Thanksgiving in the American Land

Here’s my recommendation for a Thankgiving anthem for 2006: “American Land,” by Bruce Springsteen.

It’s a contemporary American folk song Bruce recently composed for the new edition of “We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions.” Upon first hearing, it sounds like a garden-variety Irish-inflected immigrant song, extolling the joys of the American dream (“There’s treasures for the taking, for any hard working man/Who makes his home in the American land.”) But true to form, Bruce folds a deeper and more complex message into his vision of America, proving once again why he is among the most powerful – if misunderstood – songwriters of our time. Listen carefully and you’ll catch his inclusion of illegal immigrants and even (gasp!) Arabs among those who reach our shores, hoping for a better life and future.

Every Thanksgiving, I’m mindful that like most Americans, my ancestors didn’t come over on the Mayflower. My paternal grandfather, Yitzhak (later Irving) Rosen up and left his home town of Kamen-Kashirsk in the northwest Ukraine when he was a teenager, certain that a better life must certainly await him somewhere else. After wending his way through Europe (among other things, serving as a soldier in WW I) he ended up in the American Land supporting a wife and two sons by driving a candy truck in City Terrace, Los Angeles. His two sons grew up to be a doctor and a lawyer – every Jewish parent’s dream come true.

As we debate immigration policy in our country today, I can’t help but think of the myriad of immense challeges my own grandparents faced when they immigrated here not so long ago – and how this hard fought dream continues even now. In the words of the song: “They died to get here a hundred years ago, they’re dyin’ now.”

Anyhow, Happy Thanksgiving. And sing this one around the table this year:

“American Land” by Bruce Springsteen

What is this land of America, so many travel there
I’m going now while I’m still young, my darling meet me there
Wish me luck my lovely, I’ll send for you when I can
And we’ll make our home in the American land

Over there all the woman wear silk and satin to their knees
And children dear, the sweets, I hear, are growing on the trees
Gold comes rushing out the river straight into your hands
If you make your home in the American land

There’s diamonds in the sidewalks, there’s gutters lined in song
Dear I hear that beer flows through the faucets all night long
There’s treasure for the taking, for any hard working man
Who will make his home in the American land

I docked at Ellis Island in a city of light and spire
I wandered to the valley of red-hot steel and fire
We made the steel that built the cities with the sweat of our two hands
And I made my home in the American land

The McNicholas, the Posalski’s, the Smiths, Zerillis too
The Blacks, the Irish, the Italians, the Germans and the Jews
The Puerto Ricans, illegals, the Asians, Arabs miles from home
Come across the water with a fire down below

They died building the railroads, worked to bones and skin
They died in the fields and factories, names scattered in the wind
They died to get here a hundred years ago, they’re dyin’ now
The hands that built the country were all trying to keep down