In an interview after a recent rehearsal, Mr. Barenboim said he feared the recent war could become a “world catastrophe” unless further efforts were made to bring Israelis and Palestinians together.
“It makes no sense to say, ‘We Jews have suffered more than anyone else,’ or the Palestinians say, ‘We have suffered more than all of you,'” he said. “This has been a very difficult century with little calm. I think we need to move on, forget our own positions and get by with a sense of equality.”
The school year at Barenboim-Said Academy began this month with the usual orientation sessions on Israeli-Palestinian tensions, respect for differences and ways to look beyond stereotypes.
Then came the deadly Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on October 7 and the subsequent Israeli attacks on Gaza. Many students, their phones buzzing with frantic messages from friends and relatives and showing images of devastation, were too distraught to practice their instruments. The school’s leaders, including Regula Rapp, the principal, and Mr. Barenboim’s son Michael, who serves as dean, brought in advisers who are fluent in Hebrew and Arabic.
The students made a point of communicating with each other and organized meetings to try to resolve some of their differences. Not knowing what to say, they sometimes just offered hugs. At one point, they met for dinner at the beginning of the semester and shared home-cooked dishes: hummus, baba ghanouj, labneh, and bulgur salad.
Their conversations were sometimes tense, as musicians from Israel spoke about the loss of a sense of security and Palestinians described life under the oppressive blockade that Israel has imposed on Gaza for 16 years. The conversations were also deeply personal, with some students sharing stories of losing loved ones during decades of violence in the Middle East.
The students tried to support each other as they faced new difficulties in German society. Authorities banned many pro-Palestinian gatherings and a synagogue in Berlin was firebombed. They met in their dorms or went out for beer and cigarettes and talked about how they felt guilty about being away from their families.
Roshanak Rafani, 29, a drummer from Tehran and member of the student government, said the turmoil in the region could be shocking; At times she thought about quitting her studies.
“Imagine people dying, and now I’m just practicing to figure out which hand to put here or there,” she said. “We all feel this inner conflict.”
She added that the young musicians overcame their differences by embracing the idea that “we are all students and there is no side for us here now.”
“We’ve all accepted that we can’t really convince ourselves about a lot of things,” she said. “People talk and raise their voices and scream and cry, but two hours later they are hugging each other.”
The war also affected classroom discussions.
A recent philosophy course focused on Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, a metaphor for grappling with the gap between ignorance and enlightenment.