FYI for Anons
Jewish themes
Even before the Stalinist anti-Semitic campaigns in the late 1940s and early 1950s, Shostakovich showed an interest in Jewish themes. He was intrigued by Jewish music’s "ability to build a jolly melody on sad intonations".[83] Examples of works that included Jewish themes are the Fourth String Quartet (1949), the First Violin Concerto (1948), and the Four Monologues on Pushkin Poems (1952), as well as the Piano Trio in E minor (1944). He was further inspired to write with Jewish themes when he examined Moisei Beregovski’s thesis on Jewish folk music in 1946.
In 1948, Shostakovich acquired a book of Jewish folk songs, and from this he composed the song cycle From Jewish Folk Poetry. He initially wrote eight songs that were meant to represent the hardships of being Jewish in the Soviet Union. To disguise this, Shostakovich added three more songs meant to demonstrate the great life Jews had under the Soviet regime. Despite his efforts to hide the real meaning in the work, the Union of Composers refused to approve his music in 1949 under the pressure of the anti-Semitism that gripped the country. From Jewish Folk Poetry could not be performed until after Stalin's death in March 1953, along with all the other works that were forbidden.[84]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitri_Shostakovich#Jewish_themes