THE HEYMISH AND THE AMISH

I live near two large Amish settlements  — Middlefield, Ohio and Holmes County, Ohio. I know some of  the differences between the various Amish sects. Some Amish use battery-powered lights on their buggies.  Some don’t.  Some use the triangular orange “slow vehicle” sign, some don’t.

Speaking of guys-in-black, I also know some very frum Orthodox Jews.  I  know what the crocheted yarmulke means versus the black hat.

I’ve only been around Amish and Jews once.  I saw an Amish man in the lobby of Green Road Synagogue — an Orthodox synagogue in Cleveland.  I said to myself, “I’m wrong.”

This “Amish“ guy was probably a hipster Jew trying to look Amish, with a wide-brim hat, beard, no mustache and a vest.  Like Solzhenitsyn.

I saw 15 Amish women in blue dresses and white bonnets come out of the kitchen.  They carried parfaits on trays.

Then I saw a horse and buggy at the side door. (How does a horse and buggy get to suburban Beachwood? By truck.)

Solzhenitsyn stacked bales of hay in the temple lobby and brought in chickens. He was John, an Amish from Middlefield, and he worked for an Orthodox Jew who owned a mattress factory and was hosting a sheva brochas (post-wedding dinner).  Yiddishe Cup played the dinner.  We played our usual repertoire of  Yiddish, Hebrew and klezmer.  I asked the Amish buggy driver what he thought of the music.   He said, “It sounds like Mozart.”  Maybe because of the violin?

The man stacking the hay said some Amish in Ohio play harmonica — the 10-hole diatonic model.  “That’s all, for instruments,” he said.  “Other instruments [like flute, guitar] might lead to forming a band.”  A Jewish joke?

The rabbi  jokingly asked if Yiddishe Cup knew any Amish songs. We tried “Amazing Grace.” Probably a first for Green Road Synagogue.   The Amish liked the song.  We also played a Yiddish vocal, “Di Grine Kusine” (The Greenhorn Cousin), which the Amish didn’t seem to go for.  I thought they would like our Yiddish repertoire,  since the Amish speak Pennsylvania Dutch.

Now I know:  go easy on the Yiddish at Amish-Jewish parties.

Alan Douglass, Yiddishe Cup’s keyboard player, Green Road Synagogue, 2011

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The Klezmer Guy trio plays Nighttown, Cleveland Hts., 7 p.m. Tues., April 23.  $10.  Play it safe and make a res:  216-795-0550. 

An evening of social commentary, plumbing tips, and song.  As if Garrison Keillor was raised on pastrami. 

Alan Douglass, piano and vocals; Bert Stratton, clarinet and prose; Tamar Gray, vocals . . .

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Next week “Klezmer Guy” posts up on Tuesday (April 23) instead of Wednesday.  Just so I can remind you one more time about the April 23 Nighttown gig.

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Mazel Tov to Sen. Jack Stratton (I-Calif.) for reaching his goal on Kickstarter.  His band, Vulfpeck, hit the mark today.

Jack the Tummler . . .

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