Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
The Schmooze

How the Violin Became the ‘Jewish National Instrument’

Crossposted From Under the Fig Tree

Courtesy of University of Iowa Libraries Special Collections Department

Just the other night, amidst the glorious surroundings of the Music Room of The Phillips Collection, whose walls are bedecked with one masterpiece after another, over 100 people gathered together under the aegis of George Washington University’s Program in Judaic Studies to hear Professor James Loeffler of the University of Virginia incisively discuss how it came to pass that the violin became known as the “Jewish national instrument.”

I suspect this was the very first time that the Music Room rang with explicit talk of the storied relationship between the Jews and classical music. But it’s hardly the first time that the nation’s capitol engaged in such a discussion. Many years before, Israel Zangwill’s potboiler of a play, “The Melting Pot,” debuted in D.C. Applauded enthusiastically by Teddy Roosevelt, the country’s president at the time, the four-act drama centered on music.

In Zangwill’s imagined universe, settlement houses in the heart of the ghetto pulsed with music, immigrant Jews named Mendel gave piano lessons to American boys named Johnny, while a Russian Jewish violinist composed a symphonic salute to the United States, which he fulsomely called “Sinfonia Americana.”

Here, and elsewhere throughout the play, Zangwill gave voice to the belief that listening to a concerto or a symphony or a march was not just an aesthetic experience but a civic and communal one with the capacity to weld together America’s oldest and newest citizens. From where he sat, music was key to an expansive and inclusive sense of the world.

Is it any wonder, then, that so many Jews took up the violin, that instrument of longing and possibility?

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.