It was not consciously intended by the Israel Eurovision team, but Yuval Raphael defied gravity May 17 in much the same motif the fictional character, Elphaba in Wicked, has been defying gravity since 2003 – rising above her tormentors and would-be killers in song.
“Elphaba, the Wicked Witch” the greatest musical theatrical moment thus far of the 21st century, has been closing out Act 1 of Wicked on Broadway and around the globe to thrilled, sold-out audiences daily, rising to the sky in song. Dressed in her wing-dress of magic black, Raphael ascended the European set stairs to soar, singing of love and determination – our song.
Elphaba, a young witch character set in a prequel to L. Frank Baum’s 1939 book, Wizard of Oz, was created by Gregory Maguire in his 1995 novel, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West. Exploring evil, terrorism, propaganda, and human purpose, Maguire’s Wicked is the first novel in his Wicked series of adult novels. The Broadway show, Wicked is produced by Marc Platt, with lyrics and music by Stephen Schwartz.
Elphaba (named for the initials of L. Frank Baum) finds she is different from everyone else. Shunned, ridiculed, and derided by all, despite her integrity and innate talents, Elphaba is excited to go to Oz, where tutelage under the Wizard will lead to her having a normal, emancipated life.
“Once you’re with the Wizard
No one thinks you’re strange.
All of Oz has to love you…
And this gift and this curse I have inside
Maybe at last, I’ll know why…”
But Elphaba soon discovers Oz is anything but enlightening: the Wizard is a tyrant exploiting people’s goodness by Orwellian technological controls, perpetuating evil conventions posing as Oz morality.
Elphaba realizes that to be who she truly is, she must break with the prevailing gravity of Oz conformity, even though Oz life will be pleasant if one accedes to it. Elphaba finds her strength and identity to eclipse Oz and soar skyward in the showstopper closing Act I:
“To those who’d ground me
Tell them how I am defying gravity,
Nobody in all of Oz
No wizard that there is or ever was
Is ever going to bring me down. [She ascends skyward in dramatic black dress as the mob tries to kill her]”
In 1983, Israeli darling Ofra Haza, like Yuval, won the popular vote for Eurovision also in a German-speaking city (Munich) – just seven years after the Munich Olympic massacre, singing “Chai” (lyrics by Ehud Manor):
“My two eyes
Are still raised to the light.
Alive, alive, alive – Yes, I’m still alive.
This is the song which Grandfather
Sang yesterday to Father
And today I sing.
In my sky…”
Ofra Haza also sang the headliner song “Deliver Us” on the soundtrack of the Prince of Egypt, the 2003 film by Dreamworks (Spielberg et. al). Lyrics and music are by Stephen Schwartz, who said in interviews that the Prince of Egypt soundtrack “is about faith and perseverance” of the Jewish people being taken out of Egypt by Moses to Israel.
“God on High
Can you hear your people cry?
Here in this burning sand
Deliver us…”
Member among the nations
It is not a stretch to consider Elphaba’s Wizard-Oz to be like the United Nations – which gave birth to Israel and in which Israel put so much hope to be an accepted member among the nations.
With the admission of dozens of anti-democratic, anti-Western UN members since 1948, that international body has become the prosecutor and persecutor of Israel, seemingly taking up its daily business to pursue that end.
Raphael – who survived hiding under dead bodies in a pogrom in Israel – sang to jeers in the audience as a lethal ballistic missile was racing toward Israel from Yemen in a week that an Israeli mother was murdered on her way to give birth – ascended on high singing the Keren Peles lyrics:
“We are a people living in the heavens and on the earth.
To lift me up and take me high, keep my feet close to the ground
…Dreams are coming true… I choose the light. Darkness will fade.”
Jews live looking toward heaven, our feet firmly on Earth. An Earth that doesn’t always like us. Hence all this imagery of ascension and song. Rapahael sings about “the rainbow in my sky”; Harold Arlen has Dorothy sing about excelling the rainbow. The Baum message, that we possess all the resources we need, is apt for Israelis – we don’t need to seek courage like the lion in Oz, or sagacity like the scarecrow, or heart like the tin man. We have it all here.
We just have to realize it, and, like the Elphaba character, be brave and true enough to be guided and ascend.
The writer is a hi-tech lawyer in Jerusalem. He shares a birthday with Stephen Schwartz, which he mistakenly assumes gives him the mantle to be a drama critic.
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