Saturday Special: Over the Rainbow

A song made popular in the Wizard of Oz has a deeper meaning and connects societies all over the world.

photo by Sue Cauhape

About a year ago, I picked up three piano lesson books, hoping to relearn playing an instrument that, in my childhood, was an instrument of torture. Decades later, I am struggling to learn, and making some progress, so I can spark an interest in my grandchildren for music other than Disney etal. So far, I've managed to build a repertoire of about eight numbers.

One piece I've finally mastered, sort of, is Over the Rainbow. When I play it, the music takes me away from the practice room and stirs memories of a place and view I held back in the 1970s when I spent a semester in Kibbutz Usha.

Through Facebook, I've friended a woman on Usha, a person I never met while there. Usha is way north of Gaza and the war. When I was there, we used to lounge around the pool listening to the cannons in Lebanon. A war was going on there that, for once, didn't involve Israel. The kibbutzniks were rather blasé then, even joking about an evacuation drill we were all supposed to do. The underground shelters grew grass on the stairs. Nobody wanted to go down there and I couldn't blame them.

These days, however, the residents of Usha are jittery about Hezbollah attacking them. Living daily life is a bed of tenterhooks. In fact, living in Israel has always been experienced on the edge, literally and figuratively. The temperamental behavior there makes doing simple errands harder than necessary, especially for a western American girl unused to someone exploding all over if she couldn't wrangle enough Hebrew to make on a purchase. Patience isn't a virtue.

That being said, every time I play Over the Rainbow, I nearly weep thinking about how the kibbutz came to my rescue after an incident with a local Bedouin, even as a non-Jewish non-member of the community. I was volunteering to work and putting in my best effort to do my jobs well, despite the language barrier. Apparently, that was enough for them to guide me through the medical and legal processes.

Also, I think about Jeannette, a Palestinian friend of my roommate, Gillian. We visited Jeanette and her family in their beautiful home on the slope of the Carmel that overlooked Haifa Bay. It was also across the street from what the Israelis call the Persian Gardens. Jeanette worked as a secretary there. They also harbored me during that stormy winter for a few hours. By the way, they were Christian Arabs; even the police noted that Christian Arabs have a lower crime rate that Muslims.

So what's the connection between Israel and Over the Rainbow? Judy Garland sang the song in the movie, Wizard of Oz, which came out in 1939. That was a pivotal year, era actually, when Hitler can into power and WWII started on its path to destroy much of Europe and especially the Jews living there. From a meme I saw on Facebook, the writer claimed the underlying theme of the song paid tribute to the Jewish dream of coming home to Palestine. "Next year in Palestine." The age-old goal of reaching Zion. It was a real place on Earth, but for most, it was a dream of Heaven.

As I write this now, I'm thinking of my great-great-grandmother, Dorothea Christiansen, who left her alcoholic husband behind and got herself and her sons to the Mormon Zion in Utah. It took her two years to arrive in Salt Lake City with her two youngest sons. The older two had already arrived and established their lives in Zion. As soon as her feet and meager belongings touched Utah soil, her second husband, a man who owned a wagon and was assigned to marry and carry her across the plains from St. Louis, MO, continued toward California and the Gold Rush.

Her whole life was horrid. Poverty followed her through the years, but a recurring dream gave her hope. Every night, she dreamed she would meet a man who would tell her what she could do and where to go to find answers to her prayers. Oliver Cowdery, a missionary for the Mormon Church, was that man. He told her about the new religion and urged her to set out for Utah. At 56, the physical wear on her body caused her death six months after she arrived in Utah. Thought many might see this wretched woman as a failure, but I consider her a heroine. She had a dream and, by God, she made it! It took everything she had, but she got there and in her last days lived in the bosom of her Faith.

Thousands of converts made their way to Utah over the ensuing decades. Comparisons between the Mormon experience and Jews going to Israel were discussed often in classes or lectures. To my surprise, when I mentioned to the Usha kibbutzniks I was Mormon, they knew exactly what I was talking about. Apparently, that comparison, appropriate or not, had made its way to them.

The dream of finding Paradise, a safe haven where like-minded people can gather and live is a universal mythology. Immigrants to America share that same dream and, as with the Jews coming to Palestine, and the Mormons struggling to establish their kingdom of God, the immigrants find hostility and hardship when they finally arrive. It's an arduous journey.

In the Wizard of Oz, the song may have been the wish of a little girl living in Kansas, but it speaks to humans everywhere. All of us are seeking paradise where there is no more hostility and war. "If happy little bluebirds fly, beyond the rainbow, why oh why can't I."

Why, indeed, can't we answer this question?

If you enjoyed this essay, please feel free to explore other poems, stories, and essays in the Ring Around the Basin Archives.