Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gives speech to joint meeting of Congress | full video & Jews In New Amsterdam In The 1600s And The Antisemitism Of Peter Stuyvesant By Saul Jay Singer & Safeguarding Minhagim From The Nazi Era By Israel Mizrahi & Two Strikes For Rob Manfred By Irwin Cohen & 800-Year-Old Hebrew-Inscribed Tombstone Discovered in India & Irving Berlin "God Bless America" on The Ed Sullivan Show
Yehuda Lave is an author, journalist, psychologist, rabbi, spiritual teacher, and coach, with degrees in business, psychology and Jewish Law. He works with people from all walks of life and helps them in their search for greater happiness, meaning, business advice on saving money, and spiritual engagement.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gives speech to joint meeting of Congress | full video
The Three Musketeers at the Kotel
The Three are Rabbi Yehuda Glick, famous temple mount activist, and former Israel Mk, and then Robert Weinger, the world's greatest shofar blower and seller of Shofars, and myself after we had gone to the 12 gates of the Temple Mount in 2020 to blow the shofar to ask G-d to heal the world from the Pandemic. It was a highlight to my experience in living in Israel and I put it on my blog each day to remember.
The articles that I include each day are those that I find interesting, so I feel you will find them interesting as well. I don't always agree with all the points of each article but found them interesting or important to share with you, my readers, and friends. It is cathartic for me to share my thoughts and frustrations with you about life in general and in Israel. As a Rabbi, I try to teach and share the Torah of the G-d of Israel as a modern Orthodox Rabbi. I never intend to offend anyone but sometimes people are offended and I apologize in advance for any mistakes. The most important psychological principle I have learned is that once someone's mind is made up, they don't want to be bothered with the facts, so, like Rabbi Akiva, I drip water (Torah is compared to water) on their made-up minds and hope that some of what I have share sinks in. Love Rabbi Yehuda Lave.
800-Year-Old Hebrew-Inscribed Tombstone Discovered in India
Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred has two strikes against him in my book.
Irving Berlin "God Bless America" on The Ed Sullivan Show
"God Bless America" is an American patriotic song written by Irving Berlin during World War I in 1918 and revised by him in the run-up to World War II in 1938. The later version was notably recorded by Kate Smith, becoming her signature song.
"God Bless America" takes the form of a prayer (with introductory lyrics noting that "as we raise our voices, in a solemn prayer") for God's blessing and peace for the nation ("...stand beside her and guide her through the night...").
History
Irving Berlin wrote the song while serving in the U.S. Army at Camp Upton in Yaphank, New York at the end of World War I, but decided that it did not fit in a revue called Yip Yip Yaphank, so he set it aside. The lyrics at that time included the line "Make her victorious on land and foam, God bless America..."[2] as well as "Stand beside her and guide her to the right with the light from above".
Music critic Jody Rosen says that a 1906 Jewish dialect novelty song, "When Mose with His Nose Leads the Band," contains a six-note fragment that is "instantly recognizable as the opening strains of 'God Bless America'". He interprets this as an example of Berlin's "habit of interpolating bits of half-remembered songs into his own numbers."[5] Berlin, born Israel Baline, had himself written several Jewish-themed novelty tunes.[6]
In 1938, with the rise of Adolf Hitler, Berlin, who was Jewish and had arrived in the U.S. from Russia at the age of five, felt it was time to revive it as a "peace song", and it was introduced on an Armistice Day broadcast in 1938, sung by Kate Smith on her radio show.[7] This song has become the performer's calling card. Berlin had made some minor changes; by this time, "to the right" might have been considered a call to the political right, so he substituted "through the night" instead. He also provided an introduction that is now rarely heard but which Smith always used: "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." (In her first broadcast of the song, Kate Smith sang "that we're far from there" rather than "for a land so fair".)[4] This was changed when Berlin published the sheet music in March 1939.[4]
Woody Guthrie criticized the song, and in 1940 he wrote "This Land Is Your Land," originally titled "God Blessed America For Me," as a response.[8]Anti-Semitic groups such as the Ku Klux Klan also protested against the song due to its authorship by a Jewish immigrant.[4]
In 1943, Smith's rendition was featured in the patriotic musical film This is the Army along with other Berlin songs. The manuscripts in the Library of Congress reveal the evolution of the song from victory to peace. Berlin gave the royalties of the song to The God Bless America Fund for redistribution to Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts in New York City.[9] Smith performed the song on her two NBC television series in the 1950s.[10] "God Bless America" also spawned another of Irving Berlin's tunes, "Heaven Watch The Philippines," during the end of World War II. The Philippines was an American possession since 1898 and recently liberated from Japanese occupation; Berlin wrote it after he heard Filipinos singing a modified version of the song replacing "America" with "The Philippines."
Later, from December 11, 1969,[7] through the early 1970s, the playing of Smith singing the song before many home games of the National Hockey League's Philadelphia Flyers brought it renewed popularity as well as a reputation for being a "good luck charm" to the Flyers[7] long before it became a staple of nationwide sporting events.[7] The Flyers brought Smith in to perform live before Game 6 of the 1974 Stanley Cup Finals on May 19, 1974, and the Flyers won the Cup that day.[7][10]
