From The Foward -- Harmony Silenced at Egyptian Music Fest

[Behind the Aegis]

Wendy Sternberg was thrilled when the organization she founded, Genesis at the Crossroads, was invited to perform at the eighth annual International Music Festival at Egypt’s Alexandria Library.

She looked forward to achieving the goals of her group, which seeks to bridge cultures in conflict through the arts and prides itself on stellar musicianship and cross-cultural dialogue. Genesis would present master classes to Egyptian musicians and help the Alexandria Library become an established site for Arm Them With Instruments, a program that provides donated musical instruments to war-torn areas. Genesis’s musical troupe, the Saffron Caravan, would close the festival with a piece written by Sherif Mohie Eldin, one of Egypt’s foremost modern composers.

The music festival is hosted annually in Egypt at the library, a major cultural institute built for $220 million in 2002 near the site of the original library of Alexander the Great to revive the ancient library’s symbolism of Egypt’s commitment to learning and world culture.

Yet, despite her dream of the festival as a perfect fit with Genesis’s aims, Sternberg pulled out on June 4, after her group was barred from performing in Hebrew and from describing the religious backgrounds of its members in festival literature.

The more she thinks about it, Sternberg says, the sadder she becomes.

“All of this beauty just never got off the ground,” she told the Forward. “Working together to make it happen got nipped in the bud when this whole issue of omitting religious references came about.”

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[question everything]

1. Sadly, the Israel-Egypt peach is hanging by a thin thread

and, I suspect, Israelis, are not welcomed there.