Remembering Hoffy

Today would have been Hoffy’s birthday. Had he lived, he would have been well over 120. He was already in his sixties when I first met him, being at that point a hugely nervous twelve-year-old who had barely started on the cello.

Reuben Hofmekler of Latvia — he took the first name Robert, though everyone on Earth called him Hoffy — already looked older than his age. Almost entirely bald, despite having once sported those blond curls which had deceived Hitler’s ghoulish minions into wrongly believing him Aryan, he boasted a prominent nose, a Santa-esque paunch, laughing eyes, a wonderful hand-span for the…