Shalom (from Milk and Honey)

[LEE ROY REAMS, spoken]
Ladies and gentlemen, Rainbow and Stars proudly present Mr. Jerry Herman!

[JERRY HERMAN, spoken]
Thank you, thank you so much! Good evening!

Well, I had my life all figured out: I was going to be an architect, an architect who wrote songs for a hobby, when one afternoon, my mother cornered me. She said she had a friend who had a friend who was a friend of Frank Loesser, the famous Broadway songwriter. And she felt that she could arrange a meeting between Mr. Loesser and myself to see what he thought of my songs. I said, "You're my mother, of course you think they're good. I'm not going."

She stared me down for a minute, and very quietly said, "Would you please waste a half hour of your life?" Now you can't say no to that, so I went. Mr. Loesser kept me there all afternoon, asked me what in the world I was doing in a design school, and literally changed the course of my life in an afternoon

Now, if some of the stories I have to tell you sound a little like scenes from a Judy Garland Mickey Rooney MGM musical, I guess they really were. For example, you know all those movies have the scene where the tall, distinguished producer comes over to the kid at the piano and says, "I'm gonna be doing a musical on Broadway next year, and I'd like you to do the score, so let's have lunch sometime."

Well, that's exactly what happened to me one evening after a performance of a little revue I was doing on MacDougal Street called Parade. Not only was I taken to lunch, but I was sent to Israel. Because, because that's where the new musical was going to be set, and I needed to get some background and local color. And exactly one year later, I found myself on West 45th Street, looking up at my first Broadway marquee. It said, "Martin Beck Theater. A New Musical: Milk and Honey."

Ladies and gentlemen, Lee Roy Reams and Karen Morrow!

[LEE ROY]
Shalom, shalom
You'll find "shalom"
The nicest greeting you know

[KAREN MORROW]
It means "bonjour," "salud" and "skoal"
And twice as much as hello

[LEE ROY & KAREN]
It means a million lovely things
Like "peace be yours," "welcome home"
And even when you say goodbye
You say goodbye with "shalom"

[KAREN]
It's a very useful word
It can get you through the day
All you really need to know:

[BOTH]
You can hardly go wrong
You're bilingual as long
As you say
Shalom
Shalom
You'll find "shalom"
The nicest greeting you know

It means "bonjour," "salud" and "skoal"
And twice as much as hello
It means a million lovely things
Like "peace be yours," "welcome home"
And even when you say goodbye

[KAREN]
If your voice has "I don't want to go" in it

[LEE ROY]
Say goodbye with a little "hello" in it

[BOTH]
And say goodbye with "shalom"