Tuesday, May 29, 2018, in the land once known as America, but with each passing day a country becoming more and more desolate, divided and doomed to have never learned ANY lesson from not only world history, but its own 241 years of Independence!
"God Bless America" is an American patriotic song written by Irving Berlin a nice Jewish young man, an immigrant during World War I in 1918 and revised by him in the run-up to World War II in 1938. The later version has notably been recorded by Kate Smith, becoming her signature song. “I’d like to write a great peace song,” Irving Berlin told a journalist in 1938, “but it’s hard to do because you have trouble dramatizing peace.”
The song wasn’t without its critics. Certain Democrats called the song jingoistic, questioning why God should bless America and no other country, and what about separation of church and state? Others griped about Berlin’s pedigree. As a Russian Jew who immigrated to the U.S. in 1893, why should he speak for America? A prominent pastor in New York, Edgar Franklin Romig, grabbed headlines by calling the song a “specious substitute for religion.”
There is an introduction to the song, which often times is overlooked, or even ignored. For some it just seemed too ornamental and overtly dramatic, for others, it seemed just a waste of time, and why not immediately just get with the red, white and blue business of a song. And for many at the time, there was fear that God Bless America might overtake Star Bangled Banner and become the true national anthem for this country.
”While the storm clouds gather far across the sea,
Let us swear allegiance to a land that's free,
Let us all be grateful for a land so fair,
As we raise our voices in a solemn prayer. "
I remember listening to Kate Smith sing this song, looking at my Grandma Braff’s sisters and cousins, all immigrants as they placed their hands over their heart, wiped a tear from their eyes. My Grandmother would wait until the entire song was finished, especially the symphonic crescendo at the end of the song, and first wiping away any tears and God forbid any drippy ruby red lipstick from her lips, and remind all of us, that freedom was the thing about this song, not god blessing us, or praying…no, praying was something you did in shul…but freedom, without that… my Grandma Braff would insist as she pointed her very soggy handkerchief to the audience gathered…there is no god, no country, and no allegiance… Her people left Romania and generations of her relatives found fair, until the one day, the fairness became just fo some and not for everyone. It is Tuesday, May 29, 2018, the day after Memorial Day, and I decided to play my I-Tunes recording of Kate Smith singing, Irving Berlin’s ode to peace, “God Bless America,” and I cried because I am no longer certain how much freedom this country can offer!
