Dear Alma, An Israeli musician writes

From our agony aunt’s mailbox:

Dear Alma

I’m a male instrumentalist, 30 years old, playing in an Israeli orchestra.

My six best non-musician friends have spent most of the last four months on frontline service. Two were wounded, one seriously. I keep waiting for my call-up papers and nothing comes. I play concerts and imagine blank spaces in the hall, waiting for the hostages and the fighters to return, waiting for this war to be over.

Here’s my problem. I once served as a first-respondent medic, but it got left off my papers. If I reminded my unit commander, he would have me back in uniform. My skills are rusty, but at least I’d have a feeling I was doing something useful.

The alternative? There’s an audition coming up at a good German orchestra where I already know two Israeli musicians. Should I go for it? Get out of this situation? Abandon my country when it needs me?

Go on, do your worst.

Sincerely,

Not Very Useful

Dear Not Very Useful,

A life and death dilemma. And one only you can answer. This is not a question for which I would seek council, it is something that you, yourself must face alone. In the end, it is your life. You have but one and you have to decide what the purpose of it all is.

If you decide that you would like to find a way to avoid service, I would first contact a lawyer or a group which specializes in this issue for Israeli citizens. According to my reading (and I am sure our knowledgeable SD readers will have thoughts on this), simply having a job elsewhere does not exempt you from draft, and you are possibly putting yourself in a situation where you cannot return home, or face jail time if you do.

If a job elsewhere does provide you draft exemption, audition for as many places as possible to make sure you land a spot.

Not Very Useful, one of the incredible things about being a musician is that it has the ability to shield us from many unfortunate events. From avoiding doing the dishes as a teenager “I’m practicing, Mom!”, to providing emergency income any place on the planet (from busking to teaching to playing, even without knowledge of the language), to saving you from a war in which you do not want to participate, your musical abilities will always have your back.

I had a wonderful teacher earlier in my life who had been taken on Kristallnacht after a Jüdischer Kulturbund performance. He was sent to Buchenwald, spent the majority of the war in camps, and survived time and again because of his musical abilities. He was a member of a camp orchestra, and of the band which accompanied the prisoners as they marched to and from work. Evenings he played jazz and swing music for SS parties. He once told me how the SS would “have fun” shooting at their feet while they played. On several occasions they simply shot one of the members of the small band while they were playing.

Towards the end of the war, after losing his family, he was lying very sick in the Auschwitz infirmary, the final stop before the crematorium. The doctor recognized him as the child prodigy he had seen on stage before the war, switched his name tag with a nearby corpse, and hid him in the corner, saving his life one final time. He went on to have a wonderful career as a teacher and performer, and his sound and soul lay bare the struggles of his life. A life saved by his love of music.

Not Very Useful, make your decision, and make it thoughtfully and methodically. Nothing is more precious than a human life, and your decision affects not only your life, but the lives of others.

Questions for Alma? Please put them in the comments section or send to DearAlmaQuery@gmail.com