Jewish Stereo Types

...and that goes for the Jewish songwriters I've highlighted on this blog too, of course. Flipping through the Wikipedia articles on a smattering of these, I find Germany, Lithuania, England, Poland, Austria, Prussia, Belarus, and of course, broadly, Russia. Often there is no mention of where their parents or grandparents came from, just that they were Jewish and lived in this or that city. But one entry leapt out at me for specifically giving the city from which his parents emigrated--Rovno, which is now Rivne, in Western Ukraine: Leonard Bernstein. Of course, Bernstein wrote a great amount of music, both for classical venues ( Jeremiah , Candide , Kaddish ) and for Broadway ( West Side Story , On the Town , Wonderful Town ), but just as evidently he was best known for conducting, and one piece that he conducted seems particularly appropriate to me, coming in the middle of an attempt to destroy Ukraine. So today I bring you the beginning of the Fourth Movement of Beethoven's...

Video posted by arnau884 Of course, this "Best of All Possible Worlds" is from Leonard Bernstein's operetta based on Voltaire's satire Candide , and thus it is extremely tongue-in-cheek. You could even call it a bit mean-spirited, because, being a satire of Leibniz's optimism it is extremely broad and the philosophy it is satirizing is more subtle. (...But it is not entirely an unfair critique, either!) *** A positive raft of lyricists ultimately worked on Candide , but I believe that John Latouche wrote the lyrics for this iteration of "The Best of All Possible Worlds [The Lesson Song]," and although he apparently never mentioned it, Latouche was indeed Jewish, since both his maternal grandparents were . He died young (at age 41), but before that wrote the lyrics for some very well-known songs, such as "Taking a Chance on Love," and a number of musicals, plays, and even an opera. Of course, Leonard Bernstein was famously Jewish . And...