‘Hatikvah’ And ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’
I was pleased to see the very erudite June 30 op-ed article by Harvey Rachlin on the commonalities of “Hatikvah” and “The Star-Spangled Banner” – a comparison so appropriate for the July 4 weekend.
I would like to address the discussion of “Hatikvah,” particularly the Jewish sources of its melody. While I do not question Mr. Rachlin’s statement that the root of the tune is the “Italian canzonet, La Mantovana,” this is a source that we in the academic field of Jewish folksong are not familiar with.
Our authoritative sources, Professors Avraham Z. Idelsohn (1929) and Eric Werner (1976), have written that it first appeared as a Jewish melody in the Spanish-Portuguese synagogue of Amsterdam in the late 16th century as a “Tal,” which is sung to this very day in Spanish-Portuguese synagogues.
Idelsohn does find this “wandering melody” in an old Spanish cancion and a traditional Basque (Spanish) folksong. An Italian source is not mentioned. From our Jewish music historical perspective, this same “wandering melody” was used for the famous “Yigdal” of Chazzan Meier Leon of London, (1760s), and the iconic “Etz Chaim Hi” by Chazzan Sulzer of Vienna (1820), both of which are still sung in our shuls to this day across the world.
Not knowing any other source, the famous Slavic composer Smetana called it a “Bohemian melody” that he utilized as the theme of his Ma Vlast symphony in the section called “Die Moldau,” for the river that courses through Czechoslovakia.
Eventually, this (possibly) Jewish “wandering melody” was paired with the Imber poem and became the Israeli national anthem.
Cantor Sherwood Goffin
Belz School of Jewish Music
Yeshiva University
Non-Orthodox Jews And The Kotel (I)
In view of the total rejection by Rabbi Rick Jacobs and his Reform and Conservative cohorts of the most basic tenets of Judaism, it is surely way past time for them to drop the inappropriate labeling of their movements as Judaism (“The Battle for Halachic Judaism,” editorial, July 7).
It is excruciatingly painful and infuriating to view the videos of women and girls gleefully and loudly disrupting the prayers at the Kotel on Roshei Chodesh, wearing talleisim and tefillin at rakish angles and making a mockery of halachic Judaism.
Any form of Judaism not based on halacha is an oxymoron.
Fay Dicker
Lakewood, NJ
Non-Orthodox Jews And The Kotel (II)
Reform Jews’ complaint (as you noted in your editorial last week) that they
“don’t want to pray at a second class Kotel,” an area set aside for non-Orthodox Jews and men and women to pray together, is a little puzzling.
Our Temple was rife with rituals that were based on strict Torah law. The Kotel, being a remnant of the Temple, in essence represents precisely the kind of Torah values that the Reform movement makes every effort to ignore.
Given the spiritual connection (or lack thereof) Reform Jews have to the Kotel, why do they even want to pray there? They might as well gather at the Great Wall of China. At least there they could perform rituals that are probably a lot more meaningful to them than Torah rituals – like eating Sushi and doing the Chinese Macarena.
What Reform Jews need to remember is that our only claim to Israel comes from the Torah. It’s therefore only fitting that those who actually observe the Torah call the shots.
Allowing Reform Jews to establish policy in Israel is like allowing a tax cheat to run the IRS.
Josh Greenberger
Brooklyn, NY
Truman And Israel: An Exchange
I read Saul Jay Singer’s July 7 Collecting Jewish History column with much interest.
I will concede that at the end of the day President Truman did defy practically his entire administration in recognizing Israel. However, as Mr. Singer knows, New York Governor Tom Dewey was running against Truman in 1948 on a robustly pro-Zionist platform and was overwhelmingly favored to win the election.
While Truman indeed gave lip service to Israel at that crucial moment, the State Department had briefed him that Israel couldn’t hold out more than several weeks in a war with the Arabs. So what was Truman saying? Yes, I recognize you and now you can go out and make bricks without straw, because I am not allowing even one screwdriver to leave these shores in order to aid you in your battle for survival.
Truman proceeded to impose a total weapons embargo on Israel. In my view, he intended to let Israel fend for itself and then, after it had lost the war, he could tell the world that he meant well, but unfortunately the Jews could not stand up to the forces arrayed against them.
Ironically, it was not Truman who physically saved Israel from annihilation but the notorious Joseph Stalin, who temporarily suppressed his anti-Jewish bias for the sake of what he believed to be the USSR’s pressing immediate strategic interests.
In fact, he extended de jure recognition of Israel faster than Truman did. Believing he would get a warm water port to the Mediterranean and that the socialist-minded Jews would help him spread Communism, he armed Israel, primarily with German Messerschmitt planes from Czech munitions factories captured from the German war machine.
So it was the Soviet Union that in fact saved Israel from immediate destruction. Of course, not long afterward, seeing that the new state was aligning itself with America, Stalin did an about-face on Israel. But the truth is that Stalin, no friend of the Jews, was responsible for Israel’s victory in 1948, not Truman and his cronies.
Rabbi Yaakov Feller
Brooklyn, NY
Saul Jay Singer Responds: Many thanks for taking the time to write and for your interesting note.
To reply in brief:
The record on Harry Truman speaks eloquently and incontrovertibly to his support for Israel and Jews. Without going into detail here, in recognizing the state of Israel he took on the entire State Department, including Secretary of State George C. Marshall – whom he deeply admired and characterized as “the greatest living American” and who all but threatened to resign over the issue.
Truman also made the move in the face of significant resistance in his own cabinet and among broad swaths of the American electorate.
These are not the actions of a man merely engaging in “lip service,” as you put it. Nor did Truman’s support of the right of the Jews to Eretz Yisrael come only at a “crucial moment,” as you claim. His support was long and deep and actually intensified during the post-Holocaust years.
Moreover, I have always felt that Jews and Israel need to take their friends – who have historically been few and far between – where and as they find them. For example, Richard Nixon was no great lover of Jews, as his White House tapes amply demonstrate, but there can be no question that, whatever his motivation, he saved Israel during the 1973 Yom Kippur War.
Similarly, I have always argued it is a grave error to question the motivation for the incredible support of Israel by born-again Christians who, for example, flooded Israel with tourists during the intifada at a time when Jews themselves were staying home
Even if you are correct about Truman’s motivation – and I do not believe you are – it in no way mitigates the monumental and historic importance of his bold step in recognizing Israel immediately after the declaration of the Jewish state. Moreover, there can be no question that Israelis themselves disagree with your evaluation of Truman, who remains the only American president honored on an Israeli stamp.
Finally, you are correct that in a strictly legalistic sense, the Soviet Union was the first to recognize Israel de jure – it of course had its own political and far from altruistic motivations for doing so – but Truman and the United States extended instant de facto recognition. And that was indeed a very big deal, a fact that no historical revisionism can change.