Daily Podcasts Video Research

Why Prokofiev once called himself 'the only Jewish composer'

JL;DR SUMMARY Sergei Prokofiev, the renowned Russian composer, intriguingly dubbed himself "the only Jewish composer" in jest, despite his non-Jewish background and mixed engagement with Jewish themes in his work. A way out west there was a fella, fella I want to tell you about, fella by the name of Jeff Lebowski. At least, that was the handle his lovin' parents gave him, but he never had much use for it himself. This Lebowski, he called himself the Dude. Now, Dude, that's a name no one would self-apply where I come from. But then, there was a lot about the Dude that didn't make a whole lot of sense to me. And a lot about where he lived, likewise. But then again, maybe that's why I found the place s'durned innarestin'.

JL;DR members get full summaries of all articles in the archive, including this one. Donate & start reading »

Tags

Jewish ThemesKlezmerJewish Cultural IdentitySergei ProkofievOverture On Hebrew ThemesMira MendelsonIda RubinsteinSimeon BellisonZimro Ensemble

Places mentioned

Saint Petersburg, Russian Federation
"He studied at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory, which unlike other Russian institutions of higher learning at the time, accepted more than a token number of Jewish students."
Prague, Prague, Hlavní mešto, Czechia
"Sergei Prokofiev at a piano in a recording studio in Prague, circa 1940s."
New York, United States
"Yet four years later, on a trip to New York, he attended a Yom Kippur service at an unnamed synagogue."
Chicago, Illinois, United States
"Its American debut in Chicago in 1919 celebrated a local convention on Jewish statehood."
Tel Aviv, Tel Aviv District, Israel
"Szenkar led the world premiere performance of Prokofievs Russian Overture in Tel Aviv in 1938."

Support this source

This item was indexed and curated by Cairo, JL;DR's web crawler.
Cairo Item ID 80656
Cairo Source ID 35
Retrieved 2026-04-23 05:31:31 UTC
Curated 2026-04-23 08:31:05 UTC