Op Ed
In a Jerusalem Post op-ed, B’nai B’rith International CEO Daniel S. Mariaschin examines the enduring legacy of Leon Uris’s “Exodus”—the novel, film, and music that once captivated the world—contrasting its global embrace 65 years ago with today’s climate of anti-Israel hostility.
Read the full piece in the Jerusalem Post.
Sixty-five years later, would the book, the movie, and the music have been welcomed with such global approbation?
In 1958, Leon Uris’s Exodus, a story of the founding of the State of Israel, was a worldwide best seller. In the United States, at the time, it became second only to Gone With the Wind, in terms of total sales (by 1975, Exodus had sold an astounding 5.4 million copies in the US alone).
The book resonated strongly with the Jewish community. Coming 10 years after modern Israel’s independence, and only 13 years after the Holocaust, with its account of Jewish heroism and triumph in the face of long odds, it brought out a stirring sense of pride in Jews everywhere.
In December 1960, the celebrated motion picture director Otto Preminger (himself Jewish, born in what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and who left Europe in 1935) brought the film adaptation of Exodus to the big screen. Preminger and Uris disagreed over what measure of historical context should be included in the script. Preminger ultimately prevailed, hiring Dalton Trumbo, the talented screenwriter who had been on the Hollywood Blacklist in the 1950s, to do the adaptation.
Preminger assembled a blockbuster cast, including Paul Newman, Eva Marie Saint, Lee J. Cobb, Sal Mineo, Ralph Richardson, Peter Lawford, Hugh Griffith, Jill Haworth, and John Derek. Filming began in April 1960 on location in Cyprus and Israel.
The composer Ernest Gold was hired to do the score. Gold was born in Vienna, and with his family, was fortunate enough to be able to flee Austria in 1938, had settled first in New York before moving to Hollywood in the mid-1940s. More about the score, so important to the movie’s success, later.
The film focuses primarily on one central aspect to the story of modern Israel: the effort to break the blockade of Jewish immigration to pre-state Israel after 1945. Thousands of Holocaust survivors who were able to reach British-controlled Cyprus were detained in makeshift camps because of Britain’s refusal to allow them to reach their hoped-for destination: the soon-to-become Jewish state.
A fictional story based on historical facts
Uris’s story and the screenplay are fictional but based closely on facts. Important elements of the Israel story are represented – including the imperative of Jewish emigration to pre-state Israel as a result of the devastation of the Holocaust; the Haganah and the Irgun and their stark worldview differences, even within families; stiff upper lip British military officers; non-Jewish volunteers; and even a pro-Zionist Arab.
The film received mostly favorable and sympathetic reviews. It grossed more than $8 million domestically, and more than $20 million worldwide, which in today’s dollars would be a pretty good box office take: about $305 million.
Perhaps even more memorable than the film itself was its theme, composed by Gold. With its sweeping strings and shofar-like horns, it perfectly fit the uplifting story that proceeds from the tragedy of the Holocaust to the triumphant verge of Jewish statehood in a period of three years. The score for Exodus won Gold an Academy Award and, later, two Grammys.
Giving a major boost to the film score was a recording of its main theme by the pianist team of Arthur Ferrante and Louis Teicher, who were just entering a new, successful stage of their careers. Their version of “Exodus,” released in October 1960, spent 21 weeks on the Billboard top 100 charts, rising to number 2. On the Cashbox chart, “Exodus” actually reached number 1.
Enter the pop singer Pat Boone, who wrote lyrics to Gold’s music in 1961. Titled “The Exodus Song (This Land is Mine),” the song, with its inspirational lyrics, stayed on the Billboard charts for six weeks, rising to number 64.
Over time, the song has been covered by many artists, including Andy Williams, Connie Francis, the Mantovani Orchestra, and even the doo-wop group The Duprees. Edith Piaf sang a version in French. The “Exodus” song was a bona fide international hit.
Sixty-five years later, would the book, the movie, and the music have been welcomed with such global approbation? With what we have experienced not only since October 7, 2023, but before that, with the Zionism equals Racism UN resolution of 1975, the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) movement, ongoing, and the pervasive anti-Israel bias at the United Nations and other international forums, along with bullying, intimidating street demonstrations, and campus protests, would this story of Jewish resilience be even given even a fair hearing?
Would Newman, Saint, and Cobb, three giants of American film, be canceled by the woke universe? Would Pat Boone, who in 1960 was at the height of his very successful music career, be cast into the cancel bin, as well? Would screenings of the movie at local theaters be met with pushing and shoving by pro-Hamas demonstrators?
Likely, but such unbridled expressions of antisemitism cannot ever cancel, nor can revisionists rewrite what we know to be the story of courage and determination that led to the miracle that created a new Jewish state, built on the foundations of our eternal ties to the land. And for that, Uris, Preminger, Gold, and Boone deserve their place in modern Jewish and Zionist history.
Boone put it well, in the lyrics to “Exodus”:
“This land is mine, God gave this land to me. This brave and ancient land to me…..
So take my hand and walk this land with me, And walk this lovely land with me….With the help of God, I know that I can be strong…
To make this land our home, If I must fight, I’ll fight to make this land our own. Until I die, this land is mine.”
Daniel S. Mariaschin is CEO of B’nai B’rith International. As the organization’s top executive officer, Mariaschin directs and supervises B’nai B’rith programs, activities and staff around the world.