Conference Agenda

The songs of Irving Berlin have ingrained themselves in the Great American Songbook as exemplars of the country’s sound and spirit. Berlin’s journey from a Russian Jewish immigrant living in poverty to one of the nation’s most treasured and successful songwriters has been well-documented and incorporated into his legacy. An intensely private man, Berlin divulged little in his lifetime about how he perceived his personal identity throughout this shift, yet his biographers and other related scholars promote the narrative that he deliberately cast away his Jewish identity in favor of that of the general American.

Often cited to support this narrative is a group of purportedly antisemitic songs penned by Berlin at the start of his career. In accordance with the humor of vaudeville theater, popular on American stages in the early twentieth century, much of Berlin's early work featured caricatures of various ethnicities that displayed negative stereotypes. As a portion of those caricatures were Jewish, his biographers concluded that Berlin's derogatory portrayals of his ethnic group indicated his disdain for his cultural background. But a deeper reading of Berlin's lyrics suggests that, within the songs' formulaic boundaries, Berlin repurposed Jewish stereotypes to communicate emic knowledge and kinship.

My paper argues for a reframing of Berlin's Jewish novelty songs in the scholarly consciousness from crude ephemera to historical or even autobiographical documents that illuminate a young Berlin's multifaceted involvement in both the Jewish tenements and entertainment industry of early twentieth-century New York. I first compare and contrast Berlin's lyrical and musical portrayals of different ethnic caricatures, dissecting his communicated parameters of their behaviors and abilities. I then examine how his lyrics align with accounts of lived Jewish experiences and sentiments expressed in the writings of Berlin and those closest to him. My paper concludes that Berlin's Jewish novelty songs possess more depth and significance than previously represented in his biographical literature; specifically, that these songs not only allowed Berlin to write about his experiences during a pivotal period of his life but also to uplift and empathize with the community of Jewish immigrants to which he belonged.

After its 1885 premiere in Moscow, the opera Uriel Acosta by Valentina Serova (née Bergman, 1846–1924) continued its streak of success in Kyiv in 1887, though concerns of its aesthetic value and propriety began to surface in the press. Based on a tragedy by Karl Gutzkow, the opera tells of the trying situation of the eponymous philosopher for his scrutiny of the theologies of Catholicism and Judaism in sixteenth-century Amsterdam. Critics in Kyiv had made apparent that their judgement was marred by an acknowledgement of the composer’s gender, with one noting that the opera could offer a covert solution to the ‘woman question’ on which the intelligentsia had been ruminating. However, another aspect of the opera’s identity was put up for debate; whilst the majority extolled the spectacle of the opera’s synagogue scene in the fourth act, some found the performance of Jewish sacred rituals in the theatre shocking and incomprehensible, especially as it garnered applause rather than reverence. Such mixed responses and critical discourse reflect the heterogeneity of religiosity amongst Kyiv Jews – a heterogeneity resulting from the rapid modernisation of the city and the acculturating propensity of immigrant Jews from the Pale of Settlement. In the empire’s southwestern metropolis, the observance of Jewish orthodoxy, once intrinsic to the diasporic community, had become a choice.

Despite the proliferation of scholarship on Jewry and music, scant attention has been paid to the context of nineteenth-century Russia (likely due to the prevailing assumption that Jews in the vast empire are the least integrated of all European Jewish communities of that period). This paper seeks to redress this conventional way of thinking by evaluating the socio-political and musical context of the criticism received by Acosta in Kyiv. It will disentangle the complex relationship between manifestations of Jewishness in the public sphere and cultural production in a city less strictly governed by the Tsarist regime (than the capitals of Moscow and St Petersburg). In doing so, I expand the scope of the study of Jewry and music, and refine the lens with which to view Jewish musicians and musical themes in nineteenth-century Russia.

At the end of Fiddler on the Roof, the Jewish townsfolk are evicted from their homes by the Russian government. They sing “Anatevka,” a solemn dirge to their beloved but impoverished town. In earlier drafts, this music appeared in an uptempo number titled “Letters from America.” In that earlier song, a cousin’s letter prompts a debate about emigrating, weighing America’s economic opportunities against the loss of Anatevka’s Jewish traditions. Meanwhile, the original final number, “When Messiah Comes,” struck a more humorous (and less overtly Jewish) tone than “Anatevka.” These changes were not easy: a folder of songs refers to Anatevka as a “bête-noir” and went through multiple iterations. With these changes, the authors shift the focus and tone of the show, emphasizing the tragic displacement of Jews over emigration by choice, and centering the yearning for a homeland while decentering anxieties about assimilation and the US as their new homeland.

While the show’s emphasis on Jewish identity has been well documented, these specific emphases would have resonated strongly in 1964. Five months before Fiddler opened on Broadway, King Hussein of Jordan visited the US and denounced Zionism in a speech. The speech, and responses by Jewish rabbis and organizations, ignited a fierce debate about Israel, Jewishness, and assimilation among Jews in the US. Much of the renewed support for Israel was also framed within the context of the Cold War: as the USSR supported Arab nations, the US increased its commitment to Israel.

In this context, Fiddler offers a potent alliance between US values and Israel. Drawing on comparative analysis of “Anatevka,” “Letters from America,” and “When Messiah Comes,” along with other revisions to the musical, I suggest the show’s final moments center the need for a Jewish homeland—a home still threatened by Russians—and champion values held by Cold War-era US Jews.