When I met Jacques, the first question he posed after asking my name was: “Are you Jewish?” Even after knowing him for thirty-plus years, I couldn’t say exactly what the significance was of my answer to him... or why he even asked. Maybe simply to see if we were part of the same clan. He was neither a practicing nor a particularly knowledgeable Jew, but he was very connected to “being Jewish.” This was largely because of what it meant to be a Jew in France when he was a child.

His family of origin had been devastated by anti-semitism for at least the two generations which I know about. His father, Isidore (1906-1991), a soldier during the war, was imprisoned for five years in a labour camp. Upon returning to Paris, he discovered his parents had been deported to Auschwitz, along with many extended family members. Isidore was left with a nagging notion that his (first) wife had betrayed them. The woman who was to become Jacques’ mother, Simone (b. 1927), survived World War II as a teen, hiding in the outskirts of Paris with her single, illiterate Romanian mother who traded her body to ensure their safety. Simone vividly recalls her fear of venturing out to get food, covering the Star of David with her purse, then turning around and returning home – shaking and starving – after noticing a soldier nearby. In the last weeks of the war, Jacob (after whom Jacques was named), the only brother of Jacques’ father and a member of the French Resistance, was denounced and shot.

By the time the couple came together in the late-1940s, they brought with them all the unspoken war trauma they each carried. They proceeded to do what many did, to ‘re-populate’ the Jewish world by having children. There turned out to be five – of whom Jacques was the eldest -- and none could help being affected by their parents’ experiences. Jewish identity was in their history, their name (which Isidore refused to change), and in the ways in which they were treated by others. This did not necessarily extend to their practise of Judaism, though Jacques and his next brother, Raymond - who later changed his name to Reouven - became B’nai Mitzvot in a joint service at one point. (Neither of them learned Hebrew at this time but both were gifted in music and memorizing.) Raymond later became a Lubovitcher, the only practicing Jew in the family. He had nine children, who in turn spawned 25 children, all of whom remain Lubovitcher.

Prior to the war, Isidore’s family had several women’s clothing stores for which Isidore had worked as the buyer. After the war, the stores and the family were mostly gone. Although he attempted to salvage something of the business, it had been his father who ran things, so Isidore struggled on his own. When he and Simone got together, they tried unsuccessfully to resurrect the Paris stores. Although the family had been from Paris (Jacques was born in Cannes during a holiday), they moved to Le Mans to run the sole profitable shop that was being managed by Isidore’s first wife. I don’t know how this was arranged, or what happened to her, only that Simone worked there designing the store-front window displays. Apparently she was prone to ‘spells’ and took to bed at every slight. Isidore was compelled to invite his mother-in- law to come from Paris to live with them in order to look after the children and to cook. I don’t have a sense of how her infirmities affected the running of the store as much as they affected the family, but the store’s success was relatively short-lived. It was not, however, for the expected reasons.

The name of the street on which the family lived in Le Mans was Rue des Victimes de Nazisme. Ironically, the victim-hood of these particular residents didn’t end with the war. Jacques talked about having been continuously taunted as a “sale juif’ (“dirty Jew”) at school, which sparked some fights. Even more chilling was that within five years,the family was driven out of business and out of Le Mans itself by the wave of anti-Semitic rumors that swept through small towns in France in the mid-Fifties, e.g., accusations that Jewish shopkeepers were abducting women and selling them into prostitution in Africa. No amount of intercession with either the police or the church could make a difference, and the family was forced to leave and to re-invent themselves.

They farmed out the three older children to other homes during their transition back to Paris (1960), where they eventually opened a convenience store behind which they all lived—eight people, a dog, and a cat—in two rooms with no private bathroom. The older kids helped out in the shop after school and on weekends. Ultimately, however, the store failed when a larger grocery store opened nearby. So they closed their shop, moved to another apartment, and Jacques’ father began driving a taxi. This is what Isidore was doing when Jacques moved to the U.S. at age 17 for his university studies.

Within the family, Jacques had it best. During the travails of his childhood, he had a single focus from the age of eight: his violin. By the time he turned ten, he had benefactors. When the three older children were dispersed during the family’s transition back to Paris, Jacques went to the Jewish orphanage sponsored by his sponsor, the Baronness of Rothschild. The other two went to strangers’ homes. So he was plucked out of challenging situations by the combination of his gift, his grit, and his good fortune. This had a double effect: he led an easier life and was able to escape to some extent the ongoing family turbulence. Yet it also led him to feel responsible for all of them. And throughout his life, he remained keenly sensitive to issues of anti-Semitism.

Jacques was given to bold stands and on one occasion his position drew a lot of attention. That was when Jörg Haider, a known Nazi sympathizer, was freely elected in Austria and became part of that country’s governing coalition... at just the time the Toronto Symphony Orchestra was scheduled to play in Vienna (February 2000). Jacques, the TSO’s concertmaster, at first refused to join the orchestra’s tour, and his forthright stand created a controversy.

Ultimately compromises were reached. The orchestra did go to Vienna, with Jacques, but the printed program included a position statement (attached in translation below*) from conductor Jukka-Pekka Saraste on behalf of the orchestra. They also played an unscheduled piece, Meditations, from Leonard Bernstein’s Mass. During this trip Jacques met with the late Simon Wiesenthal, renowned Holocaust survivor, Nazi hunter, and writer. In my personal favourite of all his public acknowledgments, B’nai Brith honoured Jacques for his moral courage.

Jacques was a unifier—of art forms and artists, and of people from diverse circumstances. He became so happy conducting different orchestras, and was especially proud to spend one summer in the early 90s conducting the Orchestra of Youth from the Mediterranean where Arabs and Jews, Serbs and Croats were sharing music stands, meals, and friendships. He only saw the budding musician in each student, loving them all whether their gifts were large or not so large. He always found something to nurture and bring to life. What he said of composers was also true of his students: whichever one he was teaching or playing at the moment was his favourite.

Although he generally avoided organized religion, after being invited to play Kol Nidre at a friend's Yom Kippur service, Jacques continued to make this an annual offering (i.e., without fee.) He also played it on several occasions in the homes of very ill friends. There was one Yom Kippur when he was unable to play, so he asked one of his students, Amir Safavi, if he would play in his stead – which Amir did. Amir is not Jewish, so his gesture was particularly moving.

Jacques played over the phone and (in later years) over Skype to friends who were dying. He played at the death-beds of friends, including Molly Sverdrup, who had paid off the huge mortgage for Jacques’ violin as our wedding gift. He played Kaddish at the funerals of other friends. Less than a year before his own diagnosis, he played at my father’s service. As Jacques approached the end of life, I asked him if he would like someone to play Kaddish at his funeral. He said 'yes' and requested Amir, remembering how beautifully Amir had rendered the Kol Nidre. Jacques’ presence was palpable during Amir’s loving tribute to his teacher.

There is something about playing music that gives one direct access to spirit. Over the years, when Jacques’ grandmother, then his father, then his sister, then his brother died...he played for them, and to them. He did this both in the privacy and solitude of his own studio and in tributes on concert stages. It was his distinctive voice – and it was a Jewish voice.

* On behalf of all the musicians of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra I can assure you how much we look forward to the concerts at the Vienna Music Society. Nevertheless, the decision to accept an invitation for a guest appearance in Austria was not an easy one for us.

We are very disturbed by the widespread extremism in speech and ideology in Europe today. Many of our musicians are descendants of those who so recently suffered from racial intolerance and religious persecution. That makes the trip to Vienna in these times particularly difficult.

To express our dismay over the political situation in Austria we begin our concerts with the Meditation No. 1 from Leonard Bernstein’s “Mass.” Bernstein was an artist who fought tirelessly against intolerance and discrimination, and at the same time loved Vienna and its people. Canada is a young country with a commitment to multiculturalism. With the three concerts in Vienna the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, along with its youth allies itself with all those Austrian artists who commit themselves, as we do, to humanitarianism and tolerance.

       Translation:  Alice Pitt, Shaya Izenberg