To begin with, to the best of my knowledge, composer Harold Arlen made no contribution to the lyrics of the song. Moreover, the melody, with a single “accidental” borrowed from the dominant chord, is written in a major key, whereas Jewish music is typically composed in minor keys or in other modes.
More to the point, while Yip Harburg occasionally used the rainbow (which was not mentioned in Baum’s book) as a symbol of the U.S., he never made this association when he discussed the origin of this song. He said that he wrote it “to express the situation of a little girl who wanted to fly away from home, to go somewhere with more life and color than drab Kansas.” In the film, in fact, she leaves (or dreams that she leaves) the U.S. to go somewhere else. In general, he considered it a “symbolic link between man and the heaven of his imagination.” Elsewhere, he commented that it represented a goal that “still has to be reached.”
Harburg frequently used the rainbow symbolically in this way, never in a Jewish context. It appeared in at least four of his other scores, most notably in “Finian’s Rainbow,” a musical about Irish immigrants, which featured the song “Look to the Rainbow.” Thus, he clearly saw the rainbow as a universal symbol, not as a Jewish one.
In his letter, Rabbi Rosenberg was clearly describing his own subjective reaction to the song, which hardly demonstrates that the song is “deeply embedded in the Jewish experience.” The best example of this is his association with “above the chimney tops” as associated with the Nazi death camps, which could not have been imagined when the song was written.
“The Wizard of Oz” is a great film classic. We don’t need to make it Jewish to enjoy it.
Stu Lewis
Prairie Village, Kansas
