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RUTH E. GRUBER
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
lex Jacobowitz calls himself the "classical
klezmer."
Like klezmer musicians of centuries past,
the 39-year-old native of New York state
makes his living traveling from country to country and
city to city, playing music on the street.
But he's not one of the thousands of jeans-clad, gui-
tar-strumming buskers who pass the hat in subway sta-
tions and city squares. And he doesn't even play
klezmer music — the traditional popular music of
Eastern European Jews.
Jacobowitz is a classically trained artist who per-
forms the works of Bach, Vivaldi, Mozart and other
classical composers on a marimba — a gigantic instru-
ment resembling a 6-foot-long xylophone that stands
waist-high and has 100 keys.
And, as an Orthodox Jew, he performs before
Germans, Poles, Hungarians, Scandinavians and other
Europeans in a kippa, beard and peyot, the-side curls
worn by men and boys in some. Orthodox sects.
Tzitzit, the fringes attached to his prayer shawl, hang
free from under his shirt.
"I'mtrying to bring people together through
music," he said during a break in a performance, before
dozens of tourists in the vast, medieval main square of
Krakow, Poland.
Not only that, he added. He also is consciously
making the point, in the countries where the
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