Real Music & Real Estate . . .

 
I’ve never told anyone this before. It would seem kind of funny to most people, I guess. The fact is I count while I’m pissing and then I write down how long I’ve taken and what time it is. Do you realize we spend more than one whole day a year pissing?

Hah, the above paragraph is not me! It’s O’Toole, a character in Graham Greene’s novel Travels with my Aunt.

Quality Lit.

I appreciate O’Toole for his record keeping. My dad, too, kept good records, particularly on his health — his white-blood cell count. He had a rare blood disease (polycythemia vera). I imagine a lot of people keeps records on their health, like how much they weigh, or cholesterol, or whatever. They should.

I casually counted my piss times when I was young. Things were slow back then. Or fast. Now I’m more likely to count pees-per-night.

I bought a roll of 1961-D uncirculated pennies when they came out. I was anxious for the coins to increase in value. I thought they would, but they never did.

I had records. I kept the books.

I have an acquaintance — a novelist in Florida — who writes down most everything he does and occasionally publishes the results. He ran for president, as a write-in, a couple times just for the data.

I can tell you who lived in apartment 4 at 1409 Marlowe Avenue, Lakewood, Ohio, in 1965. Audrey Schubert. I just looked that up. That’s “source data,” to quote the late Richard Shatten, a Harvard-trained Cleveland urban planner. He couldn’t believe I had records on that sort of thing.

Some boys start out with baseball-card stats and go from there. (Do boys still collect baseball cards?) I sold my cards in 2007. Got $4,000. I regret the sale. I miss Tito Francona, for one thing. (I saved a few cards: Roger Maris, Rocco Colavito, Larry Doby, Pee Wee Reese, Ray Narleski.)

In Greene’s novel, O’Toole worked for the CIA and was traveling up the Paraguay River. He said, “Of course shipboard life isn’t quite average. There’s more drinking between meals, and beer keeps on repeating . . . I report the facts and any data – like the gins and the weather – that seem to have a bearing. It’s for others to draw the conclusions.”

Draw your conclusions. My conclusion is O’Toole was cool.

 
Two Jews, three opinions . . .

Warfare. The cops were called. [This was at the 2022 Yiddish concert at Cain Park, Cleveland Heights.] The concert chairman, who had a temper, asked the Cleveland Heights police to eject a Workmen’s Circle (WC) person for passing out WC literature at a card table at the show. (WC is a 125-year-old national Jewish fraternal organization.)

The chairman was the head of a group called the Yiddish Concert in the Park (YCIP) committee, an offshoot of the Workmen’s Circle. Farshtey?

The YCIP chairman was annoyed with the WC. It appeared he wanted total control of the show. It was a pishing contest. The police escorted the Workmen’s Circle pamphleteer out.

Can’t we Jews get along?

(Don’t answer that.)

Back in pre-history (the 1980-1990s), the annual free Yiddish concert at Cain Park attracted up to 2,000 people. Acts included The Klezmatics, Pharaoh’s Daughter, the Klezmer Conservatory Band, Bruce Adler and Chava Alberstein.

Then the Yiddish-speaking audience dwindled. The target audience pretty much died out. Concert attendance was down to about 400 attendees typically, in the 2010s.

Today: The YCIP and the WC (Cleveland branch) don’t exist. The WC’s website shows nothing much has happened  in the past several years. The YCIP hasn’t met in four years. Gornisht.

I’m a former member of both the YCIP and the WC. People sometimes ask me, “What’s going on with the Yiddish concert at Cain Park? I miss it.” I explain there’s a rump group of five people who use the name Workmen’s Circle, and these folks have self-funded the shows for the past two years. Funded it small-time. A couple grand, most. Not enough dinero to bring in high-quality talent.

Cain Park, which is a city-owned venue, has no time, or the resources, to deal with these tribal nuances. Cain Park doesn’t know Yiddish from spinach. And lately Cain Park has run through two general managers and an interim manager.

Another entity seemingly in the dark about all this, too, is the Cleveland Jewish News, which vigorously promotes the WC’s low-rent shows, maybe because the CJN makes money by selling ads for printed concert programs.

In 2023 I met with the then-chief financial officer of the Jewish Federation of Cleveland, and he told me he was fed up with the squabbling committees and “we’re not giving another dime [to underwrite the concert] until we see accounting reconciliations and a financial statement.”

I remember when Yiddishist Henry Green donated approximately $50,000 to the concert fund. He had escaped Europe and started a business in Bolivia, made some dough, and then moved to Cleveland. He died in 1998.

The concert endowment now has more than $150,000, manged by the Jewish Federation of Cleveland. For the record, Henry’s son, Andy, wrote to the Federation in 2023 and said he wanted the dough to go to the YCIP, not the WC. Andy died last year.

Shortly after the cops visited Cain Park, I contacted a rump WC person. He said he wanted to revive the concert in a big way. He had a very talented, very well-known performer in mind. Top secret.

“Come on, tell me who you’re thinking of. I’m a musician,” I said. “Come on.”

“Bette Midler.”

What? “How do you get to Bette Midler?” I said.

“Somebody knows her. She was in Workmen’s Circle.”

Does Midler she still perform? Does she still breathe? Does she know any Yiddish? Would she work for less than rock-star gelt?

[Midler grew up in Hawaii, where which never had a Workmen’s Circle branch.]

I called the Cain Park general manager and said, “We’re not able to attract a national act because the Yiddish Concert in the Park committee [YCIP] doesn’t exist and neither does the Workmen’s Circle.”

This was news to the park manager. He said people occasionally asked him, too, what’s up with the Yiddish concert. (This manager got fired from Cain Park after a year.)

Last year: The rump WC group produced a show which attracted approximately 75 people. The craziest part of the concert, for me, was when the WC raffled off a Glock gun at intermission.

This year: The Cleveland Jewish News just published a recap of the Aug. 23, 2026, show. Headline:

‘Phenomenal’ annual Yiddish Concert draws over 400 fans.”  

 
I learned “Danny Boy” to play in Ireland, but nobody wanted to hear it there. I also learned “Irish Washerwoman,” another non-hit.

Yesterday I played  “Danny Boy” at a nursing home in Cleveland. Big success. My friend Irwin says the tune was written by a Jew. Not true, Itchie. An Englishman wrote it. But a lot of Jews and Tin Pan Alley types helped popularize it.

Irwin plays Irish music on occasion. I once saw him jamming at Horseshoe Lake with an Irish trad-music group. I’m not very knowledgeable about Irish music, although I certainly appreciate the fact the lyrics are in English and not, say, Romanian.

I busked in Ireland last month. I was at a public park in the middle of nowhere: County Wicklow. There was a food-truck area, featuring Blaa Burger and Mr. Whippy soft-serve ice cream. There were picnic tables. I often busk on holidays to meet people. The busking is most fun if people are seated and somewhat trapped. If they’re walking by on their way to some place else, that’s tougher. These folks were trapped, seated at tables, chomping on Blaa Burgers.

When I asked an Irishman if he knew “Danny Boy,” he said no. A second Irishman knew the tune; he had spent 10 years in the US as a CPA.

My swing tunes went over best. Also, a klezmer tune for Germans tourists. There were many teenagers at the park. I told them, “I don’t play for anybody under 19.” They were glad. A Brazilian wanted “Ipanema.”

I wore a chai necklace — a gift from former Yiddishe Cup dance leader Danny Ducoff.  In Cleveland, Danny had said if I got punched by an antisemite in Ireland, I should compliment the assailant on his knowledge of Hebrew.

Only one person in Ireland reacted to my necklace — a Russian tourist, who ripped open his shirt to reveal a Star of David pendant. The Russian was on vacation. I didn’t know Russians vacationed in the West. He told me he was one-eighth Jewish. One of his great-grandfathers had been Jewish. The Russian was Mark, and I went on and on about how Jewish “Marks”  in America, at least in the 1950s, were usually “Marc.” I should have asked Mark more about Russia, and talked less about “Marc.”

“Danny Boy” — I like it. The melody. I also like Andy Statman’s “Song of Redemption,” which sounds Irish to me. All major-key pentatonic.

If you’re ever in Ireland and want to jam with the trad bands there, you should learn up-to-date tunes. Not 1920s-era Irish-American classics like “Danny Boy.”

Everybody knows a Danny. At yesterday’s nursing home gig, at least four people said they were related to a Danny. I bet even Danny Ducoff has a Danny relative.

Danny Ducoff (w/ red maracas), 2004

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Yiddishe Cup  plays a free concert 2:30 pm this SUN. (Aug. 30) at the Coventry PEACE Park stage, which is at the corner of Coventry Road and Euclid Heights Boulevard in Cleveland Heights. The concert is part of the Heights Music Hop. Bring a blanket or a chair.

 
A Cleveland Jewish News columnist regularly writes self-help pieces about how to enjoy life. Like go fly a kite, chase fireflies, take a walk. All good ideas. But the articles make me feel guilty because I’m usually sitting in a La-Z-Boy reading the columns.

How many times can I fly a kite?

I don’t envy the columnist. It’s hard to write a weekly column. And lately there’s a somewhat-new Cleveland Plain Dealer writer who chronicles her robust personal life. She joined an adult swim team. She ate a funnel cake with her kids. She played USTA tennis.

I can’t argue with any of that. Instead, I’ll guilt-trip you . . .

This month I rode my bike to Chagrin Falls and back, 24 miles. I didn’t walk up the Shaker Boulevard hill. I’ve been doing this ride annually for 48 years, and I’ve been riding the same bike — a 10-speed Kabuki Super Light, which isn’t super light. I bought the bike at Heights Furniture & Toy for $169 in 1978. The Super Light is older than my kids and my marriage.

Does that bike trip makes you feel bad? If so, now you know how I feel reading the other writers.

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Yidd Cup concert tomorrow (Thurs. Aug. 20), 7:30 pm, at the Wain Pavilion, Park Synagogue, 27500 Shaker Blvd., Pepper Pipes, Ohio. Free. The Wain Pavilion is an outdoor, covered venue, like Blossom Music Center, but smaller. Seats are provided. Donations encouraged to Magen David Adom.

 
Because I run a bar mitzvah think tank, I get calls from DJs and party planners. I sit and think, and give advice. I’m also a “fellow” at the Hudson Institute in Washington. I have office space there, which I rarely use. Hudson Institute fellow. That has a nice ring to it, but no money. I often get calls from reporters about Jewish issues, like Israel, klezmer and American Jewry. Why do they call me? Because I deliver  punchy, down-home Midwest takes on the Mideast. Sometimes I have to stay up till 3 am for my live TV interviews. The interviewer says, “Please hang on, Mr. Stratton,” and I hang on and lose sleep — all for world Jewry.

But my livelihood is the bar mitzvah thing. I supply clients — mostly DJs, like I said — with explosives, lyrics and games. Some of my games are free, just to build web traffic. For instance, take my humiliation game; the bar mitzvah boy stands on the dance floor surrounded by searing sterno cans. The guests throw napkins at him.

My top-selling games are Twine Fun, Narcissism Express, Beach Sand Saturation, Toxic Candy and Trunk-like Bodies. I have Jewish-themed games, too. The kids wear bottle caps on their heads, and the last kid to lose his “yarmulke,” wins. Lots of body contact. But my Jewish games’ sales are off, maybe because of Netanyahu, which is Hebrew for Idon’tlikeJews. Maybe Obama will become prime minister in October and we’ll all start singing “Salaam” again. Od yavo shalom aleinu.

Back to reality . . . My best-selling game is Trash Floating in the Punch Bowl. We throw chicken bones, children’s books from the centerpieces, and lipstick-smeared plastic cups into the punch bowl. Kids reach in and fish for prizes. It’s ecological.

I strained my back at a gig once. Bingo, a new game — the Grandpa Shuffle. Kids walk around like oldsters and mutter creative Yiddish curses. It’s astonishing to see teenagers limp and spew “Zol er krenken un gedenken.” (Let him suffer and remember.)

I carry classic games, too: laughing gas, toilet slime kits, photo booths, giant inflatables and partisans.

My “fellow” think-tank buddies are some of my best customers.

“Fellow” Itchie Weinberger with his “Toilet Slime” kit.

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Yiddishe Cup plays two free concerts this month:

7:30 pm Thurs., Aug. 20, at the outdoor, covered Wain Pavilion at Park Synagogue, 27500 Shaker Blvd, Pepper Pipes, Ohio. Donations encouraged to Magen David Adom. Seating provided.

2:30 pm Sun, Aug. 30. Coventry PEACE Park, Cleveland Heights, Ohio. Free. Bring a chair or blanket. The concert is part of the Heights Music Hop.

 
I might go to shul this Saturday because I have a band-aid on my nose. I have a fond recollection of old guys in shul with band-aids on their heads. Old guys with skin cancer, biopsy scars, Mohs surgeries, whatever. When I was younger, I’d see a lot of men with band-aids on their domes or noses or ears, and I’d think these guys are old.

A spot on my nose was biopsied the other day. Gotta wear the band-aid. The bump will probably be cancerous. Why not?  Mild skin cancers (like basal cell) go with the territory for old Ashkenazi Jews. At least Litvaks.

I’m wondering what the kiddish meal will be. Sometimes the meals are insubstantial. But I’m thinking this will be good. And I really need to show off my band-aid.

Back from shul . . . Blintzes and borscht, salad, and a ton of dessert. A sermon about how when there’s a big event, like a Red Sea miracle, the Jews love it and then complain three days later. What have you done for me lately? The big event is often a catalyst for changing. Sometimes you change big-time with a Red Sea-level event. Or slowly, with little changes, like saying something nice to somebody in shul. One day at a time, so to speak.

Nobody commented on my band-aid, and I even had an aliyah. The rabbi asked the congregation who was the tallest prez, and I guessed Trump, and it turned out it was Lincoln. But I got the aliyah anyway. That’s a thing – audience participation — at my synagogue.

There were about 100 people at the service. At least 85 were over 60 years old and band-aid ready. I thought I’d see others with band-aids. I didn’t look hard enough, probably. I didn’t see any other band-aids.

I have a couple more Mohs coming up. Keep looking.

—

[This happened a couple months ago.]

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Yiddishe Cup plays 7:30 Thurs., Aug. 20, at Park Synagogue, Wain Pavilion (outdoors), Pepper Pipes, Ohio Free. Donations encouraged for Magen David Adom.

Yiddishe Cup plays 2:30 Sun., Aug 30, at the Coventry PEACE Park, Cleveland Heights, Ohio. Free.

 
Yiddishe Cup takes a lot of breaks. Why kill ourselves; we aren’t kids. Some bands — Hungarian bands, say — play their asses off. They just keep on playing. Kill themselves. I’ve injured myself too many times. Tendinitis, in particular.

The cocktail hour is “wallpaper music.” It’s just ambience; nobody is paying attention to the music. And the dinner hour, don’t go full-bore.

But last month we went full-bore. We played an hour and forty minutes without a break at a national convention for cantors in Pittsburgh. The Cantors Assembly. Two-hundred cantors. They knew every tune (Jewish and American) we played, and they sang along to half of it, and some of the cantors jumped on stage (invited) and sang with us. They partied fairly hard. Many of the cantors were traveling without spouses, and since it was a convention, it was tres loose. The hazzonim were staying at the party-site hotel (Omni William Penn), so they didn’t have to drive anywhere. They had nothing to do but party.

When we stopped playing, the cantors kept on boogying until the hotel turned the lights off in the ballroom. The cantors then went into the hallway, outside the ballroom, and sang a capella.

Two attendees said they had hired Yiddishe Cup for their weddings back in the day. A cantor from Plano,Texas, and a guy from New York.

At more typical Yiddishe Cup party gigs, I usually get antsy. Like “Where’s my water?” Or my left ear itches. But in Pittsburgh, the band was in the zone for the entire party. Sarah Myerson, a cantor and dance leader from New York, did a straight-ahead, no-tricks bottle dance. (The trick is you fill the bottle one-third full. You get a lower center of gravity, which helps.)

Take me back to Pittsburgh.

 
The Asian market didn’t have salmon. The fishmongers didn’t even know what it was. Alice decided on escolar.

At dinner, Alice googled escolar. It is diarrhea fish, aka “Ex-Lax fish: banned in Japan and Italy.” The package, from Taiwan, mentioned something about possible digestive problems: “Escolar is rich and decadent . . . might cause abdominal discomfort if overconsumed.”

Alice wouldn’t eat the fish, but I would. Why would anybody knowingly eat “diarrhea fish”? Ask me. I also ate at Taco Bell recently.

Escolar is used in sushi, so how can it be banned in Japan? I have to look into this.

Wikipedia . . . “Escolar (Lepidocybium flavobrunneum) has been banned for sale as food in Japan since 1977 due to its high concentration of indigestible wax esters (gempylotoxin). While not toxic in the traditional sense, consumption often causes keriorrhea, a form of severe, oily diarrhea. It is often fraudulently mislabeled as ‘white tuna’ or ‘butterfish.'”

Escolar is simply a chunk of fat, and it’s cheap, which is probably why Alice bought it.

At Taco Bell on Monday, I read the Wall Street Journal while “dining.” The CDC advised customers to avoid T-Bells in Ohio and other Midwest states. I figured that was old news (WSJ print edition). I figured T-Bell had solved the problem by now. The store manager said business was down 75% in the store. Good. No teenagers or nutcakes in there.

The T-Bell Crunchwrap Supreme is worthy of risk-taking. The escolar, not so much.

(So far, so good.)

I knew a building manager who followed the weather reports relentlessly and thought the end of the world was coming every day via hurricanes, heat waves, or snowstorms. I don’t think she ever went outside.

Another manager was also fixated on the weather. He did a lot of indoor apartment painting and wanted every day to be 74 degrees, like Costa Rica, so he wouldn’t sweat.

A neighbor of mine once asked if I had a winter place in Florida.

I was surprised. I’m not there — retired in Florida.

However, I know a klezmer musician — a bushy-haired, ex-hippie clarinetist — who moved to Florida and took up golf. Anything is possible. I hope he plays a hora by the water fountain on the 16^th hole. (Mickey Katz did that. His band surprised a golfer on his birthday.)

Arizona versus Florida. That is a question. Which place is too hot, or not too hot.

Alice and I went to a wedding in Florida, where a guest asked, “Are you still in Cleveland?” Meaning  “Are you nuts? Do you like gray skies, slush and potholes?”

Another Clevelander at the wedding said, “The day I hit sixty-two I had to leave.” She spends her winters in Scottsdale, Arizona. A third Clevelander, originally from South Africa, prefers Florida over Arizona. “I like the ocean,” she said.

One time in Florida, at a Yiddishe Cup gig, I ran into a man who had lived in both Florida and Arizona. He said summer in Arizona is unbearable, and Florida is bearable.

What about Ohio? Is it bearable? I think so.

 
I was born with a silver spoon. An employee fine-tuned “silver spoon” to “Stratton, you were born with a silver spoon up your ass.”

I wasn’t made for real estate, like my old man. I didn’t grow up the hard way. South Euclid was no slum. I got a journalism job after college in the Collinwood neighborhood. I wrote for the the Sun Scoop Journal. Look it up. The paper doesn’t exist anymore. I dealt with all kinds of working-stiff Slovenians, Lithuanians, Italians, and blacks in northeast Cleveland.

Then I bought a house nearby, right by Lake Erie. Northeast Cleveland was cool, I learned on the job. Then I bought more houses there — with my old man’s money.

I got up to four houses, sold them, and bought an apartment building. Scaling up is the real estate term. My old man co-signed on the mortgages. My old man — not too subtly —  pushed me into real estate. So I quit the newspaper.

And I became my old man, and my old man was very happy about that. Throughout the rest of his life, he never failed to remind there was zero money in journalism. A numbers guy — my dad. He thought about money nonstop and kept records on everything.

I don’t like numbers, and I don’t keep records. The only thing I collect is receipts from the wastebaskets outside Home Depot. And every spring I take my shopping bag full of  receipts to my accountant. I’ve never balanced my checkbook. If the bank screws me, I don’t know. Fine with me.

So here I am, in 2026, still annoyed by that building manager saying, in 1984, I had a silver spoon up my ass. He could have simply said “silver spoon.” I wouldn’t have remembered that.

Silver spoon–plus has staying power. Maybe it’s true.

(This is autobiographical fiction.)

 
I dream about Buddy Holly.

One problem: I wear clear-frame glasses and Buddy Holly had black, and I don’t feel like going to the optician’s for new frames. I want to be Buddy Holly, but I’m kind of lazy.

I may have to settle for Klezmer Guy.

Animal voices — the sound of cats and fleas. Significant to my music? Definitely.

There are no rules for good music, only examples of it.

Yiddishe Cup’s Meshugeneh Mambo is a terrific record. (It’s on Spotify.)

The wrong song in the wrong place can often be the right song.

Hope You Like Klezmer is a coffee table book with more than 100 color photos of klezmer musicians. Some tied up, some with instruments in odd places. I’m in a bathtub with reeds, like Moses.

Half-ended melodies are fun.

I want to play gigs with the Buddy Holly Klezmer Band. Instead, I’m playing with Yiddishe Cup.

 
I’ve written several unpublished novels. My best was about a married couple with a kid who died from SIDS. An editor at HarperCollins liked it. She wrote, “But we need you to change it to a female narrator.”

OK, done.

My lit agent told me, “If you don’t want to change the narrator’s sex, don’t. I can sell it as is.”

OK, I’ll leave it as is.

My agent shopped the manuscript around. Evocative — as praise — showed up a lot – two years of evocatives. In the end, nothing. I probably should have rewritten the book.

I did. I sent the revised version back to HarperCollins, but the editor was gone. Editors jump around a lot. Susan Orlean had about 10 editors on her first book.

I switched to non-fiction, like Orlean. I wrote Bodegas and Bagels, a trade paperback about the Americanization of the bagel. It came out in 2017 and didn’t go anywhere.

I wrote My Main Man, Maimonides (2021). The Jewish Review of Books gave it five dreidels. Didn’t go anywhere, either.

Now I’m working on an e-book about the end of the world. The main character is a Jewish Studies prof who subsists solely on baba ganoush during the famine. I’ll self-publish. Annoying, I know . . . everybody is self-publishing and clogging the Quality Lit pipeline.

This morning I wrote a poem, “I Smoke my Own Lox.” I’ll paste it below.

No, I’ll spare you. I’ll put it in my book and make you buy it.

This post is fiction.

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Yiddishe Cup plays a free concert 7 pm this Sunday (June 28), Alma Theater, Cain Park, Cleveland Heights.

 
Some musicians hear every microtone and nuance. They say “oh, he’s flat,” or “she’s pitchy.” Come on.

Yiddishe Cup’s keyboard player, Alan Douglass, hears everything. He tells me to “push in” my saxophone mouthpiece, because I’m often flat. (More on Alan later.)

I’m bringing back an old Yiddishe Cup tune from 2009. We originally learned the piece, “Sam Malik’s Tune,” from the New Shtetl Band, who learned it from one Sami Malik, a Macedonian village musician.

I tried the tune the other day and didn’t nail it right off. I figured out the first section, but not the second. I had forgotten a lot. Which reminds me, clarinetist Sid Beckerman, at a Klezkamp workshop, once said, “I haven’t played this tune in  20 years,” and then nailed some obscure freylekhs.

I didn’t nail “Sami Malik’s Tune.” But I want to perform it at Cain Park. [Alma Theater, Cleveland Heights. 7:30 Sun., June 28. Free.]

Alan listened to the tune, which he hadn’t heard in 16 years, and nailed it. He remembered every nuance. And “Sami Malik’s Tune” is not “Mary Had a Little Lamb”; it’s a strange Macedonian tune. Or maybe Albanian.

Jazz pianist Joey Hunter once said about Alan: “he hears everything.” Alan, on gigs, knows when the other musicians are off, but he doesn’t bug them, except me., because I ask him to bug me. Why not? I don’t want to sound bad if I don’t have to.

(L) Alan Douglass and Bert Stratton, Cain Park, 2022. (Photo by Lloyd Wolf)

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Whatever happened to Putt-Putt? There are only 29 Putt-Putt courses left in the United State.

My son Teddy had a childhood birthday party at the Northfield Road Putt-Putt in 1990. He got a trophy and a cake. The birthday boy got a trophy, no matter what.

At Putt-Putt, you can make a hole-in-one on every hole if you are good and lucky. All the holes are par 2. Teddy — in his adulthood — had a friend who was a Putt-Putt pro.

There used to be a Chinese mini-golf course on Libby Road at Broadway Avenue in Cleveland, with a Buddha that went up and down. That was the epitome of exotic outings to my high school gang.

My grandkids are now two and four years old. Time for me to revive my mini-golf outings? I just need to stay healthy so I can bend down and pick up the ball. That’s the hardest part of mini-golf.

I always liked the windmills and streams, like at Pirate’s Cove. The man who started Putt-Putt called those features “gimmicks.” He was Don Clayton of Fayetteville, North Carolina. I’m not him.

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Yiddishe Cup plays a free concert 7 pm Sunday, June 28, at the Alma Theater, Cain Park, Cleveland Heights, Ohio.

(This op-ed, below, was in the Wall Street Journal last week.The op-ed generated 880 comments. Struck a chord.)

I have a no-dogs policy. I’m a landlord. When I bought the building in Lakewood, Ohio, decades ago, a gigantic Doberman lived in apartment 400. It bounded down the stairs and almost ran me over. Also, the dog stained the oak floors by regularly urinating in the living room.

So I kicked the dog out, and the tenant, and instituted a new policy. (Cats are OK at an additional $20 a month.)

Yet I do have dogs in the building—“emotional support animals.” These aren’t trained service animals like those that help the blind. Tenants find a licensed social worker or psychologist to write a letter saying the animal is needed for their mental health. The Fair Housing Amendments Act obligates the landlord to offer “reasonable accommodations” to tenants with disabilities, emotional and otherwise.

Last month a new tenant informed me she has two emotional-support dogs. She brought this up after she had already moved in. She described the dogs as “mixed-breeds, about 20 pounds each.” I immediately fantasized about changing my no-dog policy to “second dogs are OK—at $500 a month.” That would slow the pooch parade. But it would be illegal.

The tenant texted me that Daisy and Miu “are bonded and separating them would cause distress that would negatively impact my condition.” The dogs’ owner also pointed out: “My apartment is approximately 700 square feet, which is sufficient space for their size and needs.” My tenant had done her homework. More than I had. I didn’t know you could have two emotional-support dogs in a one-bedroom. How about three dogs?

The tenant said each dog has a unique function: “One assists me with daily functioning and provides support when I leave home, whereas the other helps reduce anxiety and provides a sense of safety and stability within my home environment, particularly following a past traumatic experience.”

The tenant works in a restaurant, but everybody is a lawyer on the side, courtesy of AI.

If the dogs aren’t quiet, I’ll have to file an eviction for “disrupting the neighbors’ peaceful enjoyment of the premises.” What a hassle.

I’m hoping the dogs are reasonable. The tenant isn’t.

—

The link (no paywall) to the actual WSJ article, with comments, is here.

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Yiddishe Cup plays a free concert 7 pm Sunday, June 28, at the Alma Theater, Cain Park, Cleveland Heights, Ohio.

Steven Greenman & His Violin, plus some sidemen, 1992

 
My tennis partner, Ivan, wanted to add a drive-thru window at his frozen custard shop. The addition was a big deal; there were environmental remediation concerns. The drive-thru would be on the site of a former auto repair place. Nobody wants gasoline on their ice cream cone. Ivan is 77. The drive-thru would cost hundreds of thousands. What did he need this aggravation for?

He did it. You’ve to respect an old man still taking risks like that. Or maybe Ivan is crazy.

I’m not a big risk taker. For instance, 12 years ago I freaked out about buying a medical office building in Solon, Ohio. I was 63 and didn’t really need more “action.” But my friend Carl — a fellow real estate investor — said, “You’re not dead yet.” And my wife added, “It would be a good challenge, and you’ll learn something.”

Or I could have studied Spanish, or maybe art history, at Cleveland State University. The university sponsors tuition-free classes for seniors 60 and over. The medical office building would cost more than a million dollars, and if it flopped, I wouldn’t be too happy. Carl said, “If it flops, you’ll be OK. You’ll live with it.”

I lived with it.

Do something — that’s my wife’s mantra. She’s a former gym teacher. Still, when I’m spending a lot of money, I get nervous.

I wrote an email to my investment partner: “I’m out. I don’t need it.” I didn’t relish such a roller coaster ride in middle age. I didn’t need more buildings. I met my partner for breakfast the next morning and bailed. He said, “If you’re that anxious, yes, bail.”

I slept on it again — actually, didn’t sleep — and changed my mind. The deal happened. Then, three years later, I sold the property right before the office building crash. I made money. Win some. (I’m not going to tell you about my “lose some”s.)

I have three file cabinets in my home office. That’s probably more than you have. I like paper. Yes, I have QuickBooks Pro and Excel spreadsheets, but I’m more old school than new school. (My daughter runs a 100-person company and doesn’t even own a pen, she says.)

A 24-year-old employee once said to me, “The whole history of 20th-century Cleveland real estate is in this office.” Like the other day, I threw out some 1994 employee W-2s and a boiler manual from 1990. I also collect notes from my father, who died in 1986. He started the family real estate biz. He used to jot notes on 8-column green accounting pads. I study these accounting pad marginalia for insights. I’m not quite sure what I learn . . . “Light the incinerator from the top floor down, so the refuse burns down.” Incinerators were banned around 1974. “Blow down the boilers every week.”

I should have been a historian.

I don’t dwell on the past all day long, but how about half hour a day? I recommend it, particularly if you’re 60 and up.

A high school friend, now living in New York, recently wrote me a super-curt email: “Not sure I want to meet up. No nostalgia here.” That was the entire email. He and I and other high school friends were supposed to meet up in Cleveland. My old buddies were from out of town. That’s the thing with a family business; I’m stuck here. We didn’t visit our old stomping grounds. We went to the Cleveland Museum of Art — always a safe, quality choice.

Toby Stratton, 1985 — a year before he died.

A year before my father died, I interviewed him on videotape. Part of my history-buff thing. My dad got riled when I asked him, “Do you ever think about your mother?” I asked that because my dad rarely talked about the good old days, in central Cleveland, with his dirt-poor Eastern European Jewish immigrant parents. My dad said, “Son, I think about my mother every day!” He just didn’t feel like announcing his affection daily.

My dad was good about moving on. He was always reinventing himself: chemist, stockbroker, office manager, cosmetics salesman, real estate investor. I’m not that great at it — moving on.

I saved some of my father’s personal financial statements. He inflated car values and listed stocks he didn’t own. He liked to fudge financial statements. These slightly cooked documents helped him get bank mortgages for his investment properties. My dad claimed he had $17,000 total in Emerson Electric GTE and GM stocks. And he claimed he had life insurance with a cash value of $78,000. Nope.

My dad loved leverage. He bought his first building with only 8 percent down. I don’t know how he slept at night. Come to think of it, he didn’t sleep much. He was often cranky.

I don’t roll the dice as easily. I’d like to own an old Burroughs adding machine — one that makes a lot of noise and has a clanky lever like a slot machine. Take me back.

Sorry, I’m losing it. I’ve been stuck in this real estate office, above my garage, for 32 years. Before that, I was in a basement for 12 years. Before that, a third-floor attic.

I move slowly.

Change? Let me think about it.

—

[This essay first appeared in Phi Kappa Phi Forum magazine, Spring 2026.]

 
Jack’s Deli in University Heights, Ohio, suddenly shut down on Sunday. There’s no Jewish deli in Cleveland now, although there might be an ersatz deli, sans old Jews, somewhere in Greater Cleveland.

I had a connection to Jack’s Deli. In 1981 I wrote a thank-you note which was posted in the entrance of Jack’s. My letter was about the terrific tray Jack’s had prepared for the bris of my first child, Teddy.

And I’m good with deli-talk banter. Alan Douglass (Yiddishe Cup’s keyboardist) and I often play “16 Tons (of hard salami),” which is a Mickey Katz parody of Tennessee Ernie Ford’s “16 Tons.” After the song, I query the crowd — typically at a nursing home — about their favorite Cleveland delis: Seiger’s, Budin’s, Solomon’s, C&Ls, Irv’s, Lefton’s.

None of which exist now.

I don’t eat much salami or halvah. Maybe that’s part of the reason delis are gone. I used to eat a ton of salami. In high school I sold salamis for a Jewish boys’ club fundraiser. We used the money to go to Washington.

Irwin Weinberger, formerly of Yiddishe Cup, went to Jack’s Deli whenever he visited Cleveland. (He moved to North Carolina four years ago.) Irwin liked the big sandwiches — pastrami or corned beef — and matzo ball soup. And french fries. I never understood the fries, Irwin.

The owner of Jack’s said he hopes to  remodel and reopen. He told Cleveland Scene, “I’m not saying that it is going to be a completely different restaurant, but it definitely won’t be called Jack’s and it will make sense for us. We’re going to need some time to put all that together.”

Maybe he’ll call it Mack’s . . .

And don’t forget, Corky & Lenny’s — Cleveland’s other big-player deli — closed in 2023. They had hoped to reopen, too. Deli Death 1.

 
There were several klezmer dynasties in Eastern Euorpe. In America, too. Even in the late-20th century, some baby-boomer klezmer musicians brandished serious yikhes (prominent lineage). Hankus Netsky’s uncle was a klez big shot in Philly, and Henry Sapoznik’s father, who was a cantor, worked in the Catskills alongside clarinetist Dave Tarras.

In Cleveland, the klez-band scene in the past 70 years has been Seaman, then Selker, then Stratton. (There are a lot of S’s in the yiddishe velt. My shul’s yahrzeit list doesn’t hit stride until the S’s. And the Z’s are zippy: Zweig, Zwerdling, Zwick.) My former rabbi used to mix “Stratton” up with “Seaman,” as in “Morrey Seaman” — a 1940-60s bandleader.

My great uncle Earl Kassoff led the Earl Castle Band. This was in the 1930s and 1940s. He was a drummer, xylophonist and house painter.

Morrey Seaman owned a dry-cleaning business. I, in case you don’t know, am in the real estate biz. Bandleader Greg Selker went into the executive-search business. Selker founded the Kleveland Klezmorim in 1983 and folded the group in 1990. The Kleveland Klezmorim wouldn’t play “Hava Nagila”; Yiddishe Cup would, so we got all the simcha work.

In 1992 I interviewed a local klezmer musician, Harold Finger. I can’t remember what his day-job was. He described his clarinet playing as “faking”(improvising).  When I met him, he was in a community orchestra. “I don’t do much jobbing anymore,” he said. (“Jobbing” was gigging.) Harold died several years after the interview.

I thought Harold’s kids would want a copy of the interview tape. I called a son and left a message, and didn’t hear back. The son should have called me. Harold’s wife was on the tape, too, badgering him about how he loved his axe more than her. Harold said, “What? I quit playing music for you!”

Coda: Another macher on the Cleveland Jewish music scene in recent decades was bandleader Barry Cik (pronounced “chick“). He had yikhes to-the-nth-degree. He’s from a family of Hungarian Jewish musicians. In the 1990s Cik’s son Yehuda was quite prominent on the national Orthodox Jewish music scene, and Barry wouldn’t shut up about it. When I played with Barry’s band as a sideman, I thought to myself What about your own band, Barry? The one I’m playing with right now! But Barry preferred to talk about his son’s band.

I get that now.

Yikhes (pronounced YIH-khiss).

 
Sharon, a jazz saxophone teacher, pitched me a year-long package of music lessons. I don’t have “big ears” — as the jazzers says — and I want to improve my ear-training and chord-recognition game.

I was on a Zoom call with Sharon, who was based in Los Angeles. She wanted to talk about my motivation, and I wanted to talk about cost of the lessons. She didn’t want to talk about money. She had a PAC system and an HSP system — these initials stood for something. I don’t know what. She asked what my level of motivation was, on a scale of 1-to-10. She wasn’t happy when I answered “5.”

I said, “What if I’m in a group lesson on Zoom with beginner musicians who don’t know what a C7 chord is? Maybe I should I do a solo course.” I had found Sharon on the internet. (She said to tell you the truth a lot, which annoyed me.)

An hour later she told me the solo course was $1,200, for a year. Sharon continued, “But my assistant, Juliet, in the Philippines, will send you a link to knock it down to $500. And I’m going to be a hardass about that. There will be no access to coaching in the solo course, and the price is good for a week, cool? This isn’t about money, it’s about increasing your motivation.”

Sharon’s bio said she had majored in psychology and music.

Her quick drop from $1,200 to $500 jolted me.

This was a bit of a red flag, no?

I called my son the musico and discussed the matter. He said the whole thing sounded “opaque.” I passed.

[“Sharon” is a pseudonym.]

—

Yiddishe Cup plays a free Mother’s Day concert this Sun., May 10, 2-3 pm. Beachwood library branch/ Cuyahoga County Public Library, 25501 Shaker Blvd [corner of Shaker and Richmond]. Beachwood, Ohio. We’ll play “My Yiddishe Momma,” “Natural Woman,” and klezmer!

 
After I received smicha (rabbinic ordination), I interviewed for a few rabbi gigs. This was around 1978. First I interviewed at the Hillel in Norman, Oklahoma, but I couldn’t see myself there. I’m not a geography snob, but Oklahoma was not OK. I didn’t insist on a sexy spot like Encino, Marin, or Bethesda, but how about a place with some Jews?

The Mensch, 1978

I took a stab at Omaha. Don’t underestimate the Jewish scene there. The board of trustees at BethSteak grilled me — grilled me hard. Back then I had a Jew-fro and looked like I’d just  come off the beach in Venice, California (which wasn’t too far off the mark). A board member asked, “How would you liven up our Purim carnival?”

I’d throw glow sticks all over the social-hall floor, and I’d free the goldfish from the tank. I’d pass out Free The Fish! signs. What I actually said: “I’ll listen. I’m a good listener.”

A trustee asked me how I’d handle lifecycle events.

“I’d show up,” I said. (Lifecycle was a new word back then.)

My responses to the board were all short. I was nervous, facing 20 AKs. At 28,  it was difficult to string together wisdom for the elderly. Maybe I should have delivered my hard-hitting sermon “I’ve Got the Jewish Blues,” complete with blues harp accompaniment. Instead, I did a dvar Torah. I don’t remember exactly what I said, but I ended with “The key is listening.” (I picked up some stock lines at rabbinical school.)

A board member asked when I was getting married. I said, “Have you got someone for me?” That got a laugh.

I flung some Hebrew; I knew more Ivrit than they did. They weren’t going to get anybody better than me.

The board president asked the last question: “How would your friends and family describe you?”

Thank you,  Mr. President, for that question! I said, “I don’t like to talk about myself, but I suspect my friends and relatives would say, in a word, I’m a mensch.”

Mensch — that’s the password. It unlocks the door to the Holy of Holies and all the other Temple doors, including the pantry. If you’re a mensch, you’re in. I got the gig.

And I turned it down! Me — geo snob. I wasn’t going to Omaha, Nebraska.

I did one final interview, in Muncie, Indiana — even smaller latkes. (The word had gotten out that I had turned down Omaha.) The Muncie rabbi bought all the food for the kiddushes and spread out the hummus and poured the wine.

I didn’t get the Muncie gig. A folksinging rabbi did. I heard her clips years later on YouTube. Not bad.

I wound up in property management in Cleveland. I blame that on my father. He led me into the promised land:  the dog-eat-dog world of apartment management. I joined the rabid/ate.

[fiction]

—

Yiddishe Cup plays a free Mother’s Day concert 2-3 pm Sunday (May 10) at the Cuyahoga County Public Library, Beachwood branch, 25501 Shaker Boulevard [corner of Shaker and Richmond], Beachwood, Ohio. Best to register. You can probably get in without registering, but it’s best to sign up.