In one of his classic tunes, Billy Joel famously sang, “Vienna waits for you.”
But as Israeli-born Pikesville resident Amit Peled recently discovered, not always with open arms.
A world-renowned cellist and professor at the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University, Peled made international headlines this week by getting kicked out of a restaurant in the Austrian capital.
The offense committed by Peled and his fellow Israeli diners last Sunday, July 27, was chatting with each other in their native tongue, Hebrew, before a concert performance.
Peled, 52, said he initially felt quite comfortable and welcome at Pizzeria Ristorante Ramazzotti, a small Italian restaurant in Vienna’s Leopoldstadt district.
But at one point, he said that a waiter — after taking the table’s order — reapproached Peled and his two fellow diners to inquire what language they were privately speaking.
“Naturally, we were speaking Hebrew among ourselves,” Peled wrote in an Instagram post. “I replied [in German] casually, ‘English and German.’ No, no, he insisted. ‘What were you just speaking now?’ I answered, ‘Hebrew, of course.’
“He looked me directly in the eye and said, without hesitation, ‘In that case, leave. I’m not serving you food.’”
Needless to say, Peled and his companions, violinist Hagai Shaham and pianist Julia Gurvitch, were “shocked and humiliated” by the experience.
But he said they were even more disturbed by the reactions of the other diners at the bistro.
“The people around us were clearly startled, some offered sympathetic glances … and then, quietly, they went back to their dinners, their conversations, their wine — as though nothing had happened.
“Welcome to Europe, 2025.”
Later that day, while still reeling from the incident, Peled, Shaham and Gurvitch joined other musicians onstage and “sought refuge in the music we love. Performing Dvořák’s ‘Dumky Trio’ [‘Piano Trio No. 4’] to a completely sold-out hall offered us a rare kind of healing — a fleeting but powerful moment of grace amid the dissonance.”
Since the Hamas attacks of Oct. 7, 2023, Peled said he has used music as a vehicle to express his strong support for Israel and to raise awareness about antisemitism.
Soon after the attacks, Peled started playing “Hatikvah,” Israel’s national anthem, at concerts around the world, and even performed the song on a flight to Florida.
“I’m not going to stop,” he told Jmore in 2024. “I owe it to my country. If we cannot live proudly as who we are, then what’s the reason for doing it?”
In email to Jmore this week, Peled said his commitment to Israel remains unwavering despite the incident in Vienna.
“Music will prevail,” he wrote, “and we will never give that up along with our identity.”
A committed philanthropist and community leader, Russel was president of R&H Motors.
The mother of four was a native of Winchester, Virginia, who spent most of her life in Northwest Baltimore.
The remaining 6,000 members of the community are expected to immigrate by 2030.
The Columbia resident worked on the Gemini and Apollo space missions.