The other week we went to a concert at the Jerusalem Theater, produced and introduced by Astrith Baltsan, a well-known Israeli pianist and lecturer. She welcomed three musicians: a flutist, an oboist, and a cellist. Each played some brief, familiar classical pieces.

She then turned the proceedings over to her husband, Moshe Zorman, a celebrated composer and arranger. He led the rest of the concert in a series of old Israeli songs. It came as no surprise that most of the concertgoers were old Israelis.

Some of the songs went back to the pre-State era. Most spanned more recent decades. The last segment was devoted to the songs of Matti Capsi, the legendary Israeli singer-songwriter, who had passed away that very day.

My wife and I recognized a couple of the earliest pieces. We heard them years ago on Theodore Bikel records. The rest were new to us, though certainly not to rest of the audience, who clapped and sang along. We loved watching them enjoy themselves. We liked the songs too, though perhaps not in the same way.

Zorman introduced the Israeli song segment. He spoke of the “American Songbook,” which is made up of classic songs from the 1920’s through the 1960’s. George Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, Cole Porter, and others wrote them. Singers like Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald performed them.  Zorman pointed out that these classic songs are available to the general public in simple arrangements, so ordinary people can play them. A good many have been embroidered by jazz musicians.

He has been developing an Israeli songbook, along the same lines. The rest of the concert was devoted to his imaginative and sophisticated arrangements of these Israeli songs. He accompanied the flute, oboe and cello from the piano.

Matti Caspi, whose songs my wife and I had never heard, has been an Israeli musical fixture since he was a young man in the army. He wrote over 1,000 songs. The audience obviously knew all the ones they heard. When Zorman called for them to participate in a call and response, everyone (but us) chimed in with enthusiasm.

The word “nostalgia” entered the lingo in the 17th century as a medical diagnosis. It meant “home pain,” and described Swiss mercenaries posted abroad, who suffered from what today we might call “acute homesickness.”  Later the word took on its current meaning, sentimental melancholy. Health insurance does not cover it.

When I later listened to some of the Matti Caspi songs on YouTube, nostalgia in the modern sense was clear in people’s comments. One wrote, “This song tasted like bamba.” He did not mean that it tasted like peanut snacks. He meant it tasted of his childhood, when he ate Bamba.

Another commenter wrote, “I first heard this song when I was going to school 45 years ago.”

Music is evocative. It floods us with associations, many half-remembered. Gershwin tunes can do that for me, even though Gershwin died a decade before I was born.

In general, people like the music that was popular when they were children and teens. By half a generation later, that style often sounds dated, nothing a cool teenager would dream of admitting to like.

“Vicarious nostalgia” sounds like a lame oxymoron. Can you really be homesick for someone else’s home?  Actually, you can.

Here is a curious example I came upon by accident, connected to a sentimental Yiddish song (Is there any other kind?) called Mayn Shteytele Belz. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceJhuD4FqZg  You might think the song is about the town of Belz, where the Belzer Hasidim come from, now in western Ukraine, near Lviv.

But it’s not. It was written in 1932 for a popular New York Yiddish Theater star named Isa Kremer. She hailed from Bessarabia, from the town of Balti (“Beltsi” in Moldovan Rumanian), now the second largest city in Moldova.

Oy, oy, oy, my little town, Beltz

My little home, where I spent my childhood

There we would sit under the green trees

And throw stones in the river

The song became such a hit that it was transported back to Poland, where the Jews—still alive then—sang it in Yiddish, possibly thinking of the wrong town.

And then–the Poles loved it too. Even today Poles hold klezmer festivals, though there are no Jews left to play for them. Back then they translated Mayn Shtetele Belz into Polish, and sang yearningly of…who knows?  You can long for the surroundings of your own lost childhood, even while singing about someone else’s.

The absurdity of Poles appropriating a Yiddish song for their own vicarious nostalgia – in the 1930’s! – is, for me, too grotesque to think much about.

At any rate, whatever my hazy childhood recollections, I live in Israel now. The people who have lived here a long time have all kinds of memories, which happily include pleasant and evocative ones like the songs in this concert. I truly enjoyed watching everyone around me recall their childhood.

I suppose that newer generations of Israelis prefer their own musical heroes and would think of an “Israeli Songbook” the way Americans think of theirs, as something a few old-timers pay attention to.

I found Matti Caspi’s songs very pleasant. Shvil B’emtza Shvil Batzad (One lane in the middle, one on the side) – about collective showering in the kibbutz – is witty and delightful.  Hine Hine, about yearning and disappointment, is catchy and thought-provoking. Everybody (but us) knew them and sang along with gusto.

In her concluding remarks, Astrith Baltsan, who had introduced the concert, invited everyone to join her in appreciating how much wonderful music has come out of this small country. The audience happily agreed.

The music evoked their childhood and home.  I would never begrudge that to them. Their childhood and home were not mine, though, and neither are their songs. Like everyone else, I did not choose where and when to be born.  When I am in the mood for looking back, I can listen to my own songbook.

No problem with that. Like planting a carob tree that takes 70 years to mature, planting yourself on Aliyah is mostly not for you anyway, but, perhaps, for those who may come after.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)