Or, Not the Football Player. 😉
One of the things I do for fun when I’m not working, writing, spoiling cats, or playing the Sims is… singing in Jewish choirs. Kind of a niche hobby, I suppose. But as such, that means I’m pretty familiar with Louis Lewandowski. He wrote a lot of Jewish choral music. Like, a lot.
He was born April 3, 1821, WrzeÅ›nia, Poland, and died Feb. 4, 1894, in Berlin. Lewandowski was the first Jew admitted to the Berlin Academy. (They didn’t change the rules for him, they made an exception.) Those of you who have read my book might be feeling a moment of familiarity at this point. This is not a coincidence.
As I said in the back of my book, Abraham is not Lewandowski. They just share a birthday–moved a day during edits–a birth place, and a desire to attend the same institution.
But Lewandowski was legitimately admitted at the request of his friend (and rumored crypto-Jew) Felix Mendelssohn. I thought it was more dramatic for Abraham to make the choice many in his position made, and lie. The Spanish Inquisition didn’t consider conversion at swordpoint to be “forced’–they insisted that one could choose to die instead. Abraham didn’t fake-convert at swordspoint, and arguably Prussia had more pressing heresy issues than Jews pretending to convert for academic reasons, what with the whole Protestant Reformation thing going on. But it’s a thing he definitely comes to regret.
Lewandowski, on the other hand, wrote hundreds of songs and had a long, productive mortal life. He’s stylistically very much like Mendelssohn, as you might expect from two friends of similar backgrounds from the same time and place.
Abraham’s pretended conversion owes more to Mendelssohn’s father, Abraham, a banker and the son of Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn. At the age of seven, Felix and the rest of his family converted to Christianity in a private home baptism. This was done less out of any religious fervor–Abraham Mendelssohn reportedly raised his children without religion prior to their baptism–and more to a sense that Judaism was doomed. He even tried to get the children to change their last names to something less Jewish. This was unsuccessful; Felix was proud of his Jewish heritage.
As to his actual religious convictions: Felix Mendelssohn was highly reticent on the topic. People have debated his faith, but in the absence of an actual statement from Felix himself, nothing can be proven.
Here are the Lewandowski pieces I’ve sung the most (note: to my Abraham’s horror, Lewandowski was pro-organ-music)
- Louis Lewandowski – Halalujoh Psalm 150 // Synagogal Ensemble Berlin CD: “Tuet auf die Pforten”
- Ma Tovu by Louis Lewandowski
- Louis Lewandowski – Kol Nidrei // Synagogal Ensemble Berlin CD: “Die Liturgie der hohen Feiertage”
- Unetaneh Tokeif
Honorable mention:
