The Jewish Conductor and the Polish Pope

How two men used music to bridge religious differences and historical hatreds.

By MATTHEW KAMINSKI in Mosaic Magazine
One February day in 1988, Gilbert Levine was summoned to the Vatican's Bronze Gate. "Where is that?" he asked. The Brooklyn-born Jewish conductor had no idea that the Portone di Bronzo was the principal entrance to the Apostolic Palace. He had met his first Catholic priest only months earlier.

At the palace, Pope John Paul II, vigorous at 67, welcomed Mr. Levine to his private library. The pope had asked to meet the American who had recently taken over the philharmonic in Kraków, the Polish pontiff's hometown. This was still the Cold War, and Mr. Levine was the first Westerner to lead a major musical institution in the Soviet sphere. "How are you treating my orchestra?" the pope asked with a twinkle in his eye. Turning serious, "How is my orchestra treating you? You know, maestro, they are not much fun for conductors."

"A crazy conversation ensues," says Mr. Levine, who's now 66, recalling that first meeting. The two men discussed music, Kraków and Mr. Levine's family. The conductor's father's parents emigrated to America from prewar Poland. His mother-in-law survived Auschwitz; some 40 relatives perished in the Holocaust. As a child, Karol Wojtyła had played soccer and gone to school with Jews. He told Mr. Levine that he had lost many close Jewish friends in the war.

"Something came over me in the midst of this," says Mr. Levine. "I really thought this was such a rare opportunity that would never come again, that in any case I was meant to be there for some reason and that six million people had died and I said to him, 'I believe God put you on this Earth to make things better between your people and mine.' I said those words to the pope. And he stopped talking. And he looked down." He never replied directly.

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