Wagner, the Torah, and the Irresistible Urge to Conquer Poland
These days I am taking part, as a guest of the Opéra de Monte-Carlo, in an ambitious multi-year interpretive project to which I was kindly invited by Maestro Gianluca Capuano and Les Musiciens du Prince – Monaco, an ensemble I am honored to be part of. This year we are performing Die Walküre (The Valkyrie) by Richard Wagner, the second of the four music dramas that make up the tetralogy The Ring of the Nibelung, following Das Rheingold, which we performed last year.
I must admit that when the project was first proposed to me two years ago, I was not at all certain I wanted to accept. Wagner is a totalizing, enveloping world, and entering it—even as a small cog in an enormous machine—means allowing oneself to be permeated by a powerful and somewhat unsettling mythology.
I reflected on this at length, especially during the long hours of practice and the endless rehearsal days. A few days ago, I found myself thinking of a line from the Talmud: “Jephthah in his generation is like Samuel in his generation” (BT Rosh Hashanah 25b). Samuel was one of the greatest prophets and leaders of Israel. Jephthah—whose story inspired a magnificent Baroque oratorio by Giacomo Carissimi in seventeenth-century Rome, which I had the pleasure of conducting at the beginning of this century (there was once a CD released by Dynamic, now sadly out of print, though perhaps still to be found second-hand)—was, by contrast, a deeply problematic figure who ended up having his daughter killed because of a vow he could have annulled (Judges 11–12). The Talmud’s point is that even the most flawed leader deserves to be understood and respected within their historical context.
We know about Wagner’s anti-Judaism, and about the appropriation of his work by the Nazis. Even today, his operas are not performed in Israel.
And yet, like all simplifications, this one has never fully convinced me. I do my work as a “border Rabbi” (and musician) precisely because I distrust simplifications of every kind—those comforting, sharply drawn lines that are often more questionable than reassuring. The Torah as I understand it, and as it was taught to me by my teachers, as well as life itself, is far more uncomfortable. Things are rarely monolithic, and even in the most morally clear situations there are nuances we cannot ignore.
The verse “How goodly are your tents, O Jacob, your dwellings, O Israel” (Numbers 24:5) has been integrated into countless Jewish liturgical contexts and is recited several times a day by observant Jews—yet it was uttered by Balaam, a pagan seer who, within the biblical narrative, was actively trying to curse the Jewish people. Beauty and truth do not belong exclusively to the righteous, just as ugliness and falsehood are not the sole province of the wicked. This is a dimension of reality we must come to terms with if we seek a mature spiritual and human outlook.
Beyond Wagner’s anti-Judaism and the Nazi use of his music—something that also happened, in different ways, with Nietzsche or Beethoven—the question remains: who decides the meaning of a work of art? The author? Those who use it? Those who listen to it? And what might happen if we were to place Die Walküre in dialogue with the Torah (even if only to spite Herr Wagner)?
What I have imagined during this long period is partly provocative, but it is also one of the most profoundly Jewish exercises there is: engaging the Other, even when uncomfortable, even when it forces us into lines of thought that initially seem audacious.
In Walküre, Wotan is the tragic god par excellence. He creates laws and then discovers himself imprisoned by them. He seeks to control destiny but reveals his own impotence. He tries to protect his son Siegmund but cannot, bound by his own laws—rather like the clumsy Jephthah (who, unlike Wotan, is not a god) in Judges 11–12—and must allow him to die.
The G-d of the Torah, YHWH, is not imprisoned by His own laws. He can forgive and revise decrees, sometimes moved by human moral insight. When Abraham protests the impending destruction of Sodom, the Transcendent agrees to reconsider if righteous people can be found in the city (Genesis 18).
Siegmund refuses Valhalla if his beloved Sieglinde cannot accompany him, preferring death to a salvation without relationship. Similarly, after the episode of the Golden Calf, Moses tells the Transcendent that if the people are not forgiven, he himself should be erased from G-d’s book (Exodus 32:32). Moses thus compels the Transcendent to renounce destruction—not out of rebellion, but out of radical fidelity to the very ethics that divine Transcendence has proclaimed. Both figures, so different from one another, reject a salvation that destroys relationship, choosing fidelity to human bonds above all else.
Brünnhilde, the rebellious Valkyrie, disobeys Wotan in order to save Siegmund, recognizing the authenticity of his love. For this she is stripped of her divine nature, put to sleep within fire, and accepts mortality. In the Torah, the daughters of Zelophehad (Numbers 27) challenge Moses and the patriarchal system of their time, demanding inheritance rights that had been denied to them—and they prevail. Their claim is recognized as just by the Transcendent itself, just as the Egyptian midwives were rewarded for disobeying Pharaoh-god’s orders and allowing Hebrew infants to live (Exodus 1:15–20). In all these cases we encounter women who challenge established order in the name of a deeper justice, suggesting that blind obedience is not necessarily a virtue.
If Wotan is tragic because he cannot change, the G-d of the Torah does so with difficulty, but sometimes does. And yet, we can glimpse a shared idea: even divine power has limits. Wotan discovers them through pain and helplessness; the Jewish God chooses them by creating free human beings, thereby renouncing total control.
Engaged in this artistic adventure—which is clearly also a human and spiritual one—I continue to believe that in the face of problems of every kind, the Jewish response should never be silence, but rather the life and beauty we continue to create despite everything. I believe that Wagner’s legacy does not belong to the Nazis, but to anyone capable of listening with a free spirit. I believe the Talmudic principle that “If they tell you there is wisdom among the nations, believe it” (Eicha Rabbah 2:13), where “wisdom” can also mean what is beautiful and true.
Personally, I also believe that the best way to confront hostility is never to erase its traces by avoidance, but to endow the creations of potential enemies with meanings they could never have imagined—perhaps transforming them into something they would have detested—while remaining within a dynamic of beauty and human truth.
When, in Walküre, the orchestra explodes into majestic crescendos or softens into velvety tenderness, I cannot help thinking that Wagner wanted to build sonic cathedrals for a heroic and tragic humanity. We can contribute to that cathedral—but not for him, nor for those who used his music. Rather, to remind ourselves that beauty does not belong to haters or executioners.
Rav Kook, the first Chief Rabbi of the Jewish Yishuv under the British Mandate, wrote: “The old is renewed, and the new is sanctified.” Art, at times—perhaps especially art—can be a form of resistance. We are here, and the music belongs to us.
One of the most famous remarks ever made about Wagner comes from Woody Allen in Manhattan Murder Mystery: “I can’t listen to that much Wagner—you know, I start getting the urge to conquer Poland.” For this reason, I feel it important to clarify that no country has been occupied in order to perform this Walküre, and that as far as I am concerned, the only thing I feel the urge to conquer—late at night, after four hours of very demanding music—is my quiet room, with a glass of cider (beer would be too Germanic) in one hand and a Talmud in the other.
The life of a rabbi-musician is tiring—but sometimes also interesting.