For the first time in New York, the Violins of Hope will be on exhibition in our Herbert & Eileen Bernard Museum of Judaica, each a living testament to those we lost, to the triumph of survival and to the power of music — even in our darkest days. Each violin will be displayed alongside photographs and the story of its journey as their bittersweet music fills the museum.
The exhibition will run January 28 - April 3, 2022
Museum Hours: Sunday - Thursday, 10:00 AM - 5:00 PM
Artists:
Ariel String Quartet
Ilya Shterenberg, clarinet
Angela Yoffe, piano
NSCMF's Arkady Fomin Scholarship Fund recipients:
Negar Afazel, violin; Jacqueline Audas, violin; Joshua Brown, violin; Julian Rhee, violin; Masha Lakisova, violin; Katherine Audas, cello; Janice Carissa, piano
Repertoire:
Osvaldo Golijov "Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind"
Selection of the violin and chamber music repertoire played on the instruments from the Violins of Hope collection
The Violins of Hope have traveled the world… Now they’re coming to New York City!
Friday, January 21: Friday Night Around NYC
Thursday, January 27: Opening Exhibition & Performance
Thursday, March 24: The Concert
(The exhibition will run until Sunday, April 3)
In the late 1980s, a customer entered the shop of Amnon Weinstein, a young Tel Aviv violin maker, asking for his old instrument to be restored. When Weinstein opened the case, he found ashes coating the bow: The customer had survived Auschwitz because the Germans had assigned him to the death camp orchestra that played as prisoners were herded from cattle cars to gas chambers. The man hadn't played it since.
Weinstein was thunderstruck. Hundreds of his own relatives — grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins — had died in the Holocaust. To handle one of those instruments was too much. "I could not. I could not," he says.
Finally, he did . . . and then began restoring other violins that survived:
● One carried out of Dachau when its owner was liberated.
● Another thrown from a death train by a French musician crying out, “Where I’m headed, I won’t need this.”
● The Brender instrument that traveled with a Romanian prodigy through a hard labor camp and then into woods, where he fought with Jewish partisans.
● Several belonged to musicians who smuggled them out of Germany when they escaped and ultimately played them in the Palestine Orchestra.
Over the past two decades, dozens of these extraordinary instruments that embody the harshest moments in Jewish history have been refurbished, restrung and brought back to life by Amnon and his son Avshalom. They tell a tale of torment and endurance, of the power of music and the importance of memory. They are our Jewish story.
Made possible by the generous support of Temple Emanu-El members Robert B. Menschel and Richard Menschel.
PROOF OF VACCINATION IS REQUIRED TO ENTER THE VENUE - MASKS REQUIRED AT ALL TIMES.