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Why a concert hall should be the last place for a protest — particularly an antisemitic one like this
In the opening lines of his recently published memoir, the pianist Sir Andras Schiff, born to Hungarian-Jewish parents in 1953, writes, “To begin with there is silence, and music comes out of silence. Then comes the miracle of highly varied, progressive forms growing out of sounds and structures. After that, the silence returns.”
Yet at the start of Schiff’s rendition of Beethoven’s Fifth Piano Concerto with the Israel Philharmonic last week at the Cité de la Musique in Paris, music did not come out of silence. Instead, what came out of silence was the hiss of flares followed by gasps, shouts and insults when four members of the audience tried to interrupt the opening of the concerto.
According to an official communiqué from the Philharmonie de Paris, the protesters twice lit flares while walking towards the stage, trailing smoke and sparks behind them. Schiff and the conductor, Lahav Shani, left the stage, while several audience members confronted the protesters. Altercations quickly followed and all four protesters were soon removed by a security detail from the auditorium and subsequently arrested by the police.
Once calm had returned, Schiff and Shani returned to the stage and picked up again at the beginning of the Beethoven concerto. Not surprisingly, there soon followed reviews — not of the performance but of the protest. Political and public figures across the ideological spectrum did not hesitate to weigh in.
On the far right, Marine Le Pen, in her continuing effort to efface the antisemitic origins of her political party, the National Rally, quickly added her voice to the cacophony. “The incidents provoked last night by antisemitic activists on the extreme left could have turned into a tragedy.” Turning this tragedy into comedy, the daughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen warned on X that such “acts are intolerable and calls for an exemplary response from our courts.” (Le Pen continues to denounce, it should be noted, those same courts that recently found her guilty of the embezzlement of campaign funds.)
As for the extreme left, they turned the cacophony into what could only be called a kakaphony. In a television interview, a spokesperson for Defiant France, Manon Aubry, refused to condemn what she described as “incidents.” More tellingly, she then reminded listeners that the target of the protest “was not just any artist.” Instead, they were “artists who represent the Israeli state.”
Not to be outdone, the movement’s leader, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, acknowledged the situation had gotten “a bit out-of-hand.” But you cannot, he continued, prevent people from protesting a genocide. “One can regret last night’s incidents, but I regret the genocide more than the affaire at the Philharmonie. Mais voilà, that’s how it is. There are consequences for international actions.”
Mais non, that is not how it should be — especially, as Vladimir Jankélévitch would have added, at a concert hall. In 1961, this French-Jewish philosopher published La musique et l’ineffable, which was subsequently translated and published in 2003 as Music and the Ineffable, Though he did not have such political protests in mind, Jankélévitch’s explanation of the ineffability of music reveals why a concert hall should have been the last place for such a protest, especially one that reduces the playing of music to the policies of a government.
According to the online Oxford dictionary, “ineffable” can denote something which is unspeakable because it is too shocking or too ugly to be expressed. But this is not how Jankélévitch understood the word. He distinguishes between the untellable — namely, things that cannot be spoken of, like death, because “there is absolutely nothing to say” — and the ineffable, which cannot be explained because “there are infinite and interminable things to be said of it.”
What I think Jankélévitch means is a feeling familiar to many of us when we write or read or talk or even reflect on music. We are left wordless after listening, say, to the opening credenza in Beethoven’s concerto, but we will insist on finding the words as we leave the concert hall.
And yet, writing about music is a weirdly futile exercise, one that Frank Zappa, it appears, compared to dancing about architecture. Both are equally nonsensical enterprises. Music exists on a plane where words are worse than useless; they always fail to convey what we feel while listening to the music.
This is why Jankélévitch would reject any attempt to find biographical meaning in the Fifth Piano Concerto, even though Beethoven composed the piece in Vienna in 1809, at the very moment that the French army under Napoleon was laying siege to the city. Beethoven had to take cover in the basement of his brother’s building, where the increasingly deaf composer shielded his ears with pillows from the constant bombardment from French cannons. Moreover, the authoritarian Napoleon represented the great threat to the ideal of liberty embraced by Beethoven.
Jankélévitch would also resist an effort to find historical parallels between now and then. If I, as a historian, suggested such a parallel — namely, that the concerto was composed in a context of war and death that resembles the experiences of war and death in Gaza — Jankélévitch would frown under his crown of silver hair. While music is a deeply meaningful experience, it is not, paradoxically, one that conveys a specific meaning, whether historical, moral or philosophical. And it is one that must be followed by silence.
All of this makes the protest at the concert hall not just witless and wanton, but also bewildering. The activists tried to deny a certain group from making music — the most meaningful of activities — because, as Israelis and/or Jews, they were held to be complicit in their government’s war without mercy in Gaza. Here lies the true ineffability. The clearly antisemitic action by these protesters was defended, on the extreme left, by leaders who have long been antisemitic curious. To compound the ineffability of it all, the protesters were also denounced by the extreme right which still carries the stink of antisemitism.
In a word, both extremes are guilty of the Oxford definition of ineffability. In the case of Mélenchon, his sentiments are too vile for words, just as Le Pen’s motives are equally vile. If only silence would fall over both extremes so that music can again be heard
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A Jewish soldier died saving a Christian friend. Eighty years later, a grave reunited their families.
At a cemetery outside Florence, Italy, two families gathered around the grave of a young American soldier. For decades, they were unknown to each other. Yet they had been connected for 80 years.
Private First Class Frank T. Kurzinger was born in Germany and arrived in the United States with his family in 1938 after fleeing Nazi persecution. A few years later, he returned to Europe in an American uniform as a soldier in the 10th Mountain Division.
During training, he became close friends with a soldier from Wisconsin named Del Riley. The two met in 1943.
In February 1945, the division was preparing to assault Mount Belvedere in northern Italy. The attack would take place at night. Soldiers climbed in silence. Even their weapons had been unloaded to prevent an accidental discharge.
Ahead of Riley, a scout stepped on a landmine. The explosion tore through the darkness, severely wounding both men.
Riley called for a medic, and Kurzinger responded. He took several steps toward his friend, stepped on another landmine, and was killed. He was 21. Riley survived.
For the rest of his life, he wondered whether Frank Kurzinger might have survived the war had he never shouted for help.
“It really pained him,” said Shalom Lamm, co-founder and chief historian of Operation Benjamin. According to family accounts, Riley lived with survivor’s guilt for the rest of his life.
For a time, it seemed possible that Kurzinger himself would slowly fade from memory.
His family was small. The Holocaust had left gaps in family memory and silenced many conversations about the past. In remarks delivered at the 2025 dedication of Kurzinger’s new headstone, family member Michael Stern reflected that Frank had become little more than a distant name.
“There were no photographs,” Stern said. “No yahrzeit to observe, no role for him in stirring the longings for the warmth and intimacy of the larger family.” He might have remained, Stern said, “an anonymous stranger.”
Instead, a grave brought his life into relief.
The ceremony at Florence American Cemetery was organized by Operation Benjamin, a nonprofit that identifies Jewish servicemembers and veterans buried beneath incorrect religious markers and helps restore headstones that reflect their faith.
Kurzinger had been buried beneath a Latin Cross. Aware of the danger a German-born Jew would face if captured by the Nazis, he identified as Catholic on his dogtags.
Eight decades after he was buried, a Star of David was placed above his grave.
Yet the headstones are only part of the work. There is also the responsibility of restoring stories before they fade.
Operation Benjamin’s researchers reconstructed Kurzinger’s story. They traced descendants and gathered family memories. They also located the family of Del Riley, the Wisconsin soldier whose life Kurzinger had tried to save. The two families met for the first time in Italy ahead of the ceremony.
The next day they stood together at the cemetery.
For Lamm, Operation Benjamin is not simply about correcting the historical record. It is about zachor, the Jewish obligation to remember. He points to an unexpected moment in the Book of Exodus. As the Israelites leave Egypt, Moses fulfills a promise made generations earlier: “And Moses took with him the bones of Joseph.”
Joseph asked the Israelites to swear that when God redeemed them, they would carry his remains with them.
Lamm sees Operation Benjamin’s work as a series of “Moses moments.”
“No matter what’s going on in the world,” he said, “never forget your heroes.”
The stories beneath the stones
The organization’s work grew from a simple question. In 2014, Rabbi Jacob J. Schacter visited the Normandy American Cemetery and remarked that he expected to see more Stars of David among the graves. The observation led researchers to discover cases in which Jewish servicemembers had been buried beneath crosses because of wartime paperwork errors, mistaken records, or decisions made under extraordinary circumstances.
Since then, Operation Benjamin has reviewed thousands of cases and helped facilitate dozens of headstone corrections.
But a new headstone is only part of the story. Operation Benjamin’s researchers reconstruct lives that might otherwise be forgotten. “We will not forget you,” Lamm said. “We go back. We tell your story.”
In his remarks at the graveside, Stern reflected on what the journey had meant to his family. “Through the unlikely context of death and burial,” he said at the ceremony, “he has become a tangible link to life, to our roots, our history and the lineage from which we come. A second cousin once removed no longer feels as distant or abstract.”
In prepared remarks released by the U.S. Mission in Italy, U.S. Consul General Daniela Ballard noted that Kurzinger’s name was one of 4,392 at the military cemetery.
“Every name represents a young life lost and a family left behind,” she said. “But today, we are all Frank’s family. We are the ones who carry his memory forward.”
In remarks shared by Operation Benjamin after the ceremony, members of the Riley family described climbing Mount Belvedere with a commemorative challenge coin. One side bore Del Riley’s name and a Christian cross. The other bore Frank Kurzinger’s name and a Star of David.
The two men had set out for the mountain together in February 1945. Neither completed the mission. Frank was killed. Del was wounded. Eighty years later, the Riley family carried both men to the summit. They buried the coin at the 10th Mountain Division memorial.
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Israeli citizen Michael Mizrahi killed in Montreal shooting
(JTA) — Michael Mizrahi, an Israeli citizen and longtime member of Montreal’s Jewish community, has been identified as the civilian killed in Monday’s shooting involving a gunman and Canadian police officers in Montreal’s Côte-des-Neiges neighborhood.
The suspected gunman was killed during the incident, the investigation of which is ongoing. Police have not publicly released the suspect’s identity or provided details about a possible motive. They also have not confirmed who shot Mizrahi.
The Israeli Consulate in Montreal confirmed Mizrahi’s death, saying in a statement that he was an Israeli citizen and extended condolences to his family “on behalf of the people and the State of Israel.” The consulate said his family “knows all too well the horrors of terror and violence, making this tragic loss even more painful.”
Montreal police Constable Mohamed Lamine Benredouane, 34, was also fatally shot responding to the incident, according to police.
The Service de police de la Ville de Montréal said Benredouane died in the line of duty while protecting the public during an intervention in Côte-des-Neiges, a heavily Jewish neighborhood. He had served with the force since 2021.
A second officer, who is female, was also shot and remains in critical condition, police said.
Quebec’s Bureau des enquêtes indépendantes, the province’s police watchdog, has opened an independent investigation into the use of a firearm by a police officer in a fatal confrontation.The Quebec police watchdog group states that it is “mandated to fully investigate the facts surrounding police interventions. The BEI investigates all cases where a person, other than a police officer on duty, dies, suffers serious injury, or is injured by a firearm used by a police officer during a police intervention or while in police custody.“
A number of Canadian Jewish groups published statements assuring the Jewish community that they were not in danger. The UJA-Federation of Toronto put out two statements explaining that the Jewish community did not appear to be a target.
The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, the advocacy arm of Canadian Jewish Federations, also put out a statement mourning the loss of a community member.
“We mourn the tragic loss of Michael (Michel) Moshe Mizrahi z”l, a beloved member of Montreal’s Jewish community, an innocent victim of today’s events,” the group posted on X on Monday night. “Our thoughts and our deepest condolences are with his family, friends, and loved ones during this time of unimaginable pain.”
Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar wrote on X that he had called the Chabad Rabbi of Montreal Mendel Raskin to extend his “deepest condolences to the families of the victims, to the Jewish community of Montreal, and to all Canadians mourning this terrible loss.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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Supreme Court reinstates murder conviction in Etan Patz disappearance case
(JTA) — The Supreme Court on Monday reinstated a murder conviction for the man convicted of killing Etan Patz, the 6-year-old Jewish boy whose 1979 disappearance riveted the nation.
In a 6-3 vote, the justices reimposed the conviction of Pedro Hernandez, who was found guilty of kidnapping and murdering Patz in 2017 and was serving a 25-year sentence until a New York federal appeals court ruled last year that he was entitled to a retrial.
The justices granted an appeal from New York prosecutors who urged them to overturn the decision last year, writing in an unsigned opinion that the lower court “exceeded its authority in holding that Hernandez is entitled to relief.”
“Today the Supreme Court agreed with the findings of multiple lower courts and upheld the trial conviction of Pedro Hernandez for the horrific murder of Etan Patz, which changed a generation of New Yorkers,” Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said in a statement Monday. “This office has remained steadfast in its pursuit of justice for Etan and the Patz family and will continue to stand by this important conviction.”
Harvey Fishbein, a lawyer for Hernandez, told the The New York Times Monday that the Supreme Court’s order meant Hernandez would not get a new trial, adding that his team was “terribly disappointed.”
“We firmly believe that an innocent man is in jail for a crime that he did not commit,” Fishbein said.
Patz vanished in May 1979 while walking to his school bus stop in New York City for the first time. The 6-year-old became one of the first missing children whose photograph appeared on milk cartons nationwide, but despite years of searches and public appeals, he was never found.
Patz’s parents, Julie and Stan, spent decades seeking an arrest for his disappearance, helping to establish a national missing-children hotline. The anniversary of Etan’s disappearance, May 25, also became National Missing Children’s Day.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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