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The Jewish violinist who saved Carnegie Hall from the brink of destruction
(New York Jewish Week) — Violinist Isaac Stern made his Carnegie Hall debut in 1943, but it would hardly be his last performance at the famed concert venue: He performed there more than 200 times between then and his death in 2001 at the age of 81.
Carnegie Hall was “part of his DNA,” his daughter, Rabbi Shira Stern, told the New York Jewish Week.
The opposite is likely true as well: As the person who fought to save the famed concert hall from demolition in the 1950s, and then served as the president of Carnegie Hall Corporation for 41 years, Stern’s “DNA,” if you will, is all over the iconic institution at the corner of Seventh Avenue and 57th Street.
Carnegie Hall, built by industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie in 1891, isn’t just the punchline of an old joke (“practice, practice, practice”). It’s a bonafide cultural colossus, having hosted performances by musicians as varied and famous as Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and The Beatles.
And though it seems inconceivable today, by the late 1950s the hall had fallen into disrepair and was set to be demolished. Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts was being built and Carnegie Hall’s primary tenant, the New York Philharmonic, had plans to make Lincoln Center its new home. It declined an offer to buy Carnegie Hall for $4 million.
Stern, however — who, beginning in 1944, had performed with the New York Philharmonic more than 100 times — could not allow Carnegie Hall to simply disappear. He organized the Citizens’ Committee to Save Carnegie Hall, a group of musicians and philanthropists — and his efforts led to legislation that allowed the City of New York to purchase the venue and save it from the wrecking ball.
“The young people of this country are demanding more and more music and producing more and more first-rate musicians,” Stern was quoted as saying in his New York Times obituary. “How dare we take away from them, the music, and the audiences of the future, one of the great music rooms of the world?”
Stern was elected the first president of the Carnegie Hall Corporation, the entity that was formed to operate the venue, at its founding in 1960. It was a positions he held until his death in 2001. As president, Stern pursued a vision that Carnegie Hall could become a major center for music education and training. Under his leadership, the hall underwent major renovations in 1986 and celebrated its centennial in 1991, according to the Carnegie Hall’s Rose Archives.
Additionally, under Stern’s leadership, Carnegie Hall began to establish itself as a global cultural institution, bringing in various international ensembles and branching out into other genres of music besides classical. In 1997, the main hall was named the Isaac Stern Hall in his honor.
For all of these reasons, on May 16, 2003 — two years after he died and exactly 43 years after the founding of The Carnegie Hall Corporation — the corner of West 57th Street and Seventh Avenue was renamed “Isaac Stern Place.”
“To me Carnegie Hall is nothing less than an affirmation of the human spirit,” the violinist was quoted as saying in an Associated Press story about the street co-naming.
Stern had undying support for the Hall and for what it could do for others, specifically “opening it up to young musicians so that they would be able to have access to consummate musicians,” Shira Stern said. She told the New York Jewish Week about “the red phone” — a direct line to Carnegie Hall that rang in her father’s study in case of an emergency.
“There was a certain idealism in Isaac Stern that had to do with music, with art, with politics, with culture, with not accepting when someone would say this is impossible,” violinist Philip Setzer of the Emerson String Quartet told JTA in 2001.
“He was grounded in music before he was born,” his daughter said.
Isaac Stern in 1979. (Bogaerts, Rob/Anefo; Dutch National Archives)
The family immigrated to San Francisco when Stern was an infant, and at a young age it “was clear that he was gifted” in music, according to his daughter. Stern dropped out of public school after second grade and began a life dedicated to violin. He enrolled at the San Francisco Conservatory at 8, where he studied under Naoum Blinder — who he later regarded as his main influence — and played his first concert at age 15 with the San Francisco Symphony.
In 1949, under impresario Sol Hurok, Stern played 120 concerts over a seven-month tour of the United States, Europe and South America. “By 1950, Mr. Stern had established himself as one of the best young violinists on the concert circuit, and the first American-trained violinist to gain so great a measure of international respect,” having performed with every major orchestra by that point, Stern’s New York Times obituary noted.
Stern was also known for helping to establish young talent, particularly cellist Yo-Yo Ma and the Israeli-born violinists Itzhak Perlman and Pinchas Zuckerman. “He found people who had talent, he nurtured them, he mentored them,” said Shira Stern. “Teaching was his delight.”
“He wasn’t religiously Jewish, but he was extraordinarily spiritual,” said Shira Stern about her father. “[He] realized that his spiritual language wasn’t Hebrew, his spiritual language was music.”
She recalled the time Stern was supposed to play a concert right after former President John F. Kennedy had been assassinated. “He asked that the orchestra not play, and he played 45 minutes to an hour of unaccompanied Bach, because he said that this was the highest form of prayer for him.”
Though he may not have been religious, Stern was a Zionist who regularly performed in Israel. He rushed there during the Yom Kippur War in 1973 in order to play at the bedsides of wounded soldiers and for troops in the Negev. Shira Stern said her father would weave “Hatikva,” Israel’s national anthem, into these performances, because he knew “that it was a comfort to people,” she said.
That same year, Stern founded the Jerusalem Music Center, “which still is vibrant and continues to provide masterclasses and training for young musicians in Israel,” said Shira Stern, adding that her father was the chairman of the America-Israel Cultural Foundation alongside his second wife, Vera.
In 1991, Stern was playing a concert in Jerusalem when a Scud missile attack interrupted his performance. While other musicians left the stage, he donned a gas mask and continued playing.
Shira Stern described her father as an “activist.” Beyond his role in saving Carnegie Hall, Stern was passionate that the U.S. government play a role in funding the arts and held an advisory role in the creation of the National Endowment of the Arts in the 1960s. He organized a musicians’ boycott in 1974 when UNESCO suspended its programs in Israel, and would not perform in Germany because of the Holocaust, although he did urge Israeli artists to perform there in order to establish an artistic presence.
“He would have been 103 this year and people are still talking about what he has done for them,” Shira Stern. In addition to the musically inclined rabbi, both of Stern’s sons, Michael and David, are composers, helping to realize their father’s long held dream. “He just wanted to make sure that there was a solid next generation of musicians and music lovers,” she said.
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The post The Jewish violinist who saved Carnegie Hall from the brink of destruction appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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An Orange Moment of Pure Unity in Israel
A woman holds a cut-out picture of hostages Shiri Bibas, 32, with Kfir Bibas, 9 months old, who were kidnapped from their home in Kibbutz Nir Oz during the deadly Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas and then killed in Gaza, on the day of their funeral procession, at a public square dedicated to hostages in Tel Aviv, Israel, Feb. 26, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Shir Torem
A tourist visiting Israel on certain days in May may find themselves surprised. Suddenly, in the middle of a busy street, at a café, or even on a crowded highway, everything comes to a halt. People rise from their seats, stop walking, pull over their cars, and stand still — all while a siren echoes through the air and from car radios.
Looking around in astonishment, they see an entire nation pausing in unison. The sirens of Holocaust Remembrance Day and Memorial Day for Israel’s Fallen Soldiers are among the times that this national mourning happens.
But last Wednesday, we witnessed another such moment — one that lasted an entire day — when the coffins of Shiri Bibas and her children were laid to rest.
Tens of thousands of Israelis accompanied the funeral procession, waving Israeli flags, orange and yellow banners, symbols of the hostages, and posters expressing support for the family. Shiri and her two little boys were buried together in a single coffin, and the funeral was marked by elements in orange — a tribute to the red hair of the Bibas children. Across the country, orange balloons were released into the sky, a heartbreaking symbol of childhood cruelly cut short.
Along the route, thousands of Israelis put their daily routines on hold, silently accompanying the Bibas family on their final journey. Many held signs with the word “Sorry” — a word that expressed pain, frustration, and a deep sense of helplessness. Others sang “Hatikvah” through tear-filled eyes, holding hands, forming circles of remembrance, grief, and unity.
On the day of the funeral, the pain was not just the family’s — it was the pain of an entire nation. And the entire world saw this powerful Israeli phenomenon — this collective mobilization, this national embrace, these tears that belonged to everyone.
At the request of the Bibas family, the funeral ceremony itself was intimate, with no government or Knesset representatives present. But the eulogies were broadcast to the public, and all of Israel heard Yarden Bibas’ farewell words.
After speaking lovingly about his wife, Yarden then spoke about his children: “Chuki,” he addressed Ariel, who would forever remain four years old, “you made me a father. You made us a family. I’m sure you’re making all the angels laugh with your impressions.” Then, he turned to little Kfir: “I miss playing our morning games. Mishmish, who will help me make decisions now? How am I supposed to make decisions without you? Do you remember the last decision we made? In the shelter, I asked you if we should fight or surrender. You said, ‘Fight.’ so I did. I’m sorry I couldn’t protect you.”
These are the moments that remind us of our shared existence, of our ability to rise above division and discord. In days of deep disagreements and social tensions, these moments of unity are not to be taken for granted; they serve as a reminder that beneath the turbulent and stormy surface, there is a common ground of values, of humanity, and of shared destiny.
The debates will continue another day. But this moment of unity deserves to be etched into our collective memory as a reminder of what we are capable of being, in the hope that we will find this unity again in brighter days.
Itamar Tzur is the author of The Invention of the Palestinian Narrative and an Israeli scholar specializing in Middle Eastern history. He holds a Bachelor’s degree with honors in Jewish History and a Master’s degree with honors in Middle Eastern studies. As a senior member of the “Forum Kedem for Middle Eastern Studies and Public Diplomacy,” he leverages his academic expertise to deepen understanding of regional dynamics and historical contexts.
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Why Palestinian Terrorism Is Never Legal or Justified: A Fact-Based Retort
Partygoers at the Supernova Psy-Trance Festival who filmed the events that unfolded on Oct. 7, 2023. Photo: Yes Studios
In a world of international anarchy, law-based counter-terrorism is never just about strategy, tactics, or doctrine. Whatever an insurgency’s specific features, this critical arena of national security planning should remain intellect-based and logic-centered.
For Israel in the Islamic Middle East, this means an ongoing awareness of enemy concepts of death. It signifies, among other things, that Israel’s counter-terrorism planners ought continuously to bear in mind the primacy of an historically under-examined form of geopolitical power.
This neglected form of power, abstract but incomparable, is “power over death” — meaning, in what manner should have jihadi promises of immortality been affected by the Assad regime collapse in Syriaand the still-unresolved Gaza War?
“An immortal person,” says Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, “is a contradiction in terms.” Accordingly, any promise of immortality to jihadi terrorists will be densely problematic. It will, however, still resonate among those many insurgents who routinely prefer mystery to reason.
Assuming that others use decision-making rationality often make sense in explaining world politics, but there remain enough significant exceptions to temper any mundane generalities.
If Israel’s national decision-makers were to survey the prevailing configuration of global jihadi terrorist organizations (Sunni and Shiite) from a suitably- augmented analytic standpoint, the nexus between “martyrdom operations” and “life-everlasting” could become more conspicuous and understandable.
At that point, Israel’s national security planners could begin to place themselves in a better position to deter murderous hostage-takers and suicide-bombers, in microcosm (i.e., as individual human terrorists) and in macrocosm (i.e., as law-violating organizations or states that support the terrorist microcosm).
Those jihadi insurgents who seek to justify gratuitously violent attacks on Israelis in the name of “martyrdom” are acting contrary to codified and customary international law.
All insurgents, even those who passionately claim “just cause,” must still satisfy longstanding jurisprudential limits on permissible targets and levels of violence. Moreover, as a binding matter of law, such limits can never be tempered by any actively contending claims of religious faith. Under law, Palestinian claims of insurgency “by any means necessary” remain nothing more than an empty witticism.
Under established rules, even the allegedly “sacred” rights of insurgency always exclude any deliberate targeting of civilians or any intentional use of force to inflict unnecessary suffering. When Hamas terrorists kidnapped and beheaded Israeli infants on October 7, 2023, they were acting not on behalf of sovereignty or self-determination, but rather to cultivate the grotesque pleasures of a lascivious barbarism.
Law and strategy are interrelated. At the same time, they remain analytically distinct. The legal “bottom line” is unambiguous: Violence becomes terrorism whenever “political” insurgents murder or maim noncombatants, whether with guns, knives, bombs or automobiles. Always irrelevant to assessments of “just means” (jus in bello) is whether the expressed cause of terror-violence is just or unjust (jus ad bellum). Under the universal “law of nations,” unjust means used to fight for allegedly just ends are still law-breaking ipso facto.
Sometimes, Israel’s martyrdom-seeking jihadi foes advance the supposedly legal argument of tu quoque. This argument stipulates that because “the other side” is guilty of similar, equivalent or even greater criminality, “our side” is innocent of any wrongdoing.
Jurisprudentially, any such argument is disingenuous and incorrect, especially after landmark legal judgments by the Nuremberg (Germany) and Far East (Japan) ad hoc tribunals. Historically, tu quoque is always an immutably discredited posture.
For conventional armies and insurgent forces, the right to use military force can never supplant “peremptory” rules of humanitarian international law. Nonetheless, without a scintilla of law-based evidence, supporters of jihadi terror-violence against Israeli noncombatants continuously insist that “ends justify means.”
Leaving aside the ordinary ethical standards by which any such argument should be dismissed on its face, ends can never justify means in the law of armed conflict. Indeed, there can be no authoritative argument against this civilizing affirmation.
Witless banalities of politics ought never be taken as valid expectations of international law. In such law, whether codified or customary, one person’s terrorist can never be another’s “freedom-fighter.”
It’s really not complicated. Whenever an insurgent group resorts to unjust means, its actions constitute terrorism. Even if adversarial claims of a hostile controlling power could be plausible or acceptable (e.g., relentless Palestinian claims concerning an Israeli “occupation”), corollary claims of entitlement to “any means necessary” remain false.
Recalling Hague Convention No. IV: “The right of belligerents to adopt means of injuring the enemy is not unlimited.”
What about Israeli attacks on Gaza targets? Though Israel’s bombardments of Gaza are spawned multiple Palestinian casualties, the legal responsibility for these harms lay entirely with Hamas “perfidy” or “human shields.” While Palestinian casualties were always unwanted, inadvertent and unintentional, Israeli civilian deaths and injuries were always the result of jihadi criminal intent or “mens rea.”
International law does not provide an intuitive or subjective set of standards. This law has determinable form and content. Therefore, it can never be casually invented or reinvented by terror groups to justify selective adversarial interests. This is especially the case when inhumane terror-violence intentionally targets a designated victim state’s most fragile and vulnerable civilians. Murdering captive infants is never defensible. Never.
National liberation” movements that fail to meet the test of just means can never be protected as lawful or legitimate in themselves. Even if relevant law were to accept the questionable argument that jihadi terror groups had fulfilled all valid criteria of “national liberation,” these groups would still fail to satisfy equally significant jurisprudential standards of distinction, proportionality, and military necessity.
These standards were specifically applied to insurgent or sub-state organizations by the common Article 3 of the four Geneva Conventions of 1949, and (additionally) by the two 1977 Protocols to these Conventions.
There is more. Standards of “humanity” remain binding upon all combatants by virtue of the broader norms of customary and conventional international law, including Article 1 of the Preamble to the Fourth Hague Convention of 1907. This rule, commonly called the “Martens Clause,” makes “all persons” responsible for the “laws of humanity” and for associated “dictates of public conscience.” There can be no exceptions to this universal responsibility.
Under international law, terrorist crimes mandate universal cooperation in both apprehension and punishment. As punishers of “grave breaches” under international law, all states are expected to search out and prosecute or extradite individual terrorists. This is emphatically true for the United States, which incorporates international law as the “supreme law of the land” at Article 6 of the Constitution.
For the foreseeable future, jihadi “martyrs” could present an incrementally existential threat to Israel. If these criminals should ever get their hands on usable fissile materials, however, this threat could become more immediately existential. This does not mean that terrorists would necessarily require a “chain-reaction” nuclear explosive, but only the essential ingredients for an advanced radiation dispersal device.
In a worst case scenario, jihadi use of radiation dispersal weapons against Israel could spur Iran into protracted and enlarged military conflict with Israel. At that unpredictable point, Israel’s policy considerations of adversarial “last things” could become all-important.
In essence, for Israel, a jihadist enemy that links terror-violence to faith-based hopes of immortality could pose an incomparable threat. To suitably deter this fearsome peril, Israel’s national security planners should more expressly examine all strategic, geographic, and legal dimensions of the problem. For these science-based planners, jihadi searches for “power over death” ought immediately to become a subject of highest policy urgency.
Prof. Louis René Beres was educated at Princeton (Ph.D., 1971) and is the author of many books and scholarly articles dealing with international law, nuclear strategy, nuclear war, and terrorism. In Israel, Prof. Beres was Chair of Project Daniel (PM Sharon). His 12th and latest book is Surviving Amid Chaos: Israel’s Nuclear Strategy (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016; 2nd ed., 2018).
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Israel Releases Same Terrorist Murderer for *Third* Time in Latest Hostage Deal
Gilad Shalit salutes Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after prisoner exchange deal in Oct. 2011. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
The following is the tragic history of how Israel has released terrorist murderer Aladdin Al-Bazian in three different hostage exchange deals:
1. 1981 – Arrested
Aladdin Al-Bazian “was imprisoned for terrorist acts.” [Ma’ariv, May 6, 1986]
2. 1985 – Released
Al-Bazian was “released in the prisoner exchange deal with Ahmed Jibril’s organization.” [Ma’ariv, May 6, 1986]
3. 1986 – Arrested
Al-Bazian was apprehended “for the murder of Zehava Ben-Ovadia as well as for sniper attacks” [Ma’ariv May 6, 1986] and “sentenced to life in prison.” [Ma’ariv, November 5, 1986]
4. 2011 – Released
Al-Bazian was released as part of the Gilad Shalit exchange deal. [Jerusalem Post, October 19, 2011]
5. 2014 – Arrested
Al-Bazian was arrested and re-sentenced to life in prison. [Ynet, July 16, 2014]
6. 2025 – Released
Al-Bazian was released a third time in the latest hostage extortion deal. To prevent him from returning to terrorism this time, Israel expelled him to Egypt.
Note also that Israel has released many other murderers in the recent Hamas extortion deal. Most of them returned to their homes in Judea and Samaria or Gaza.
Israeli security has reported that 82% of terrorists released in the past have returned to terrorism. Israel plans to enforce tighter security measures to prevent further tragedies — but it remains to be seen how effective that will or can be.
Ephraim D. Tepler is a contributor to Palestinian Media Watch (PMW). Itamar Marcus is PMW’s Founder and Director. A version of this article originally appeared at PMW.
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