By Miriam Liebman

Nearly a year ago, not long after the United States began its attack on Iraq, I performed in my school musical, Once Upon a Mattress. After one of our performances, an elderly couple approached one of the actors and told him that our show took their minds off the war even if it was only for a few hours. It was news of a prince, a princess and their struggle for love in a swamp rather than more news of blood, pain and suffering that took them away from the news of the day.

The need to find cultural healing didn’t start with our current “War on Terrorism.” During the Holocaust, the men and women of the Warsaw Ghetto as well as the concentration camps watched people die daily of starvation, torture and being overworked. Yet while six million people died, the music and the culture of the Jews, even during this time, did not.

During World War II, in the Siege of Leningrad, people were living under similar conditions as the Jews in Warsaw. Dimitri Shostakovich wrote his fifth symphony during the siege. By the time his symphony was completed, only sixteen members of the original Leningrad Symphony Orchestra were still living. Signs were posted around the city looking for anyone who could still play an instrument. Weak, sick and tired, the musicians of Leningrad dedicated themselves to performing Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony. The people were told to confiscate as many weapons as they could from the Germans as to avoid interruptions during the performance. The musicians played with everything they had inside of them. One listener of the concert said, “The performers read the music as if they were reading a living chronicle about themselves…”

Before the current war in Iraq, the Iraqi National Symphony Orchestra played at one of two places--- The Rasheed Concert Hall or the National Theatre, both of which have since been destroyed by bombings and lootings. Despite the destruction of their buildings, the orchestra continues to practice in a downtown building with no electricity. The 63-member Iraqi National Symphony Orchestra has lived through years of war but their music never stopped. Today, they are striving for a bit of normalcy in our still abnormal world.

Conductor Daniel Barenboim, with the help of the late Edward Said, has brought together Arab and Israeli musicians to perform together. This orchestra was founded in 1999 in hopes of one day bringing peace to the region. Berenboim believes that it is up to the people to make peace. The orchestra is not about the politics or the politicians. It is about the people. Rather than realizing their cultural differences, the 80 musicians now have a commonality---their music, their cultural healing.