You Will Not Play Wagner

Performing Wagner has been unofficially banned in Israel since the creation of the State because he was a cultural touchstone of Nazism. But could Wagner’s music transcend the anti-Semitic views of its creator? When Ya’akov, an Israeli conductor, announces he will play Wagner in the finals of the Esther Greenbaum International Conductors’ Competition, Esther, a Holocaust survivor, must face a moral dilemma: whether the trauma of the past justifies stifling the future of young talent. Buried memories, nightmarish dreams uncovered — Ya’akov and Esther, aided by Morris, the competition organizer, viscerally argue their opposing points of view from Tel-Aviv, the Berkshires, and Brooklyn. Across the COVID-plagued world and across historical, ethical, and personal domains, will they be able to hear each other The playing of Wagner in Israel remains highly controversial to this day.