January 28

Sarah McLachlan (1968)

It was on this date, January 28, 1968, that Canadian musician Sarah McLachlan was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She started singing at age four. Not only does her voice attract fans, with songs like "Adia," "Angel," "Hold On," and "Sweet Surrender" — yielding three Grammy Awards — but McLachlan has also distinguished herself as an activist.

McLachlan founded and held the first annual Lilith Fair in 1996, to spotlight women in music, with proceeds going to charities benefiting abused women. For advancing the careers of women in music, in 1998 McLachlan was awarded the Elizabeth Cady Stanton Visionary Award. Since 2001 the Sarah McLachlan Music Outreach Program has provided free music education classes to inner city youths whose school music programs have been cut. She also visited Thailand and Cambodia in 1992 to draw attention to poverty, hunger and child prostitution in the region.

When asked what religion she follows, she replied in a 1996 interview, "I don't follow any organized religion, but I do believe in the idea of god as a verb — being love and light, and that we are part of everything as everything is part of us."* McLachlan covered the British Punk/New Wave band XTC's song "Dear God" in a 1996 tribute CD—

Dear God, hope you got the letter and
I pray you can make it better down here
...
You're always letting us humans down
The wars you bring, the babes you drown
Those lost at sea and never found
And it's the same the whole world 'round
The hurt I see helps to compound
The Father, Son, and Holy Ghost
Is just somebody's unholy hoax
...
If there's one thing I don't believe in
It's you
Dear God.

* 28 May 1996 SprintChat. Online source: Celebrity Atheist List, at this link.
** Ibid.

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Artur Rubinstein (1887)

It was also on this date, January 28, 1887, that Polish-born American pianist Artur Rubinstein was born in Łódź. His parents were merchants who saw to his education: by age five he was already performing classical works at the piano. When he was 13, Rubinstein gave his first formal concert in Potsdam. Six years later, after studying with the likes of Paderewski, he made his Carnegie Hall debut.

It took Rubinstein another 30 years, and performances on film soundtracks in the 1940s and 1950s, to win an international reputation and US citizenship. He is considered one of the greatest pianists of the 20th century. His biographer, Harvey Sachs, says, that although there was much opportunity for an orthodox education in the Łódź of Rubinstein's childhood, "Arthur was given virtually no religious education.... As an adult he referred with pride to his Jewish origins but he called himself an agnostic."*

"My father," said Rubinstein, "had taken me, once or twice, to a synagogue, but only for musical reasons — to hear a famous cantor sing."** His younger daughter, Dr. Alina Rubinstein, a psychiatrist, says he was reluctant to call himself an Atheist "because it was so hard to accommodate the idea that a musical 'gift' like his could have come 'out of nowhere.'"

Sachs goes on to relate this anecdote:

Once, late in Rubinstein's life, Franz Mohr — Steinway's chief concert technician, who was a deeply religious man — attempted to "talk to him about the gospel" ... he cut me off and said, "Don't worry about me. When I get to heaven, I have no problem. I am Jewish. and if Moses is there at the gate, he will let me in.... You know my wife is Catholic — maybe it is St. Peter who is at the gate ... so he will let me in. And I have a son-in-law who is an Episcopalian minister — so how can I lose!" In short, he did not take the issue very seriously.†

* Harvey Sachs, Rubinstein: A Life, 1995.
** Ibid.
† Ibid.

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