Editor’s Note; This article was originally published in the Forward on September 20, 2012.
To some lovers of classical American song, it may seem paradoxical that the Tin Pan Alley genius who created such goyish holiday classics as “White Christmas” and “Easter Parade” was born Israel Isidore Beilin in Belarus, Russia, the son of a village cantor. After he and his family fled to New York to escape Cossack pogroms in 1893, the family’s name was changed to Baline at Ellis Island. In 1907 it was altered again to Irving Berlin by Joseph Stern, a sheet music publisher who concocted the composer’s definitive name to sound more snazzily American.