Thursday, November 20, 2014
THE INHERITANCE OF ACQUIRED CHARACTERISTICS
My grandson, Samuel, has expressed an interest in learning to play the violin, so I shall foot the bill for a half sized instrument for his birthday present [he will be nine in December]. I have dreams of playing duets with him. What is it with little Jewish boys and violins? I think half of the little boys in Vilna must have studied the violin in the early twentieth century. Samuel's six year old sister [the one who is a shark at Backgammon] would like a pair of boots. So I went on line. Do you have any idea how many styles of boots there are for little girls? This business of being a grandpa is more complicated than it looks.
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3 comments:
Of course it might be the acquisition of inherited characteristics.
I would have said "Odessa", not "Vilna". Isaac Stern once memorably quipped that cultural exchanges between the US and Soviet Russia were simple affairs: "They send us their Jews from Odessa, and we send them our Jews from Odessa."
Heifetz was from Vilna, but the other famous Russo-Jewish violinists were from further east: Oistrakh and Milstein from Odessa, Stern from north Ukraine, Elman from Kiev, Zimbalist from Rostov, and Menuhin's family from Belarus (although Menuhin himself was born in NYC).
It must be a deep memory from my youth, when Heifetz was THE violinist. Also, my grandmother came from Vilna, so I was prejudiced. Fascinating. Thank you for that detail.
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