The Violin Journey

by Basil Porter

June 20, 2025

To the Editor.

In the trying times in which we now live in Israel, I am led to recall a set of occurrences which I experienced many years ago, which may resonate with those wondering where a happier ending may lie.

        When I reached Beersheva some fifty-plus years ago to start my professional career as a pediatrician in Israel, after three years of training in Chicago, I looked for an opportunity to reconnect to my classical music hobby, which had been totally neglected while busy starting a family and pediatric training. I was directed to try out with a local amateur orchestra, and was duly recruited to this diligent, if not earthshattering ensemble. My training on the violin and in groups, including an amateur orchestra, helped me to adapt quickly, and I enjoyed playing in this orchestra as a break from practicing pediatrics. One night we were informed that a Dr Weizman would be playing a Bach violin concerto as soloist with us, and while my initial reaction was one of a little jealousy, feeling that I could have been selected, I soon had to confess that maybe this doctor did play better than me.

          Among the hodge-podge of musicians in the orchestra was an elderly lady, who played second violin, who I soon discovered headed a pediatric department in the hospital, though I had been recruited by the head of the second department. Her name was Dr Wilhelmina Cohen, a Hollander who had spent the second world war In Indonesia, before reaching Israel and settling in the rugged desert town in the south of Israel. After meeting Dr Weizman at clinical meetings in the hospital, I learned he was the deputy head of an Internal Medicine department. He subsequently became a top specialist in diabetes as well as a renowned epidemiologist and rapidly became a professor in the newly established medical school.

          Within a short time, the orchestra disbanded with the demise of the conductor, and Shimon (Dr Weizman) and I looked for other opportunities to play. When a new head of the Epidemiology unit arrived at the medical school, we were quickly informed that he too was a serious and passionate violinist. Thus began a lifetime of grabbing every opportunity to play chamber music., with weekly chamber music being the common pastime, which could not be missed. Although never formally defined, the leader of the group was Shimon. I learned that his father had been a professional klezmer musician in Argentina, and that Shimon was almost sent to the Julliard School of Music but instead, chose medicine as his main direction. He was not only the best trained of the three violinists, but he was also the one who would try to discipline us in the finer points of the music, demonstrating a phenomenal knowledge of music in general, and particularly our world of chamber music.

          While glued to the television during the current war with Iran, after the usual hours of pundits expressing their definitive solutions for peace, when about to head for bed, I heard the presenter declare they would be showing a short clip with a happier ending than most of the day’s news. The story involved a young musician named Amir Weizman, whose apartment in Tel Aviv that he shared with his partner, a pianist, had been severely damaged by an incoming missile. I knew that the name Amir Weizman was very common in Israel, but pairing this name with the information that he played the violin and viola rang a loud bell in my head. This could only be the grandson of my colleague in medicine and music, Shimon.

          I had met Amir when he was in the army, where he had served as the few granted the role of “Outstanding musicians”. He would occasionally join the quartet where Shimon and I were members, where his talents were already clear. I had not seen Amir much since he became a student at a prestigious music academy, when suddenly there he was on prime-time television in front of his severely damaged apartment building, wondering about the fate of his priceless violin. Next, he was following rescue workers, himself wearing protective gear including a helmet and torch. The camera followed him into his apartment, where he quickly groveled through rubble and dust to a chest of drawers, opened one and extracted a violin case. Without hesitating he opened the case, took out the violin and bow, and launched into a few bars of a classic Bach partita. I called Amir immediately and asked if this was the Klotz violin of Dr Cohen, and he confirmed.

          This was a moment when the arts and humanities demonstrate their potential for survival. A violin made in Germany more than two hundred years ago, acquired by a Jewish pediatrician in Holland, who then travelled to Indonesia, and continued to Israel after World War II to Israel, then finding its home with a third-generation musician of a family that had emigrated to Israel from Argentina more than fifty years ago, and had survived the attack of a missile sent from Iran in the current war. Even those not connected to the musical world must be moved like me by this story showing what has been called “the deathless art of music”.

Sincerely,

Basil Porter

Tel Aviv, Israel