If I were Rothschild

October 10, 2006 - 3:58 PM by 90minute

“Fiddler on the Roof” is about as culturally Jewish as culture can be, and one of its signature taglines is the title of the well-known song “If I were a rich man.” (Go ahead, sing it: All day long I’d biddy biddy bum…)

But for all that the Jewish connotations of the phrase would seem to make it quite suitable for use in Israel, Israelis actually use an altogether different expression to get across the same idea.

The Marker, an Israeli business newspaper that is part of the Haaretz Group, used the expression Monday as a front-page teaser for a story about billionaire Arcady Gaydamak’s acquisition of property on Rothschild Boulevard in Tel Aviv. The phrase? “If I were Rothschild.”

It somehow strikes me as fitting that Israelis use this phrase and not the Fiddler one. After all, the Rothschild family is renowned – here, at least – not only for their wealth, but also for their role in establishing the State of Israel.

As you can read here, the Balfour declaration, a 1917 statement of British support for “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people,” was made in a letter from Arthur James Balfour, the British foreign secretary, to Lionel Walter Rothschild, 2nd Baron Rothschild and a leader of British Jewry.

And so it is that those who are willing to take the chance of reading too much into a possibly innocuous idiomatic difference can see that once again, the lines between Israeli Jewry and American Jewry are being drawn, in the linguistic arena at least. While American Jewry falls back on the Diaspora image of shtetl Jews to describe their financial aspirations, Israelis look toward – well, yes, a Diaspora Jew, but one who played a key role in creating the state that bred a few million New Jews who shove and shout and ask you how much money you make and carry M-16s and create technology start-ups by the dozen: in a word, un-Tevyes.

Crossposted to the 90th minute

Share with others

Add 'If I were Rothschild' to Del.icio.us

Add 'If I were Rothschild' to Technorati

Add 'If I were Rothschild' to Stumble Upon

Tags: • Category: General, Israeliness

Comments

4 Comments on If I were Rothschild

David All on Tue, Oct 10th 2006 9:56 PM

In America from the 1890s to the 1970s, “as rich as Rockefeller” would have been the standard phrase for saying a person was as rich as possible. Nowadays I suppose it would be Bill Gates who would be standard for a wealthy person.

Believe that American Jews do all the things that Israeli Jews are described as doing in your post, except that part about carrying M-16s! (And would not that be Uzis that Israelis carry?) That image of Israeli or New Jews as a tough bunch who you better not get on the wrong side of is the real difference, in my opinion, between American & Israeli Jews.

David on Wed, Oct 11th 2006 2:30 AM

Actually the “new” Jews are nothing of the sort. They are in fact the “old” Jews. How?

For example – King Solomon or King David. What about Joshua and Gideon and, not forgetting Deborah.

These were proud Jews who fought and won and defeated their enemies.

There were those who fought and did not give up – such as on Masada and people like the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto.

The shetl was a new and brief Jew, not at all the “old” Jew.

Nominally Challenged on Wed, Oct 11th 2006 11:24 AM

Actually, the Hebrew translation of “If I were a Rich Man” (the song title, that is), is “Lu hayiti Rothschild”, although the line “if I were a wealthy man” is translated as “lu hayiti ish ashir”, primarily due to issues of scansion, I would guess. I believe that the Yiddish version also refers to “Rothschild”.

Rankin Mike on Thu, Oct 12th 2006 12:07 PM