Simon and Garfunkel's The Sound of Silence and the Jewish American Experience

 

Ever since I started doing my own Jewish genealogy, I hear Simon and Garfunkel's The Sound of Silence very differently. I've finally put my thoughts into a video. I'll be interested to hear what others think.

I've looked into Paul Simon's genealogy and, no surprise, it shares a great deal in common with my own, from the horrors of the pogroms... 

... and the general deprivation and systemic oppression of Jews in Lithuania and the larger Pale of Settlement in Eastern Europe...

... that led so many Jews to leave Europe as refugees and try their luck in New York...

... to the overcrowded...

... impoverished, "tenement halls" of the Lower East Side of Manhattan (ie the Jewish ghetto) that Simon sings about in the song...

... to the "words of the prophets" written on the "subway walls"...

... to the "neon lights that split the night"...

... to the peaceful but difficult silence of the very Jewish, Forest Hills, Queens ... 

... to Forest Hills High School...

... which Simon and Garfunkel attended...

... with my father...

... to the silence both my family and Paul Simon's kept to protect the youngsters from the pain of knowing their family's past and present suffering...

... and the alienation and anger about that silence that led my father, and Simon and Garfunkel to distance themselves from that silence... without knowing its cause. 

Yes, Paul Simon's family story and my own share a great deal in common.

And so I felt I might be a bit qualified to take second look at The Sound of Silence, a song we all know and think we understand... a second look that takes the Jewish American experience as the song's starting place, even if its fresh faced writer didn't even know it. 

Let me know what you think.