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April 16, 2004/Nisan 25 5764, Vol. 56, No. 30
Concert recounts musical history
LEISAH NAMM
Managing Editor
Many aspects of Jewish culture have transformed throughout the years, and music is no exception.
A concert highlighting three periods of Jewish music, orchestrated by Abe Meth, will be featured at an Israel Independence Day celebration 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 28, at Temple Beth Shalom in Sun City.
The concert begins with Eastern European music, with Temple Beth Israel's Cantor Michal Shiff-Matter and Rabbi Emeritus Albert Plotkin, performing songs in Yiddish.
Next the program travels to America, where Shiff-Matter and Cantor Baruch Koritan of Temple Beth Shalom will perform English translations of musical numbers from the Yiddish theaters of the Lower East Side in New York.
The concert concludes in Israel, where Shiff-Matter, Koritan and members of the West Valley Chorale will sing Israeli songs in Hebrew. The program also features Rabbi Arthur Abrams of Temple Beth Shalom, Rabbi Leo Abrami of Beth Emeth Congregation, and performers Arthur Goldberg and Selma Stoorman. The Sun City Chamber Orchestra will accompany all performances.
Meth, the Sun City resident who orchestrated the concert, has exhibited a passion for music for nearly eight decades.
Meth started playing violin at age 7 and soon expressed interest in music composition and arrangement, which he studied privately. After receiving a teaching degree from the Teacher's Institute of the Jewish Theological Center in Budapest, he taught at a Jewish day school and, in his early 20s, began studying music orchestration and composition at the National Conservatory in Budapest.
But in the early 1930s, after nearly three years at the conservatory, Nazi anti-Jewish laws were instituted, and he lost his teaching job and was no longer allowed to attend the conservatory.
For several years, music took a back seat to survival.
"There was a hiatus during the war," Meth says. "I didn't play at all. I was just hiding most of the time."
He and his wife Lillie, who were married in 1939, were separated from each other many times during the war, interned at different labor camps. The longest period they were apart was six months.
In 1945, after Budapest was liberated by the Russians, Meth and his wife began the process of rebuilding their lives. "It took four or five years to settle down, find an apartment. I began to play again when I came to America in 1948," Meth says.
The Meths first lived in Kansas City, Mo., where they were active with Congregation Beth Shalom, a Conservative congregation. Meth organized a youth orchestra and was a Hebrew school teacher. "I would say that I prepared over 1,000 children for their bar/bat mitzvah over a 30-year period," he says. "Every now and then I bump into some grandfather or father and they say, 'Remember me? You were my bar mitzvah teacher.'"
While in Kansas City, Meth wrote a musical, "Out of the House of Bondage," about the Exodus. The piece was performed at several venues including the centennial celebration of Utah State University in Logan, Utah. He's also produced the musical twice in Sun City during the 25 years he's lived in Arizona. "Now it's resting in dust in my cabinet, and I'm waiting for someone to show some interest in it and have it developed and produced again," he says.
Meth has produced several musical programs for Temple Beth Shalom in Sun City, where he and his wife are members, and he played with the Sun City Chamber Orchestra for 15 years.
Long after retirement, he still enjoys teaching. He teaches Hebrew to adults in Sun City and helps prepare them for their b'nai mitzvah. On Saturdays, he travels to Beth El Congregation in Phoenix to read the Torah for the congregation.
The Meths have two children, Joseph Meth, who lives in New York, and Agnes Oblas of Phoenix.
Details
- What: Israel Independence Day music festival
- Who: Temple Beth Shalom
- When: 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 28
- Where: Temple Beth Shalom, 12202 101st Ave., Sun City
- Cost: No charge
- Call: 623-977-3240
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