Re: Hatikvah, Yerushalayim shel zahav, God Bless America, etc

[MaxwellSt <MaxwellSt...>]

In a message dated 9/20/2002 4:48:33 PM Central Daylight Time, 
l_cahan (at) staff(dot)chuh(dot)org writes:


> I got the distinct impressionthat it was taken to be too "pro-Israeli" by 
> some, perhaps because of some contexts in which the song has come to besung 
> or even Shemer's personal politics.    

I don't think that this is a question of "too Jewish" (as Avi Hoffman 
entitles his revue) or the other impressions that this comment gave.  Some of 
Naomi Shemer's songs that I really like--such as "Al Kol Eyle"--were taken up 
as anthems by people that, for example, interpret the last line of the 
chorus--"return us and we will be returned...to the good land"--to mean "we 
must never give up Judea and Samaria."  When good songs are saddled with 
overtly political messages, they become statements that can overshadow their 
original more general meanings.  (This conversation could loop us around to 
Wagner again, but I'd rather it didn't.)  It doesn't mean one can't sing "Al 
Kol Eyle" without being a fanatic, but one should not be naive of how it has 
been colored by current events, either.
Lori