The courtyard of the late 19th century Sergei Building is an oasis of tranquility in the midst of downtown Jerusalem. Last night the two-story stone walls surrounding fragrant greenery and an array of casually displayed sculptures reverberated with the sound of a talented octet of classical musicians — the Pearls of Music Ensemble.
The concert is one of a series of free events under the rubric of the annual two-week Israel Festival. In addition to the regular ticketed performances that fill the city’s concert halls with musicians, dancers and actors from all over the world, some of Jerusalem’s more unique venues play host to free events every night.
Was it by chance that Israel Festival planners scheduled the Russian-speaking immigrant players of Pearls of Music to play at the Sergei Courtyard? If so, the black-clad musicians seem thoroughly at home in the stately setting of the building named after Czar Nicholas’ brother, Prince Sergei Romanov who visited Jerusalem in 1889.
In a day that started at a press briefing on the Forty Years of War, where Natan Sharansky, amongst others, discussed the ramifications of the Six Day War on the modern world, the significance of the influence of Mother Russia on contemporary Israel is particularly striking.
Sharansky views the Six Day War in terms of the beginning of the fall of the Soviet empire. In his view, the 1967 war brought with it the sobering realization for the Soviets that they would not dominate the Middle East, as well as the emboldening of Jewish national identity amongst Soviet Jews who would begin to agitate to leave the Soviet Union creating a movement that undermined the very notion of the idyllic worker’s paradise and caused the foundations of Soviet society to crumble.
Sharansky explained in passing, how the compulsion of Soviet Jews to excel in their professional lives was an expression of their identity in a society where nearly all of them were completely disconnected from knowing what it meant to be a Jew in any other way.
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