ETCETERA

NIGHT CAP

Music Moves Me: The Original Remix

A long-forgotten composer and the young man who brought him back.

By Sam Zerin

hen I left Detroit to spend a year in Israel, I only
planned to improve my Hebrew. Instead, I returned
with a business, a fiancee and clear-cut goals for my
future.
After graduating from the University of Michigan, where
I majored in music history, I knew I wanted to spend more
time in Israel. (Until the end of 7th grade, I grew up in In-
dianapolis, where I was one of maybe 10 Jewish kids in my
school; I always craved more Jewish knowledge.)
At Michigan, I took tons of Jewish studies courses,
traveled to Israel with Birthright and returned there the
next summer as a volunteer English teacher for children
affected by the rocket attacks in Sderot. Before applying
to graduate school in musicology, I wanted to solidify my
Hebrew and do some serious research in the Jewish music
archives in Jerusalem.
Unfortunately, the archives were under construction
and closed for the entire year. So, aside from taking a
Hebrew course at the
Hebrew University
and developing my
Yiddish language
skills on my own, I
began to explore the
Conservative Jewish
world in Israel and
visited the Conser-
vative Yeshiva in
Jerusalem.
The environment
not only seemed
conducive to improv-
ing my Hebrew and
Talmud skills, but
I also felt that the
serious atmosphere
would enable me to

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focus on my research.
Thanks to the funding I received from Masa Israel Jour-
ney, I registered for classes.
Then I met Rachel. In my first Hebrew class at the Con-
servative Yeshiva, I introduced myself and spoke about
my Jewish classical music research; and her interest was
piqued.
It turned out that she, a future rabbinical student at
the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, had been a
double major in religion and music. Three months later, we
were engaged.
Around that time, something else big happened to
me. I was accepted to participate in Masa Israel's Building
Future Leadership program, where I could take part in
entrepreneurship workshops and develop my own entre-
preneurial project.
Since college, I had dreamed of launching an organi-
zation to raise awareness of Joseph Achron, an all-but-
forgotten Lithuanian-Jewish classical composer. Achron
fascinated me. Beyond his excellent compositional talent,
he also expanded the notion of Jewish music — combin-
ing the secular, religious, ancient and modern in his many
pieces.
The Building Future Leadership program gave me the
tools to write a business plan and deliver a successful
elevator pitch. It also gave me confidence. One Friday
morning, the other participants and I headed to the shuk
(outdoor market) to work on our marketing skills. Our task
was to get people to buy a little extra food and donate it
to the poor. It was not easy to approach people at first; but
with practice, we were able to collect more food than we
could ever have imagined.
I returned to the United States with a clear vision for my
future: I joined my fiancee, who was by then living in New
York, took a few jobs teaching Hebrew school and began
learning German and Russian for my graduate studies.
I also launched the Joseph Achron Society. We pub-

C aucus Caw

lished the sheet music for
one of his concertos that had
been performed only once
before — by Achron himself
in the 1930s.This month, an
orchestra in Brandenburg an
der Havel, Germany, will
perform the piece for
the first time in more
than 70 years — as
part of a concert
series of music by
Jewish composers.
Ironically, this city
is one of the first
locations where the
Nazis experimented
with killing their victims
by gas.
As I prepare
for my summer
wedding and my
Ph.D. in musicol-
ogy at New York
University, I look
forward to con-
tinuing to restore
Achron's long-
forgotten works.
Working to fill in
this gap in the classical
music repertoire is my form of

tikun olam FaT

Sam Zerin is a 2005 graduate of Andover High School and Ada Shalom syna-

gogue's Monday night "Nosh and Drosh" program. His parents reside in West

Bloomfield.

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26 May 2011

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