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Book excerpt
A continuum exists between music and the philosophy of social activism, writes Lionel Rolfe, as he looks back on his conversations with uncle Yehudi Menuhin. The first of a two-part excerpt from his important new book, Death and Redemption in London and LA
He rented the Huntington Hotel's dining room on Nob
Hill in San Francisco… where he held a family reunion.
There had been hard feelings between my uncle and
myself over my first book The Menuhins: A Family Odyssey,
published in the 1970s. My grandparents had cut me out of
the will as a result of the book - and Yehudi, who had the
power to change that, did not. He was unhappy with my
portrayal of his mother, Marutha, and also that I wouldn't let
his wife edit the manuscript. His parents were unhappy
because I did not perpetrate the fiction that Marutha was an
Italian princess. Instead, in my book. I told the truth: namely
that Marutha had come from a poor Jewish family. Her father
had not been Tarter or Italian royalty, but rather a poor
"shocket" - which is to say in Yiddish, a kosher chicken killer
- who lived in Waukegan, Illinois.
Still, my uncle and I hugged each other, however tentatively, and hardly talked after that. He kept glancing over at me, as if to say, "Let's talk", throughout the night. But I
was frozen in my chair, talking with my cousin Gerard, the
only of Yehudi's sons to show for the reunion. It was the first
time I had liked Gerard. For one thing, he was talking with
me. In the past he rarely acknowledged me. But on this night
we talked, and it was a good feeling. I was able to enjoy the
illusion I was a member of a real family.
Considering our past long conversations, it was a fateful
decision on my part to talk no more to Yehudi. I could not
conceive that this would be the last time I would see him
alive.
Nevertheless, it was a good reunion. I heard the story of
how my mother Yaltah used to put me in a baby basket
underneath the piano as she practised and played. The
thought startled me. It was as if I had been raised from the
womb surrounded by music. I realized how truly I had been
under the spell of music from the first, as it thundered out
glorious melodies from the heavenly keyboard.
Lilly related to this story. Her mother, like mine, was
also a pianist. And she also used to lay her in a baby basket.
Only, in her case, she said she was put near the piano, not
directly under it as I was.
So while it had some pleasant and even revealing
moments, the reunion in San Francisco was probably no more
successful in reuniting the family from its various hurts and
wounds than Yehudi's efforts to stop the Six Day War had
been. In contrast, a grandly successful family reunion was
staged by the Australian side of my family after the
Westminster Abbey memorial.
It was a gathering of the clan, all of whom shared the uncommon commonality of being mightily affected by their relation to this incredible man. My family moved from San Francisco to Los Angeles
early on after World War II, and I didn't see uncle Yehudi as
often as I had in the very first years of my life. Yet I never
stopped struggling with my being related to Yehudi. I think
this was so for all of us, including the Australians.
One of my earliest memories of the great man was in the
late '40s when I was under ten. Yehudi's parents, my
grandparents, Moshe and Marutha Menuhin, did not celebrate
Hanukah. Instead we had Christmas. And that Christmas we
had a giant Christmas tree, its tall trunk bent at the top under
the high ceiling in the front room of Rancho Yaltah in Los
Gatos.
Yehudi's Christmas gift to me was my most memorable
of the evening. My famous uncle gave me an Erector set, and
I loved it for years and years after that.
It would be at least two decades before he gave me
anything else. When I was having a tough spell getting going
as a magazine freelancer, he subsidized me to the extent of
paying my rent.
I ultimately concluded he wasn't wildly generous with
me. But, in the aggregate, he was generous to many people,
and not without concern for me.
If he didn't dote on his nephew, his influence was always
there. In the early '50s, Yehudi used to come to Los Angeles
and he always brought something new to our lives. On one
occasion he introduced us to raw fish. He cut some tuna and
we ate it. He also personally introduced Yoga to us. For a
while my mother was taking me to see Indra Devi, his yoga
teacher who lived in the Hollywood Hills.
On another occasion, I carried his violin case across the
campus of the University of Southern California. Two violins
were inside: Guarnerius and a "Strad." In an impish aside, he
told me he liked to announce to his audience that he was
playing one instrument, and play the other instead. He said no
one ever complained, or seemed to notice.
And over the years, whenever he came to Los Angeles
from London where he lived, he and I would meet at various
hotels and talk at length. He told me that I was the most
creative and intelligent of the Menuhin grandchildren. During
those meetings, we talked about Jewishness, writing, music,
his parents, history and politics. He thought the idea of
tracing the connection between the religious background of
the Menuhins and the musical background would produce an
important work. That was one of the reasons I felt compelled
to write The Menuhins.
All his life, he told me, he had heard of the Rebbes, his
most noble ancestors. He described them as the singing,
musical Jews. The first rebbe back in the 1800s, Schneur
Zalman, was also a musical prodigy. His songs brought
people to the new Hassidic movement.
Yehudi told me I was the only one who could carry on
the grand tradition of our mystical, cabalistic rebbe-ancestors.
To this day, I'm still pondering what he meant. Was he just
talking about Hitlahavut, that wondrous state of concentration
associated with the 18th-century Jewish mystic the Bal Shem,
wherein every-thing is always being made fresh and new
again?
I continue to ponder why Yehudi anointed me to carry on
the mystical, religious tradition that at best seems very
tangential to my modern-day existence in Los Angeles.
But there is a continuum, from the music to the tradition and philosophy of social activism. I came easily to that Jewish
tradition described in Fiddler on the Roof where the line
between social activism and religion is thin. Those Jews in
Russia who joined the revolution to replace the Czar's evil
and corrupt regime with a socialist paradise were really
expressing the old Messianic urge.
Since we Jews do not put much emphasis on the afterlife,
we've always tried to make this earth a better place to live.
Thus, even those who channel their religious energy into
social activism are acting out an old Jewish tradition.
It was no accident that during the war, Yehudi flew to the
fronts and played for the troops, often at considerable risk to
his own life. In the aftermath of the Second War, he was also
the first artist to play for the inmates of the concentration
camps, as well as the citizens of Berlin.
Published with permission from Lionel Rolfe
More -- Yehudi Menuhin's activism -- how he played to blacks in shanties and protested South African aparthied
Visit The Menuhin Foundation, Brussels
*Fantastic site -- Hitbox *Web's best -- Britannica *Superb coverage... worth tuning in to -- Rediff *Classy -- Deccan Herald
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I explored the California roots of my family saga in my
book Fat Man on the Left: Four Decades in the
Underground, where I described seeing Yehudi for the last
time in 1997.