Brookwrite

The Sound of Jewsic

by Doug Brook
Southern Jewish Life columnist

At this time of year, the hills have just finished being alive with the sound of shofar music. As the echo fades, the traditional season for viewing "The Sound of Music" approaches, because what's more festive and appropriate for the Thanksgiving and Christmas season than a family being chased from Austria by pre-WWII Nazis?

Aside from being a lovely story about family, "The Sound of Music" has almost several Jewish aspects to it. You just have to really want to see them. So, let this column be your eyeglasses, and take a look at the heretofore or five unobserved Jewish aspects of this classic musical.

The seemingly most obvious Jewish tie-in actually isn't. Despite his name, lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II was not Jewish. His grandfather, Oscar Hammerstein, was, but Numero II was raised Episcopalian.

An equally obvious, and more actual, Jewish tie-in is the story of a family fleeing the Nazis just before the start of World War II, while others remain behind thinking they can just ride out the storm and that this too shall pass.

But there are numerous, more subtle Jewish subtleties scattered throughout the play. The most legitimate, yet most subtle subtlety, comes during the wedding sequence. After singing "How do you solve a problem like Maria," the nuns all sing the Confitemini Domino.

Both of you who studied Latin and Hebrew and also go to services might observe that this is also the first line of Psalm 118, known to Jews as the ubiquitous "Hodu" in the festival "Hallel" and elsewhere.

Back at the very beginning -- a very good place to start -- before Maria is sent from the abbey to be the von Trapp governess, her fate is discussed by a trio of nuns -- a Catholic Bet Din, though none of them are named Beth. Or Dina.

Upon arrival, Maria tries to ingratiate herself to the children by teaching them to sing. She uses the song "Do-Re-Mi," whose words at first are as comprehensible to the von Trapp brood as a weekday minyan is to most children (and adults).

That night, during a thunderstorm (or later, in the film), the kids and Maria sing a famous, playful song, "The Lonely Goatherd," whose title easily describes more characters in Genesis than you can shake a graggar at.

When Maria flees to the abbey after Brigitta (in the film, Elsa) enlightens her about the Captain and being in love, the Mother Abbess sings to her to climb every mountain -- a seemingly insurmountable task, since even Moses was commanded to climb just one mountain. (As an homage to Moses climbing Sinai a second time for the second set of tablets, "Climb Every Mountain" is reprised at the end.)

Not all of the Jewish tie-ins are associated with songs or plot points. Some involve the actors and even the real-life basis of the play.

The ubiquitous film features Christopher Plummer (if not his singing voice) as Captain von Trapp. However, the original Broadway production five years earlier starred Theodore Bikel, who later logged thousands of performances as Tevye in "Fiddler on the Roof."

Of course, in "Fiddler," Tevye has five daughters. In "The Sound of Music," von Trapp has five daughters plus two sons, for a total of seven children. In the original Shalom Aleichem stories, Tevye had seven daughters. In real life, von Trapp had ten children (three of them were his with Maria).

Albert Einstein was a German Jewish mathematician who could probably figure out the mathematic algorithm for predicting real children versus musical children in major Broadway musicals.

What's the most unifying Jewish aspect of all these observations? Most of them are no more of a stretch than many of the scenarios and interpretations found throughout the Talmud. Next time: How "A Christmas Carol" is actually a Jewish story, best appreciated in Dickens's original Yiddish.

Doug Brook is a writer in Silicon Valley who is directing a production of "The Sound of Music" opening this month in California, without having a glass smashed at the end of the wedding. For more information, past columns, other writings, and more, visit http://brookwrite.com/. For exclusive online content, like us at facebook.com/the.beholders.eye.