Twenty Years Post Messiah

OK, my duty is clear: if yesterday we celebrated the twentieth anniversary of the Messiah, don’t you, Devoted Readers, deserve to find out about it?

Anybody who has been to New York, and especially the Crown Heights section in Brooklyn, has seen them: the Hasidic Jews, easily identifiable by the long beards, the black Fedora hats, and the dark clothing. And I knew a bit about the Hasidim, since I had read the work of Chaim Potok, a novelist most famous for his first book, The Chosen.

But what do the Hasidic Jews and the novels of Potok have to do with the Messiah? Well, they are both intricately wound up with this figure, about whom Wikipedia says:

Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson (April 5, 1902 – June 12, 1994), known as the Lubavitcher Rebbe or just the Rebbe,[3] was the most influential rabbi in modern history and most famous rabbi since Maimonides.[4] From 1950 he served as the seventh and last Rebbe (Hasidic leader) of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement.

OK—even if Schneerson wasn’t the Messiah, to be called the most important rabbi since Maimonides is no little feat. Here’s what Wikipedia says about him:

Our Rabbi/Teacher Moses Son [of] Maimon"), was a preeminent medieval Spanish, Sephardic Jewish philosopher, astronomer[5] and one of the most prolific and influential Torah scholars and physicians[6][7][8] of the Middle Ages.

OK—most of us know people who are “assimilated” Jews: men and women who may practice their religion to some extent, but who are essentially indistinguishable from the Methodists or Mormons or just atheists with whom they mix. But the Hasidim are in your face, and they’re intent on preserving a traditional way of life. How traditional? Well, they keep kosher: not eating pork or shellfish—hey, more shrimp for me!—and not mixing meat and dairy products. Women wear wigs or scarves—or both—in public and even in their homes, since, what if there’s a visit? And then there’s the matchmaker, who may have a “database” of hundreds or thousands of names.

True, it’s not quite as it used to be: the boy and girl meet, and sit together until they “feel comfortable.” Then, the marriage takes place quite quickly, with the bride and groom kept apart until the ceremony itself.

Domestic life is guided by 613 rules found in the Torah, and a prime job of the Hasidim is to procreate: eight children is the norm. And like the Mormons, there’s a big push to get out there and proselytize, though only to other Jews. Here’s one writer on the subject:

Lubavitchers (another term for Hasidim) are sent into the street as 13- or 14-year-olds to ask passersby, “Are you Jewish?” For those who say yes, they offer to help put on tefillin, the little wearable black boxes containing prayers, or, depending on the season, give them matzos or Hanukkah menorahs. They, too, may not convince others to become observant, but they are always solidifying their own observance.

So who was this man, the most important rabbi since Maimonides if not the Messiah? Well, he was born in Russia in 1902, the son of a rabbi. After becoming a rabbi himself, he made it to Portugal in 1941, to take one of the last boats out of Europe to the United States. There, he joined his wife’s family: his father-in-law was the rebbe of the Lubavitch community there. And his mission, as Wikipedia states, was:

…to rebuild Jewish life after the devastations of the Holocaust; to reverse the Communist eradication of Judaism in Russia; and to combat widespread assimilation by encouraging Jews to engage more deeply with their faith.

And the rebbe must have succeeded, since he sent 4000 missionaries around the world, reviving Jewish traditions, starting schools and day camps, and getting the fold back to a more faithful practice of the religion.

He knew both the great and powerful; here’s Wikipedia again:

During his years as Rebbe, he was visited by Presidents, Prime Ministers, Governors, Senators, Congressmen and Mayors. Notable among them are prominent American politicians such as John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr, Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, Jacob Javits, Ed Koch, Rudy Giuliani, David Dinkins and Joe Lieberman.

But he also started, in the year he became the rebbe, the practice of talking to anyone who sought an appointment. The sessions would start at 8 PM on Thursdays and Sundays, and would often go throughout the night. In these meetings, the rebbe would give a dollar to this person who had sought his counsel; the dollar was to be given to charity.

His power and influence was great—in the world of orthodox Jewry certainly, but in many other places as well. Go to YouTube and check out, as I did, what Margaret Thatcher had to say about him.

And so for 40 years he was the rebbe, living, after his wife died, in the main synagogue, at 770 Eastern Parkway. Not a bad address—take a look:

And who was this guy, who apparently never claimed he was the messiah? Well, he seems singularly elusive:

We know nearly nothing of the Rebbe, whose organizational talent is largely responsible for keeping Judaism a worldwide religion (as well as keeping Judaism somewhat vibrant in pockets of communist countries, like those of the former Soviet Union)…. If the Rebbe had any personality outside his persona, either nobody saw it, or those who saw it don’t tell. Beholding the discretion of those around the Rebbe, one can only wonder that every pope should be so lucky.

Read more: http://forward.com/articles/199036/why-rabbi-schneerson-was-good-for-jews-but-bad-for/#ixzz36KqaTjYQ

And so, last night, thousands of Hasidim gathered in the Montefiore Cemetery in Queens, New York, to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the death of the rebbe. The men were in one side, the women in another, there was even a section for the goyim, or gentiles. People were writing names of the dead down on pieces of paper, asking for a special blessing; believers were parking cars on irate neighbors’ driveways; the devout were having a nip or two of—presumably—vodka.

Who knows, maybe he was the Messiah?

Mendelssohn

Susan wrote me an email—did I know of any recording of the complete 12 fugues for string quartet by Mendelssohn?

Actually, I had never heard of the work, so I did what anyone—including Susan, I’m sure—would do. And yes, the clip below from YouTube is what I found.

Also yes, four of the fugues were recorded by the Vogler Quartet. But the other eight? Yet to be recorded, it seems.

It’s both surprising and unsurprising that Mendelssohn wrote these fugues when he was 12 years old. Surprising because they are very complex and very mature—far from what you would imagine even the most talented 12 year old could do. Unsurprising because Mendelssohn was a child prodigy who went on to champion the work of another composer, also of fugues as well as much else—Johann Sebastian Bach.

Susan knew of these works because of the remarkable work of Stephen Somary and his Mendelssohn Project, which has located some 270 pieces of music hitherto unpublished and unknown.

And it’s total justice that Mendelssohn has this champion, since he got a completely bad rap for years. Yes, his music was played—we’ve all heard the violin concerto, the Italian Symphony, Fingal’s Cave. But the critical judgment was that Mendelssohn was conservative, a little light—not the heavyweight that Brahms, Schumann, Schubert were. George Bernard Shaw, in fact, came out and said it: Mendelssohn "was not in the foremost rank of great composers," he wrote in 1898.

There are a number of reasons for this. Paradoxically, Mendelssohn was wildly popular in his time, and that has always cast a bit a suspicion—can a composer be that popular and still be any good? Was he catering to the crowd?

The second strike against him—he was Queen Victoria’s favorite composer, and the two in fact met and made music together (she was a passable singer). More support for the theory that there’s something a bit sentimental about the music.

But the most important factor might simply be racist. Mendelssohn was Jewish, though in fact he was baptized and raised as a Christian. But he pointedly refused to hide his Jewish origins, despite his father’s wish that he use the name Bartholdy, instead of Mendelssohn.

And three years after Mendelssohn’s death at 38, Richard Wagner published a savage attack on the Jews in general and Mendelssohn in particular. The essay, entitled Jewishness in Music, used Mendelssohn as the best example of why “there is no place for the Jew in music.” Yes, he was skilled, he was facile, but he “has shown us that a Jew can possess the richest measure of specific talents, the most refined and varied culture ... without even once through all these advantages being able to bring forth in us that profound, heart-and-soul searching effect we expect from music".

We’ve rejected the racism—but have we kept, wittingly or not, the critical judgment of Mendelssohn? Isn’t it time to rethink, and to rehear?

I’ve always thought so, and have been happy that others do as well. What I didn’t know was the tremendous amount of music that was unpublished. Why? Because Mendelssohn was well off, under no pressure to publish. He also died quite young; he may have been too busy composing to worry much about publishing.

So he was prolific, and left scores of manuscripts unpublished. What happened to them?

Here, racism strikes again. In 1936, the Nazis forbade Mendelssohn to be played publicly, and most of the manuscripts, located in the state library in Berlin, were taken secretly to Warsaw or Krakow. When these cities fell, says Somary, the compositions were dispersed in any way possible, and ended up throughout the world.

Right—so is it any good?

Well, Somary says yes. Frequently, an unpublished piece has a reason to be unpublished, but not in the case of Mendelssohn. In fact, the version of the Italian Symphony that we all know is the wrong version, not the revised version that Mendelssohn wanted published.

It might be time as well to start hearing some of the chamber music besides the famous octet. I listened recently to five minutes of the 6^th String Quartet, and it was enough to send me straight to Amazon—I needed that music.

For years Bach was unplayed, almost unknown, until Mendelssohn came along. How fitting that Mendelssohn, unfairly treated, should have found a champion himself.