Reading Response #9

It was very enlightening to me to watch the film about Said and Barenboim's joint orchestra. It shed some light on the feelings of the different people groups in the Middle East, and showed just how little each of the different cultures knew about the other, and showed that when there is a higher goal, there can be, if not peace, a mutual sense of unity in attempting to achieve a common goal. The passion with which Said and Barenboim pursued their goal of a unified orchestra was very refreshing and their ability to bring together people from all backgrounds and use music to teach about human interaction gave me hope that there may be possibility for peace or at least understanding. Also, I thought it was very interesting during the movie when the Palestinian and Israeli violinists were being interviewed together and the Israeli mentioned "peace" and the Palestinian got really upset and walked off the set. This shows that in spite of the unity that is experienced in the orchestra, there are still many struggles outside of the auditorium that affect each of the musicians. The orchestra walks a fine line between coming together and building a peaceful community around music and completely ignoring the issues that exist outside the project. It would be very easy for the musicians to come and meet and spend all summer together and pretend to ignore the issues that are affecting the daily lives of their people back home, but Said and Barenboim do such a wonderful job of addressing the issues that each culture has to deal with head on rather than ignoring them for the perceived "greater good" of the orchestra. I feel that this project is a great start to learning to understand other cultures and develop social skills to get along with each other. There is still a long way to go before there is peace in the Middle East, but projects like this change individuals one at a time and eventually, hopefully these changes will spread all across the region and maybe peace can be found.