Holocaust took place, that Jews and Judaism are still
very much alive.
"My kippa, my beard, my tzitzit — these are not
props," he said. "They are Who I am."
Ten years ago, when he first played in Hungary, he
recalled, "People told me that no one had worn a kippa
in public for 40 years. They said I was giving courage,
setting an example, for those who were afraid."
Particularly in Germany, he said, "when people ask
me what am I really doing [there], I feel that it is an
inner compulsion to confront death."
Sometimes, he said, "Christians start crying. I'm not
here to resolve people's conflicts, but I know that what
I do helps, that music helps."
Jacobowitz, who did not grow up in a reli-
giously observant home, studied at the
Eastman School of Music, in Rochester, N.Y.
He made aliya to Israel in the 1980s,
became Orthodox and now lives — when he
is not on the road — in the West Bank settle-
ment of Kiryat Arba, near Hebron.
For more than a decade, he has spent eight months
of the year touring Germany and other European
countries, going from city to city by car and pulling a
trailer containing religious books and kosher food as
well as his marimba. He sleeps, and often prays, in
parking lots.
Jacobowitz models his profession and lifestyle after a
19th-century Chasidic musician named Michael
Joseph Gusikow, who took Europe by storm in the
1830s by playing classical music on the straw fiddle, a

type of xylophone that Gusikow himself invented.
Gusikow was born into a family of musicians in
what is now Belarus, in about 1806. With his typical
Chasidic attire a visible part of his mystique, Gusikow
toured Russia and then Austria, Germany and France
to great acclaim before his death in 1837.
He became so popular that Orthodox side curls
sparked a fashionable hairstyle among society women
— the "coiffure a la Gusikow." The composer Felix
Mendelssohn was one of his fans.
Jacobowitz discovered Gusikow when he was in
music school doing research on the marimba — an
instrument more frequently associated with Latin

told an interviewer two years ago that he took in
between $1,000 and $2,000 a day thanks to donations
and on-site sales of his CDs.
In Poland, local audiences compared him to one of
the most famous characters in Polish literature —
Jankiel, the Jewish innkeeper and cymbalom player in
the epic I9th-century book Pan Tadeusz, by Adam
Mickiewicz.
But Jacobowitz has also been the target of anti-
semites.
"You develop a radar about it," he said.
On the first day he played in Germany, in 1991, he
said, he was hassled by skinheads, who heckled him
and looked as if they might attack.
"I felt challenged," he said. "I
wasn't going to go away, and I wasn't
going to be afraid."
Several Americans in the crowd
stepped in and prevented any vio-
lence.
Though Jacobowitz has played all over much of
Europe, his performances in Krakow marked the first
time he had taken his act to Poland.
He timed his visit to take place during Krakow's
annual Festival of Jewish culture, which draws many
Jewish performers and tourists to the city.
But still, he admitted feeling uneasy playing in a
country with a history of antisemitism, and where 3
million Jews were killed in the Holocaust.
"This is a debt I wanted to pay with Auschwitz,"
he said.

An Orthodox marimba player reminds
Europe of its Jewish past.

American rhythms than classical works.
"If I didn't have Gusikow as a role model, I wouldn't
have such confidence in what I do," Jacobowitz said.
Jacobowitz is a consummate showman, whose spiel,
jokes and storytelling — in several languages — enliv-
en his virtuoso performances.
He enthralls audiences as he crouches and twists his
body and arms over the marimba, hitting the keys with
four flashing mallets, and sometimes inviting an
onlooker to grab a mallet and join him.
Crowds are usually friendly — and generous: he

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