Martin Anderson provided a Norman Lebrecht article.  It was highly
complimentary of Shostakovich in terms of his views and actions in support
of Russian jews.  However, two parts of the article hit me the wrong way:

>Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-75) was the supreme Russian symphonist of the
>twentieth century, not a drop of jewish blood in his veins, yet more jewish
>in heart and mind than any minyan of Israeli cabinet ministers, past or
>present.

I find this comment to be insulting and ignorant.  It's just more of that
"over-the-top" crap that Lebrecht loves to engage in.  I could spend the
rest of my life championing the cause of Black Americans, but that wouldn't
make me a black person in mind or heart.

>If Shostakovich were alive today, or had ever visited the State of Israel,
>he would have been forced to revise his image of the Jew as victim and
>replace it with something less flattering.

Is this man nuts? There isn't anything much worse than being a victim,
and the victim mentality hardly represents the best in a human.  How can
it be less flattering to get off the ground, insist on being treated with
respect, and take measures to insure that the victim status will not be a
recurring one.  It's one thing to romanticize victims in works of fiction,
quite another to apply it to real life.

These dumb Lebrecht comments are a shame, for in other respects, the
article was a fine one.

Don Satz
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