November 25, 2021 marks 10 years since Bela Stein Zaharopol Welt left this world, a world she has preserved over the years unusually rich in music and beauty. At the age of 16, I met her for the first time, at her home in Bucharest, where I spent my first New Year’s Eve as a teenager, with a small group of friends. Our last meeting was in October 2011, during a visit to the apartment in the Gilo district of Jerusalem. It was the last time I could show her affection and respect. Bela, who knew many foreign languages, was a woman of culture whose life could be opened like the calendar of a dramatic historical period, from the Second World War, to taking refuge in the remote regions of Soviet Russia, returning to Romania and then through her emigration to Israel. His talents were innumerable, but the main one was that of piano pedagogy, a field in which he spent most of his professional life. In Jerusalem, through his presence, but especially through the memorable piano lessons enjoyed by the city’s intellectuals concerned with the musical education of their children, they offered Bela a legendary halo, and created an endless source of friends and human connections with his students. Read more…
