November 16: You Will Not Play Wagner
We’re proud to partner with the Jewish Arts Collaborative Boston on JArts Theatreworks Group Presents: You Will Not Play Wagner. The filmed play will be screened on Tuesday, November 16 at 7 p.m. ET / 4 p.m. PT.
Register here.
Is it ok to play the music of a known anti-Semite?
Richard Wagner’s music has been informally banned in Israel on the grounds that the German composer was promoted during the Nazi era as Hitler’s favorite composer.
You Will Not Play Wagner takes place across Boston, New York, and Tel Aviv as we Zoom across the world in a COVID-19 world. Ya’akov, a young Israeli upstart, causes a storm by selecting to perform Wagner in the finals of an international competition for conductors. He comes into conflict with Esther, Holocaust survivor and competition patron who has her own tragic connection with Wagner’s music, and Morris, the competition organizer.
Their arguments push the competition to the brink and set Israeli society on edge. Should Ya’akov play Wagner? Should the politics of his music interfere with the quality of his art? To what extent do we honor the memory of the Holocaust, its survivors and their descendants, without stifling the next generation? And would a Jewish Israeli conducting Wagner be treachery or triumph?
This filmed play was adapted for Zoom by South African playwright Victor Gordon just before he passed away from COVID-19. This film is in his memory.
Register here.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO