Real Music & Real Estate . . .

Yiddishe Cup’s bandleader, Bert Stratton, is Klezmer Guy.
 

He knows about the band biz and – check this out – the real estate biz, too.
 

You may not care about the real estate biz. Hey, you may not care about the band biz. (See you.)
 

This is a blog with a gamy twist. It features tenants with snakes and skunks, and musicians with smoked fish in their pockets.
 

Stratton has written op-eds for the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and Washington Post.


 
 

THE FUNNIEST RABBI
IN CLEVELAND

by Bert Stratton

 
I ran into a funny rabbi the other night. Happens. Some rabbis are funny. Rabbi Matt Eisenberg told me he is the “second funniest rabbi in Cleveland.” Why number-two? He explained he came in second in Cleveland’s Funniest Rabbi Contest in 2011. Fourteen years later, he’s still funny. He did a clever Purim shpiel based on Fiddler on the Roof.

I was a judge at the funniest rabbi contest once, but not the year Rabbi Eisenberg participated. I was a judge a couple years later. The winner that year wasn’t even a rabbi. The funniest rabbi in Cleveland in 2013 was a doctor/mohel — Kiva Shtull.

The judges made comments after each rabbis did their shtick. We rated the ravs. Afterward, an audience member said to me, “You were very nice in your comments.”

Why not?  Author Theodore Dalrymple wrote (about “comedian” Boris Johnson of England), “Telling a joke that falls flat is an excruciating social experiment.” Telling original jokes, non-stop, in front of 200 people at the Schmaltz Museum of Jewish Heritage — that’s not for the faint of heart or your typical pulpit rabbi. I had stocked-piled complimentary adjectives in advance. My arsenal was droll, gut-busting (didn’t use that one), cheery, sharp, zany, wacky, witty and perturbing.

Nobody was perturbing, unfortunately.

I gave the highest rating to the mohel, who moonlighted as the spiritual leader of Congregation Shir Shalom in Bainbridge Township, Ohio. He got wry, droll and zany. (The shul went under about a year later. I don’t know why.)

I just rediscovered a video of Dr. Shtull’s comedy routine. It holds up, at least for the first couple minutes. I’m not sure if Rabbi Eisenberg — the second funniest rabbi of 2011 — has a video. Probably. But check out Shtull’s shtick. Listen at least till you hear the word Chabad — around the two-minute mark.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxd4_oGjeso

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2 comments

1 Steve Kohn { 03.19.25 at 3:40 pm }

Oh, is he ever good. And why stop at “Chabad,” Bert? That’s when he went into overdrive.

2 Bert Stratton { 03.20.25 at 8:09 am }

Steve: You’re right. The whole video is worth viewing. I just thought if I told readers to listen to 10, or so, minutes, of somebody they’d never heard of, they’d freak out. So I settled on two minutes.

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