Isadora Pulman-Jones, Guildhall School of Music and Drama
When I submitted my proposal to write a piece of music for the ‘Visualising Peace Project’ run by Dr Alice König at St Andrews University in February of 2024, the full implications of the Israel Palestine situation were still emerging, and, even at that point, I knew the journey I was embarking upon as a Jewish creative would be a challenging one, extremely complex to tackle correctly. Having just completed my undergraduate degree in Theology and Jewish studies, now undertaking a masters in Electronic Music at Guildhall, this felt like a much-welcomed fusion of my two disciplines; music and cultural studies; thus, when I first saw the outline for the project, I knew that I wanted to be involved in some capacity. My aim was not to use my Jewishness as a vehicle for presenting a peace solution in whatever I created, but rather as a way of composing something that allowed me to process my own unrest due to the conflict in a way that might result in some sort of internal, personal peace – something I thought might be of value in further contributing to the exploration of the diversity of our understanding of ‘peace’ in the wider study going on at St Andrews for this project.
However, as the situation grew more dire with each day, as the Israeli military and government continued to commit war crimes and genocide towards the people of Palestine, my place as a Jewish musician creating for a project about peace began to feel futile and somewhat ‘tone deaf’. After many failed attempted writing sessions, venturing in different directions, and trying to work out a way I could channel what I was feeling, I sadly decided to pull out of the project, a decision that I will attempt to unpack in this writeup. Before I begin, however, I would like to acknowledge my privilege not only as a British Jew far away from the literal geography of this conflict, but mainly as a Jewish creative in general within the context of this devasting situation. My thoughts and prayers are with all those suffering from the ongoing horrors of this conflict.
As a British Jew who condemns the acts of the Israeli government, the first few months that followed the horrifying events of October 7th were extremely hard to navigate. Partnered with both a rise in antisemitism and in extreme patriotism towards Israel in some sections of the Jewish community I was surrounded by, I was not only feeling a personal identity crises around my Jewishness, in terms of both political and moral beliefs, but I was also beginning to experience a rift in my own Jewish community; one that had been long brewing, but had remained dormant through avoidance of the topic of Israel and Zionism, which now became inevitable. Further, I began to feel an encroaching external pressure and unspoken obligation as a Jewish person to give answers to non-Jewish friends about the situation, my stance, and how ‘Jews’ as a collective were involved. Whilst it is likely that many of these feelings were fuelled by paranoia driven by my own embarrassment and concerns relating to the depiction of the Jewish voice in the media and among friends, there were definite factors that contributed to this feeling. At the beginning of this conflict, when media and news outlets were at their peak of churning out a myriad of both fake news and important information surrounding the conflict, as a pro-Palestinian Jew, I do feel I felt somewhat of an obligation to declare my disapproval of Israel as a precursor in discussions after mentioning being Jewish, where pro-Palestinian non-Jews seemed far less inclined to declare and verbally acknowledge that being Jewish should not be, and is not, synonymous with Israel and its government.
I mention this personal anxiety and the complexity of Jewish thought at the time as I feel it is necessary context in order to understand what I was trying to dissect through music – and subsequently why I chose to no longer participate in this project, but in no way to detract from the heinousness of what the people of Palestine are facing. Predominantly, what I was feeling was what most people were also experiencing. I was feeling helpless to make a real change and unable to positively and impactfully contribute to the situation. I was feeling guilty and detached from my community, not sure who to turn to as I felt so many of my Jewish friends did not share my political views, which further stirred an additional guilt in how I was personally perceiving the Jewish community. These were the feelings I was wanting to channel into some form of musical exploration for this project, which, now reflecting on the trajectory of this project in August of 2024, was a very ambitious conceptual idea.
My initial proposal was to create some sort of Palestinian/Israeli fusion piece, perhaps with lyrics in Yiddish – a cultural language of Judaism – and an instrumentation that was undeniably Palestinian, as a symbol of Jewish solidarity with Palestine, drawing on inspiration from the Barenboim-Said orchestral collaboration of West-Eastern Divan Orchestra. Throughout my undergraduate degree, completing units in ethnomusicology, I was always inspired by how interwoven the history of Palestinian and Israeli musical traditions were (along with many others in the middle east), seeing it as a beautiful metaphor for what a two-state solution, or at least a solution of ‘peace’, might look like prior to October 7th – reflected also as a microcosm for peace in the development the alphabet ‘Aravrit’ by Liron Lavi Turkenich which collated Arabic and Hebrew script for street signs, a creation that I was hoping to somehow incorporate in my composition. I was aiming to join forces with a Palestinian musician, and together work out how to construct some sort of fusion piece, acknowledging that a piece made solely by aJewish creative in this time would not be suitable or something that would have had a ‘peaceful’ reception. After submitting my proposal, I realised that an Israeli friend of mine – also an Electronic Music student at Guildhall – had submitted a proposal with a similar outcome in mind. We decided that we would attempt this challenge together, and persist in trying to find a Palestinian collaborator to help us in processing the complexity of the trauma we were experiencing. For both of us, this project – of course – represented the conflict between Israel and Palestine and Jews and Muslims, as well as exploring the significance of the external political and financial contributors to the conflict, but also further, the conflict arising amongst Jews within Jewish communities – as differing views began to polarise us from friends and family.
We met frequently to discuss possible pathways for our creative vision and different avenues we might take artistically in expressing the magnitude of the situation, playing around with Yiddish folk music, Israeli classics, and trying to educate ourselves in Palestinian traditional music. We came across a plethora of similar existing collaborations that have occurred throughout time, none of which, however, felt particularly pertinent to us in the grand scheme of ‘peace,’ or even the smaller scale of personal ‘peace’ and processing. We had several studio writing sessions in which we workshopped ideas, almost completing a Palestinian/Israeli inspired bosa nova lullaby for the people of Gaza; but, as is evident from that Frankenstein of a creation, nothing felt right. It felt too hard to portray through music and lyrics the gravity of the situation, or to find the correct tone. Having reached out to a few Palestinian musicians in hopes of collaboration, we were met with anticipated and understandable responses expressing their regret for not wishing to be involved at this time in a project of this sort. Whilst we did not succeed in collaborating, we are indebted to the musicians we reached out to for the education many of them gave us on how past projects of this kind, whilst having been well received in the Jewish pro-Palestine community, were – unsurprisingly – never particularly well received specifically in Gaza and by the people of Palestine. It was this information that drove us to decide to bring our exploration to an end and accept that the complexity of the conflict in itself, on top of the complexity that we – as Jewish creatives – brought to the project, made it too challenging to undertake in a way that we felt would positively contribute to the discussion.
Whilst we did not achieve in producing something tangible (or audible) for this project, I do feel as though all the curve balls we faced and walls that we hit throughout attempting to compose for this project forced us to experience what peace could mean in many different ways. It pushed us to unpack our own trauma around the conflict to try and use it creatively. It drove us to get in touch with Palestinians and have extremely important conversations about what the conflict meant, and further, about what music might mean in its context. I have always, and do still, feel as though music is an incredible tool in discussing peace and understanding conflict and history, but this projected forced me to think about it as a factor in the present day, as opposed to having studied music in the context of historical examples of peace. It made me question at what point the creation of art as a response can become part of the discussion of an ongoing conflict, where art may feel futile in the wake of what is still happening.