Our tormentors demanded songs of joy: "Sing us your songs of Zion." Psalm 137.
Joyous songs of Zion. This phrase struck me after watching a documentary (Netflix: Broadway Musicals: a Jewish Legacy) about the amazing influence of Jewish musical geniuses on mid-twentieth century music and especially the Broadway musical.
Growing up in a working class, Catholic family in the 1950s, our home was always alive with the Broadway music of that period: light-hearted, humorous, optimistic, catchy, affectionate, sentimental, joyful. On a tight budget for a family of nine children, my parents would nevertheless splurge at Christmas to bring us to Broadway. That music was the air we breathed.
I always considered myself at best a middle-brow, culturally, in many ways, especially regarding music. I don't go to the ballet or opera; don't really listen to classical music; can't even remember the names of musicians and groups (except for Sinatra, Elvis and the Beatles.) I've had a closeted inferiority complex about my taste: the musicals, glory and praise, some Gregorian/Church, folk, and pop music like Whitney, Barbara and Cher. But after watching the documentary, I happily realized that I have good taste: the Jewish-American corpus is populist but brilliant, wholesome, inspiring and inspired.
George and Ira Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, George Cohan, Rogers and Hammerstein, Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim and a litany of others! Geniuses each and every one of them. Marvelously, they drew upon a rich tradition of Yiddish theatre and music as they developed a distinctively American corpus of music, integrating black gospel, jazz, blues, folk, elements of classical and a delicious buffet of sources. It was at once both Jewish and American. Cole Porter, a singular gentile outlier, allegedly determined to "write Jewish tunes" and afterwards became successful.
Much of this music was written during the Great Depression, World War II, and the genocide of the Jews. Things could hardly be worse! Yet the music is impeccably happy, radiantly hopeful. How is this possible? I attribute it to the deep, residual Jewish faith God.
To be sure, these Jewish composers were hardly observant Orthodox Jews: they were for the most part assimilated, secular , and agnostic. But they were close to their Jewish roots. While they detached from religious practice and cognitive belief, their lives and music drew upon the bottomless fount of centuries of Jewish worship, suffering, faith, endurance, erudition, culture, and family life. In other words, their music in those dark times drew from the same fountain of Joy that inspired the songs that so impressed their Babylonian captors 2500 years ago.
It is mysterious, but undeniable, that the Jewish people carry in their cultural DNA an extraordinary gift for culture: study, entertainment, finance, education, law, medicine, comedy, music, psychology, and politics. They carry a zest for life, an esprit de corps, a sense of humor, a sharpness of intellect. I guess that's what happens when you spend a few millennia in friendship with G-D.
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