// literary & arts //
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The Death of Klinghoffer
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On Saturday morning before the opening night of John Adams’ The Death of Klinghoffer at The Metropolitan Opera, I heard a prominent Orthodox rabbi on the Upper West Side stand at his synagogue's pulpit and implore his congregants to attend a rally protesting the “morally repugnant” performance. In The Jewish Week, the president of the Zionist Organization of America called on the Met to cancel its Klinghoffer performances, asserting that the opera contains “outrageous libels” against Jews. Jeffrey Wiesenfeld, a former aide to New York Mayor Koch, and a past CUNY trustee known for trying to block an honorary degree for Tony Kushner on the basis of Mr. Kushner’s anti-Israel politics, accused the Met of proactively inciting anti-Semitism in New York City by producing an opera that “celebrates terrorists and celebrates anti-Semitism.” Disobediently, I went to see the performance that the Orthodox, Zionist, New York communities — my communities — were pressuring me to protest. It turns out that they were right to be angry, but that they were angry about the wrong thing.
Magnificent and ambitious, as opera is wont to be, Klinghoffer undeniably dramatizes a crime against Jews. However, its commitment to telling, and even aggrandizing, a tale that involves a terrorist act against Jews does not make the opera anti-Semitic. Klinghoffer explores the murder of Leon Klinghoffer, a Jewish wheelchair-bound man killed and flung overboard during the 1985 hijacking of the Achille Lauro cruise ship by members of the Palestine Liberation Front. The opening scene is of a ‘Chorus of Exiled Palestinians,’ a weeping dirge in which Palestinians recount that “[their] father’s house was razed/ In nineteen forty- eight/ When the Israelis passed/ Over [their] street.” A ‘Chorus of Exiled Jews,’ follows the first, in which immigrant Jews clutching saplings “recount to each other all [they] endured.” Behind the performers, a screen flashes a series of historically significant, violent dates: 1948, 1967, 1982, 1995, 2003, and 2014. From the very beginning, the opera taps into the disparate, painful narratives of the two desperately divided peoples, and reconstructs a historical event that involved both parties. While neither is condemned, as the opera’s naysayers would have liked, neither is condoned either. Admittedly, the opera is not anti-terror—but it is not anti- Semitic either.
Accusations of anti-Semitism in Klinghoffer are unfounded, but I would have expected that thoughtful Jews would take issue with the insensitivity of the opera’s neutral, almost academic representation of terrorists. An innocent Jewish man is murdered, his family mourns, and the Met makes money. The 3,000 people who rallied outside the Met (likely without having ever read the Klinghoffer libretto) wielding signs that read “cancel racist opera” and “propaganda masquerading as art” (among other taglines) were misguided in thinking the opera was intentionally antagonistic. A sharper assessment reveals that the problem lies not in what the opera asserts about Palestinians or Israeli, but rather in what it doesn’t. The libretto’s ideological neutrality is perhaps politically correct, but it is an offense to Leon Klinghoffer’s dignity. His murderers deserve severe condemnation, but if Adams felt unqualified to pass that judgment, he should certainly have been capable of conveying the intense sadness and agony that accompanies the killing of a guiltless man. Anything less is an injustice to the victim’s family, friends, and community at large. Sympathy and kindness – the fundamentals of compassion – are absent from the opera, and without them, honoring Leon Klinghoffer is impossible.
I am not certain that honoring the victims of terror is the responsibility of the arts, but to actively dishonor the wishes of the victim’s family is certainly irresponsible. Klinghoffer’s daughters, Lisa and Ilsa, fiercely denounced the opera: “For our family,” wrote the sisters, “the impact of terrorism is obviously deeply personal.” This message is the heart of a letter from the two women that the Met printed in the Klinghoffer playbill, which goes on to shame the opera for rationalizing terrorism and sullying their father’s memory in the process. They opera does not present Klinghoffer as the “vibrant and gentle, fine, principled, sweet man” who “lived life to the fullest” that the daughters describe. In the opera, he is nothing more than a weak, easy target and, subsequently an old, overboard dead man. Instead of paying attention to the immense emotional trauma caused by Klinghoffer’s murder, the Met ignored the daughters’ requests to halt the performances. Does the Met think it absolves itself of this indecency by distributing playbills with the daughters’ heartfelt message inside? On the contrary: the playbill served to draw my attention to the Met’s total disregard for the deceased.
This is not to say that I oppose the exploration and utilization of mankind’s most disgraceful moments in art. Some of the finest art represents or is inspired by history’s most devastating events. One might even argue that art is nothing if not an elicitor of emotion, no matter how vulgar or electric. But the problem with The Death of Klinghoffer is that in its decided impartiality, the performance elicits no angst whatsoever. Just as there is no anti-Semitism, there is no pacifism, no pluralism, no playfulness and really no particular purpose at all. If the opera had succeeded in conveying one of these, or a directed sentiment of any kind, there may have been room to protest its bias. However, with no bias to distract me, all I saw was jarring heartlessness. There is a possibility for value – musical, visual, aesthetic etc – in opinionated, uncomfortable art, even if it risks insulting someone. But there is nothing impressive or redemptive about pure indifference.
By expending endless effort and rhetoric in baseless attacks against the Met for being anti-Semitic and for glorifying terrorists, the Jewish voice missed its chance to champion a serious cause: deference for the victims of terror. By putting on this opera the Met is not cementing Leon Klinghoffer’s legacy; it is circumventing the difficulties that his legacy presents by dulling and equating the complex parties in an age-old violent dispute. What the Met’s manager calls “reconnect[ing] the Met to cultural conversation,” I call a cheap, and uninteresting employment of a familiar controversy to garner attention. The Jewish pundits fell prey to the drama, and I fell prey to theirs. But the joke is on them both: I’ve discounted the loudest Jewish complaints, and I managed to score a free student-press ticket to the Met.
Magnificent and ambitious, as opera is wont to be, Klinghoffer undeniably dramatizes a crime against Jews. However, its commitment to telling, and even aggrandizing, a tale that involves a terrorist act against Jews does not make the opera anti-Semitic. Klinghoffer explores the murder of Leon Klinghoffer, a Jewish wheelchair-bound man killed and flung overboard during the 1985 hijacking of the Achille Lauro cruise ship by members of the Palestine Liberation Front. The opening scene is of a ‘Chorus of Exiled Palestinians,’ a weeping dirge in which Palestinians recount that “[their] father’s house was razed/ In nineteen forty- eight/ When the Israelis passed/ Over [their] street.” A ‘Chorus of Exiled Jews,’ follows the first, in which immigrant Jews clutching saplings “recount to each other all [they] endured.” Behind the performers, a screen flashes a series of historically significant, violent dates: 1948, 1967, 1982, 1995, 2003, and 2014. From the very beginning, the opera taps into the disparate, painful narratives of the two desperately divided peoples, and reconstructs a historical event that involved both parties. While neither is condemned, as the opera’s naysayers would have liked, neither is condoned either. Admittedly, the opera is not anti-terror—but it is not anti- Semitic either.
Accusations of anti-Semitism in Klinghoffer are unfounded, but I would have expected that thoughtful Jews would take issue with the insensitivity of the opera’s neutral, almost academic representation of terrorists. An innocent Jewish man is murdered, his family mourns, and the Met makes money. The 3,000 people who rallied outside the Met (likely without having ever read the Klinghoffer libretto) wielding signs that read “cancel racist opera” and “propaganda masquerading as art” (among other taglines) were misguided in thinking the opera was intentionally antagonistic. A sharper assessment reveals that the problem lies not in what the opera asserts about Palestinians or Israeli, but rather in what it doesn’t. The libretto’s ideological neutrality is perhaps politically correct, but it is an offense to Leon Klinghoffer’s dignity. His murderers deserve severe condemnation, but if Adams felt unqualified to pass that judgment, he should certainly have been capable of conveying the intense sadness and agony that accompanies the killing of a guiltless man. Anything less is an injustice to the victim’s family, friends, and community at large. Sympathy and kindness – the fundamentals of compassion – are absent from the opera, and without them, honoring Leon Klinghoffer is impossible.
I am not certain that honoring the victims of terror is the responsibility of the arts, but to actively dishonor the wishes of the victim’s family is certainly irresponsible. Klinghoffer’s daughters, Lisa and Ilsa, fiercely denounced the opera: “For our family,” wrote the sisters, “the impact of terrorism is obviously deeply personal.” This message is the heart of a letter from the two women that the Met printed in the Klinghoffer playbill, which goes on to shame the opera for rationalizing terrorism and sullying their father’s memory in the process. They opera does not present Klinghoffer as the “vibrant and gentle, fine, principled, sweet man” who “lived life to the fullest” that the daughters describe. In the opera, he is nothing more than a weak, easy target and, subsequently an old, overboard dead man. Instead of paying attention to the immense emotional trauma caused by Klinghoffer’s murder, the Met ignored the daughters’ requests to halt the performances. Does the Met think it absolves itself of this indecency by distributing playbills with the daughters’ heartfelt message inside? On the contrary: the playbill served to draw my attention to the Met’s total disregard for the deceased.
This is not to say that I oppose the exploration and utilization of mankind’s most disgraceful moments in art. Some of the finest art represents or is inspired by history’s most devastating events. One might even argue that art is nothing if not an elicitor of emotion, no matter how vulgar or electric. But the problem with The Death of Klinghoffer is that in its decided impartiality, the performance elicits no angst whatsoever. Just as there is no anti-Semitism, there is no pacifism, no pluralism, no playfulness and really no particular purpose at all. If the opera had succeeded in conveying one of these, or a directed sentiment of any kind, there may have been room to protest its bias. However, with no bias to distract me, all I saw was jarring heartlessness. There is a possibility for value – musical, visual, aesthetic etc – in opinionated, uncomfortable art, even if it risks insulting someone. But there is nothing impressive or redemptive about pure indifference.
By expending endless effort and rhetoric in baseless attacks against the Met for being anti-Semitic and for glorifying terrorists, the Jewish voice missed its chance to champion a serious cause: deference for the victims of terror. By putting on this opera the Met is not cementing Leon Klinghoffer’s legacy; it is circumventing the difficulties that his legacy presents by dulling and equating the complex parties in an age-old violent dispute. What the Met’s manager calls “reconnect[ing] the Met to cultural conversation,” I call a cheap, and uninteresting employment of a familiar controversy to garner attention. The Jewish pundits fell prey to the drama, and I fell prey to theirs. But the joke is on them both: I’ve discounted the loudest Jewish complaints, and I managed to score a free student-press ticket to the Met.
// LILY WILF is a Junior at Barnard College and Managing Editor of The Current. She can be reached at [email protected]. Photo courtesy of www.nypost.com.