by dan pine
staff writer
“Classical music is a field covered with dead bodies,” says Rabbi Moshe Cotel. “Of the few survivors, I happened to be one who flourished.”
Forget false modesty. Cotel speaks the truth. A Julliard trained pianist, he chaired the department of composition at Baltimore’s Peabody Conservatory. His 1985 opera “Dreyfus” ran in New York, Vienna and Germany, with Cotel himself conducting many performances.
But in 2003 he swapped the podium for the pulpit, becoming an ordained rabbi. He now serves as spiritual leader of a Brooklyn Conservative congregation.
That doesn’t mean he left music behind. For several years, Cotel has been touring the country with “Chronicles,” a concert/lecture/Torah lesson he subtitles “A Religious Life at the Classical Piano.”
Cotel brings “Chronicles” back to the Bay Area with performances May 31 and June 3 in Palo Alto and Berkeley, respectively. Both concerts are co-sponsored by several Jewish and Christian congregations.
In his presentation, Cotel draws on the music of titans like Bach, Mozart, Mendelssohn and Gershwin. None of them wrote overtly Jewish music (though the latter two were Jewish). But the spiritual power of their art well illustrates the rabbi’s musical midrash.
“It’s nine rabbinic monologues, each illustrated from the repertoire,” says the 64-year-old Manhattan resident.
For example, to talk about tefillin, he plays a piece for the left hand by Alexander Scriabin (tefillin is wrapped around the left arm).
To illustrate kavanah, or “mindfulness,” Cotel chose a very different composer. Not a European, not a classicist, not even a human. He chose his cat, Ketzel.
Ten years ago, the cat wandered into the study as Cotel practiced. Ketzel jumped on the piano and started walking down the keyboard. Instead of shooing her away, Cotel decided to take dictation.
“It was 30 seconds of cat splats,” says Cotel, “but it seemed to have a beginning, middle and an end.”
As a lark, he entered Ketzel’s piece in a European competition. To his astonishment, the tune was selected. “To this day,” he affirms, “Ketzel remains the only cat on earth who has ever won a prize in an international music competition.”
That’s one magnificat.
As for Cotel, he was raised in an observant household, but music soon supplanted Judaism as his religion. He wrote a symphony at 13, and later won the Rome Prize, which led to further musical studies in the Italian capital.
While there he had a Jewish reawakening. Giving his uncle a tour of the city, he passed the famed Arch of Titus, which memorializes Rome’s sacking of the Second Temple. All over it they found graffiti: “Am Yisrael Chai.”
That inspired him to move to Jerusalem, where he lived for a few years pursing music. Upon his return he launched his long association with Peabody.
He had another pivotal Jewish moment when he took private German lessons with an elderly immigrant. Months after their lessons ended, she approached Cotel to thank him.
“She was one of those German kids whose parents waited too long to get out,” recalls Cotel. “She was raised Catholic. But she always remembered. She said to me, ‘I didn’t tell you. I was born Jewish. Now I’m coming back to it in my old age. And it’s all because of you.’ My life changed in that moment.”
Soon thereafter, he enrolled in rabbinical school, and in 2003, he was ordained. For the last several years he’s served at Temple Beth El in Brooklyn. His congregation has asked him to renew his contract. So apparently they don’t mind he has taken “Chronicles” on the road with more than 50 performances to date.
The next two will be here in the Bay Area, home to his daughter, Orli Cotel, who works for the Sierra Club. Though these shows are the original “Chronicles,” he already has a few revised versions in mind, some of which will include his own compositions.
Not a bad musical career for a man who was prepared to leave music behind.
“I have asked myself: Was I sent to rabbinical school to be the maestro rabbi?” he says. “Apparently, God is an ironist.”
Moshe Cotel performs “Chronicles” 7:30 p.m. Thursday, May 31, at First Presbyterian Church, 1140 Cowper St., Palo Alto; and 7:30 p.m. Sunday, June 3, at Congregation Netivot Shalom, 1316 University Ave., Berkeley. Tickets: $10-$18. Information: (650) 325-5659 for Palo Alto; (510) 549-9447 for Berkeley.
CopyrightJ, the Jewish news weekly of Northern California