Dear Collectors, Colleagues and Friends,
Friday night, the 13th, just before leaving my office to meet my wife and
friends for dinner and a Broadway show, my iPhone innocently chimed with
an alert posted by The New York Times. The grim report briefly described
the events starting to unfold in Paris. Over the next several hours, I
grabbed every opportunity to read updated details about the terror then
raging through the capital of France.
The dispatches grew worse and worse and by the time we crossed Broadway
and passed through the theatre's pro-forma security check, the story
seemed all but over. It only remained to count the dead, tally the wounded,
wonder how many terrorists were involved, wait for world leaders to respond,
and ask, over and over again, "Why?" and "What can be done
to stop this insanity?"
The show we saw that night was the musical "An American in Paris,"
based on the movie of the same name, -- a spun sugar love story, gift-wrapped
in magnificent dancing with, of course, George Gershwin's inspired,
life-affirming music. The show's climax came in the second act with
a stunningly choreographed ballet set to the music of Gershwin's 1928
tone poem, "An American in Paris." After the curtain fell, the
cast stepped forward and, following an appeal for donations to fight the
scourge of AIDS, the show's lead expressed sadness and solidarity
with the people of France who, once again, had become victims of the scourge
of terrorism.
We dropped our donation into the red bucket in the lobby, satisfied that
at least we had done "something" to help fight AIDS, but how
could we help the French? How do we help the country that sent us Lafayette
and Rochambeau during our American Revolution? Even citizens like Caron
de Beaumarchais, whose plays inspired Mozart's "The Marriage
of Figaro" and Rossini's "Barber of Seville," successfully
arranged for the sale of gunpowder to support the American colonists.
My small, essentially benign gesture of solidarity begun in January, of
putting the logo "Je suis Charlie" at the end of each of my
business emails, started to feel outdated and it was just last week that
my staff wondered out loud whether it was time to remove it. "Let's
leave it at least until the first anniversary," I had suggested.
What do I do now? Replace it with "Je suis français?"
More importantly what do "WE" do? We, the "free" world,
we the defenders of individual liberty, we the supporters of the freedom
to think and believe what we want, we who are comfortable engaging in
debates with ideological foes, we who are raised to tolerate racial, gender,
religious and ethnic diversity? These questions raced through my mind
as Gershwin's music rang in my ears and the boulevards of Paris appeared
and disappeared in the show's exquisite set design.
I felt transported back to the Paris I discovered in my twenties, when
I took my first business trip there in November 1977 as a novice autograph
dealer. I was enchanted with what I saw and overwhelmed by the realization
that a huge metropolis could be so beautiful, so vibrant and so elegant.
For financial reasons I stayed in a youth hostel and because of my discomfort
at my ignorance of French, I spent some nights preferring to eat in my
tiny room where I warmed up a meal on top of the radiator. A friend of
mine, a Parisian named Yves, came to the rescue and did his utmost to
show me the sights and took me to an expensive, Michelin-starred restaurant.
He grinned throughout the entire meal, so proud was he to show me his
city and give me something of what it had to offer. One day, after a casual
bistro lunch, he called me with an urgency in his voice. Did I remember
that he had a magazine with him? I did. Did I take it by mistake? I did
not. Did I remember if he forgot it at the restaurant? I could not remember.
I asked him why he was so concerned about the magazine and he replied
that it was a French magazine with content that would interest mostly
French Jews. And? Well, he said, his name was on the magazine's subscription
label and because of some not-so-latent-anti-Semitism in France, he was
worried what might happen if someone saw the label and thereby identify
him as a Jew. My cosmopolitan, fully assimilated, French-born friend Yves
was living in fear of being exposed as a Jew. I cannot help but wonder
how fearful Muslims must be whether they live in Lebanon, Afghanistan,
Syria or Iraq, or right now in France. They are terrorized by fanatic,
psychopathic militant Islamists and scrutinized and sometimes marginalized
by their non-Muslim neighbors abroad.
Must all of us live in some kind of fear? Should we, as Americans, be
afraid to set foot into places of worship now that it is legal in some
states to carry concealed weapons inside of them? Do many parents live
in fear of another school shooting rampage? Are more and more African-Americans
questioning whether black lives matter? Ever since 9/11, I can no longer
watch a plane fly over Manhattan without re-living that awful day which
began early on such a beautiful September morning. And now, I suppose,
even "Friday the 13th" will truly and forever symbolize something
bad for us as well.
For two enchanting hours, Gershwin's music transported me to Paris,
and even though I was in New York, and not an American in Paris, in my
heart, I was walking down the Champs Elysees, arm in arm with the both
the fearful and the brave, united in their defiance in the face of evil.
David H. Lowenherz
President