Articles written for JEWISH WEEK by Leonard J. Lehrman
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<u>MUSIC</u><BR><BR>Music: The Soul of Satire (Tom Lehrer)<BR><BR></b>
August 11, 2000<BR><BR>
by Leonard J. Lehrman<BR>
<BR><BR>[passages in brackets were cut by the editor]
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Tom Lehrer (Nearly) Complete In New Boxed Set
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   "I know there are people in this world who do not love their 
fellow human beings, and I HATE people like that!"
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Only a Jew with a penchant for logic, ethics and total irreverence
could have come up with a conundrum like that, and that's Tom Lehrer: 
mathematician, teacher and creative musical satirist par excellence.  
Formerly a faculty member at Harvard, MIT and Wellesley, 
now 72, he "hangs out" in Cambridge, Mass, half the year, 
teaching the other half in Santa Cruz, California.
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   "I'm Spending Hanukkah in Santa Monica" is thus only 
quasi-autobiographical.  [("Those Eastern winters, I can't endure 'em, 
/So ev'ry year/I pack my gear/And come out here/Till Purim.")]
That song, one of half a dozen released for the very first time 
in Rhino Records' new $50 half-century retrospective 3-CD collection, 
"The Remains of Tom Lehrer," is a virtual catalog aria on the Jewish holidays.  
Written for and premiered on Garrison Keillor's radio show in 1990 and 1992, 
it was conceived as "a sort of answer to 'White Christmas,'" since, as Keillor 
pointed out, "there just aren't any popular Hanukkah songs, because no Gentile 
songwriter ever thought about writing one, and the great Jewish 
songwriters were busy writing Christmas songs."
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   Unfortunately, it doesn't cover all the Jewish holidays. 
As Lehrer pointed out in a letter to this writer, Pesach is
particularly rhyme-resistant, and "All I could think of was 
'I always get my ass over/To Tel Aviv for Passover'"-- 
and then of course it wouldn't be a family song....
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[Perhaps Jewish Week would be interested in publishing the sequel
by this writer, approved by Tom Lehrer, filling in the other holidays--
maybe around Chanukah???]
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  Since Tom Lehrer stopped performing publicly a quarter of a century ago,  
no one has come close to replacing him, in terms of craft, construction, 
and care in the realm of original musical satire.  And, with few exceptions,
no one performs his works as well as he does. This despite over 200 
productions of the Cameron Mackintosh revue, <i>Tomfoolery</i>, 
whose original cast recordings from England and Canada
have been released, though not the off-Broadway cast recording.
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   Listen to how he gets away with the self-mocking "Everybody hates the Jews" 
in the song "National Brotherhood Week," and recall his statement (not included 
in the album) that "political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger 
was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize."  Raised as a secular Jew, he carefully covers all bases: 
"If anyone objects to any statement I make, I am quite prepared not only to retract it, 
but also to deny under oath that I ever made it."  
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  [May we all live to see the day that, like Leonard Bernstein's <i>Mass</i>, 
which was also once deemed "sacrilegious," Tom Lehrer's hysterical "Vatican Rag" 
may be performed (as it was at last week's Eastern Naturist Gathering--au naturel) for the Pope!]