How Do Jewish Musicians Celebrate Christmas? By Thomas Wolf

How did Russian Jewish musicians of my grandmother’s generation deal with the December holidays once they settled in United States?  For some, like the conductor Serge Koussevitzky and the violinist Efrem Zimbalist, the decision was straight-forward.  They converted, became Christians, and celebrated Christmas.  For others, like my grandmother Lea Luboshutz, the less said about religion the better.  Lea was happy to go along with whatever celebrations were taking place – especially the secular aspects – but once in America, she no longer practiced any religion.  Though her grandfather had been a rabbi, she had had enough of Jewish persecution in the old country and was not at all sure about the new one. After she arrived here, she never set foot in a synagogue again.

But life became a bit more complicated when her daughter, my mother Irene, married an American Jew whose father and grandfather had each been presidents of their temple. The Wolfs did practice their religion both at home and at the synagogue.  When December rolled around, they celebrated Chanukah. As a good wife, so did my mother.  On the other hand, earlier in her life, when my mother arrived in the United States at the age of twelve, she had experienced her first American Christmas at the home of one of Lea’s patrons.  It had been overwhelmingly exciting. Mom loved the gift-giving, the decorated tree with lights, the ample food with Yule logs of rich chocolate…even the fruit cake.  And the good cheer was infectious. She was not about to give that up once she had a family of her own. So she convinced my father that our family should also celebrate Christmas.  Thus, we children thought it perfectly natural to celebrate both Chanukah and Christmas.  Chanukah was for Judah Maccabaeus and prayers; Christmas was for Santa Claus and presents.

Each year, my mother supervised the decorating of a giant Christmas tree spanning two floors of our house (it helped that the central corridor built around a staircase was open to the third floor).  Under the tree, there would be piles of gifts to be opened on Christmas day (including a small pile for grandmother Lea).

Sadly, I have no photos of our tree; but looking at images on the internet, this photo is a close approximation of what our tree looked like.  The wrap-around stairway allowed us to decorate the upper branches and my mother always personally placed an angel on top.

As my brother and I grew older, Christmas became ever more important, not so much for the gift giving, but for the opportunity to earn money.  During out teenage years, as our professional performing careers began, there were opportunities to play lucrative Christmas programs and we developed several offerings that were popular.  Christmas concerts featuring the Wolf brothers were festive affairs including lots of light music and often ending with a Carol sing. I would conduct the audience, singing at the top of my lungs, while my brother banged out the piano accompaniment.  He and I probably memorized more Christmas Carol lyrics than most Bar Mitzvahed boys our age and for some programs one or the other of us would even dress up as Santa Claus. Sometimes we pressed other musicians into service and when we did so, I would put down my flute and move to a chair next to the piano and become Andy’s page turner – that is, I turned the pages of his music while he played.

As a pianist, Andy knew he could rely on me as the person who would organize his music and turn the pages at the right time.  I had grown up in a family that included four professional pianists and had been inducted into the page turning fraternity at a very young age. I was good enough to graduate from family members to professionals on big stages and I learned the importance of mastering the idiosyncrasies of each player. Some liked their pages turned early – a couple of measures or sometimes three or four before coming to the end of the page. Others liked me to wait until the very last note. Some marked places in the music where they could turn themselves so I would not be a distraction. Others wanted me to carry their music on and off the stage. I learned how important it was to talk in advance about whether or not repeats in the music would be observed necessitating my turning back a page or sometimes multiple pages (always a tricky operation).

Then there were the stage antics one had to get used to. The pianist Rudolf Serkin, my brother’s teacher, had what I would call a round-house left and when the music indicated a loud bass passage, I would be sure to stay out of the way of his left arm rotating into my space. Another pianist, Seymour Lipkin, liked having his music lie flat within the piano case making it virtually impossible for me to see it from a sitting position (I kind of squatted). Most would give me a slight head nod.  But with Andy I had an almost instinctive sense of what he wanted and needed and we rarely had to talk about it.  I needed no cues. I never worried and neither did he.

At one particular Christmas concert, Andy was playing one of the pieces with a violinist friend and I was his page turner as usual. As we walked on to the stage, he handed me a towel. “Oh, I almost forgot,” he said, “Here.” And that was all – no explanations as he and his colleague took their bows. It was not unusual for Andy to give no instructions.  He always assumed I could read his mind but this time I was stumped.  Throughout the performance, I remained puzzled about why I was holding a towel. Perhaps Andy was worried he was going to sweat. But he didn’t seem at all hot or sweaty.

When the musicians arrived at the finale, there were several glissandi indicated in the music requiring Andy to extend his thumb to a lower note and pull it quickly over all the white keys going up the scale. And then I realized what the problem was. Andy had cut his thumb earlier that day and while the cut had closed up somewhat, it did not stay closed during the first glissando. “Wipe,” he called out in a stage whisper and I dutifully dodged his hands while I cleaned the blood off the keys without sounding the notes, an accomplishment that I am proud of to this day. When another glissando came round, the process was repeated…and so on until the end of the piece. When the work was finished and Andy was taking his bows, I thought about whether I should wipe the keys one more time and I decided not to. It would distract from the musician accolades. And given that it was a Christmas concert, the red keys seemed appropriate to the occasion.