Art becomes life

Editorial

In Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi's classic, "Zakhor, Jewish History and Jewish Memory," the writer evokes the biblical injunction zakhor (to remember) and then poses two salient questions: Just what is to be remembered, and how?

With the approach of Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, this year April 9, the imperative takes on almost mythic proportion and its execution gargantuan importance. How do we memorialize such devastation, such catastrophic loss? And how to do it in a way that is both relevant and respectful?

The controversial exhibit "Mirroring Evil: Nazi Imagery/Recent Art," which opened last month at the Jewish Museum in New York, puts on view Nazi imagery as artistic metaphor to stimulate discussion of contemporary issues. Its "Lego Concentration Camp Set," "Giftgas Giftset," and "It's the Real Thing Self-Portrait at Buchenwald" address American materialism and commercialism.

Yet, some critics assert, those artistic expressions - a can of Diet Coke superimposed on a photo of starving inmates; a designer label plastered on a canister of poison gas - commercialize, trivialize and cheapen the all too real images of the Shoah's unspeakable horror. Elie Wiesel decried them as a vulgarization of the Holocaust and an offense to those who perished.

Respectful? Hardly. Relevant? Questionable.

Compare that with the April 12-14 performances of the Phoenix Boys Choir, which will include poetry written by young children at Terezin, one of the Nazi concentration camps, and music written and performed by inmates there.

As Assistant Editor Leisah Namm reports on Page 4 of this issue, the choir, comprised of boys ages 8-14, met with local Holocaust survivors to prepare for this spring's program. The singers kept journals of their experiences and noted their impressions during rehearsals. Choir Artistic Director Georg Stangelberger wanted to assure that the boys would "remember (the Holocaust) years down the road."

The choir's endeavor gives testimony to the power of art to imitate life - not simply to capture it with raw images meant to provoke, but to animate and breathe new life into it. The students' work bears witness to the ability of art to make painful memories real and relevant, and to create a whole new set of reminders for a whole new set of rememberers. Isn't that what Yerushalmi is asking us to do?

So let us hear the sweet voices of the Phoenix Boys Choir - and remember.

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