0:00:27 > 0:00:30'At first, it seemed like a place of utter desolation...
0:00:31 > 0:00:33'..but then I saw them,
0:00:33 > 0:00:36'the stylised angels' wings hovering over the ceiling.
0:00:39 > 0:00:44'Out of the dust burst the colours - the blues of heaven,
0:00:44 > 0:00:49'the reds of the kings of Judah, the rainbows coming through the glass.
0:00:52 > 0:00:57'And then, amidst all this absence, I began to sense the presence,
0:00:57 > 0:01:01'the cantor's chant, the murmuring banter,
0:01:01 > 0:01:05'and there in the galleries were the women of Jewish Kosice
0:01:05 > 0:01:09'and down below, the men in silks and hats.'
0:01:11 > 0:01:16'In the spring of 1944, 15,700 Jews from Kosice -
0:01:16 > 0:01:21'the entire community, were sent to their deaths in Auschwitz,
0:01:21 > 0:01:24'but this wasn't a place that sat passively
0:01:24 > 0:01:26'waiting for its death sentence.
0:01:29 > 0:01:31'Before the Holocaust, Kosice,
0:01:31 > 0:01:35'like thousands of Jewish towns and villages
0:01:35 > 0:01:38'strung across Central and Eastern Europe, was alive,
0:01:38 > 0:01:41'thriving, confident, noisy -
0:01:41 > 0:01:43'the opera and the klezmer,
0:01:43 > 0:01:46'the schnorrer beggars and the prosperous merchants,
0:01:46 > 0:01:51'the pushcart pedlars and the street-corner revolutionaries.
0:01:54 > 0:01:56'That this world somehow flourished
0:01:56 > 0:02:00'despite all the pounding storms that would come its way
0:02:00 > 0:02:01'is an escape act so epic
0:02:01 > 0:02:06'that it counts as one of history's all-time redeeming miracles.
0:02:06 > 0:02:10'Even when systematic annihilation overwhelmed the people,
0:02:10 > 0:02:13'the world that had nourished them survived.
0:02:13 > 0:02:18'This is the story about how this unique culture
0:02:18 > 0:02:21'of faith and ferment, of poetry and music,
0:02:21 > 0:02:25'of a search for deliverance from brutality and oppression,
0:02:25 > 0:02:28'did not get pulverised by the hammer of history.
0:02:28 > 0:02:32'It just changed its address -
0:02:32 > 0:02:37'from Minsk to Manhattan, from the shtetl to Hollywood
0:02:37 > 0:02:42'and ultimately from destruction to salvation.'
0:02:42 > 0:02:44HE HOLDS NOTE
0:03:39 > 0:03:44'Eastern Europe was once home to more than five million Jews,
0:03:44 > 0:03:48'the largest population of Jews in the world.
0:03:48 > 0:03:53'They were the Ashkenazim, Yiddish speakers who first came east
0:03:53 > 0:03:57'from the valleys of Germany and France in search of refuge
0:03:57 > 0:04:01'from persecutions and expulsions some time around the 13th century.
0:04:04 > 0:04:07'They would find it in what was then
0:04:07 > 0:04:09'the largest and most tolerant state in Europe -
0:04:09 > 0:04:11'the Polish-Lithuanian Kingdom.
0:04:11 > 0:04:14'Pragmatists, not sentimentalists,
0:04:14 > 0:04:16'the Polish kings asked the Jews
0:04:16 > 0:04:18'to harvest their taxes,
0:04:18 > 0:04:19'allowing the Jews
0:04:19 > 0:04:21'not just to settle, but to prosper.
0:04:23 > 0:04:25'But when, at the end of the 18th century,
0:04:25 > 0:04:27'the Kingdom was carved up
0:04:27 > 0:04:29'between Austria, Prussia
0:04:29 > 0:04:32'and Russia, 'most Jews fell under Russian rule.
0:04:34 > 0:04:36'For Russian merchants,
0:04:36 > 0:04:41'this new Jewish population was unwanted competition.
0:04:41 > 0:04:43'Russia's response was to expel
0:04:43 > 0:04:45'the Jews from the major cities
0:04:45 > 0:04:46'and confine them
0:04:46 > 0:04:48'to the Pale of Settlement
0:04:48 > 0:04:49'stretching from the Baltic
0:04:49 > 0:04:50'to the Black Sea.
0:04:50 > 0:04:53'Somewhere at the northern end of it,
0:04:53 > 0:04:57'in the neck of these Lithuanian woods,
0:04:57 > 0:04:59'were my mother's family - the Steinbergs.
0:04:59 > 0:05:03'Like many Jews in the small towns of the Pale, called shtetls,
0:05:03 > 0:05:07'they eked out a living as best they could, trading in illegal liquor,
0:05:07 > 0:05:12'hustling in the markets and felling trees in the woods.'
0:05:12 > 0:05:15You don't really think about the Jews as woodland people very much.
0:05:15 > 0:05:17In fact, in Jewish tradition,
0:05:17 > 0:05:22the woods are where demons lurked. Yet, somehow,
0:05:22 > 0:05:24the Steinbergs and countless thousands of them
0:05:24 > 0:05:26had to make a living
0:05:26 > 0:05:29in what was called the lumber business.
0:05:29 > 0:05:34The rich Jews got to ship it off to Hamburg and places west.
0:05:34 > 0:05:38My lot would cut and stack and log and pile.
0:05:38 > 0:05:42In our family, there were stories of the wolf attacks.
0:05:42 > 0:05:44My mother used to talk about her great-uncle
0:05:44 > 0:05:47showing off his wolf scars on his birthday.
0:05:47 > 0:05:51The Lithuanian Jews, the Litvaks,
0:05:51 > 0:05:55took a kind of pride in the harshness of their world.
0:05:55 > 0:05:57They'd be kind of fierce and flinty.
0:05:57 > 0:05:59I'll tell you how you can tell the difference,
0:05:59 > 0:06:03the way Lithuanian Jews felt about themselves,
0:06:03 > 0:06:05and Polish Jews to the south.
0:06:05 > 0:06:09Lithuanian Jews never put sugar in their gefilte fish
0:06:09 > 0:06:11the way the Poles did.
0:06:11 > 0:06:16They only liked it...salt, tough, briny, kind of fish,
0:06:16 > 0:06:19and they were fierce in their religion too,
0:06:19 > 0:06:22but it wasn't, at least, however harsh, a solitary life.
0:06:22 > 0:06:27Everything the villagers of the shtetls did, they did together.
0:06:27 > 0:06:30They worked together, they sang together, they ate together,
0:06:30 > 0:06:33they lived together, they died together.
0:06:33 > 0:06:36The word "individualism", I think,
0:06:36 > 0:06:39doesn't have a translation in Yiddish.
0:06:39 > 0:06:41They were never individuals.
0:06:41 > 0:06:44They were a cahal, they were a community.
0:06:50 > 0:06:54'There's little left of the Jewish Lithuania the Steinbergs knew,
0:06:54 > 0:06:59'but its ghosts have materialised in the most unlikely places.
0:07:01 > 0:07:04'In 2001, someone reached into a sofa
0:07:04 > 0:07:08'of this gloomy St Petersburg apartment
0:07:08 > 0:07:11'and pulled out a miraculous treasure trove
0:07:11 > 0:07:16'of over 350 hand-printed photographs of shtetl life
0:07:16 > 0:07:22'taken between 1912 and 1914 by a group of Jewish ethnographers,
0:07:22 > 0:07:28'led by the writer and socialist revolutionary Shimon Ansky.
0:07:28 > 0:07:32'They had set off on what they called an expedition
0:07:32 > 0:07:34'into the dark continent of the Pale
0:07:34 > 0:07:38'to document everything they could find -
0:07:38 > 0:07:42'the streets, the schools,
0:07:42 > 0:07:44'the extraordinary wooden synagogues...
0:07:49 > 0:07:54'..and the countless ways the Jews made their living.'
0:07:55 > 0:07:57So many of the cliches, you know,
0:07:57 > 0:08:00take a beating in these incredible pictures
0:08:00 > 0:08:04and there is nothing in these shtetls that Jews aren't doing.
0:08:04 > 0:08:07It's not true that they're just tailors and pedlars.
0:08:07 > 0:08:11They're blacksmiths and they're bakers and they're weavers,
0:08:11 > 0:08:13and this cobbler is quite fantastic.
0:08:13 > 0:08:15He's not going to pose for the camera.
0:08:15 > 0:08:18This is actually someone living,
0:08:18 > 0:08:20he's not a folk caricature in any way,
0:08:20 > 0:08:24but there is, I don't know, Yunkel the local grocer,
0:08:24 > 0:08:27who's sitting there patiently on the bench
0:08:27 > 0:08:29waiting for his soles to be repaired.
0:08:30 > 0:08:33And here's, er... SIMON LAUGHS
0:08:33 > 0:08:39..here's three incredibly dirt-encrusted, nebbishy types.
0:08:39 > 0:08:42You know these, these are the bad uncles, really,
0:08:42 > 0:08:44who've had a bit too much vodka
0:08:44 > 0:08:48and there they all are, just sitting there, a bit curious.
0:08:50 > 0:08:53This is a world that lives and breathes
0:08:53 > 0:08:55and dances and sings, really.
0:08:55 > 0:08:57And it's not sentimental - it's real.
0:09:00 > 0:09:04'Shut out from the cities, from professions and universities,
0:09:04 > 0:09:06'forbidden to own land,
0:09:06 > 0:09:10'shtetl Jews looked inwards to their own culture for enrichment.
0:09:10 > 0:09:13'To the outside world, they looked impoverished,
0:09:13 > 0:09:17'but they had the treasure of their holy books
0:09:17 > 0:09:20'bequeathed by countless generations of sages.
0:09:21 > 0:09:23'From the kheyder schools,
0:09:23 > 0:09:26'where the Hebrew teacher taught fidgeting children
0:09:26 > 0:09:28'every word of the Torah and Talmud...
0:09:32 > 0:09:37'..to the deep culture of self-help and charity, where everyone,
0:09:37 > 0:09:40'from the rabbi to the old folk in their retirement home,
0:09:40 > 0:09:44'had an allotted place. The shtetl was a wraparound world,
0:09:44 > 0:09:46'a micro-state shaped to survive
0:09:46 > 0:09:50'amidst the repressive policies of the Russian tsars.
0:09:55 > 0:09:58'And perhaps one of the most enduring and painful memories
0:09:58 > 0:09:59'of shtetl life
0:09:59 > 0:10:03'was the forced conscription of Jewish boys as young as 12
0:10:03 > 0:10:08'into the Russian Army for up to 25 years.
0:10:11 > 0:10:14'It's hardly surprising, then, that there were times
0:10:14 > 0:10:19'when the shackles would be cast off in a collective frenzy of joy.'
0:10:20 > 0:10:22Times are hard in the shtetl.
0:10:22 > 0:10:26The rabbi's on his last legs, nobody can make a living any more.
0:10:26 > 0:10:28The Cossacks are round the corner.
0:10:28 > 0:10:29What do we all need? We need a simcha!
0:10:29 > 0:10:32And the best simcha of all is a hossnah, a wedding.
0:10:32 > 0:10:37Weddings are the time when the whole shtetl comes together.
0:10:37 > 0:10:40In these streets around here in the shtetl,
0:10:40 > 0:10:42at the beginning would be the niggun -
0:10:42 > 0:10:44the procession, slow, dignified -
0:10:44 > 0:10:48the bride being led into the square by the two mothers,
0:10:48 > 0:10:52two mothers, one on each side, under the chuppah they go.
0:10:53 > 0:10:58Their friends say the seven blessings - the Sheva Brachot -
0:10:58 > 0:11:01the groom stamps on the glass finally,
0:11:01 > 0:11:04with the left or right foot, I can never remember which,
0:11:04 > 0:11:08because in all weddings, in all simchas and all moments of joy,
0:11:08 > 0:11:10there must be a moment of sorrow.
0:11:10 > 0:11:13We must remember the destruction of the Temple,
0:11:13 > 0:11:16sorrow and happiness - such a Jewish idea.
0:11:19 > 0:11:22The crowd go crazy. "Mazel tov!" they shout.
0:11:22 > 0:11:26The klezmorim, the cream of music from all around,
0:11:26 > 0:11:30the skirling clarinet, the cimbal, the cimbalom,
0:11:30 > 0:11:33the whirling fiddle, the drums.
0:11:33 > 0:11:38Dancing starts, and maybe even if the rabbi is not so well,
0:11:38 > 0:11:40he starts the dancing,
0:11:40 > 0:11:44the men on one side, the women on the other.
0:11:44 > 0:11:49Rasanka, mazel tov, and the rabbi himself dances
0:11:49 > 0:11:55and dances with his eyes burning, because an old Jewish saying says,
0:11:55 > 0:11:58"Every man is an instrument and his life is the melody."
0:12:00 > 0:12:03'For many shtetl Jews, feeling the joy,
0:12:03 > 0:12:05'letting it course through the body,
0:12:05 > 0:12:09'wasn't something that should be reserved for a wedding.
0:12:09 > 0:12:11'And that deep craving for an ecstatic Judaism
0:12:11 > 0:12:17'sparked the astounding mass phenomenon of Hasidism.'
0:12:18 > 0:12:20ALL SAY PRAYER TOGETHER
0:12:20 > 0:12:23VOLUME INCREASES
0:12:23 > 0:12:26'Unlike traditional Jewish Orthodoxy,
0:12:26 > 0:12:28'that centred almost exclusively
0:12:28 > 0:12:31'on the study of the Torah and the Talmud,
0:12:31 > 0:12:35'Hasidism also urged Jews to commune with God directly
0:12:35 > 0:12:39'through joyous bouts of singing and dancing
0:12:39 > 0:12:41'and ecstatic trance-like prayer.
0:12:43 > 0:12:46'That's what God wants.
0:12:46 > 0:12:49'Turn somersaults before the Ark if the holy mood takes you.
0:12:51 > 0:12:54'The idea was to melt the soul into the Shekinah,
0:12:54 > 0:12:59'the divine radiance that flows through all earthly things.
0:13:04 > 0:13:09'Hasidism has left an extraordinary imprint on the Jewish world,
0:13:09 > 0:13:11'but to understand why it emerged
0:13:11 > 0:13:16'one has to travel further into the Pale and back 300 years.
0:13:19 > 0:13:24'The shtetl of Satanov in Ukraine was once deep Hasidic country.
0:13:29 > 0:13:33'The number and sheer exuberance of the gravestones
0:13:33 > 0:13:37'reveal the prosperity and vitality of the Jewish presence here.
0:13:37 > 0:13:41'They burst with animal energy and Hasidic high spirits.
0:13:41 > 0:13:44'Hares spin on a cosmic wheel,
0:13:44 > 0:13:48'bears clamber for grapes on the tree of life,
0:13:48 > 0:13:54'lions are rampant as Jewish lions must be.
0:13:54 > 0:13:57'This community clearly didn't tremble in terror,
0:13:57 > 0:14:00'but terror was never far away descending on Satanov,
0:14:00 > 0:14:03'not just in the form of famine and plague,
0:14:03 > 0:14:08'but rampaging Cossacks who singled out Jews for slaughter
0:14:08 > 0:14:14'as the protected people of their hated enemy, the Polish king.
0:14:14 > 0:14:18'That's why Satanov's Jews built their synagogue as a fortress.
0:14:20 > 0:14:24'And if the horrors receded, the memories didn't
0:14:24 > 0:14:26'and many Jews felt that the traditional leaders
0:14:26 > 0:14:28'of the religious community,
0:14:28 > 0:14:30'the severe masters of the Talmud,
0:14:30 > 0:14:34'fell short of answering their spiritual and emotional needs.'
0:14:37 > 0:14:41Into the breach stepped a group of itinerant mystics
0:14:41 > 0:14:45called the Baal Shem, the Masters of the Name.
0:14:45 > 0:14:48Whose name? Well, God's, of course!
0:14:48 > 0:14:51And these were masters who, through secret knowledge,
0:14:51 > 0:14:56could manipulate the letters of God's name to protect you from harm.
0:14:59 > 0:15:03'Those secrets were derived from the ancient mystical tradition
0:15:03 > 0:15:06'of the kabbalah, a doctrine of esoteric knowledge
0:15:06 > 0:15:11'revealing profound truths about the nature of God and the universe.
0:15:11 > 0:15:16'Kabbalistic tradition has it that the very substance of the world
0:15:16 > 0:15:22'was made of letters, alef for air, shin - fire, mem - water
0:15:22 > 0:15:25'and the most powerful and dangerous letters of all
0:15:25 > 0:15:27'were the many holy names of God,
0:15:27 > 0:15:29'which could be rearranged and chanted
0:15:29 > 0:15:32'to perform miracles on Earth,
0:15:32 > 0:15:36'bringing the infinite of the divine into the finite world of man.'
0:15:37 > 0:15:39MAN SINGS
0:15:49 > 0:15:52'It was an extraordinary moment in Jewish history,
0:15:52 > 0:15:55'a moment when wonder-working rabbis,
0:15:55 > 0:15:57'ascending into the heavenly courts of God
0:15:57 > 0:15:59'to defend their people from harm,
0:15:59 > 0:16:03'struck a profound chord with the people of the Pale
0:16:03 > 0:16:05'and the most legendary of them all
0:16:05 > 0:16:08'was the man who came to be known as the founder of Hasidism,
0:16:08 > 0:16:11'the Baal Shem Tov - the Master of the Good Name.
0:16:13 > 0:16:17'And over the next 100 years, his followers, known as tzaddiks,
0:16:17 > 0:16:20'righteous men, became kings among Jews,
0:16:20 > 0:16:24'creating courts with tribes of young followers,
0:16:24 > 0:16:29'founding dynasties, some of which survive in Hasidism even today.'
0:16:33 > 0:16:37Hasidism was so popular and so successful, I think,
0:16:37 > 0:16:41because, essentially, it was a response against helplessness,
0:16:41 > 0:16:46against the autocratic states that took Jews for cannon fodder
0:16:46 > 0:16:48and every other kind of fodder, for that matter.
0:16:48 > 0:16:54Against those states, Hasidism created states of faith,
0:16:54 > 0:16:59complete with a righteous man - a prince, Messiah, scholar -
0:16:59 > 0:17:05at its centre, the Tzaddik, and around him an entire spiritual army
0:17:05 > 0:17:11and with him a great body of fabulous lore,
0:17:11 > 0:17:14tales of wonder and healing and resurrection.
0:17:14 > 0:17:19The Tzaddik prince could make barren fields fertile.
0:17:19 > 0:17:22He could make the impotent virile.
0:17:22 > 0:17:24He could communicate with the stars.
0:17:24 > 0:17:27He was the possessor of secret mysteries
0:17:27 > 0:17:29which would keep away demons.
0:17:29 > 0:17:33Now, how could enlightened despots
0:17:33 > 0:17:38and, for that matter, enlightened Jews in their city suits
0:17:38 > 0:17:40compete with that?
0:17:40 > 0:17:42ALL PRAY TOGETHER
0:17:45 > 0:17:48'Since the collapse of the Soviet Union,
0:17:48 > 0:17:53'Hasidism has returned to the land of its birth.
0:17:53 > 0:17:57'In the Ukrainian town of Uman, 30,000 pilgrims visit the grave
0:17:57 > 0:18:01'of one of the most charismatic tzaddiks, Rebbe Nachman of Breslev,
0:18:01 > 0:18:07'on Rosh Hashanah every year, two centuries after his death.
0:18:07 > 0:18:11'They come to ensure the Tzaddik's protection for the year ahead.
0:18:13 > 0:18:18'Hasidism is still a cult of ecstatic communion,
0:18:18 > 0:18:22'and it holds true to the principles of its birth.'
0:18:24 > 0:18:31I think today it's very difficult to live as a religious Jew
0:18:31 > 0:18:33without Hasidic way
0:18:33 > 0:18:38because Hasidism teaches that you can find God
0:18:38 > 0:18:41in anything. Even very bad things?
0:18:41 > 0:18:43This is our purpose,
0:18:43 > 0:18:48to reveal holiness in anything that we deal with -
0:18:48 > 0:18:54money, business, food, intimacy.
0:18:54 > 0:18:58'This is his mission in this world,
0:18:58 > 0:19:01'and joy is that you know that you do the right thing'
0:19:01 > 0:19:06so that you live the meaningful life.
0:19:08 > 0:19:12'But not every Jew fell into the redemptive raptures
0:19:12 > 0:19:14'of Hasidic prayer.
0:19:14 > 0:19:17'If you craved more than ecstatic visions,
0:19:17 > 0:19:21'if you had a restless Jewish mind and even more restless feet,
0:19:21 > 0:19:26'then the world of the shtetl could bring on attacks of claustrophobia
0:19:26 > 0:19:28'and there at the very bottom of the Pale
0:19:28 > 0:19:30'facing the Black Sea was one place,
0:19:30 > 0:19:32'a port city with eyes open to the world,
0:19:32 > 0:19:36'that drew those Jews like moths to a flame.
0:19:37 > 0:19:40'Its name was Odessa...
0:19:42 > 0:19:46'..a city of grand boulevards and brothels, of theatres
0:19:46 > 0:19:50'and progressive schools that taught Jewish boys Russian,
0:19:50 > 0:19:52'politics and mathematics.
0:19:52 > 0:19:56'"The flames of hell burn seven miles around Odessa,"
0:19:56 > 0:19:58'the rabbis warned.
0:20:07 > 0:20:13'And it was soon full of modern Jews who loved that hellish heat -
0:20:13 > 0:20:17'grain merchants and gangsters, tarts and klezmer fiddlers,
0:20:17 > 0:20:20'poets and Jewish thinkers who hung out at cafes
0:20:20 > 0:20:25'where they smoked and sang and read radical Russian literature.
0:20:25 > 0:20:29'Here they'd ask themselves the big question -
0:20:29 > 0:20:30'how to be Jewish in the modern world
0:20:30 > 0:20:34'without resorting to Hasidic miracles in the sky.
0:20:38 > 0:20:42'Two of them would make a profound impact on the world of the Jews.
0:20:42 > 0:20:47'Moshe Leib Lilienblum was a religious runaway from Lithuania
0:20:47 > 0:20:49'who'd turned his back on what he regarded
0:20:49 > 0:20:53'as the stifling relic of Jewish Orthodoxy.
0:20:53 > 0:20:55'His friend, Dr Leo Pinsker,
0:20:55 > 0:20:58'was the son of an enlightened Hebrew teacher
0:20:58 > 0:21:01'who'd been taught that Jews must live in the real world,
0:21:01 > 0:21:03'not in their mystical version of it.
0:21:07 > 0:21:10'And like a lot of their fast-talking crowd,
0:21:10 > 0:21:14'they believed that if only Jews embraced revolutionary politics
0:21:14 > 0:21:16'and joined forces with a downtrodden people,
0:21:16 > 0:21:20'their Russian comrades, they could change the motherland
0:21:20 > 0:21:25'and that surely would be enough to make a better life for the Jews.
0:21:30 > 0:21:34'But the bitter truth was that even here, in Odessa,
0:21:34 > 0:21:37'the Jews couldn't escape the shadow of violence.
0:21:38 > 0:21:41'On the 13th of March, 1881,
0:21:41 > 0:21:45'Tsar Alexander II was assassinated in St Petersburg
0:21:45 > 0:21:48'by the Russian left-wing terrorist organisation
0:21:48 > 0:21:51'Narodnaya Volya - The People's Will.
0:21:51 > 0:21:55'One Jewish girl was amongst the plotters and, within the month,
0:21:55 > 0:22:00'a tidal wave of pogroms, from the Russian word "to destroy",
0:22:00 > 0:22:02'was unleashed across the Pale.
0:22:04 > 0:22:06'They hit Odessa,
0:22:06 > 0:22:10'Kirovograd, Kiev,
0:22:10 > 0:22:13'then Yekaterinoslav and Kishinev,
0:22:13 > 0:22:15'followed by attacks on hundreds
0:22:15 > 0:22:17'of shtetls across the Pale.
0:22:22 > 0:22:26'And in 1903, the most violent wave yet,
0:22:26 > 0:22:33'Minsk, Simferopol and Odessa once again, for the sixth time.'
0:22:35 > 0:22:38In the morning of November the 6th, 1905,
0:22:38 > 0:22:45people all over Britain were reading this in their Guardian newspaper
0:22:45 > 0:22:47as they ate their bacon and eggs.
0:22:48 > 0:22:50"The events in the suburbs
0:22:50 > 0:22:53"of Moldavanka, Slobodka and Bugaieoka last night
0:22:53 > 0:22:56"were of a most terrible nature.
0:22:56 > 0:22:59"Immense bands of ruffians accompanied by policemen
0:22:59 > 0:23:01"invaded all the Jewish houses
0:23:01 > 0:23:05"and mercilessly slaughtered the occupants.
0:23:06 > 0:23:11"Men and women were barbarously felled and decapitated with axes.
0:23:11 > 0:23:14"Children were torn limb from limb.
0:23:14 > 0:23:19"The streets were littered with corpses hurled out of windows.
0:23:19 > 0:23:23"The houses of murdered Jews were then systematically destroyed.
0:23:23 > 0:23:29"In this way, the Jewish population of the district was wiped out."
0:23:45 > 0:23:49The morning that the reporter visited the hospitals of Odessa,
0:23:49 > 0:23:53there were at least 3,000 people in the emergency wards.
0:23:53 > 0:23:59It was, by any standards of outrage, the most appalling atrocity
0:23:59 > 0:24:03in the entire blood-stained history of the Russian pogroms.
0:24:06 > 0:24:08'For many Jewish intellectuals,
0:24:08 > 0:24:12'this was the moment that shocked them out of the complacency
0:24:12 > 0:24:17'that they might ever attain equal rights in tsarist Russia.
0:24:17 > 0:24:20'One of the illusions was that non-Jewish leftists
0:24:20 > 0:24:23'would come to their defence,
0:24:23 > 0:24:25'but they hadn't and this bitter lesson
0:24:25 > 0:24:27'threw them in different directions.
0:24:27 > 0:24:33'Some would rush even further into the arms of socialist revolution.
0:24:33 > 0:24:36'Others, like Lilienblum and Pinsker,
0:24:36 > 0:24:40'would acknowledge the death of those dreams.
0:24:40 > 0:24:42'Having devoted their futures to Russia,
0:24:42 > 0:24:48'they now founded the first Jewish nationalist organisation.
0:24:48 > 0:24:51'They called it The Lovers Of Zion.'
0:24:52 > 0:24:56After the terrifying pogrom here in Odessa,
0:24:56 > 0:25:00Pinsker published a small booklet which I read as a child,
0:25:00 > 0:25:05and it had an electrifying influence on me, called Autoemancipation.
0:25:05 > 0:25:08In that booklet, Pinsker diagnosed -
0:25:08 > 0:25:10and he was a doctor, remember -
0:25:10 > 0:25:13Judeophobia as a kind of fear of ghosts.
0:25:13 > 0:25:17The problem, he said, was that Jewish national existence
0:25:17 > 0:25:22had died a long time ago, but Jews were still alive everywhere,
0:25:22 > 0:25:28and people treated them as phantoms and you get neurotic about phantoms.
0:25:28 > 0:25:31The only way to cure it, for Pinsker,
0:25:31 > 0:25:34was not for Jews to be beholden to others,
0:25:34 > 0:25:39to receive civil rights, like charity given to a beggar.
0:25:39 > 0:25:43The issue was to seize a sense of your own national identity
0:25:43 > 0:25:46to make it happen somewhere,
0:25:46 > 0:25:50and make it happen with power and moral strength.
0:25:50 > 0:25:54Thereupon was a momentous departure.
0:25:54 > 0:25:57Momentous absolutely for Jews,
0:25:57 > 0:25:59and, as I need hardly tell you,
0:25:59 > 0:26:02incredibly momentous for the world.
0:26:07 > 0:26:10'For the countless Jewish multitudes,
0:26:10 > 0:26:12'there was, of course, another way out.
0:26:12 > 0:26:16'Why wait for Zion when there was another promised land
0:26:16 > 0:26:17'lying across the ocean?
0:26:17 > 0:26:19'America.
0:26:21 > 0:26:23'It was known in Yiddish as the "goldene medinah",
0:26:23 > 0:26:28'the golden sanctuary and it had long been on the lips of the Pale.
0:26:30 > 0:26:33'Letters from relatives who'd already made the trip
0:26:33 > 0:26:36'told fables of a land of miracles
0:26:36 > 0:26:40'and if that sounds like something straight out of Hasidism,
0:26:40 > 0:26:42'well, then, it's no coincidence.
0:26:48 > 0:26:51'Maybe this is where the Messiah might be,
0:26:51 > 0:26:56'even if this Messiah would be called American democracy.
0:27:01 > 0:27:04'And the tales weren't all tall.
0:27:04 > 0:27:08'Earlier Jewish immigrants had gone west and struck gold.
0:27:08 > 0:27:14'In America, Motl the tailor could become Levi Strauss of Levi's jeans.
0:27:16 > 0:27:18'Pedlars could build banks.
0:27:20 > 0:27:22'A Jew, Adolph Sutro,
0:27:22 > 0:27:26'could even become the 24th mayor of San Francisco.
0:27:28 > 0:27:31'All of them had the same story.
0:27:32 > 0:27:35'Emigrating from provincial Germany in the 1850s,
0:27:35 > 0:27:37'they'd peddled their way across America,
0:27:37 > 0:27:40selling soap, polish and cloth,
0:27:40 > 0:27:43'opening stores and investing wisely
0:27:43 > 0:27:45'in the industries that built America -
0:27:45 > 0:27:51'the steel works, the mines, the railroads and the skyscrapers.
0:27:54 > 0:27:58'In uptown New York, the Temple Emanu-El on Fifth Avenue
0:27:58 > 0:28:02'shows just how established and successful
0:28:02 > 0:28:06'this wave of Jewish immigrants would become.
0:28:07 > 0:28:08'This was, and still is,
0:28:08 > 0:28:11'the headquarters of American Reform Judaism,
0:28:11 > 0:28:13'progressive, English speaking,
0:28:13 > 0:28:17'not sticklers for the minutiae of Talmudic laws,
0:28:17 > 0:28:20'but proud, unapologetic Jews nonetheless.
0:28:23 > 0:28:26'This is where many of those Jewish American names
0:28:26 > 0:28:27'you might have heard of,
0:28:27 > 0:28:30'the Wall Street bankers and industrialists,
0:28:30 > 0:28:32'like the Schiffs, the Warburgs and the Guggenheims,
0:28:32 > 0:28:35'could sit together with their wives
0:28:35 > 0:28:36'in their fancy hats
0:28:36 > 0:28:39'from Bergdorf's, Macy's and Bloomingdale's,
0:28:39 > 0:28:41'their fellow congregants' stores.
0:28:42 > 0:28:47'Here was the promise of Jews out in the world becoming something,
0:28:47 > 0:28:51'astonishingly realised in glass and stone.'
0:28:51 > 0:28:55Anyone coming into this place could be forgiven for thinking
0:28:55 > 0:29:00that they'd arrived perhaps in a third temple in Jerusalem,
0:29:00 > 0:29:02and if this wasn't actually Jerusalem,
0:29:02 > 0:29:05it must have seemed pretty much like it.
0:29:05 > 0:29:08This stupendous, glorious decoration -
0:29:08 > 0:29:12marble, mosaic, soaring Romanesque columns -
0:29:12 > 0:29:16all will have delivered an astonishing proclamation
0:29:16 > 0:29:18of Jewish magnificence.
0:29:18 > 0:29:24Remember where the Jews of New York had come from, and now, uptown,
0:29:24 > 0:29:28they could lay claim to one of the most extraordinary buildings,
0:29:28 > 0:29:32not just in New York, but in the whole of the United States.
0:29:41 > 0:29:43'A couple of miles downtown,
0:29:43 > 0:29:45'most of the new wave of Jewish immigrants
0:29:45 > 0:29:47'pouring into New York Harbor
0:29:47 > 0:29:50'ended up just streets away from the boat,
0:29:50 > 0:29:54'in the mega shtetl of New York's Lower East Side.
0:29:54 > 0:29:56'It's THE iconic landing place
0:29:56 > 0:30:00'in the Jewish American story for a good reason.
0:30:00 > 0:30:02'Of the two and a half million Jews
0:30:02 > 0:30:06'arriving in America between the 1880s and the 1920s,
0:30:06 > 0:30:10'more than 60% of them began their new lives here,
0:30:10 > 0:30:14'stuffed into a patch of land just one and a half miles square.
0:30:14 > 0:30:19'This lot were deeply different from the uptown Jews of Temple Emanu-El -
0:30:19 > 0:30:25'proletarian, drenched in old world superstitions or radical politics
0:30:25 > 0:30:27'and, worst of all, Yiddish.
0:30:27 > 0:30:30'And in many ways, the new world
0:30:30 > 0:30:34'was just a high rise version of the old one they'd left behind.
0:30:34 > 0:30:36'Here too were the pushcart pedlars
0:30:36 > 0:30:38'and the street corner revolutionaries.'
0:30:39 > 0:30:41MEN SING
0:30:41 > 0:30:43'Here too were Orthodox synagogues
0:30:43 > 0:30:46'built in the Moorish styles of Eastern Europe,
0:30:46 > 0:30:48'where star cantors were shipped in from Odessa,
0:30:48 > 0:30:52'albeit now on $2,000 contracts.
0:30:52 > 0:30:54'Welcome to America!'
0:30:54 > 0:30:56SINGING CONTINUES
0:31:10 > 0:31:13'But in the shove and jostle of city life,
0:31:13 > 0:31:14'the authority of the rabbi
0:31:14 > 0:31:19'was soon overtaken by the institutions of democratic America.
0:31:19 > 0:31:23'In particular, the socialist newspaper the Daily Forward
0:31:23 > 0:31:25'and a Jarmulowsky Bank,
0:31:25 > 0:31:29described as the two handles of the Torah scroll
0:31:29 > 0:31:31'holding the community up.'
0:31:31 > 0:31:36By the standards of 1912, these two buildings were skyscrapers,
0:31:36 > 0:31:39the tallest boys in the block, and they're very close to each other,
0:31:39 > 0:31:44two big animals ideologically locking horns.
0:31:44 > 0:31:48'They were built on the same street in the same year
0:31:48 > 0:31:50'by two immigrants from the Pale.
0:31:50 > 0:31:52'On one side was Abraham Cahan,
0:31:52 > 0:31:55'a revolutionary socialist from Lithuania
0:31:55 > 0:31:56'who turned the Forward
0:31:56 > 0:32:00'into the most widely read Jewish newspaper in America.
0:32:00 > 0:32:05'Like a secular tzaddik, he fought the battles of the poor in print
0:32:05 > 0:32:09'and initiated them into the novelties of American life,
0:32:09 > 0:32:11'like baseball and voting.
0:32:11 > 0:32:15'On the other was Sender Jarmulowsky, a new world banker,
0:32:15 > 0:32:18'but always a good Torah Jew.
0:32:18 > 0:32:20'Not only did he encourage Jews to save,
0:32:20 > 0:32:23'in order to get themselves out of the Lower East Side,
0:32:23 > 0:32:26'he also provided reliable shipping tickets
0:32:26 > 0:32:30'to those they'd left behind in the nightmare of the pogroms.
0:32:30 > 0:32:35'And just to make sure his building was taller than Cahan's,
0:32:35 > 0:32:39'Jarmulowsky added a 12-metre cupola to his roof -
0:32:39 > 0:32:41'such an American story.'
0:32:41 > 0:32:45Look, it's possible to think of these big boys,
0:32:45 > 0:32:47the socialist and the banker,
0:32:47 > 0:32:49as locked in a battle for control
0:32:49 > 0:32:52of the Jewish future in the Lower East Side,
0:32:52 > 0:32:56but I don't really think of it like that at all.
0:32:56 > 0:33:00I think both of them essentially embodied
0:33:00 > 0:33:06the old Jewish principle right out of Hasidic Europe - tzedakah -
0:33:06 > 0:33:07benevolence or charity,
0:33:07 > 0:33:11the loving kindness of your fellow neighbour,
0:33:11 > 0:33:15planted in that other meaning of tzedakah - justice.
0:33:15 > 0:33:21Both these tall, big boys were the embodiments of Jewish justice.
0:33:21 > 0:33:26# And I found my inspiration
0:33:26 > 0:33:34# On the East Side of New York City... #
0:33:35 > 0:33:38'Justice, charity, the community -
0:33:38 > 0:33:41'words that had come straight from the shtetl,
0:33:41 > 0:33:44'hardly surprising in the world of the socialist newspaper,
0:33:44 > 0:33:48'perhaps more so in the world of New York banking.
0:33:48 > 0:33:50# All form a part
0:33:50 > 0:33:56# Of my tenement symphony... #
0:33:58 > 0:34:02'But what's even more surprising is how shtetl idealism
0:34:02 > 0:34:05'would cling to the next generation of American Jews,
0:34:05 > 0:34:11'who'd take it right into the brassy heart of American popular culture.
0:34:11 > 0:34:12'Growing up in the pressure cooker
0:34:12 > 0:34:15'of the Lower East Side was a group of Jewish boys
0:34:15 > 0:34:19'who'd go on to create the music that all America would sing.'
0:34:19 > 0:34:26There was Israel Baline, who became Irving Berlin, super patriot,
0:34:26 > 0:34:29the composer of God Bless America.
0:34:29 > 0:34:33There were the Gershowitz brothers, shortly to become the Gershwins,
0:34:33 > 0:34:40who took the cool of the jazz age and injected romantic warmth in it.
0:34:40 > 0:34:43And then there was someone some of you might not have heard of,
0:34:43 > 0:34:47Isidore Hochberg, who became Yip Harburg.
0:34:47 > 0:34:51Now Yip had something entirely different in mind
0:34:51 > 0:34:53for his great song lyrics.
0:34:53 > 0:34:56He wasn't interested so much in escaping from this world,
0:34:56 > 0:35:01the world of the Lower East Side, as taking its passions and its concerns
0:35:01 > 0:35:06right slap bang into the heart of American show business.
0:35:06 > 0:35:07PIANO INTRO PLAYS
0:35:07 > 0:35:11Ladies and gentlemen, Mr EY "Yip" Harburg.
0:35:11 > 0:35:14APPLAUSE AND CHEERING
0:35:20 > 0:35:22Thank you all.
0:35:25 > 0:35:29'Yip Harburg was born on the sixth floor of a walk-up on Allen Street
0:35:29 > 0:35:32'to two Yiddish-speaking immigrants,
0:35:32 > 0:35:35'Louis and Mary Hochberg from Minsk in the Pale.
0:35:35 > 0:35:38'She was deeply Orthodox.
0:35:39 > 0:35:41'He was a little bit less so,
0:35:41 > 0:35:44'taking work in the sweatshops whenever it was on offer.
0:35:46 > 0:35:49'Their grandson, Yip's son Ernie Harburg,
0:35:49 > 0:35:52'still lives on the Lower East Side.'
0:35:52 > 0:35:55They were all desperately poor.
0:35:55 > 0:36:01They worked six days a week and then the mother used to work on Sundays.
0:36:01 > 0:36:06I think she made, er...some kind of hats for people, all right?
0:36:06 > 0:36:10And it was all work. You had to work all the time
0:36:10 > 0:36:13and the parents spoke Yiddish.
0:36:13 > 0:36:19They never spoke English, so Yip was the intermediary between them
0:36:19 > 0:36:21and the outside world, no matter what it was -
0:36:21 > 0:36:24the landlord, the postman, anything.
0:36:24 > 0:36:28They had to get Yip to play the man of the house, see, right?
0:36:28 > 0:36:32So, you know, he grew up pretty fast.
0:36:32 > 0:36:37And the one thing that startled me a little bit was to know,
0:36:37 > 0:36:43because it was an Orthodox, or, at least, a moderate Orthodox family,
0:36:43 > 0:36:47that the father actually told the mother
0:36:47 > 0:36:50that he was taking Yip to shul,
0:36:50 > 0:36:53to the synagogue, and they wouldn't go there,
0:36:53 > 0:36:58they went to the Rialto musicals along on Second Avenue there.
0:37:00 > 0:37:04'It was a household immersed in the sweatshop socialism
0:37:04 > 0:37:05'of the Lower East Side,
0:37:05 > 0:37:09'which sent Jewish America into a fever of unrest
0:37:09 > 0:37:12'in 1909 and 1910,
0:37:12 > 0:37:17'when over 80,000, mostly Jewish, garment workers went on strike.'
0:37:25 > 0:37:32The father was, er...read the socialist daily paper to them,
0:37:32 > 0:37:36the Daily Forward, I think it was, every night, and read them poetry
0:37:36 > 0:37:41and I think the left-wing leaning of the fathers
0:37:41 > 0:37:46was handed down to the sons and the daughters.
0:37:51 > 0:37:53'Desperate to get his parents out of the tenements,
0:37:53 > 0:37:56'Yip gave up his dreams of becoming a songwriter
0:37:56 > 0:38:01'and set up a company selling home appliances to New York housewives,
0:38:01 > 0:38:06'which, by 1929, was worth a quarter of a million dollars.
0:38:08 > 0:38:13'But then, on the 29th of October, 1929, came the Wall Street Crash,
0:38:13 > 0:38:17'which brought his business and America to its knees.
0:38:20 > 0:38:23'Four million unemployed almost overnight.
0:38:23 > 0:38:25'The industries that had built America -
0:38:25 > 0:38:27'railways, mines, steel plants -
0:38:27 > 0:38:31'all put into what seemed like an eternal deep freeze.'
0:38:34 > 0:38:37NEWSREEL FOOTAGE: When do we work?
0:38:37 > 0:38:39There's nothing wrong with me.
0:38:39 > 0:38:43I can still work, I'm OK.
0:38:45 > 0:38:48'By 1932, the Great Depression
0:38:48 > 0:38:51'had become the battleground for a new election.
0:38:51 > 0:38:52'President Herbert Hoover
0:38:52 > 0:38:54'versus Franklin Roosevelt,
0:38:54 > 0:38:56'the Governor of New York,
0:38:56 > 0:38:58'who put the blue collar working man
0:38:58 > 0:39:00'at the heart of his campaign.'
0:39:00 > 0:39:06ROOSEVELT: These unhappy times call for the building up of plans
0:39:06 > 0:39:09that build from the bottom up and not from the top down,
0:39:09 > 0:39:14that put their faith once more in the forgotten man
0:39:14 > 0:39:16at the bottom of the economic pyramid.
0:39:17 > 0:39:24'But if it was America's nightmare, it was Yip Harburg's salvation.
0:39:24 > 0:39:27'Yip had written enough songs to land a job
0:39:27 > 0:39:31'on a new satirical show on Broadway called Americana,
0:39:31 > 0:39:35'which was to centre on Roosevelt's forgotten man.
0:39:36 > 0:39:40'And it was with an unknown Tin Pan Alley composer,
0:39:40 > 0:39:43'another Jew, Jay Gorney, that he wrote the song
0:39:43 > 0:39:47'that would become the anthem of the Great Depression.
0:39:49 > 0:39:52I didn't want a song to depress people.
0:39:52 > 0:39:54I wanted to write a song
0:39:54 > 0:39:56to make people think.
0:39:56 > 0:40:00In other words, it isn't a hand-me-out...a hand-me-up song
0:40:00 > 0:40:03of, "Give me a dime, I'm starving, I'm bitter."
0:40:03 > 0:40:05It wasn't that kind of sentimentality.
0:40:05 > 0:40:09# Once I built a railroad, made it run
0:40:09 > 0:40:13# Made it race against time
0:40:13 > 0:40:17# Once I built a railroad, now it's done
0:40:17 > 0:40:21# Brother, can you spare a dime?
0:40:21 > 0:40:25# Once I built a tower to the sun
0:40:25 > 0:40:28# Brick and rivet and lime
0:40:28 > 0:40:32# Once I built a tower, now it's done
0:40:32 > 0:40:36# Brother, can you spare a dime? #
0:40:41 > 0:40:44'The melody was based on a Yiddish lullaby
0:40:44 > 0:40:46'that had been sung to Jay Gorney
0:40:46 > 0:40:49'by his grandmother back in the Pale.
0:40:49 > 0:40:51'And onto a song of suffering and hope
0:40:51 > 0:40:53'Yip laid the poetry and passion
0:40:53 > 0:40:56'of Lower East Side politics.'
0:40:56 > 0:41:00The first line of their song runs,
0:41:00 > 0:41:04"They used to tell me I was building a dream."
0:41:04 > 0:41:05We all know who "they" are -
0:41:05 > 0:41:10the fat cats who were surviving the slump - and what is this song doing?
0:41:10 > 0:41:14Saying that American dream no longer survives?
0:41:14 > 0:41:16You bet it was,
0:41:16 > 0:41:21and it only got tougher still in Yip Harburg's lyrics.
0:41:22 > 0:41:25'The song was a potted history of the American dream
0:41:25 > 0:41:30'fallen into the ash can, a song about American heroes,
0:41:30 > 0:41:32'the railway and construction worker,
0:41:32 > 0:41:35'the veterans of World War I reduced to begging
0:41:35 > 0:41:38'and it took two new Americans,
0:41:38 > 0:41:42'two Jews immersed in the ideas of justice,
0:41:42 > 0:41:44'to prick America's conscience.'
0:41:44 > 0:41:49And above all, tragically, it's a dagger pointed at the heart
0:41:49 > 0:41:54of what had become of buddydom, that deep American ideal of friendship.
0:41:54 > 0:41:58"Don't you remember, I was your pal, buddy?"
0:41:58 > 0:42:02For the first time, that word brother becomes,
0:42:02 > 0:42:04"Buddy, can you spare a dime?"
0:42:04 > 0:42:08# Say, don't you remember?
0:42:08 > 0:42:12# They called me Al
0:42:12 > 0:42:16# It was Al all the time
0:42:16 > 0:42:19# Say, don't you remember
0:42:19 > 0:42:22# I'm your pal?
0:42:22 > 0:42:28# Buddy, can you spare a dime? #
0:42:28 > 0:42:30PIANO CHORD PLAYS
0:42:32 > 0:42:33It's not a bitter song, it's a man
0:42:33 > 0:42:35who was proud of what he did.
0:42:36 > 0:42:38Now, you would think the audience
0:42:38 > 0:42:42out for a night out in Broadway would be horrified, be walking out.
0:42:42 > 0:42:43They did nothing of the sort.
0:42:43 > 0:42:46They stood every single night for an ovation,
0:42:46 > 0:42:48cheered till they were hoarse.
0:42:48 > 0:42:51Harburg and Gorney had not only written a song
0:42:51 > 0:42:55that was an American history, they'd made American history.
0:42:55 > 0:42:58The election was just a few weeks away.
0:42:58 > 0:43:01Suddenly every crooner, Bing Crosby, Rudy Vallee,
0:43:01 > 0:43:05wanted to record this confrontational anthem
0:43:05 > 0:43:07of the Great Depression.
0:43:07 > 0:43:11The Republicans were terrified that it would elect Roosevelt
0:43:11 > 0:43:14and attempted to ban it, and maybe it did.
0:43:14 > 0:43:16He was swept to power.
0:43:16 > 0:43:19Looking back on it, Jay Gorney said,
0:43:19 > 0:43:22"That was the song of the American soul."
0:43:22 > 0:43:25MAN SINGS
0:43:34 > 0:43:37'Jewish soul, with its minor key melodies
0:43:37 > 0:43:39'and plaintive but defiant vocals,
0:43:39 > 0:43:43'finds its musical kin in that other great family of American song -
0:43:43 > 0:43:45'Black soul music.'
0:43:45 > 0:43:48SOUL SINGING
0:44:01 > 0:44:05'This is Joshua Nelson, a Jewish African-American singer,
0:44:05 > 0:44:09'who's married up "chazzanut", traditional Jewish cantorial music,
0:44:09 > 0:44:14'with African-American spirituals in what he calls "kosher gospel",
0:44:14 > 0:44:16'a fusion of kindred souls.'
0:44:34 > 0:44:37So, Joshua, is there something about the structure of the music,
0:44:37 > 0:44:41the sound of the music, the insides of the music,
0:44:41 > 0:44:44which is common between Black and Jewish experience?
0:44:44 > 0:44:47Kosher gospel music is experiencing that...
0:44:47 > 0:44:50that shtetl experience in a way.
0:44:50 > 0:44:52You know, when the old cantors would...
0:44:52 > 0:44:54Nowadays, a lot of cantors,
0:44:54 > 0:44:57the chazzanut, is not as intense as it used to be.
0:44:57 > 0:45:00No, when I heard you sing it, it was absolutely electrifying.
0:45:00 > 0:45:03Oh, thank you. It was like being in the 19th century.
0:45:03 > 0:45:04And that's what soul is. Yeah.
0:45:04 > 0:45:06Soul is the neshama -
0:45:06 > 0:45:11it's the spirit inside of the body crying out from suffering.
0:45:11 > 0:45:14Um, you take, for instance...
0:45:14 > 0:45:17HE SINGS IN HEBREW
0:45:18 > 0:45:22HE REPEATS THE LINE
0:45:23 > 0:45:26HE REPEATS IT MORE SOULFULLY
0:45:35 > 0:45:38..and, you know, it sounds very similar to... Yeah.
0:45:38 > 0:45:42# When Israel was in Egypt's land
0:45:42 > 0:45:46# Let my people go. #
0:45:46 > 0:45:52Hebrew, English, but the same spirit, and it's something like,
0:45:52 > 0:45:56I always wondered how African-Americans and Jews,
0:45:56 > 0:45:58who lived two worlds apart,
0:45:58 > 0:46:01wind up both in ghettos at some point in history,
0:46:01 > 0:46:06the shtetl and the ghetto, and expressing themselves musically.
0:46:06 > 0:46:09These are all songs that were about social action.
0:46:09 > 0:46:10Yeah. It's very powerful
0:46:10 > 0:46:14and I think it's not necessarily a Black or a Jewish thing.
0:46:14 > 0:46:16I think it's a matter of humanity.
0:46:24 > 0:46:28'What America had taught the Jews is that the dream that they could be
0:46:28 > 0:46:31'both Jewish and part of the wider culture in which they lived,
0:46:31 > 0:46:34'a dream that was impossible in the old world of Russia,
0:46:34 > 0:46:37'did actually have a chance of working out.
0:46:40 > 0:46:42'And not just working out.
0:46:42 > 0:46:44'The success of their songs would take Yip,
0:46:44 > 0:46:46'the Gershwins and Irving Berlin
0:46:46 > 0:46:49'across America into the dream factory of Hollywood.
0:46:52 > 0:46:56'Of all the American industries that the Jews had been involved in,
0:46:56 > 0:47:00'this was the one that made the most powerful imprint on American life.
0:47:04 > 0:47:08'In the 1930s, all the big studios had been created
0:47:08 > 0:47:09'and were run by Jews -
0:47:09 > 0:47:12'Paramount and 20th Century Fox...
0:47:14 > 0:47:17'..Warner Brothers, run by Harry and Jack Warner.
0:47:21 > 0:47:24'And the big daddy of them all, MGM,
0:47:24 > 0:47:26'under the iron fist of Louis B Mayer.'
0:47:27 > 0:47:31Those Jews had pretty much the same story to tell.
0:47:31 > 0:47:33Their fathers, who'd been the immigrants
0:47:33 > 0:47:36from the shtetls and Eastern Europe,
0:47:36 > 0:47:38from the bad part of Germany,
0:47:38 > 0:47:42had pretty much all been failures in the scrap metal business,
0:47:42 > 0:47:46selling stuff off barrows on Hester and Delancey Street,
0:47:46 > 0:47:49but their boys, their boys were hungry
0:47:49 > 0:47:53for something bigger and more spectacular
0:47:53 > 0:47:55and, very often, they took time off,
0:47:55 > 0:47:57especially time off from Jewish observance,
0:47:57 > 0:48:01to come to places like this, to vaudeville shows.
0:48:01 > 0:48:03JAUNTY PIANO MUSIC PLAYS
0:48:06 > 0:48:10Between the dog and pony acts and the busty sopranos
0:48:10 > 0:48:14and the flat-footed comedians telling slightly off-colour jokes,
0:48:14 > 0:48:15there they saw the future.
0:48:15 > 0:48:18They saw little picture palace shorts,
0:48:18 > 0:48:21news of the day, mini documentaries,
0:48:21 > 0:48:24but sometimes little, tiny biopics.
0:48:24 > 0:48:29And they saw how America would change through the movies.
0:48:30 > 0:48:33'And it wasn't just about swashbuckling romances
0:48:33 > 0:48:38'or making huge sums of money, though they'd certainly do that.
0:48:38 > 0:48:42'They wanted the movies to be a school for working-class America,
0:48:42 > 0:48:45'such a Jewish idea.
0:48:45 > 0:48:50'They'd exalt it with history, with the noble epics of world literature,
0:48:50 > 0:48:53'creating on screen an ideal America.'
0:48:53 > 0:48:56No wonder, out of all the possible birth dates
0:48:56 > 0:48:59that were claimed for Louis Mayer,
0:48:59 > 0:49:04the one he chose was, of course, the 4th of July.
0:49:06 > 0:49:11'In 1938, Louis Mayer would give Yip Harburg Hollywood's dream ticket -
0:49:11 > 0:49:15'the job of lyricist on The Wizard Of Oz -
0:49:15 > 0:49:18'a fantasy about munchkins and witches
0:49:18 > 0:49:21'and a magical Utopian land in the sky,
0:49:21 > 0:49:25'not too far removed from the Hasidic tales.
0:49:25 > 0:49:28'This time, his composer was Harold Arlen,
0:49:28 > 0:49:31'the son of a synagogue cantor from Buffalo
0:49:31 > 0:49:34'who'd started his career in the vaudeville theatres
0:49:34 > 0:49:35'of the Lower East Side.
0:49:37 > 0:49:39'Together, they'd write the song
0:49:39 > 0:49:42'that would come to define the golden age of Hollywood
0:49:42 > 0:49:46'and which would win them the Oscar at the Academy Awards of 1940.'
0:49:46 > 0:49:50To Harold Arlen and EY Harburg, for the year's best song,
0:49:50 > 0:49:52Over The Rainbow from The Wizard Of Oz.
0:49:58 > 0:50:05# Somewhere over the rainbow
0:50:05 > 0:50:10# Way up high
0:50:10 > 0:50:13# There's a land that I heard of... #
0:50:13 > 0:50:17'It was a long way from the shtetl, or was it?
0:50:17 > 0:50:21'For who could write this universal song of hope better
0:50:21 > 0:50:23'than a Jewish boy from the Lower East Side?
0:50:23 > 0:50:26'And what is Oz, other than America
0:50:26 > 0:50:30'or any place where dreams of a better life really do come true?'
0:50:30 > 0:50:36# And the dreams that you dare to dream
0:50:36 > 0:50:40# Really do come true. #
0:50:40 > 0:50:45It's amazing to think that the song which pretty much everybody believes
0:50:45 > 0:50:50is the greatest movie song of all time almost never happened.
0:50:50 > 0:50:53It wasn't in the book for The Wizard Of Oz.
0:50:53 > 0:50:58The producers of the movie complained that it wasn't right
0:50:58 > 0:51:01to come out of the voice of a little girl in Kansas,
0:51:01 > 0:51:06but Yip Harburg and Harold Arlen believed in it passionately.
0:51:06 > 0:51:11Why? Well, because it summed up all of the history
0:51:11 > 0:51:15of Jewish yearning for deliverance from oppression.
0:51:15 > 0:51:18All that back history of their own families,
0:51:18 > 0:51:21but what they did was actually to channel
0:51:21 > 0:51:24that specifically Jewish American sensibility
0:51:24 > 0:51:29and marry it up with something authentically American -
0:51:29 > 0:51:34the intense American faith in optimism - and, by doing that,
0:51:34 > 0:51:39they made Somewhere Over The Rainbow a universal treasure.
0:51:54 > 0:51:56'I wish the story could end there
0:51:56 > 0:51:59'with the collective success of America's Jews
0:51:59 > 0:52:02'and the dream world of Oz, but it didn't.
0:52:02 > 0:52:06'Remember the date of that triumphant night at the Oscars?
0:52:06 > 0:52:08'1940.
0:52:24 > 0:52:27'What American Jews saw when they looked across the oceans
0:52:27 > 0:52:28'at their old homelands
0:52:28 > 0:52:31'were nationalisms inflamed by war
0:52:31 > 0:52:34'that had grown ever more violently racist,
0:52:34 > 0:52:36'and not just in Germany.
0:52:36 > 0:52:41'And this was not good for the three million Jews who'd stayed behind.
0:53:07 > 0:53:09'In the 1930s,
0:53:09 > 0:53:11'the small town of Plunge
0:53:11 > 0:53:14'in northern Lithuania, the land of my mother's family,
0:53:14 > 0:53:18'was like any other shtetl community in what was once the Pale -
0:53:18 > 0:53:21'half Jewish, half Lithuanian,
0:53:21 > 0:53:23'and where life for the water carriers,
0:53:23 > 0:53:25'merchants and Jewish grandmas
0:53:25 > 0:53:28'still revolved around the old-world institutions
0:53:28 > 0:53:30'of market and synagogue.
0:53:36 > 0:53:41'But in 1941, the shtetl was engulfed in tragedy.
0:53:43 > 0:53:47'Aged just 17, Jakovas was conscripted into the Red Army
0:53:47 > 0:53:49'to fight the Nazis,
0:53:49 > 0:53:51'which saved his life.
0:53:51 > 0:53:55'But on his return to Plunge after the war,
0:53:55 > 0:53:58'he found a shtetl emptied of Jews.
0:53:58 > 0:54:01'His father, brother and grandfather all disappeared.'
0:54:01 > 0:54:06How many...how many people were killed here, Jakovas?
0:54:27 > 0:54:30'Jakovas is now the last Jew in Plunge.
0:54:30 > 0:54:35'A carpenter, he's devoted his life to rebuilding its Jewish memory,
0:54:35 > 0:54:37'carving a memorial in the woods
0:54:37 > 0:54:41'and surrounding himself with the shtetl characters of his youth.'
0:55:42 > 0:55:45'In the end, it wasn't the gas chambers of Auschwitz
0:55:45 > 0:55:47'that killed the Jews of Plunge.
0:55:47 > 0:55:51'The Holocaust had barely got into its stride by the summer of 1941.
0:55:55 > 0:55:57'Instead, Plunge's Jews were rounded up
0:55:57 > 0:55:59'and their wooden synagogues destroyed
0:55:59 > 0:56:01'with the active participation
0:56:01 > 0:56:05'of some of those who'd been the Jews' neighbours for generations.'
0:56:11 > 0:56:15And as the grandchild of a Lithuanian Jewish family,
0:56:15 > 0:56:17I need to tell you what happened.
0:56:17 > 0:56:19What happened was this.
0:56:19 > 0:56:24Those Jews who'd been rounded up were hermetically sealed
0:56:24 > 0:56:27inside a synagogue -
0:56:27 > 0:56:33locked up with no air, no water, no light for two weeks.
0:56:33 > 0:56:38People died in their own filth. They were not even allowed
0:56:38 > 0:56:43to throw the dead bodies of the old people, the children outside.
0:56:45 > 0:56:47'When they were finally allowed out,
0:56:47 > 0:56:52'they were forced to defile and burn the heart and soul of their faith,
0:56:52 > 0:56:54'the Sefer Torah - the scrolls of the law -
0:56:54 > 0:56:59'before being led into the forests where they had worked for centuries,
0:56:59 > 0:57:01'but where they were now forced
0:57:01 > 0:57:05'to dig their own mass graves before they were shot.'
0:57:07 > 0:57:09So I suppose I should tell you...
0:57:11 > 0:57:15..that the Jewish idea that the ethical spirit, that moral force
0:57:15 > 0:57:19could vanquish physical force,
0:57:19 > 0:57:23that the Shecinah, the divine presence fills the entire world,
0:57:23 > 0:57:29came to an end in those stinking pits of broken bodies and horror.
0:57:29 > 0:57:31But it didn't end.
0:57:33 > 0:57:35It never does end.
0:57:35 > 0:57:38It moves...elsewhere.
0:57:40 > 0:57:46The Jews pick up their old, battered suitcases and find somewhere else
0:57:46 > 0:57:49where there's a possibility of the decency
0:57:49 > 0:57:52and the nobility of an ordinary life.
0:57:55 > 0:58:00I remember something said by the Hasidic Rabbi, Shlomo of Karlin,
0:58:00 > 0:58:06who said that the worst thing the evil urge can do
0:58:06 > 0:58:12is to make us forget that men are all the sons of a king.
0:58:14 > 0:58:20Even in a place like this, thinking of a time like that,
0:58:20 > 0:58:26I wouldn't be Jewish if I didn't at least try and remember that.
0:58:30 > 0:58:36YIP HARBURG: # Somewhere over the rainbow
0:58:36 > 0:58:40# Bluebirds fly
0:58:40 > 0:58:46# Birds fly over that rainbow
0:58:46 > 0:58:50# Why then, oh, why can't I?
0:58:51 > 0:58:55# If any little bird can fly beyond the rainbow
0:58:55 > 0:59:00# Why, oh, why can't I? #