PINK!, WIZARD OF OZ, & JUDAISM..... Pink! performance at Oscars 2014 [● LIKE & SHARE ●] At the 2014 Oscars, they celebrated the 75th anniversary of the release of the Wizard of Oz by having Pink sing Somewhere Over the Rainbow, with highlights from the film in the background. But what few people realized, while listening to that incredible performer singing that unforgettable song, is that the music is deeply embedded in the Jewish experience. Perhaps the most poignant song emerging out of the mass exodus from Europe was Somewhere Over the Rainbow, lyrics written by Yip Harburg, the youngest of 4 born to Russian Jewish immigrants. His real name was Isidore Hochberg & grew up in a Yiddish speaking, Orthodox Jewish home in New York. The music was written by Harold Arlen, a cantors son. His real name was Hyman Arluck and his parents were from Lithuania. In writing it, the two men reached deep into their immigrant Jewish consciousness- framed by the pogroms of the past and the Holocaust about to happen - and wrote an unforgettable melody set to near prophetic words. Read the lyrics in their Jewish context and suddenly the words are no longer about wizards and Oz, but about Jewish survival....[click below to read more] The Jews of Europe could not fly. They could not escape beyond the rainbow. Harburg was almost prescient when he talked about wanting to fly like a bluebird away from thechimney tops. In the post-Auschwitz era, chimney tops have taken on a whole different meaning than the one they had at the beginning of 1939. Pinks mom is Judith Kugel, of Lithuanian background. As Pink was belting the Harburg/Arlen song from the stage at the Academy Awards, I wasnt thinking about the movie. I was thinking about Europes lost Jews and the immigrants to America. I was then struck by the irony that for two thousand years the land that the Jews heard of once in a lullaby was not America, but Israel. The remarkable thing would be that less than ten years after Somewhere Over the Rainbow was first published, the exile was over and the State of Israel was reborn. Perhaps the dreams that you dare to dream really do come true. ✔ via the Kosher Culture Foundation
Posted on: Sun, 14 Sep 2014 13:50:36 +0000