When it came to questions of religion, the great satirist Tom Lehrer explained he was “Jewish by ancestry — more to do with the delicatessen than the synagogue.”
If that’s so, then there must have been something in the corned beef that inspired a whole generation of irreverent post-war Jews to make America laugh its way through the culturally uptight, politically correct Ike-and-Mamie 1950s.
To name the merest varsity squad of Jewish comics and writers of that era: Mort Sahl, Lenny Bruce, Mike Nichols, Elaine May, Shelley Berman, Sid Caesar, Philip Roth, Mel Brooks, Jules Feiffer, Bruce Jay Friedman.
The big difference between these folks and Lehrer: While the others were cracking wise jokes, he sat at a piano and put everything into song. And while the phrase “comic genius” is thrown around a little loosely, Lehrer, who died in late July at age 97, really was a genius.
He got into Harvard at 15. Even then, he was putting his intelligence into rhyme. For his admissions essay, he wrote a lengthy verse that wound up:
“I will leave movie thrillers/And watch caterpillars/Get born and pupated and larva’d/And I’ll work like a slave/And always behave/And maybe I’ll get into Harva’d.”
By the time he was 19, he’d gotten a master’s degree. He taught math and physics at Harvard, MIT and the University of California, and did a stint with the Atomic Energy Commission.
Lehrer turned this trail into comic material. He wrote “Fight Fiercely, Harvard,” a prissy football fight song so beloved that the Harvard marching band played it for years, while alumni sang out:
“How we shall celebrate our victory. We shall invite the whole team up for tea.”
Then there was his “tribute” to the Atomic Energy Commission, called “The Wild West is Where I Want to Be,” a tune about the AEC testing nuclear bombs. A couple of lines:
“Mid the sagebrush and the cactus/I’ll watch the fellas practice/Dropping bombs through the clean desert breeze./I’ll have on my sombrero/And of course I’ll wear a pair of Levis/Over my lead BVDs.”
As the New York Times observed in its Lehrer obituary, “His lyrics were almost always sardonic, sung to music that tended to be maddeningly cheerful.” Not all of it was political, but much of it was macabre, including “We Will All Go Together When We Go,” about nuclear war wiping out the whole planet.
The tunes were jaunty, as counterpoint to the dark topics. “I want to go back to Dixie,” he sang sarcastically. Even before mid-20th century’s great civil rights movement, Lehrer looked at southern segregation and mocked “the land of the boll weevil/where the laws are medieval.”
In “National Brotherhood Week,” he wrote:
“Oh, the white folks/hate the black folks/And the black folks/Hate the white folks/To hate all but the right folks/Is an old established rule/But during National Brotherhood Week/National Brotherhood Week/Lena Horne and Sheriff Clarke are dancing cheek to cheek./It’s fun to eulogize/The people you despise/As long as you don’t let ‘em in your school.”
Lehrer was giving us more than wit. He was gently pointing out a sliver of American hypocrisy. That same song included:
“Oh, the Protestants hate the Catholics/And the Catholics hate the Protestants/All the Hindus hate the Muslims/And everybody hates the Jews.”
In performances at colleges, nightclubs and progressive venues, those lines drew huge laughs. America patted itself on the back and pretended to be a melting pot. The audience reaction provoked by Lehrer was a kind of group admission: we’re not always who we pretend to be, so let’s share a laugh and put that nonsense behind us.
Lehrer will be remembered as a great satirist, but when asked why he stopped writing, he replied, “Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.”
It becomes even more obsolete when we hear Donald Trump leading a campaign for his own Nobel.
Lehrer’s religious beliefs might have owed more to the deli than the synagogue, but he did write an affectionate piece called “(I’m Spending) Hanukkah in Santa Monica,” which also mentions spending “Shavuous in East St. Louis” and “Rosh Hashanah in Arizona.”
He called the song his answer to “White Christmas.” 
A former Baltimore Sun columnist and WJZ-TV commentator, Michael Olesker is the author of six books, including “Journeys to the Heart of Baltimore” (Johns Hopkins University Press) and “Michael Olesker’s Baltimore: If You Live Here, You’re Home” (Johns Hopkins University).
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