By Dorothea Shefer-Vanson in Mevasseret Zion, Israel
Attending a performance of Verdi’s opera Nabucco in Tel Aviv last week I was struck by the apparent reference to contemporary developments. The opera, which was written in 1841, is loosely based on events described in the Bible (2 Kings, Jeremiah, Lamentations, and Daniel) recounting the conquest of the ancient Jewish capital, Jerusalem, and the kingdom of Judea by Nebuchadnezzer, king of Babylon, followed by the deportation of its Jewish population into slavery in Babylon.
Alongside largely invented dramatic events in the opera which involve power struggles and love interest, the theme of the exile and enslavement of the Jewish population plays a major dramatic role.
Babylon was one of the most celebrated and influential cities of the ancient world. Located on the Euphrates River in modern-day Iraq, it served as the capital of the Babylonian and Neo-Babylonian empires in the sixth and seventh centuries BCE.
The high point of the opera is the beautiful song of yearning for the homeland of Zion sung by the chorus of Hebrew slaves. At the time that the opera was first performed Italy was undergoing political upheaval and rebellion against foreign rule in the struggle for unification, known as the Risorgimento. The chorus of the Hebrew slaves in the opera served as one of the unifying points for the movement and was sung by Italians as if it were the national anthem.
The words of the chorus (Va pansiero, in Italian) speak of the longing for the lost land of Zion, with references to King Solomon, the river Jordan and the prophets. Evidently, Italians transmuted that longing for the lovely, lost land of Judea into their longing for a unified Italy. Fair enough. Anyone’s longing for their country can be regarded as legitimate, provided it is in fact their country.
But what comes across in the words and the music of the opera is the fact that the Jews were forcibly taken from their land and that they continually longed for it, until eventually they were allowed to return by King Cyrus of Persia in 538 BCE, after the Persian conquest of Babylon. It is described in the Bible in the books of Ezra and 2 Chronicles.
“By the rivers of Babylon” is the opening line of Psalm 137, apparently written by the exiled Jews. It is a deeply moving biblical hymn that describes the longing for their homeland and constitutes a patent demonstration of the Jews’ deep-seated connection to the Land of Israel already several millennia ago.
And yet, it seems that the Biblical texts are not sufficient proof of the Jews’ age-old connection to their land, and contemporary critics have the gall to claim that the Jews are upstarts in Israel, colonial occupiers of land that belongs to ‘the Palestinians.’ That term, which was imposed on the region in the first century CE, was devised by the conquering Romans and derived from their distortion of the long-gone occupants of part of the region known as the Philistines (and with whom Samson had several clashes until his final demise (Judges 14:3; 1 Samuel 13:19–20).
Be that as it may, the ability to disregard hard evidence and distort facts is characteristic of the concerted campaign to discredit modern-day Israel and claim that the Jews have no right to the land which bears their name which we are witnessing today.
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Dorothea Shefer-Vanson is an author and freelance writer based in the Jerusalem suburb of Mevasseret Zion.