CHEZ KLEZ

I’ve been in the rag trade for 17 years, selling Yiddishe Cup T-shirts.  Black tees with the band’s logo superimposed in white.

East Coasters buy the tees just for the look.  Yiddishe Cup, the band?  Feh.  The T-shirt?  Cool.

The tee is a limited edition.  Probably about 750 of them in the world.  I don’t advertise.

You have to be invited to wear one.

Sometimes I get a photo from, say, Mount St. Helens, Wash., of a man in a Yiddishe Cup T-shirt.  I played his wedding.  Or a photo of a Missoula, Mont., man wearing a Yiddishe Cup T-shirt on a cattle ranch.

I give the T-shirts to newlyweds and bar mitzvah moms.  Or the bat mitzvah kid, herself, if I think she’s woman enough to handle the impending peer harassment.

I saw a young man on Coventry Road, Cleveland Heights, in a Yiddishe Cup T-shirt, with black jeans. Was this hip kid a Cuphead?  I asked him where he got the tee.  He said at a thrift store for $1.  He had never heard of the band.

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