Jacob Weinberg

Jacob Weinberg (1 July 1879 – 2 November 1956) was a Russian-born American Jewish composer and pianist who composed over 135 works for piano and other instruments. He was one of the founders of the Jewish National Conservatory in Jerusalem before immigrating to the U.S. where he became “an influential voice in the promotion of American Jewish music” from the 1940s until his death. Life and career Weinberg was born in Odessa in the Russian Empire (present-day Ukraine) to Dora and Wolf (Zev) Weinberg. His family was middle class and his father was a merchant who died when Jacob was only 12. Jacob wrote an essay about how he had been sent to a synagogue to say the Kaddish prayer in mourning for his father. He wrote that he had not been raised in an Orthodox home and he was not familiar with the sounds of the Hebrew language in the prayer but he fell in love with the music of the language and the rhythm of the prayer. This sparked his interest in Jewish religion and Jewish music. One of his uncles was Peter (or Pyotr) Isaevich Weinberg (or “Veinberg”). (Peter was a very prominent translator of Shakespeare, Goethe, Heine and other luminaries into Russian. Peter was a friend of Anton Che