Rebecca Came Back From Mecca

REBECCA CAME BACK FROM MECCA

by Kalmar & Ruby
as sung by Monroe Silver

Across the street from where I live
There is a girl and her name is Rebecca.
She's twenty-three.
She saw an Oriental show 
And so decided she would go
To Mecca
Across the sea.
She sailed away one day
For Turkey, far away
And she lived in the Sultan's den.
She stayed about two years
Got full of new idears
And now she's back home again.
Since Rebecca 
Got back from Mecca
All day long she keeps on smoking Turkish tobecca.
With a veil upon her face 
She goes dancing round the place
And yesterday her father found her
With a Turkish towel around her.
Oh!  Oh!  Everyone's worried so.
They think she's crazy in the dome.
She's as bold as Theda Bara
Theda's bare but Becky's barer
Since Rebecca got back home.

In Mecca, where the nights are hot
Rebecca got an awful lot 
of learning.
She certainly did.
She goes to sleep when shadows creep
And has to keep
A bowl of incense burning.
Some classy kid.
Her mother feels so sad.
Her brother Moe is mad
And keeps on complaining so.
To satisfy her whim
She keeps on calling him
"Mohamed" instead of "Moe".

Since Rebecca 
Came back from Mecca
All day long she keeps on smoking Turkish tobecca.
She lays on a Persian rug.
Everyone says she's a "bug".
And since she got back from the harem
She's got clothes, but she don't wear them.
Oy! Oh! Everyone's worried so.
She made the Sultan loose his throne.
Once, her little sister Sonia
Wore her clothes-- and got pneumonia!
Since Rebecca came back home.

Notes: 1) Monroe Silver sings the song with a vaudvillian New York Yiddish accent which produces additional puns or doubleªentendres; for example: "She saw an horiental show" and "Rebecca got an awful lot of loining".
2) In as much as Mecca is the holiest city of Islam, to which all faithful should make a pilgrimage at least once in their lifetime if able, and to which all non-Muslims are barred, one can only conclude that Rebecca must have been a practitioner of Islam prior to her entrance into the city. Perhaps she was converted by some member of the "Oriental show".
3) Although Mecca will currently be found in Saudi Arabia, and indeed it's location has not changed, the description of Mecca as being located in Turkey is no mere case of cartographic carelessness. Prior to the First World War, Western Arabia was controlled by the Ottoman Empire, and the whole of the Ottoman Empire was loosely known as "Turkey" in the West.
4) The depiction of the land of the chador and veil as a haven for nudism and female liberation can only be seen as an example of American ignorance regarding foreign lands. The references to Islam's "Mother of Cities" in a humorous novelty song with double entendres may seem at the least irreverent. Perhaps the Holy Men of the Near East were as ignorant of the Western novelty song as the American novelty song composers were of the customs of that distant land; which may explain why lyricist Harry Ruby escaped a sentence similar to that pronounced upon of Salman Rushdie.

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