History & versions of Over the Rainbow

A rainbow over Kansas

Harold Arlen wrote the melody and Yip Harburg the words for MGM’s The Wizard of Oz (1939). Judy Garland sings it as Dorothy, a few minutes into the film, after Aunt Em tells her to find a place where she won’t get into any trouble.^[1] The published title is “Over the Rainbow”; English speakers also call it “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” Garland recorded the film take on October 7, 1938, and a Decca side in 1939. The studio nearly cut the slow ballad; it stayed, won the Academy Award for Best Original Song, and became the number she was asked for for the rest of her life.^[2][3]

Hear Over the Rainbow — the 1939 film clip this site plays.

Yiddish in the writers, English in the song

Harburg was born Isidore Hochberg on the Lower East Side. His parents were Yiddish-speaking Orthodox Jews who had emigrated from Russia; he later said his love of theater began in boyhood visits to Yiddish theater (ייִדיש טעאַטער) and vaudeville with his father.^[4] Arlen was born Hyman Arluck in Buffalo, the son of Cantor Samuel Arluck of the Pine Street Shul.^[5][6] That is ancestry, not category. The lyric they wrote for Dorothy is English. A Yiddish life of the tune is a later translation, not a recovered original.

A sheynem regnboygn

Al Grand, a retired New York City schoolteacher, is known for putting Gilbert and Sullivan into Yiddish — especially Di Yam Gazlonim (The Pirates of Penzance).^[8] In his spare time he also Yiddishized American popular songs. The Forward printed his “Over the Rainbow” on June 13, 2003, as “Iber a sheynem regnboygn,” and noted that he had copyrighted it and asked that it not be used without permission.^[7] This article does not print the words. Grand later posted his own recording to his YouTube channel; the video’s description carries the full romanized lyric under that same 2003 copyright.^[11] Other Yiddish settings of the same melody circulate; Grand’s is the one we can point at with a verified recording.

Wolf Krakowski — born in a displaced-persons camp in 1947, a first-language Yiddish singer who recasts old songs in a blues-and-rock band — recorded Grand’s translation in Westhampton, Massachusetts, in 2016.^[9][10] Hear Iber dem regnboygn on his own Kame’a Media channel (he spells the title “Iber Dem Regenboygen”).

The family, as a list

Two catalog songs: the 1939 English original and one documented Yiddish life. Lyrics stay off this page — the English is still under copyright, and Grand asked for permission before reuse.

1. Over the RainbowJudy Garland, 1939Original

   1939 · California · English — The Wizard of Oz — Judy Garland as Dorothy.

2. Iber dem regnboygnAl Grand’s Yiddish translationTranslation

   2003 · Yiddish — Al Grand’s Yiddish — his own YouTube upload and Wolf Krakowski’s 2016 recording.

   • Yiddish — Al Grand’s own upload (2009)
   • Yiddish — Wolf Krakowski, 2016

   • Yiddish folk

For other tunes that crossed into Yiddish from somewhere else, see History & versions of Misirlou.

Quotations are reproduced briefly for commentary and criticism, with attribution and links to the originals. Where a source is public domain it is marked as such; other works are quoted under fair use. Click a song title to play a recording in place or open the song page.