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The Pencils

3/28/2014

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"The Pencils" is a short story I wrote a few years ago, not long after my most recent visit to Italy. In its subject matter, it has little to do with the kinds of things I've been posting here; in its style, it has nothing in common with my Tsimbalist novel. I hope that, either in spite of these facts or because of them, you will choose to read the story.

I should add that some previous readers hated the story's ending, while others loved it. If you feel so moved, let me know which camp, if either, you find yourself in.

And please enjoy.



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The Pencils

The cathedral is ageless--unlike him. 

High up on the hill, almost atop the city, it is an easy target for wind, rain, even snow, when there is snow; yet looks exactly as it must have, if not when first built, then at least six or seven hundred years ago. (It was built eight hundred years ago--almost twenty times longer than he has been alive!--but somehow manages to remain unblemished. In his mind at least, it is indestructible.) 

Of course, the cathedral is a building, and he, only a poor human. If someone were to point out to him this essential difference, he would say, "Of course. Listen, I'm not an idiot, I know: the cathedral's a building, I'm a human." But that doesn't make the difference any easier to swallow! (One of the directors once said to him that "the rational world has borders which are all too near its capital." If he understands the idea correctly, to mean that the rational world is truly a very small place, then his attitude about the cathedral is, he thinks, an excellent example.) 

However, to be precise, it isn't the cathedral's agelessness, nor its indestructibility, that is so hard for him to swallow. What aggravates him, taunts him even, on a daily basis, is the beauty of the whole place, the beauty which he is forced to gaze at every time he comes outside (and who could stay in the bar all day? That, too, would be impossibly oppressive.)


In the first place, there is the cathedral itself, with its perfect white marble, eight graceful rosettes all around the façade, sober campanile to the left, elegantly-columned porch in front, and on top, the triangular … he doesn't know the architectural term for it … the triangular top adorned with that nearly Byzantine madonna, which, somehow, has never lost a fleck of paint. And then, the piazza spread out before it, so broad, open, even generous, welcoming. And the steps, beginning here where the piazza narrows, where he's standing ... grand in their own way, too, as they climb, dramatically, even higher up the hill. All of it so gloriously, intoxicatingly, obnoxiously gorgeous--and not despite its age, but in fact partly because of it! The hard edges of church and square and steps have been made, if anything, more beautiful with the passage of time. Whereas he, who was once undeniably beautiful, too, is already in decline. 

His hair, still long, is now a middle-aged man's long hair, not a young man's long hair. His features, perhaps still striking, are twice as wide as they used to be: now it is not his eyes but his nose that dominates his face.

Somewhere in between lies the bar: twenty years old, neither untouched by age nor unduly battered by it. Backgammon, the most elegant bar in town, the most expensive, the most advantageously placed, in the crook where piazza meets stairs (in this way, too, it is in between.) In summer, Backgammon's tables extend a good way into the piazza, introducing a modern note into the ancient setting. 

According to Roberto's estimate--and according to his little joke--half of those who go inside the cathedral to see the freschi, the frescoes, stop at his place on the way back up for rinfreschi, refreshments. (He's Backgammon's bartender.) Even today, when it's still cold, there has been a steady trickle of customers: Germans and Italians, sweating in their warm clothes as they come in to order wine or aperitivi (in the case of the Italians) or cappuccino (in the case of the Germans, who don't know, or don't care, that it's too late in the day for it.) 

Today he's been guessing which ones would stop in, and what they would order. (He's usually right.) He's dressed as always, regardless of the weather, in a dark blue blazer, of vaguely nautical cut, adorned with brass buttons. A little cool for today, a little warm for full summer. (The pencils are stuffed into the blazer's breast pocket.) He considers it more important to look the part than to be comfortable, even if he can’t always rouse himself from his more and more frequent feeling of being tired of the world, which he knows must make some impact on his appearance. He will still be gracious, he will still play captain of the ship. Even now, as a new party approaches from below, he smiles, as much as he can manage, before striding back in ahead of them.

Inside, the place looks good: the furniture is a little scratched, but the mirror behind the counter spotless and streakless, and the backgammon-board motif freshly repainted on the walls. Probably, he's still the envy of all the other bartenders in town. He has even been able to buy Backgammon, after all these years.

It was the director--the director--who gave the place its name. After he founded the film festival (who could have imagined then that the festival wouldn't run forever, that the director would one day die?) and established it in town, and bought up property, including here alongside the piazza, he opened Backgammon (a simple reason: it was his favorite game) and installed Roberto as its bartender. 

At the time, Roberto was merely one of a collection of beautiful young men the director liked to keep around him, all hoping to become movie stars. Tending bar there was to be a summer thing. 

He bought his first blazer (now there are more than twenty in his wardrobe, all nearly identical, each worn for exactly one year) made caffè and cappuccino and cocktails, hobnobbing late into the night, every night, with the several famous directors who came in after showings, and with the actors (the "other actors," as he thought of them then) and actresses (a few of whom he'd slept with--and especially one of them) and waited for his moment.

***

They are a party of five: Italian, well-off, chic … two men, three women, relationships not immediately obvious. One of the women reminds him of someone.

The men sit, the women drape expensive purses over chairs before sitting too. Dark glasses come off, gloves too, two of the women remove scarves from their heads, and--actually, the resemblance is really striking! Of course, she can't be Silvia. But she has the same almond, almost Eastern eyes, the same pointed nose, smudge of mouth, dirty blonde hair in a curly bob. She's wearing a light-colored cashmere sweater, tan slacks. When he takes their order, he can barely meet her eye. 

Whereas, a few minutes later, standing behind the bar, he can't take his eyes off her. Frankly, she's beautiful. And elegant. But also--bored with her companions? Every time the man next to her--her husband?--touches her arm, she makes a point of straightening her sleeve. She barely opens her mouth, looks toward the doorway, at the ceiling. They've been there twenty minutes when she stands, and approaches the bar. 

Like everyone else, she looks first at the pencils, before raising her eyes to his face. Then, she surprises him: "Can I borrow one?" A pencil, she means. And he thinks: Really?


***

They are colored. Old, some of them twenty years old. Unused, sharp as knives (almost?), packed tight like sardines. Twenty in number. And he can't remember how they first came to be there.

It wasn't long after he'd started tending bar. He had three colored pencils in his pocket. Why? Who knows. Maybe there was a reason. Maybe he was actually planning to write something, the way people did with pencils, back then. In short, there they were: red, yellow, green, tips up.

The bar had a mirror--obviously. He caught sight of himself, and--frankly--he was impressed. Not with the pencils, precisely. With their effect. That is, he looked impressive. The pencils looked like some kind of military--or, why not, naval--insignia. They were sharp, and even. They resembled teeth, it occurred to him, of a shark, for example. Of something dangerous and impressive.

He didn't want to dull them. He wouldn't use them. He'd simply leave them in his pocket (and when it was time for a new blazer? He transferred them.) Until, at some point, they almost weren't pencils anymore. Now, they were stripes, fangs, fetishes. 

Or, they were a calendar. Because before long, three pencils became five. Five became eight, eight twelve. And now, with twenty years gone by, twenty.

Naturally, whenever people order a drink, they eye them. And yet, for some reason, perhaps the brooding air beneath his smile, no-one mentions them, no-one asks about them--let alone asks to borrow them. Until now: "Can I borrow one?" And this, from her?

"Of course," he says. "What color?"


***

The first thing she draws is him. She's quite good. It looks like him, how he sees himself--only younger, perhaps, more beautiful, the way he once was. A pencil really has the power to change reality!--he thinks. He wishes he could draw.

She holds the pencil--she's chosen a red one--in her left hand (she wears a wedding ring, too, whether he's her husband or not.) Her fingers are those of a woman entering, or almost entering, middle age, skin drier than it once was, one who uses creams to make her skin look good, not young, exactly, but good. (The same goes, perhaps, for her face.) She's using a sketchpad she carries in her purse: good, thick paper. The sketch takes only a few minutes. 

As she finishes, the man--he must be her husband--comes over, glances at the sketch, then at him. "Brava," he says to her (saccharine, patronizing) and then, to Roberto, "If you’re done modeling, how about another round?" (patronizing, but definitely not saccharine.) She returns to the table with him. That's all.

But when they leave? She stays. "Go without me," she says, "I'll catch up, I want to do one more."

And suddenly they're alone in the place, separated only by the bar. She's drawing him again, another study in red, this one a profile. She leans close, examining his features, she's centimeters away, she's even breathing on his cheek. 


Quite an intimate feeling, he decides, posing as a model. 

Then--she's done. She's closing the sketchpad, wrapping her scarf around her head. Saying goodbye, thanks. And here, for you, the sketches.

"But I’ll keep this," she smiles, dropping the pencil into her purse. "Goodbye." 

And he's left alone in the bar.


***

It's with some difficulty that he wakes the next morning. Without customers, he took a few drinks himself. As he approaches the bar, the piazza is empty, the cathedral magnificent in the early morning light. Inside, he makes a coffee. He's about to take a sip, when his eye falls on the two drawings. (How could he have been so careless, leaving them on the bar?) And, they're really good. He feels handsome, and happy.

The morning is slow. It's Monday, no-one really works here on the piazza anyway. Mostly, the place is empty. Until, at eleven, she walks in.

They're all off on a drive, she explains. They wanted to visit those famous vineyards, in that famous town, nearby? Whereas she wants to draw, here. So many interesting subjects, really, cathedral, piazza ... him … if it’s all right. "Only, I forgot to bring any pencils."

But--of course it's all right. Take your pick of colors, he says. (She chooses cobalt, silver, emerald, peach.) He even brings a table and chair outside--it’s warmer today. She’s comfortable? Yes? Then, I'll be inside.

But he can see her through the doorway: a shimmering pink presence in the sunlight. He raises his eyes to one of the framed posters, high up on the wall, posters from the festival. Yes, he nods: the same pink Silvia always wore.

Later, he goes to check on her progress. He bends next to her--she asks for more colors--looks at the four drawings she's made, all of the cathedral. She's an excellent draftsman, everything's there: campanile, rosettes, madonna. Only, somehow the cathedral itself doesn't look excellent. It looks--even if only slightly--misshapen. Off-color. In the subtlest of ways, ugly. 

He feels strange, has to sit. He's blocking her view. She looks up. And he asks: "Are you doing this for me?"


***

Late Tuesday afternoon, she's back again.

"They went off to look for somewhere to buy truffles," she explains this time. "Real tourists." Whereas she wants to draw again--inside, if possible. 

"Why not?" he says. (And actually, he’s happy about it.)

She borrows four pencils for starters--leaving him less than ten. She goes to work, drawing the doorway, him, two old customers, a collection of grappa bottles, one particular grappa bottle. He adds up a few figures. When he looks again, she's eying the posters.

She calls out: "That's that actress, isn't it?" 

"Which?" He comes over, apprehensive.

"The one who died in the car crash--begins with an 'S'?"

"But," he stares at her, "people must tell you all the time, no? That you--"

"I'm going to draw her."

"--look like--"

"There's something compelling about her face, I think."

He's silent, baffled.

"I need crimson. And pink, of course."

At loose ends, he polishes glasses, straightens out chairs, returns grappa to the shelf, coming near only to lend her more colors, then returning to his work. Finally, she calls him over, to sit next to her: "Look."

It's a drawing of the Silvia poster. Only, there’s no Silvia in the poster--or barely. Only her hand, grasping a letter 'L,' as her head and her torso dangle out of the frame, and her feet descend the bar wall.

"She's escaping, into your bar. Do you like it?" 

Does he? He doesn't know.

"And now I want to draw the backgammon pattern. I'll need chocolate brown, and cream--oh, and yellow." He's still fixed on the drawing, as she takes the pencils from his pocket, begins a new sketch. 

But, the escaping Silvia? What is that?

Meanwhile, she's still drawing. He looks up, looks at her face, notices for the first time a little scar next to her eye. Silvia never had one ... Suddenly he grabs her arm. "Are you her?" 

"Her?" she pulls away. "Who?"

"Silvia."

"What a question!" She laughs, unkindly. "I'm me."

Again, he grasps her, this time by both shoulders. He needs to look into her eyes.

"Let me go," she cries, wrenching herself from his grasp, standing, knocking over her chair, running. He picks up the chair, goes after her. But she's already gone--leaving behind the last of the sketches: Triangles on the wall. And on one of them, a doorknob.

***

It's late. The place is closed. He's up, but he's been sleeping, with his head on the bar. Naturally, he's been dreaming about her, one of those dreams that seem, at first, like divergent versions of ordinary life. Her, here, drawing (just like today.) Him working, scrubbing at the wall. 

One of the triangles has gotten smudged. He wants to make sure the fresh paint job isn't ruined. But she calls him over, wants one more pencil. 

He pretends not to hear. He doesn't want to give it to her. I
t's his last one.

"Please," she begs.

"But can't you see," he says--and this is where the dream gets strange--"that that would be, in effect, a castration?"

She laughs: "Are you really so conventional that you think a pencil is like a--"

Then, instead of finishing the question, she surprises him. "Please," she repeats, simply and sincerely. Which is when he wakes up.

He opens his eyes. The room is bright. Its harsh light helps to drive away the dream. 
He squints at the clock, slowly stands. It's time to go home. 

Someone knocks on the half-closed shutter outside the door. He hurries over. Someone calls out. He raises the shutter. It's her. She's here, coming toward him, out of the night, she looks like the queen of the night--not the one in the movie, but a real queen, and of this actual night. Beautiful, powerful, serious, intent. 

She's taking his hand (her own is warm) leading him gracefully (she wears a dress the color of turquoise) behind the bar (he feels as if they are in a ballet) taking, not asking permission this time, a pencil, the last one--it really is--tracing one of the tall triangles on the wall, a thick line, up one side and down the other, along the bottom, done.

And now she casts aside the pencil--it disappears, beneath a table, into a dark corner, it's gone--is placing her hand against the wall, pushing, pushing, till it gives way, till the triangle opens inward, making a doorway, to--well, to where? 

To a place only she knows how to find.


***

When he wakes the next day, it's bright--the bar should already be open. He jumps up, runs to brush his teeth--his clothes are on the floor, what the hell?--splashes water on his face, looks at his reflection--two new grey hairs, one new wrinkle--and rushes to get dressed, bending for the blazer, and--but that's impossible! No pencils. 

He turns the blazer upside down, shakes it, reaches in the pocket, looks around, on the floor, all about. And sees her. 

Her. Here, in his bed. Covered by nothing, a thin, little sheet. His sheet. His bed. And he remembers …

He remembers.

He walks closer, quietly, watching her sleep. He doesn't want to wake her yet. He'll make a coffee on the stove, bring it to her. She'll like that. He turns toward the kitchen--then hears her move, and stops.

"Good morning, my little love." His voice sounds strange to him, like a melody. "Are you awake?"

"I'm awake," she says, the words coming out like little yawns. Then she sits up, the sheet falling away. "And what shall we draw today?"






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Rich Kids and Cantors' Sons

3/25/2014

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Last week I talked about violinists with klezmer in their blood. Today I want to talk about some other old-time Jewish musicians and their family backgrounds. 

Let's start with a video, one which I find totally delightful (although you may want skip ahead, for reasons I'll explain in a moment):

Ba Ta Clan, Opera mobile from Jonathan Kaell on Vimeo.


This is Ba Ta Clan, a one-act operetta by Jacques Offenbach. Offenbach was a wildly successful operetta composer in 1850s, '60s and '70s France. He was also wildly popular in London and Vienna, where he had a big impact on later operetta creators like Johann Strauss and Gilbert and Sullivan, and through that influence, on the direction of musical theater in general. 

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Although Ba Ta Clan is far from Offenbach's most famous operetta, I included it here for a reason: beginning at 15:36, Offenbach employs a tune which probably started its life as a cantorial melody.

This may be seem surprising. But the explanation is simple: Jacques Offenbach was a cantor's son. Offenbach the older was a cantor in the German city of Cologne, and Jacques is said to have used some of his father's melodies, along with other German-Jewish cantorial melodies, in his compositions. The tune here may be one of these: it
 is remarkably like the melody of a Reader's Kaddish found in a nineteenth-century collection. (As far as I know, this similarity was first pointed out by musicologist Eric Werner.)

Offenbach seems to have been alone among major cantor's-son-composers in bringing cantorial melodies to the compositional table. This may be less notable than it seems, however; in nineteenth-century Western Europe, cantorial music was becoming less and less recognizably Jewish anyway, and more and more similar to other European liturgical styles. Perhaps this even made the transition from cantor's son to composer a little easier.


In any case, you could say that choosing to be a cantor's son was a very clever move for Offenbach, because being a cantor's son seems to have been one of the two main paths open to aspiring nineteenth-century Jewish composers. The other choice was perhaps even cleverer: it consisted solely of being born into a wealthy family.

It's true. Examples of rich-kid-Jewish-nineteenth-century-composers abound. Scions and scionesses of assimilated and affluent families, these kids studied music, especially piano, as part of a broad, cosmopolitan, European education. Showing remarkable aptitude for the instrument, and rubbing shoulders at the same time with elite cultural figures among their parents' social circles, they were launched into artistic careers.

This description fits a number of composers to a tee, but none better than Felix Mendelssohn, who was perhaps the greatest musical prodigy of all time. Mendelssohn began piano study at the advanced age of six, made his public debut at nine, and in 1822, at the age of only thirteen, wrote this:



Mendelssohn's family background was extraordinary: his grandfather was the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn; his father and paternal uncle, bankers. On his mother's side, Mendelssohn's great-grandfather was Court Jew to two Prussian kings and the head of Berlin's Jewish community; as such, he was responsible for the removal of many restrictions on Jews in Prussia. One of Mendelssohn's great aunts on the maternal side was a pianist who studied with one of Bach's sons, Wilhelm Friedemann Bach; another great aunt was a patron of Mozart in Vienna. A great-uncle by marriage, another banker, translated the Hebrew prayer-book into German, and founded a Jewish free school. An uncle was Prussia's Consul-General in Rome and an art patron, to whom is attributed a revival of fresco painting by German artists.

So … you can sort of see how he might have ended up with a little bit of talent, culture and ambition … 

Following the lead of some older relatives, including his parents, Mendelssohn was eventually baptized as a Christian. This is something else he had common with most of the other rich kid composers.

Meanwhile, orbiting Felix in Germany's musical firmament were others with similar backgrounds: first, his sister Fanny, who according to some visitors to the Mendelssohn home was as great a prodigy as Felix, and who, although her composition career was not enthusiastically encouraged, did write a large number of works including this vocal duet:



… and also, Ignaz Moscheles. Moscheles, a virtuoso who was one of Felix and Fanny's piano teachers, himself came from a German-Jewish merchant family of Prague, and married the daughter of a German-Jewish banker who was related to the poet Heinrich Heine. Here's an etude by Moscheles:


… and also, Felix's close friend Ferdinand Hiller, the son of a Frankfurt textile merchant. Hiller's spectacular playing and kindly disposition inspired both Chopin and Schumann to dedicate compositions to him. He is also said to have introduced to his non-Jewish composition pupil Max Bruch the Kol Nidrei, with results that are still heard every autumn. Here's a composition of Hiller's, the Piano Concerto in F sharp minor:


But the other big star among these rich kids, who was not in Mendelssohn's orbit at all, but had one of his own, was Giacomo Meyerbeer. Meyerbeer, though you don't hear his music a lot today, was the most frequently-performed opera composer in the whole nineteenth century. Meyerbeer was actually related, distantly, to Felix and Fanny. He grew up in Berlin just like they did, only about fifteen years earlier, and made his piano-playing debut at age nine, with a Mozart piano concerto. 

Meyerbeer was the son of a financier who gave his children an unbeatable education. (The father also kept a private synagogue, and Meyerbeer, unlike these others, remained Jewish all his life.) One of the composer's brothers, Michael Beer, was a poet and co-founder of the Association for Culture and Science of the Jews. Another brother was Wilhelm Beer, who worked as a banker and was also a passionate astronomer, collaborating on the first maps of the Moon and of Mars, and in his spare time, helping to establish the Prussian railway system, and later, getting elected to the Prussian parliament.

Brother Giacomo (he picked up the name in Italy) ended up in Paris, where he ruled the operatic roost for over thirty years, from the 1830s to the 1860s, writing super-deluxe operas like Robert le diable. As it looks like I've run out of time again for those other poor cantors' sons, let's finish up with a clip from that once insanely popular opera:

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Purim Play, Part I

3/20/2014

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I'll get to those cantors' sons shortly. But last weekend, Purim happened, and I want to talk about a Purim-related matter before too much time goes by.

As some of you know, Purim is a very fun holiday involving colorful costumes and obnoxious noisemakers. Saturday night, I was a little busy playing a concert with Big Galut(e) and the Catskill Symphony, so I didn't get to dress up as anything but a fancier version of myself; and sadly, none of the no-doubt numerous obnoxious noises I made had anything to do with mocking the villain Haman, or celebrating Esther and Mordecai's deliverance of the Jews from his perfidy. 

However, I did enjoy a great pre-Purim activity a few days earlier: I ate some truly exemplary poppyseed hamantaschen from Bell's Market, an amazing Russian grocery store in the Philly suburbs northeast Philadelphia. Bell's' hamantaschen were better than the ones pictured below, because the dough part was really thin and a little crunchy. I am ultra-Orthodox about hamantaschen thinness. Frankly, I don't understand why anyone would make that disgustingly thick and crumbly kind of hamantaschen that you see everywhere (that is, everywhere that you see hamantaschen.) Just because Haman was distasteful doesn't mean his namesakes need to be, too. 

Also, I'd like to point out that people whose favorite filling is something other than poppyseed are quite simply wrong. I'm all for open-mindedness … but only on less important subjects than this one.


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Anyway … that was my pre-Purim activity. Other people, in other places, saw fit to engage in other kinds of activities. An editorial by Rabbi Daniel Landes in Haaretz talks about this: 

"The funhouse sideshow of Haredi life in Israel and in the New York area bursts forth every Purim, as the ultra-Orthodox transform themselves into fez-wearing Turks, medieval noblemen and so on. We enjoy the easing of cultural barriers in the humor and evincing of a shared humanity. But this year’s twin pre-Purim Sunday anti-draft demonstrations, one blocking Jerusalem’s main entry point, and the other on Wall Street, illustrated that the divide within the Jewish people is in earnest. The Purim parody is an all-Haredi affair - a group that refuses to confront the central teachings of the Purim megillah itself …"

The background to this is that, in Israel, an end to military draft exemptions for the Haredim, or ultra-Orthodox,  is in the pipeline. (These exemptions, which apply especially to yeshiva students, have existed one way or another as long as the state has.) The whole issue is highly controversial and touches on many sub-issues that I have neither the knowledge nor the space to get into here. But I'll mention two of them. There is a belief on the part of some Haredim that their prayers and study, which they believe will hasten the coming of the Messiah (among other benefits), are of far greater value to the community than the contributions of soldiers, or of any other assimilated Jews. And there is a belief on the part of some other Israelis that the Haredim are, more or less, parasitic sponges, who live on welfare paid for by other people's taxes while looking down on everyone else. As the editorial goes on to say: 

"The Purim story has no exemptions. There are no yeshiva deferments. There are no deferments for women, for anyone.  ... No beit din (religious court) forms to forbid the fight; no prayer demonstrations condemn the 'real culprits' to be those assimilationists, the intermarried Esther and the goy posturing Mordechai … The special mirrors in the Haredi funhouse can render their own prayerful contributions as exceptionally large and that of the IDF as tiny. It must be entertaining for a moment to entertain such unusual and exalted visions … The megillah tells us to share matanot l’aniyim (monetary gifts for the poor), not to sign up and join the class of alms recipients. That position has been the rejected one in Jewish tradition. Today the greatest givers of tzedakah are the population who works, pays taxes, and tries to keep an increasingly impossible welfare burden of Haredim on their shaky feet …"

This isn't really a current events sort of a blog. But it strikes me that this is a very old argument, or at least, that it's related to old, nineteenth-century arguments over how Jews should interact with modernity, what role a life of study should play, and how a life of study should be supported, in financial terms. Since these are subjects I've already touched on a couple of times here, in a Part Two of this post, I'd like to get deeper into them. Maybe looking at the past will even shed some light on the present.

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A Family Business

3/17/2014

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Today, I'd like to discuss a date well known in the Jewish world: March 17th.

All right, so it's not so well known. March 17th, as everybody knows, belongs to the Irish, and Jews have got nothing that can remotely compete with expelled snakes and shamrock shakes. The Irish have got green rivers, and what have we got? Joan Rivers. 

But at least, we’ll always have Halévy. 

Halévy who? Why, Jacques-François-Fromental-Élie Halévy, of course: French composer, father-in-law of Carmen composer Georges Bizet, and himself responsible
 for a hit opera called La Juive (The Jewess.) In today’s edition of Israeli newspaper Haaretz, we learn that Halévy died on March 17th, 1862. And this is what got me thinking.

La Juive is not an opera I've ever played in the orchestra for, nor am I even slightly familiar with it. But Halévy is of interest to me for another reason: his life is an example of a pretty intriguing pattern. 


According to Ha-aretz’s David B. Green, "He was usually known as Fromental Halévy, because the day he was born, May 27, 1799, was the feast day of Fromental, 'oat grass' in French, in the French Republican calendar. His father, Elyahu Halfon, was a German Jew who changed his name to Elie Halévy when he moved to Paris. There he worked as a cantor …"

It’s a funny thing: a whole lot of notable Jewish classical musicians were the sons of either cantors or klezmers. In Western Europe from earlier in the nineteenth century, and in Eastern Europe beginning a little later, the same thing kept happening: arts and skills learned in the course of
 Jewish observance (klezmer was very much a part of Jewish observance) came to serve, with the shifting of cultural borders, as passports to a very different world.

Let's take a look at some of these sons of traditional Jewish musicians who ventured across the border into high culture. If I miss anybody important, let me know in comments.

The Zimbalist Family

Did I say something about high culture? Never mind. You maybe remember Stephanie Zimbalist from Remington Steele ... 

Remington Steele & Laura Holt 1986 from Chris Austin on Vimeo.


She was the daughter of Efrem Zimbalist Jr. …


… who was the son of Efrem Zimbalist, one of the first Russian-Jewish violinists to become a big star in America (following his 1911 debut.) He later became head of the prestigious Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, where he taught my violin teacher Shmuel Ashkenasi.  Here's Zimbalist with his wife, in a mash-up that should delight all former Suzuki students: Dvořák's "Humoresque" and "Swanee River." (This is, apparently, the kind of thing people listened to in 1915.)


The last name Zimbalist is the same word as "tsimbalist," which was his grandfather's profession. 

Other Violinists

In his story, "Migrations of a Melody," the great Yiddish author I.L. Peretz writes:

"In our district of Kiev, there isn't a house without a violin … You want to know how many men live in a house? You merely have to look at the walls! The number of fiddles hanging there tells you the number of men. All play: the grandfather plays, the father plays, the son plays. It's a pity, however, that each generation plays its own tunes, each plays differently, each has its own peculiar style. The old grandfather plays Sinai-melodies or such synagogual chants as Kol-Nidre, Shoshanas-Yakov, Gdi-Kshur-Yodaim, etc. The father, an adherent of Hassidism, likes to go all out on the strings in the good old Jewish style. The son, in turn, plays from notes, plays musical selections from the theatrical repertoire."


These sons who played "from notes" included most of the big names among Russian-Jewish violinists. Of special note are: 

--Adolph Brodsky, who premiered Tchaikovsky's violin concerto, along with pieces by Brahms and Grieg, and who had all three of those composers over for dinner one night at his house in Leipzig. His father and grandfather were violinists, most likely of the klezmer variety, at least in the grandfather's case.

Picture
Brodsky


--Mischa Elman, who from about the age of thirteen was both a huge classical music star (at a time when classical music was huge) and a real icon among Jews on both sides of the Atlantic, the model prodigy held up as an example by parents forcing their children to practice. (Sholem Aleikhem fictionalized him as Grisha Stelmach in the 1909-11 novel Wandering Stars.) Elman was famous for the fat "Elman tone" he produced, and recorded a lot of 78 rpm records of short pieces, including some classicized klezmer numbers like this one:



His grandfather was a klezmer fiddler. 

--Elman's career took something of a nosedive after Jascha Heifetz arrived in America in 1917. Heifetz was, just like Zimbalist and Elman and also Toscha Seidel, a pupil of Leopold Auer in St. Petersburg. The Gershwins actually wrote a song about this whole stable of fiddlers and their teacher:


Anyway, it's probable that at least one of Heifetz's grandfathers was a cantor, while his father played violin in klezmer bands. (This according to Jascha Heifetz: Early Years in Russia by Galina Kopytova.)

I can't really help myself when I start talking about violinists … so since this is already long enough, let's leave discussion of people like Kurt Weill, Jacques Offenbach, and the extraordinary Halévy family till next time, and finish with one of the countless incredible recordings Jascha Heifetz made:

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Spare the Rod, Spoil the Child? 

3/6/2014

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This blog post is in honor of my nephew, who in only two days is going to be having his Bar Mitzvah. He is reportedly all set to do a great job. I'm happy for this; I'm also happy that he didn't have to prepare for his Bar Mitzvah the old fashioned way.

What's the old-fashioned way? 


We can learn about it from the song Moyshele, by Mordecai Gebirtig. Gebirtig is the same guy who wrote Reyzele, that song with the whole thing about whistling. 

Here's Moyshele:


And here's the story of Moyshele: Two old friends meet. One of them says, " How are you, Moyshele? I knew you in an instant. You were my friend many years ago in Hebrew School. The rabbi still stands before me, his cane in his hand. Oh where have those years gone? … My heart yearns for that angry rabbi … How are you, tell me, my friend? Your smile now reminds me of your stubbornness when you were a child. The rabbi thrashes you, you're upset and pale, but you smile anyway. The rabbi jumps with rage … Oh, my heart yearns for those lashes from the rabbi …"

Lest you think that Gebirtig was embellishing the truth, I have here a long list of questions* posed by Ansky's ethnographic team, which I've mentioned before:

440. List all the punishments, whether corporeal or psychological, that occur in the kheyder.

441. Does the beating of students occur in all kheyders or just some of them? 

442. Do you notice the beating of students gradually disappearing from kheyders?

443. At what age are students usually no longer beaten?

444. For what does one most often strike the students: for mischief, for poor comprehension, or for bad habits?

445. With what are they beaten? (a whip, a rod, or a yarmulke, how many tails in the whip, how many rods in the bundle)?

446. Are there still melamdim who always keep a rod stuck in the door so that the students can see it? Are there still melamdim who soak the rods in salt water?

This goes on for a while till we get to …

452. Does the teacher ever command one child to beat another?

and

454. Does the teacher ever command the children to taunt the beaten child?

and 

456. What derisive jokes and songs are there about a beaten child?

And my personal favorite:

457. Do you know of a phenomenon from the past in which every Thursday the entire kheyder was beaten, guilty and innocent alike?

So Isaac my friend: I don't care how you do on Saturday. Just for not having to go through all that, you're already a winner in my book.




*  from Deutsch, the Jewish Dark Continent
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    Author

    Sasha Margolis is author of The Tsimbalist (the novel and the blog) and violinist, singer, and storyteller for the band Big Galut(e)
    He can be found on twitter as @SashaMargolis

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