Sheli and father Rami "at home".

Sheli Bar Niv grew up in a home where there was a constant sound of music. Her father, Rami, played the piano and her brother Tal the trumpet.

Her father was already an accomplished pianist performing at concerts in Israel the United States and other countries. Tal, at the age of fifteen, played well enough to be invited to perform with orchestras at concerts.

It all started with her grandmother Genia. Genia was born in Poland and started to study piano at a very young age. In 1937, at the age of seventeen, she decided to immigrate to Palestine where she continued her piano studies and when she received her teacher’s diploma she began to teach piano to young students. Genia also performed at concerts. At one of these concerts she met Aaron who performed with his violin. Their love of music and their feeling for each other brought them close and eventually they married. They continued their studies and also taught.

They had a son, Rami, who as a young child listening to the wonderful sounds of the music of his parents at home naturally wanted to make music as well. When Rami was five his mother started giving him lessons. Rami loved playing the piano and continued to study with his mother for the next seven years, and later with other teachers.

Rami married and had a son whom he encouraged at a young age to start playing a musical instrument. Tal chose to study the trumpet. His parents were very pleased and so another sound of music was added to the home. They also had a daughter, Sheli, who as a very young child watched her father play the piano and sometimes she would sit beside him and with her tiny fingers would hit the keys of the piano.

When Sheli was six her grandmother, Genia, started giving her lessons at the piano; her father, of course, helped along. They took great pride in how well Sheli progressed.

Soon Sheli was able to join her father at the piano and they performed together. Four hands playing in perfect harmony the compositions of the great masters of music, Chopin, Mozart and Beethoven.

Sheli lived the life of a normal girl growing up. She had many friends, went to school and got good grades. When Sheli was ten she became greatly interested in learning to play the clarinet. Soon, accompanied by her father at the piano, they performed together before audiences.

During summer vacations, when her parents traveled together, her father performing at concerts in the United States, Sheli would stay at a music camp studying and playing the piano. In later years she became a counselor at the camp and helped teach other campers. In high school she participated in the school orchestra. Sheli also traveled with her group to Austria and France performing there.

Sheli attends the Raanana Conservatory of Music and continues to perform with her father in Israel and the Jerusalem Theater and in other places, she playing the clarinet accompanied by her father at the piano. Rami has composed many compositions of his own music which they perform together. Tal, who is fifteen years older and married with two children, continues to perform with orchestras and also teaches the trumpet

Sheli, a pretty girl and very modest in her acceptance of her talents by audiences, is a fine example of what our future generation can bring to Israel if given a good education and the support of their family in whatever endeavor or profession they choose to follow.

When I asked Sheli if she intends to pursue some other profession later on, she replied, “First I must serve in the Israeli army and then I will decide what to do with my future.”

Sheli graduated high school in June 2007. She is now working with disadvantaged children and will be entering the army April 2008.

I have written this little story of Sheli and her wonderful family because I admire her talents and those of her family. An example of a family which has given its children, our future generation, a good education and the support they need to achieve their desires and also to be good citizens in a land they believe in and love. We, the older generation, can only hope their future in Israel will be in a land of peace and an example to the rest of the world that this country can live with all its neighbors in good relationships and in peace.

We must convince our younger generation that those who have such enmity towards us must be shown that this path only leads to more and more loss of what we hold dear. We must respect each other’s beliefs, show more understanding of each for the other, share in each of our achievements in technology, medicine, science and everything that makes life more fulfilling and more content.

A world where everyone has enough to feed their family. To look forward to each new day with a smile and contentment.

I am a woman of 92 years of age and a member of Esra.