Just for fun--Hi Ho, Shekel!
One of the centrepieces of Most’s book is a chapter on Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II’s musical “Oklahoma!” and the secret Jewish messages both composer and librettist put into it. (Throughout the work she ignores “book” writers in her discussion of musicals, and attributes the entire structure to the composer and lyricist). For example, she discusses the character of the Persian peddlar Ali Hakim as in actuality a Jewish character, since the vast majority of peddlers in the American West were German Jews and since his name suggests “hacham,” a Hebrew and Yiddish word meaning “clever man” that Rodgers and Hammerstein would have known. This is ingenious. Loath as I am to differ with a fellow Canada-based academic and Harvard Press author, her contention goes against a number of points, such as that 1) The character was invented in the musical’s source, the non-Jewish author Lynn Riggs’s play GREEN GROW THE LILACS; 2) By 1889, when the play is set, most German Jews had ceased peddling, and a number of Arab immigrants were stuck in the trade, which by then had become significantly less lucrative; and 3) It is not at all clear that Rogers or Hammerstein, two very assimilated third-generation German Jews educated at Columbia University, spoke either Hebrew or Yiddish. The only foreign languages I can recall hearing in their productions is French (in SOUTH PACIFIC) and Latin (in THE SOUND OF MUSIC).
However, author Most goes on to suggest that Rodgers and Hammerstein were also influenced by Zionist ideals of a return to the soil, as is demonstrated by the title song, with its line “We know we belong to the land.” She then immediately changes the subject. However, this small idea, plus her exclusive concentration on composers, makes me realize that it is Richard Rodgers who is the subversive ideologist, and that OKLAHOMA! is a Zionist creation of his making. As Most notes, the title song contains the line “WE know we belong to the land/and the land we belong to is grand.” This is a direct lift from the Zionist folk song “Zum Gali Gali” “Eh-chalutz le-mon avo-dah/avo-dah lah mon eh-chalutz” (The pioneer belongs to the land/the land belongs to the pioneer.”
Richard Rodgers makes this association clear through his music. The tune for “Ev-ry thing’s up to date in Kansas City” is a slightly tweaked version of this same folk song!
Through this melodic association, he is saying not only that the pioneer wishes a return to the land, but that he has “gone about as fur as he can go” for it…
Another example is the music he adapts for Hammerstein’s lyric’s “It’s a scandal! It’s an outrage.” Instead of using a minor key to express outrage, he adapts the holiday song “Dreidel, dreidel, dreidel/I made it out of clay” Again, his unmistakeable point is that the pioneers risk of being trapped is no more serious than winning or losing the prize gambling on the spinning of a top. Meanwhile, the Jewish folk song “Hava Nagillah” (let us be joyful) Rodgers disguises effectively in the song “Many a new day”. He provides a hora for an after work dance.
The most subtle yet powerful example bit of Rodgers’s use of melodic citation as Zionist propaganda is his adaptation of the most famous Zionist tune, “Hatikvah,” which has become the Israeli national anthem. He transforms the tune, into the song “People Will Say We’re in Love.” The beginning of the song, with its minor key wail at the exile of the Jewish people, he uses to set the prohibitions (“Don’t throw bouquets at me,” etc.). However, in the chorus, when the song switches to a major chord to represent the hope of a restored homeland, he places “Sweetheart, it’s all right with me/let people say we’re in love.” His triumphant affection for the homeland he would never visit remains strong.
However, with this decoding accomplished, many questions remain about Rodgers’s views. Why did he not write OKLAHOMA! with his longtime writing partner Lorenz Hart? He reunited with Hart shortly after for their revival of A CONECTICUT YANKEE shortly thereafter, before Hart’s early death. Perhaps Hart’s presence among the writing team would have given away the real subtext too easily, given Hart’s notorious resemblance to Golda Meir. And why, as Most notes, did Rodgers and Hammerstein remove all the African American and Native American characters from Riggs’ original play, if they were going to put in a Muslim character? After all, according to Zionist ideology, the Middle East was empty and awaiting the pioneers. While we can only guess, perhaps the fact that the character was a Persian and not an Arab (despite his Arabic name) was meant as a model for the long collaboration between the Mossad and the Shah of Iran. Much remains to be done before any such questions can be answered with certainty. Yet here we finally have the beginnings of the answer to how Rodgers and Hammerstein developed the genius for political propaganda that would allow them a generation later, with THE SOUND OF MUSIC, to transform the mass of 1938-era Austrians into democrats and anti-Nazis.