World-renowned violinist Yehudi Menuhin (pronounced yuh-HOO-dee MEHN-yoo-ihn), who “stunned listeners with his pure tone, his virtuosic technique and his interpretive insight,” first came to fame as a child in the late 1920s.
Yehudi’s two younger sisters, Hephzibah and Yaltah, were also musical prodigies; both went on to become concert pianists.
The trio’s parents, Moshe and Marutha Mnuchin, were Jewish immigrants from Russia. They were living in New York City when Yehudi was born in the spring of 1916. Marutha chose her son’s name while the couple was looking for a place to live:
They found an apartment on 165th Street where the landlady bragged about its exclusivity. “I don’t rent to Jews,” she said proudly.
(…)
Marutha loudly proclaimed, “But we are Jews.” And the landlady replied, “You don’t look Jewish.”
She had no doubt meant this as a compliment, for she indicated that she might be willing to rent to them. She never got the chance, however. Marutha rocked back on her heels and angrily cried out, “I will name my child Yehudi (the Jew), so the whole world will know he is Jewish.”
Years later, in his memoir, Yehudi wondered why his mother hadn’t simply given him “the name of any patriarch.” He concluded:
An Abraham, an Isaac or a Jacob is a part of history, begotten and in turn begetting; ‘the Jew’ is Everyman, evoking no model and continuing no line. (…) [M]y mother was determined that no burden of the past, either claims of relations or Jewish tradition, should encumber her children.
Moshe, Marutha, and baby Yehudi moved to San Francisco in 1917. Two years later, upon becoming an American citizen, Moshe changed the family surname to Menuhin.
Hephzibah (pronounced HEHF-zee-bah) was born in 1920, and Yaltah — who was named after Marutha’s birthplace, the Crimean city of Yalta — was born in 1921.
P.S. In the late 1930s, Yehudi Menuhin’s unusual first name inspired the catchphrase “Who’s Yahoodi?” The phrase was soon turned into a song [vid].
P.P.S. The name Judith (which ranked inside the U.S. girls’ top 10 from 1939 to 1946) derives from Yehudit, the feminine form of Yehudi.
Sources:
- Rolfe, Lionel Menuhin. The Menuhins: A Family Odyssey. San Francisco: Panjandrum/Aris, 1978.
- Menuhin, Yehudi. Unfinished Journey: Twenty Years Later. New York: Fromm International, 1999.
- Menuhin, Moshe. The Menuhin Saga: The Autobiography of Moshe Menuhin. London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1984.
- Kozinn, Allan. “Sir Yehudi Menuhin, Violinist, Conductor and Supporter of Charities, Is Dead at 82.” New York Times 13 Mar. 1999.
- Who’s Yehoodi? – Wikipedia
Images: Clippings from the Phonograph Monthly Review (Jul. 1928) and the Montgomery Advertiser (18 Nov. 1927)