Thurnauer School honors its first leader

When she was 5 years old, Dorothy Kaplan Roffman had already decided to be a teacher when she grew up. At 8, she began learning violin. And by 20, she was harmonizing those two aspirations.

“I love the feeling of explaining something and feeling that the student understands what I’m saying and is responding in the right way,” she said.

Now 85, she has taught approximately 10 to 15 violin students annually for the past 65 years. She still teaches violin at the Thurnauer School of Music at the Kaplen JCC on the Palisades in Tenafly. She is the school’s founding director and its director from 1984 to 2025. Now she is its director emerita.

Ms. Roffman will be honored at Thurnauer’s annual Gift of Music scholarship benefit concert on Sunday, March 29. (See box.)

Born in Cuba to parents who escaped Nazi Germany in the late 1930s, Ms. Roffman grew up in Washington Heights, the northern Manhattan neighborhood that was heavily populated by German Jewish refugees.

After earning a bachelor’s degree in English and music from the University of Rochester and its Eastman School of Music, and a master’s degree in musicology from Columbia University, she taught violin at the New York Association for the Blind, at SUNY Stony Brook. This was followed by teaching at the Harlem School of the Arts, which sent her to study with pioneering music educator Shinichi Suzuki in Japan, and then at the Lighthouse School of Music and at the Manhattan School of Music.

In 1975, 4-year-old Amelia Gold of Englewood desperately wanted to take violin lessons. Her mother, Dr. Sandra O. Gold, engaged Ms. Roffman to teach Amelia –—who would later graduate from the Juilliard School and now is the arts department chair and principal of the Lower School at the Elisabeth Morrow School in Englewood. Seeing the preschooler’s exceptional talent, Ms. Roffman suggested enrolling the child in the Manhattan School of Music. Her classes were held on Saturdays.

“Amelia always said she’d be Orthodox when she grew up,” Dr. Gold recalled. “When we drove past Congregation Ahavath Torah,” an Orthodox synagogue in Englewood — “on our way to the Manhattan School of Music, she said to me, ‘I can’t be Orthodox because I will have to take my children to music school on Saturday.’ That’s what put the idea into my head to start a community music school” with a schedule that would accommodate Sabbath-observant students.

The JCC on the Palisades was the perfect venue for such a school; the center is closed on Shabbat, though it welcomes members of any faith and ethnicity. And Ms. Roffman was the perfect leader for the new school. “I knew Dorothy was the right person to take on this job, to make it a first-class experience for every child,” Dr. Gold said. “Her standards are high and her values are impeccable.”

Ms. Roffman accepted the challenge. “The idea of being able to shape a school with the things I thought were important was very exciting,” she said. Despite being apprehensive about taking on a directorship position without experience, she dove into the role and launched the school with 25 students in 1984. Three years later, William and Maria Thurnauer endowed the fledgling school, and it was named in their honor.

“The JCC has been a wonderful home for the Thurnauer School, and we have had marvelous supporters through the years,” Ms. Roffman said. “I’m very grateful to all the people who made this happen.”

Over the years, Thurnauer students have performed with Whoopi Goldberg and Bob McGrath on “Sesame Street,” and have appeared at Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, and Merkin Concert Hall in Manhattan, and at bergenPAC in Englewood.

“My goal was to create an environment where children would enjoy the uplifting experience of learning music and attending concerts, and Dorothy has accomplished that,” Dr. Gold said. “She embraces music education with her whole heart.”

Michael Reingold, the Thurnauer School’s associate director, has worked with Ms. Roffman for nearly 33 years. He describes her as “dedicated, determined, visionary, hardworking, collaborative, inspiring, playful, creative, and fun. As an administrator and fundraiser, she’s very focused. She believes profoundly in her soul in the ultimate mission of creating well-rounded musicians who become good citizens and lovers of the arts, and in ensuring accessibility for all who want a music education.”

That is the purpose of the Gift of Music scholarship benefit concert, established by Drs. Joan and Alan Handler in 1991. Ms. Roffman said the event is always headlined by “incredible musicians” who play solo and with Thurnauer students and alumni.

Co-chaired by Craig Barnett, Amelia Gold, Vivian Holzer, and Carey White, and hosted by Elliott Forrest of WQXR 105.9 FM, this year’s concert will feature alumni including Kevin Lin, concertmaster of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. Other highlights include Thurnauer Orchestra alumni performing Leonard Bernstein’s “Mambo” and a world premiere by faculty composer Emily Ostrom, written in celebration of Dorothy Kaplan Roffman.

Though Ms. Roffman turned over the Thurnauer leadership reins to director Mai Abe and artistic director Emma Brondolo last July, she admits to “working as hard as I always was, putting more time into teaching and thinking about teaching and thinking about the future of the school. I can’t imagine not teaching here.”

The longtime Tenafly resident still “rolls out of bed right into the JCC” to nurture violin students, some of them as young as 3.

“My specialty is the early years,” Ms. Roffman said. “I think it’s important that children begin in the right way, that music is introduced in a way that engages the students and helps them love it, in spite of the difficulties.”

Developing musical proficiency “doesn’t happen easily or quickly. Learning is a process, and the luckiest people are those who enjoy the process and are not frustrated by it. I prepare families for what the journey is going to be like. I help guide the parents to never lose their sense of humor, to always have a feeling of the pleasure of learning together, and to be patient and feel proud of what their children are accomplishing. When a parent has that joyful attitude, then things work.”

Ms. Roffman’s insistence on intense parental involvement in music education echoes the parenting style she and her husband of 62 years, physicist Eric Roffman, chose for their own four children. They thoroughly researched whatever subject each child was interested in pursuing, seeking the right teacher and educational environment.

The oldest Roffman daughter, Kim Field, is an environmental engineer in the energy sector in London. Karin Roffman teaches English and poetry at Yale and wrote a critically acclaimed book about the poet John Ashbery. Ian Roffman is a lawyer in Boston. Their youngest, professional violinist Sharon Roffman, formerly concertmaster of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, lives in Paris.

With her children, and seven grandchildren ranging in age from 25 to 6, living across the United States and in Europe, Ms. Roffman is sensitive to the troubling societal divisions she sees and hopes to use the arts to heal these rifts.

In 2024, the Thurnauer School commissioned its artist in residence, Rob Kapilow, to write a five-movement work for chorus and orchestra, based on Faith Ringgold’s book “We Came to America.” Ms. Ringgold, a famous and influential artist, writer, quilter, and activist, lived in Englewood from 1992 until she died in 2024. “We Came to America” was presented at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark and at the Mayo Performing Arts Theater in Morristown.

“I’d love to see that wonderful work performed throughout the country,” Ms. Roffman said. “It comes with a curriculum on the value of immigration and enjoying each other’s culture, art, music, literature, and food. There should be many more opportunities to appreciate one another as we move forward.

“The arts bring us all together and help us see how much we all have in common. I want to help that happen.”

“Dorothy has been the heartbeat of the Kaplen JCC’s Thurnauer School of Music for decades, with an unwavering commitment to music education for all,” Sue Gelsey, the JCC’s CEO, said. “The Kaplen JCC is thrilled to celebrate Dorothy for what she built, for elevating the Kaplen JCC, and for all the lives she has changed for the better.

“We are truly grateful to her.”

What: The Gift of Music benefit concert, the Thurnauer School of Music’s annual fundraiser supporting need-based scholarships.

Where: Kaplen JCC on the Palisades in Tenafly

When: Sunday, March 29, 4–5:30 p.m., preceded by pre-event exhibition from 3-4 p.m. and followed by a VIP reception from 6-8 p.m. in Englewood Cliffs.

Tickets and sponsorship: Email the JCC development department at Development@JCCOTP.org or go to www.jccotp.org/event/gift-of-music-2026.