Moshe Cotel facts for kids

Moshe (Morris) Cotel (born February 20, 1943 – died October 24, 2008) was a talented pianist and composer. His music often showed his Jewish background. Later in his life, he became a rabbi, which is a Jewish religious leader.

Early Life and Learning

Morris Cotel was born in Baltimore on February 20, 1943. He grew up in an Orthodox Jewish family. His parents were Charles and Lena Bormel Cotel.

From a young age, Morris was very busy. He went to two schools at the same time! He attended the Talmudical Academy of Baltimore and the Peabody Conservatory at Johns Hopkins University. He started at Peabody when he was only 9 years old. There, he studied music and took classes to get ready for college.

When he was just 13, Morris wrote a huge symphony that was 200 pages long. His piano teacher at Peabody was amazed and didn't believe him until Morris showed the finished music score.

He later earned two degrees from the Juilliard School in New York City. He got his first degree in 1964 and his second in 1965. When he was 23, Cotel won a special award called the American Academy in Rome Prize for music. This allowed him to study art in Italy for two years.

Music Career

Morris Cotel became a professor of music composition at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore. He taught there from 1972 until he retired in 2000. Even after moving to New York City in 1977, he kept his job at Peabody. He would travel to Baltimore every week to teach.

As a Composer and Performer

A newspaper called The New York Times wrote about one of his performances in 1977. The review said that Morris Cotel was a composer and pianist with "unusual capabilities." This means he was very talented at both writing and playing music.

His Compositions

Morris Cotel wrote many important musical pieces:

• His opera Deronda was based on a book called Daniel Deronda by George Eliot. This story was about a Jewish character from the Victorian era who had ideas about Jewish identity and spiritual beliefs.
• The Fire and the Mountains was a cantata, which is a type of musical story. He wrote it to remember the Holocaust.
• Trope for Orchestra was a choral piece. It used special musical patterns called cantillation. These patterns are used when reading the Torah in a synagogue.
• His 1985 opera Dreyfus was about the unfair trial of a French officer named Alfred Dreyfus. This event caused a lot of anti-Jewish feelings in France.

Becoming a Rabbi

Before a trip to Germany and Austria for performances of his opera Dreyfus, Cotel wanted to improve his German language skills. He got help from a woman who had survived the Holocaust.

Later, he met the same woman again. She told him that hearing about his efforts to share the story of Alfred Dreyfus had made her want to return to Judaism. This meeting made a big impact on Cotel. He decided he wanted to become a rabbi.

Cotel said about the meeting, "Without knowing it, I had changed this woman’s life, and she had no idea that she had just changed mine." Soon after, he started studying part-time at the Academy for Jewish Religion.

He retired from his teaching job at the Peabody Conservatory in 2003. He wanted to focus completely on his rabbinical studies. Three years later, he received his rabbinic ordination, officially becoming a rabbi. He described his journey by saying, "My religion changed from Judaism to classical music, and in adulthood it changed back again."

A Cat's Composition

In 1996, something funny happened. While Morris was playing the piano, his 3-year-old cat named Ketzel jumped onto the keyboard! Cotel wrote down the notes his cat's paws played. He entered this short piece into a music competition in Paris. The piece, called Piece for Piano Four Paws, won an honorable mention!

As a Rabbi and His Passing

For the last five years of his life, Rabbi Cotel was the spiritual leader of Temple Beth El in Manhattan Beach, Brooklyn.

Morris Cotel passed away peacefully on October 24, 2008, at age 65. He was found in his apartment in Upper West Side of Manhattan. His wife found him wearing his tallit (prayer shawl) and tefillin (small boxes with scripture) for his morning prayer service. She thought he was meditating, as he liked to pray alone for two hours each morning.

Family Life

Morris Cotel was married to Aliya. They had a son named Sivan and a daughter named Orli.

Main Works

• Deronda, Opera in Three Acts (1985–1989)
• Dreyfuss, Opera in Two Acts (1980–1983)
• Trope for Orchestra - a choral work
• My Shalom, My Peace (1980) - for children's chorus, harp, and percussion, based on poems by Jewish and Arab children
• The Fire and the Mountains (1977) - a cantata for chorus, children's chorus, soloists, and percussion
• Night of the Murdered Poets - premiered in 1978 with actor Richard Dreyfuss as narrator
• Piece for Piano Four Paws by Ketzel, for piano