Sylvia Rothchild, novelist, reviewer, and cellist; at 86
Books by the hundreds arrived at Sylvia Rothchild's house, year after year. Poring through them, sometimes five at a time, she would decide which to feature in her review column in The Jewish Advocate of Boston.
Reviewing was only part of her writer's life, however. She published a novel, a biography, personal essays, and two well-received oral histories - one weaving together interviews with Holocaust survivors, the other featuring Soviet Jewish émigrés. The flow of words, it seemed, was endless.
"So seldom in the world do you get to be yourself," she told the Advocate in 1995. "And in writing, I am myself."
Mrs. Rothchild, who could be as passionate about playing cello as she was about writing, died Sunday at Lahey Clinic Medical Center in Burlington of complications from surgery. She was 86 and divided her time between her home in the Brookline section of Chestnut Hill and a summer place in Truro.
A scientist by early training, she was the daughter of European immigrants and found her way out of the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn, N.Y., to become a sought-after speaker, lecturing across the country. Add to those travels the duties of a spouse, mother, grandmother, and amateur painter.
"She was this very complicated blend of all these different worlds," said her daughter Alice of Brookline.
Hebrew College in Newton, where Mrs. Rothchild taught for many years, awarded her an honorary doctorate in 1992. Teacher was another of her many roles, but in the eyes of many she met, one job trumped the rest. In the 1995 interview with the Advocate, she said, "I'm almost embarrassed when people say, 'Your name looks familiar. Aren't you the book reviewer?' "
To Mrs. Rothchild, such recognition suggested that people weren't familiar with her books and thought of her only as a reviewer, a task she also performed for publications such as the Globe.
Her two oral history compilations, meanwhile, were praised by critics. Writing in The New York Times in 1985, John Gross said that in "A Special Legacy," Mrs. Rothchild's book on Soviet Jewish émigrés, the oft-told story of "the recent Jewish exodus from Russia . . . regains its original impact." The credit, he wrote, should go to Mrs. Rothchild, "who has already given proof of her editorial skill and good judgment in a previous book, 'Voices From the Holocaust.' "
As a child in Brooklyn, Sylvia Rosner grew up in a home where Yiddish was the principal language, where religious traditions were strictly followed, and where grand ambitions were not exactly applauded.
"You didn't go beyond your neighborhood, all of your cousins lived on the block," her daughter said. "It was the kind of world where she wanted to take piano lessons, but they cost 50 cents, and it was too much because her father worked in a sweatshop."
As a teenager, Mrs. Rothchild fell in love twice, with Seymour Rothchild, whom she met at a party when she was 16, and with the sound of the cello, which she heard at a Brooklyn College concert.
The Rothchilds married in 1944, and she left Brooklyn College before graduating, but by then she also was learning to play the cello, often under arduous conditions.
"Brooklyn kitchens were not designed for would-be cellists," she wrote in the Advocate in 2003. "The bow hit the stove when it went up and the refrigerator when it came down. I took to practicing scales pizzicato, plucking the strings until an angry neighbor opened his window to shout, 'Vots tvittering? Stop with the tvittering!' "
Though she had her first byline at 11, writing for her school newspaper, Mrs. Rothchild initially worked in the X-ray department of a company that produced quartz crystals. Her husband's career then took them to Rochester, N.Y., for his graduate studies, and to Boston for work. They settled in Sharon to raise their family.
In 1951, she began writing for Commentary and published, under a pseudonym, several articles about a town she called Northrup. Modeled mostly on Sharon, along with a few other suburban communities, Northrup was a place where the "Jewish community has grown from a small, struggling minority into an affluent majority," she wrote in the early 1960s.
Music was part of her life in Sharon, too. Her husband, who died in 2001, played violin. Over the years, they performed with the Sharon Civic Orchestra, the Boston Civic Orchestra, and the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra.
"My cello madness has enriched my life, my marriage, my family, and gave me a way to reach out to strangers who became my friends," she wrote in the Advocate.
Always fond of Cape Cod, Mrs. Rothchild and her husband bought a place in Truro.
"When they got there, they had one of the only houses," said her son, Joseph of Waban. "She landscaped it herself and carried rocks up from the beach."
She wasn't afraid to toss a few verbal stones, either, particularly in the more than 1,000 book reviews she penned for The Jewish Advocate, the Globe, and other publications.
Reviewing a new novel by Nobel laureate Saul Bellow in the Advocate, she curtly wrote in 1998 that "the plot of 'The Actual' is too thin to bother with." A couple of paragraphs later, though, she conceded that "the novel is nevertheless a pleasure to read. One meets Saul Bellow in his early 80s trying to make peace with his species."
Mrs. Rothchild also was still writing in her 80s, a course she had predicted in the 1995 interview with the Advocate.
"I plan to do this as long as I live," she said. "It's what I do."
In addition to her daughter and son, Mrs. Rothchild leaves another daughter, Judith of Octon France; two sisters, Miriam Goldkrantz and Vivian Schottenfeld, both of Brooklyn; and four granddaughters.
A memorial service will be held today at 10 a.m. in Levine Chapels in Brookline. Burial will be in Sharon Memorial Park in Sharon. 