I Am an Immigrant

Kids are Kids the Whole World Round was the first elementary school musical that my brother and I wrote. Published in 1997 by the Hal Leonard Corporation, the half-hour musical featured eight of our songs connected by short monologues we wrote to introduce each song. Over the years we’ve heard from many music teachers around the country who have used it to present programs with their third or fourth graders, but we never saw an actual performance. Until now. On February 16th, coincidentally—but very appropriately—on the national “A Day Without Immigrants,” we heard the fourth graders at Rogers School in Berkley, Michigan, perform the musical in the afternoon for their teachers and schoolmates. That night they presented it again for their parents and families.

First things first—the kids at Rogers were great! Their music teacher, Maryann Maiuri, had prepared them very well and they sang in tune, in rhythm, and, most importantly, with feeling. They delivered the monologues from memory, with enthusiasm and dramatic flair. Laz and I were delighted and moved—a couple of times to tears—by their beautiful presentation.

We wrote those songs and monologues more than twenty years ago, a couple of the songs nearly thirty years ago. Several of them are still in our sets at many of our concerts. But we hadn’t seen or heard the monologues since the musical came out. As we listened to the kids perform Kids are Kids, Laz and I were both struck by how much of it, songs and monologues both, seemed eerily timely and relevant—and much more so today than when we wrote them, or at any time since then.

The first song of Kids Are Kids is “Hello,” which features greetings in eight languages, and which has been our opening number at almost all of our children’s and family concerts since 1988. The monologue that follows goes like this: “We just greeted you, and each other, in all those languages because, although we live here in the United States, we are connected to people the whole world ‘round. After all, every one of us, including Native Americans, has ancestors who came here from other parts of the world. Maybe it was our parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, or great-great-great grandparents… Maybe they came from Europe, Africa, South America, India or China… They spoke different languages…they looked and dressed differently from one another…they cooked different foods. Yet they all worked together to create one great country! We can continue to do the same today, because, just like them, deep inside, we are all much more alike than we are different. Inside, we are really all the same.”

You get the idea. Here are some lyrics from “All the World”: “All the world is a rainbow/What color are you? Are you red black or white, are you yellow or brown, are you some other shade or hue?” “Everybody Once Was a Kid” pays homage to some of my heroes: Michael Jordan, Babe Ruth, Amelia Earhart, Aretha, Martin Luther King, Mother Teresa, the Beatles, Michael Fox, Baryshnikov, Peter, Paul and Mary, and Elvis. “If We Care” was the only song that featured soloists, and they were magnificent. I’m hoping there was an adequate supply of Kleenex around for their families when they sang, “If we care, and we share, then we’ll all have enough. If we don’t, or we won’t, it’ll be tough, it’ll be rough. But if we love one another, deep in the heart, that’s the start.” Laz and I sure used some. The musical ends with “The Sun’s Gonna Shine” featuring lyrics that proclaim an optimism that I have been struggling to feel since November 8. “The sun’s gonna shine, shine on me, I can feel it in my bones.”

I have never sat down and said to myself, “Today I will write a song about immigration, or about the value of diversity, or about the necessity of tolerance.” Like most writers, I work from my life experiences, sometimes without even recognizing till much later what the impetus or inspiration was for what I’ve written. But listening to the kids perform Kids Are Kids, I realized what was one main impulse that sparked those songs and monologues, and, for that matter much of the rest of our music—our original songs and the traditional ones we’ve included in our sets over the years.

Although we were not born in this country, having come here as children with our parents, I’ve not thought of myself as an immigrant in many, many years. I have long felt thoroughly American, and never think of myself as being Hungarian, though I was for my early childhood; or Israeli, though I was that for a few years before we came to America. But for months now, I have been frequently, forcefully, and very unpleasantly reminded that I am an immigrant and, but for the accident of the timing and location of my birth, might have faced the same rejection that many of today’s refugees and immigrants face in moving, or trying to come to America.

My family and I came here legally but, like most immigrants and refugees the world over—for eons before us, and up to the present day—we left our homeland to escape violence and persecution, and to seek a chance at a better life.

Our family did that twice. First, my parents uprooted themselves and my brother and me from the only country all of us had ever known; my father was 47 years old, my mother 39. We left behind most of our relatives, most of our possessions, our language, my parents’ work, our whole way of life—and moved to Israel and started over. And then, less than three years later, we did it all again to move to the US.

My brother and I were just kids—eight years old the first time, almost eleven the second. It wasn’t that hard for us. The new languages came pretty easily and, with the flexibility and resiliency of the very young, we readily made new friends, and learned new customs. It was much more difficult for my parents, but they did it knowing that because we were Jewish we’d face—at best—prejudice and limited educational and work opportunities and—at worst—lethal persecution in Hungary. We left Israel because in the late fifties the only work and way of life available to my parents simply presented too many difficult changes for them to make at their age.

I’m not arrogant enough to think that I’ve given more to this country than I’ve received. Just the opposite, in fact. But, like most of us, immigrants and others, I’ve tried to live a good life here, tried to live a life that has felt honorable and worthwhile to me, my family, my community, my country, and ultimately the planet. And, like many of us—and unlike the current administration—I don’t now feel that there’s no more room in this country for others facing the hardships—and far worse—that my parents faced when they decided to leave their homeland. I’m also not so arrogant as to think that our one little musical, sung by a couple dozen kids at Rogers School (and by a few hundred other children at elementary schools that are doing this musical around the country) will have any effect against Trump’s illegal executive order. But I can say with some certainty and even a little pride that—unlike Trump’s order, which has and will—this little musical can’t hurt.