Many years ago in New York, Leonard Bernstein’s son told me about riding across Long Island in the family car, as his father drove, furious and horrified, after hearing a news report on the radio about 1960s New York City, in which Puerto Rican and European American youth had fought and died on the street. Needless and heartbreaking death – and Leonard Bernstein went home and wrote West Side Story. This contemporary Romeo and Juliet story, still beloved today, is an ongoing testament tobuilding bridges between cultures that may feel are too different from one another.
Here at the Newark Symphony Orchestra, I was able to sit recently round my dining table in Newark, Delaware with Rabbi Michael Beals and Maestro Simeone Tartaglione about our upcoming Jewish Heritage Concert: our hopes to share music from a culture that has been developing and evolving for thousands of years, with you, featuring, of course, among others, Leonard Bernstein.
I hope you will be able to hear the attached interview – less than 10 minutes long – which WDEL radio aired on Sunday, October 12 on their program, The Rabbi Speaks.
Purchase advance tickets for our Sunday, October 26, 2025 Jewish Heritage Concert.
Margaret Badger