Dave and Randy

From Odessa to God Bless AmericaDave Posmontier and Randy Shupp create a musical mosaic that portrays the long hard road endured by Jewish immigrants in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when they fled persecution in the Old World and sought refuge in the land of opportunity – America. They brought their traditions, their sense of humor and irony, their optimism and “constant devotion to God” and blended the sounds and sensitivities of their traditional ethnic religious cultures into the melting pot that was early twentieth century America.

An excerpt from the show's Libretto:

Sometime in the reign of Czar Nicholas II – a little village somewhere in the Pale of the Settlement – a family on the Sabbath – a family at prayer.

May the Lord protect and defend you.

May the Lord preserve you from pain.

Favor them, Oh Lord, with happiness and peace.

Oh, hear our Sabbath prayer. Amen.

Tevye: Because of our traditions, every one of us knows who he is and what God expects him to do.

Who, day and night, must scramble for a living,

Feed a wife and children, say his daily prayers?

And who has the right, as master of the house,

To have the final word at home?

The Papa, the Papa! Tradition.

Who must know the way to make a proper home,

A quiet home, a kosher home?

Who must raise the family and run the home,

So Papa's free to read the holy books?