Throughout our long history in the Middle East, in Europe and in America, we have nourished and been inspired by the surrounding cultures, enriching our traditions — and theirs.
Among those with whom we have shared a long cultural history are the Muslims. Not only are we rooted in the same soil — in the Holy Land, Spain and North Africa — but we have shared our cuisine, our linguistic heritage and, of course, music.
It is that message the festival, presented by the Berkeley Richmond Jewish Community Center, aims to promote. Among the performers are Shumiel Kuyanov, born in Uzbekistan, where Jews and Muslims have long made music together.
“Yes, there was lots of anti-Semitism, but the music [is] the same,” he said. “Everything which is beautiful [in the music] we share together.”
Another is Moroccan-born Gerard Edery, whose style is strongly influenced by Arab culture. Still, during a tour following Sept. 11, some in the U.S. Jewish community asked him not to sing in Arabic because it might “offend some of the Jews in the audience.”
That request struck him as preposterous as his own grandfather, a Jew, spoke only Arabic.
As American Jews we cannot and must not let a political crisis caused by a few terrorists sour us against the entirety of Muslim culture.
So if you ask us whether harmony is possible between Jews and Muslims, we’ll tell you we believe it is. Events such as the festival help bring it about — one chord at a time.
Let the music begin.