Category — Miscellaneous

 
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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I put a latch on my bedroom door to keep my parents out. I was a grown-up — in my early twenties. I was at my parents’ Beachwood apartment, the Mark IV (featured a couple weeks ago in a Klezmer Guy post). The Mark IV was later called The Hamptons and is now The Vantage. I was listening to John Handy’s “Don’t Stop the Carnival” on my record player. There was talk about real estate and bridge games. I pondered some prospective book titles:

Suburban Nightmare

Rebounding from the Bar Mitzvah Trail

Confessions of a Bar Mitzvah Wino

He played Clarinet Between his Legs

Unstuck Pads

The Bar Mitzvah-Goer

Maybe I thought about bar mitzvahs because I never had one. I was Confirmed, Reform-style. (In my adulthood, I did leyn Torah a couple times.)

I swam in the Mark IV apartment pool and got in an argument with an old guy — maybe 65. He said, “You’re going to bump into my grandkids and you’ll be sorry you did!”

Lay off, man. (I love grandkids — 50 years later.)

My dad considered selling me his beater car, a Plymouth Valiant, so I could drive away from Beachwood. He said, “But if you get the car, what are you going to do to support it?”

“I’ll get some money somewhere. I’ll rob a bank.”

“You do that and I’ll wipe my hands of you!”

Simmer down, Dad. I bought the car, but I didn’t drive too far. I went four miles west to Cleveland Heights and rented a room in half-a-house.

Where else could I have gone? Boston was too collegiate. New York? I had been there and had had my ride towed. New York is a tough town for cars. Go back to Ann Arbor? Too many kids there. California? Too hard to get to.

Tough times . . .

My dad said, “You don’t know what a tough is!”

Change your place, change your life. I met a girl via the ride board at Case Western Reserve University. (A lot of my life revolved around that CWRU board.) The girl was Jewish, cute and English. A true trifecta. We hitchhiked to California, and somewhere near Knoxville she told me she was going to meet up with her boyfriend in California. Bummer road!

Because of the “chick” factor, we even got rides from truckers.

I ran into the English girl again, in Israel a year later. She said nothing had materialized with the “boyfriend” out west (and nothing much happened with me and her in Eretz Yisrael).
California . . . I said cheerio to the English woman and hitched back east solo.  When I walked into my parents’ apartment, my dad said, “Isn’t that a pistol.”

I guess it was. As Isaac Bashevis Singer wrote, “Life was too good to us. We had to ask for trouble.” I looked for trouble, somewhat unsuccessfully.

Isaac Bashevis Singer

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(This essay was in the Cleveland Plain Dealer on Sunday.)

Even if you’re rich, you can’t always get what you want. For example, you can’t buy Horseshoe Lake, which straddles Shaker Heights and Cleveland Heights. An assortment of neighborhood high-rollers, medium-rollers and salt-of-the-earth ex-hippies tried to save Horseshoe Lake. These lake-lovers funded lawsuits against the cities of Shaker Heights, Cleveland Heights and the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District.

We fought the law and the law won.

I was a founder of Friends of Horseshoe Lake. We paid for the lawsuits and an engineer’s evaluation of the defunct dam. We wrangled a couple thousand signatures on a petition to save the lake, but not enough people cared.

Horseshoe Lake when it was a lake. (Photo by Lucy Stratton)

The Sewer District is going to turn the former lake — which was drained almost six years ago — into a boardwalk and nature preserve. They plan to rip down some trees and put in a paved service road. Is the road a homage to the never-built Clark Freeway that the county wanted to put through the Shaker Lakes area in the 1960s?

I have a friend who lives a mile from Horseshoe Lake. He lives near Lower Shaker Lake. He said, “I have my lake. I don’t care about yours.” The notion of NIMBY (Not in my Backyard) doesn’t travel well; you get about a mile from the Horseshoe Lake, and not that many people get worked up about its disappearance.

Granted, there are more pressing issues than Horseshoe Lake, like crime, housing matters and leaf blowers. But how many boardwalks and little playgrounds do we need? We already have the Nature Center at Shaker Lakes. Even a “lake feature” is lacking at the upcoming Horseshoe park. The Sewer Board is spending $28.7 million – up from the original $14 million – and that doesn’t include another $8.6 million for amenities, which supposedly Shaker Heights and somewhat-financially-strapped Cleveland Heights are expected to cover.

The Sewer District and the Ohio Department of Natural Resources claim the goal is to prevent a flood disaster downstream in University Circle. Nobody has died from a flood there, but you never know. Every hundred years a person might die in a storm under the Cedar Road Rapid tracks. And I might get hit by a bus tomorrow.

I live about a football-field away from the late great Horseshoe Lake. I used to live several miles away and visited often. Horseshoe Lake was calming. It was blue and serene. I couldn’t bike out to Lake Erie that often; that’s a six-mile schlep from Cleveland Heights. The Metroparks aren’t too close to the Heights either. Speaking of which, our lawyer talked with Metroparks’ people, and the park system wasn’t highly motivated to save Horseshoe Lake. On a stroll around the Heights, I ran into retired Cleveland city planner Bob Brown. He said he thought the Sewer District’s plan for the Horseshoe area “doesn’t look so horrible.” I hope Bob is right.

In winters I used to walk across the frozen lake. There were signs posted against it, but the water wasn’t that deep, and I figured if I fell into the lake. it would be a classy exit. Now what can I fall into? A playground amenity? No, thanks.

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The Mark IV apartments, Beachwood, Ohio

I’m at my parents’ apartment near I-271. So loud — the highway. I’ll hitch down to Cedar-Taylor to get some air.

I’d like to see Sleeper and American Graffiti.

Cleveland . . . it makes one stop and think. I’m thinking of Boston and New York.

The history of the Jews. My parents grew up in the Kinsman neighborhood. Ezra lived in Babylonia.

How do you get the girls if you don’t go near them?

I left my heart in Sandusky.

My friend Chap drove his Corvette up and down Mayfield Road with 11 other Corvette drivers. Chap has a 350-hp engine with headers, minus emission controls.

I saw Sleeper. I resented the Jewish stereotypes.

Stan Smith vs. John Newcombe.

Never write about a place you haven’t done time in. And detail-for-detail-sake is useless.

I don’t want to live here.

—

Recap:

My dad said, “I’m sure you’ll be a success some day.”

At what? Whatever, I should do a good job of it. My father never said to me, “What are your plans? What do you see yourself doing in ten years?” That would have been cruel.

My post-college days were hell, but not that hellish. My mother lined up blind dates for me. The dates were usually with daughters of my mom’s friends. I took the girls to bars and restaurants and ordered 7&7s. That was my booze repertoire: 7&7.

Then I got feedback about the dates from my mother, who picked up tidbits at bridge games. Some of the girls liked me, some didn’t. One date thought I was “a little weird.”

She was weird. She had no business dragging me through her dad’s kangaroo court (his living room had World War II medals on the wall). What are my plans? What do you do?

What’s an apricot sour? That’s what the girl ordered at the bar.

Chap asked me to go to the Corvette rally at Manner’s Big Boy, Mayfield Heights. He had a brand-new 1974 ’Vette. He said, “You think you’re too good for my ’Vette, Stratton. You’d prefer a VW bus with a hippie slut. Why not try real chicks and real cars . . . Friday night at the Strongsville Holiday Inn, it’s crawling with chicks and ’Vettes. No, you’d rather be in Cleveland Heights. Any city that has a bumper sticker like that is a losing proposition.”

When my sentence (nine months) at the Mark IV was up, I moved to Cleveland Heights, into a double, sharing it with three guys I met off the Case Western Reserve rooms-for-rent bulletin board.

I’ve been in Cleveland Heights ever since, and I haven’t seen Chap in more than 35 years. He doesn’t hang around klezmer concerts, for one thing. Alice knocked on the door of the Cleveland Heights double in 1977, looking for a room to rent. Mom’s Dating Service, RIP.

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This acclaimed animation is from the guys over at Challah Barbaric. The vid (below) may seem, at first glance, to be navel-gazing. It’s not. It’s magic. The two main characters — a sleazy guy and a bug-eyed naïf — turn the cutthroat world of real estate into something warm and fuzzy and slightly erotic  — or robotic.

The landlord in the vid is so pompous at first. Then more so. The plot twist: the young lady draws forth the landlord’s humanity and even a Peter, Paul and Mary lyric.

Should I rent to a Stripper? 2:57 minutes. United States . . .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSzSE1QHnpA&t=1s

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My time is worth $107.98 an hour.

I lost two harmonicas at a gig yesterday. I never lose anything. And I had bragged about finding my wife’s Visa card, which had been missing for a day. Alice considered calling the 800-number and canceling. No, Alice, that’s nightmare city. Alice walked in the snow for four miles looking for the Visa card, which she thought might have fallen out of her pocket while biking.

She didn’t find the card. I found it in the bedroom under a bed. I don’t know how the card got there. I always use a flashlight to search for missing stuff. That’s my trick; the flashlight helps me focus.

My harmonicas were in a gig bag, which I hadn’t fully zipped. I think the harps wound up in the snow in the parking lot at a nursing home, where I had a gig last night. I didn’t “hear” the harps fall in the snow. The last time I lost something was a ski cap — also in the snow.

I think I’ll order two harps on Amazon, $107.98 total. The harmonicas will arrive tomorrow. I don’t feel like driving 16 minutes each way to the nursing home to look for the harps. That’s 12 miles round-trip — a significant haul by Cleveland standards. And then another half hour looking for the harps.

I’ve called the nursing home. So far, nothing.

My two choices: 1) pay $108 for two harps, or 2) drive 32 minutes, plus spend time looking for the harps in the snow. And don’t forget the depreciation on my car.

(“Yesterday” was actually Jan. 16, 2025. I bought the harps.)

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Nobody is tall in my family. I was 5-feet-2 in ninth grade. But I played on the football team! I rode the bench; the coach wouldn’t put me in. He thought I’d get killed. He had me drill with a similar five-foot guy, who also never saw action.

My parents wanted me to play tennis. Figures.

I suited up for the Benedictine game. The head coach wanted “a lot of presence,” as he put it, so he brought the entire 9th-through-12th-grade team to the game– frosh (including me), JV, and varsity. This was 2002, when Benedictine had Ray Williams, who went on to win the “Mr. Football” award for best high school player in Ohio. He signed with West Virginia University.

Ray Williams

Our coach warned us all year about Williams. About 80 of us got on the school bus for Benedictine. We were a presence. And then in the very first play, Williams ran with it and we knew we were toast.

Williams wound up an accessory to a murder, so he never played at West Virginia. He played some at Toledo, but I think he screwed that up, too. And then he played a bit at Shaw University in North Carolina. I wonder what happened to him. There’s a documentary about him, Mr. Football, but it apparently has never played anywhere.

All I know is Ray Williams was an absolute beast at Benedictine. I watched him absolutely crush for 40 carries a night. Everyone knew who was getting the ball, every snap, but no one could stop the kid.

For the record, I’m now 5-feet-9, in my thirties and playing tennis.

(fiction)

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The Challah Fame hosts its annual business seminar next week. (The Challah Fame is in the former Beef Corral at Warrensville and Cedar roads, South Euclid, Ohio.)

Klez Biz.  Biz hundert un tsvantsik.

The program . . .

Lori Lippitz, director of the Maxwell Street Klezmer Band, speaks on KIS / Klezmer is Simple. “Never play for free, but if you feel like it, no problem.”

Henry Sapoznik, co-founder of KlezKamp. “No ‘Hava Nagila.’ Ever.”

Stanley McChristyl, retired US Army general. “Hire klez musicians with military backgrounds. How to find them? Check out the cats in the Israel Police Orchestra.”

Michael Winograd, clarinetist. “Learn to play ‘Sid’s #1’ in all 12 keys.”

Hankus Netsky, director of the Klezmer Conservatory Band. “Who’s in charge of this 11-piece klez band? I am — sometimes!”

Alan Douglass, pianist. He has played klezmer for 42 years in Cleveland without annoying any klez musicians. “Except one or two.” Learn Midwestern mores.

Steven Greenman, violin. “Klez Etiquette. Is 15 minutes too long for a doina? Nope!”

Alan Greenspan

This year’s seminar closes with a concert featuring Alan Greenspan, age 98, on saxophone, followed by his speech “The straight emes: how to dance the arts/commerce tango.”

Be there.

—

Greenspan went to Juilliard and played saxophone in big bands.

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My latest Cleveland Plain Dealer essay . . .

A LONG MOVIE, ONE LESS TENANT AND A GUITAR

CLEVELAND HEIGHTS, Ohio — The new Bob Dylan movie, “A Complete Unknown,” is too long and a bit too “unknown” — too much about Dylan-from-nowhere. And it’s two hours and 20 minutes, with 40 songs. I like biopics from somewhere — and shorter. How about Dylan’s year at the Sammy fraternity house at the University of Minnesota, followed by his odyssey to New York’s Greenwich Village? That would have been better.

Maybe I’m not enough of a Dylan aficionado. I’m a fan, but not a fanatic. Irwin Weinberger — who used to play in my klezmer band — is a super-fan. Irwin has been to Duluth and eaten at Zimmy’s Deli in Hibbing, Minnesota. Irwin loved every bit of the movie. When Irwin and the klezmer band played weddings and bar mitzvahs, Irwin would often — by request from listeners — veer from the klezmer music into Dylan, singing “Subterranean Homesick Blues” and “Tangled Up in the Blue” without a cheat sheet. The trick was getting Irwin to stop after two verses.

A tenant left his guitar behind. (My day job is managing apartment buildings in Lakewood.) The tenant said he was going home to Kentucky, taking only what could fit in his car. He said he wasn’t renting a U-Haul because he didn’t have a valid driver’s license. The manager at the building told me the suite was dead-bolted from the inside. I said, “Well, if the place starts to smell, let me know.” Every so often a tenant dies in a suite.

I tried to open the door with the regular key. That, surprisingly, worked. Locks can be finicky, particularly in old Lakewood buildings; you’re never sure you’re getting in until you’re actually in. The suite was above an Indian restaurant and a butcher shop on Detroit Avenue. I found a wooden chair, the guitar, some heavy-metal CDs, a book of Shakespeare plays and Charles Bukowski’s “Notes of a Dirty Old Man.” The guitar was a Chinese Martin knock-off with a solid-body case. The case, alone, was worth something. I’ll give the guitar back to the tenant if he returns, but I doubt he will. I also got some postage stamps from the apartment. Nobody wants stamps except me, apparently. I pay a lot of my bills by mail. I’m 74.

When I was 26 . . .

Years ago, I learned a few guitar chords, and now I want to try again. How about, “Dear Landlord”? … “Dear landlord, please don’t put a price on my soul.” Life is complicated. I hunched over the guitar, pressed my fingers to the steel strings, and strummed hard. An acoustic guitar is probably the least ergonomically friendly instrument around. I’m not a 20-year-old made out of rubber.

Dylan mostly plays piano these days. I can see why. He’s 83.

Maybe a tenant will leave me a piano. But please, not a rotted-out 400-pound upright with worn-out strings, dampers and hammers. I “inherited” that piano from a tenant in September. It cost me $500 to junk.

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Teddy, then 11, insisted we go to Disney World. He wasn’t abiding his mother’s posturing about how Disney World would deliver no “sense of mastery” to him. Let’s go!

This would be Ted’s second Disney trip. He had been to Orlando five years previously with his grandmother, sister and me.

The repeat trip turned out to be the greatest family trip of all time. Ted and his siblings, Lucy and Jack, went absolutely nuts for Figment, Miss Piggy and the Ninja Turtles. And Epcot was cool. The kids spent some time on the floor there — Lucy on top of Jack in the Moroccan restaurant lobby, putting him in a full-nelson.

Ted had researched the vacation, using Unofficial Guide to Disney World. (This was 1993, pre-Web.) Teddy devised our personalized Disney itinerary. We got on popular rides at odd hours and walked in counter-intuitive directions. This was before priority passes and VIP lines. This was when America was Sweden.

Prior to the Disney trips, I had been a snob about amusement parks. If an amusement park was new-ish, we weren’t going.  It had to be old and rickety. We had gone to Memphis (Avenue) Kiddie Park, Geneva on the Lake, Kennywood in Pittsburgh, and Conneaut Lake Park in Pennsylvania. Conneaut was the best; it had a carnie booth of caged chickens playing tic-tac-toe. You bought corn kernels from  a gumball machine and fed the kernels to the chickens, to motivate them to play tic-tac-toe. The contraption was like out of a B.F. Skinner behavioral-science experiment.

Conneaut closed in 2010. Luna Park closed in 1929. (I didn’t make it to that one.) Euclid Beach Park — the classic Cleveland amusement park — closed in 1969. Geauga Lake, for some reason that was never on my radar.

Disney forever.

—
Teddy’s itinerary . . . This is just the first page (the next two pages are lost to history). 1993. Typed on a Compaq x386. WordPerfect 3.1.

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When my kids were young, every Chanukah I would take them to the various Jewish bookstores around town to buy decorations and Chanukah books and toys, just so they would get used to these places. At Frank’s Hebrew Bookstore, I thought I was in Poland: tallisim (prayer shawls), spice boxes, yarmulkes. A photo of Koufax on the wall — that would have helped.

Also, I drove my kids to the Christmas lights at General Electric’s Nela Park. That was a family tradition, started by my parents in the 1950s. Why not? Lights is lights.

Yiddishe Cup used to play holiday parties at the Cleveland Plain Dealer. We would stroll table to table. Just about everybody asked for Christmas carols.

Hey, I didn’t start Yiddishe Cup to play “Silent Night.” I said no to all Christmas requests. We would play “Hava Nagila” or tunes from Fiddler on the Roof, if asked. Dick Feagler, a renowned Plain Dealer columnist, gave us the thumbs-up for staying Jewish. Dick apparently liked our Full Cleveland approach. (Full Cleveland meant polka, klez, bandura, tamburitza, salsa. All good.)  No rock for Dick.

After strolling to about 10 tables, I cracked; I couldn’t take any more “What? You don’t do Christmas songs?”  We played Jose Feliciano’s “Feliz Navidad.” Christmas in Spanish was OK.

—

My family went to KlezKamp in the Catskills during Christmas week for more than a decade. At first I couldn’t get my wife, Alice, to go. We had young kids and she didn’t want to schlep them. One year I took the two oldest kids and went without her. I spent a lot of time in the hotel game room and swimming pool that year. That chemical vat, a k a pool, was only slightly larger than a half dollar, and you had to coat yourself with 100-proof skin cream or get a rash.

The kids and I went to New York City afterward. My daughter, Lucy, then 5, made me carry her everywhere. We didn’t get too far. We went to Popeye’s on Times Square for dinner.

When we got back to Cleveland, Alice said at the doorway, “The kids look anemic!”

Alice, we had beans and rice and lemonade at Popeye’s! (The kids hadn’t been too crazy about the borscht and herring at KlezKamp.)

Alice has never trusted me with food, or childrearing for that matter.

The following year Alice came with us to Klezkamp. All five of us. Alice was a folk dancer and exercise nut; however, Jews at klezmer conventions are not typically exercise freaks. Alice found a nearby indoor tennis court which was so dusty the balls turned black after one set. It was like playing in a parking garage.  We went skiing on Christmas. I thought the slopes would be empty, but no, a lot of Asians and Jews from New York City were there.

We snuck over to The Pines resort for ice skating. That place looked like a staging area for a Borscht Belt revival movie. We had a good time checking out trivia contests in the lobby. I’ve got nothing against middle-class Jews. I am one.

My family kept going back to KlezKamp every Christmas. Ikh khulem fun a vaysn nitl. (I’m dreaming of a white Christmas.) And every year Alice would complain: “I can’t believe we’re going to KlezKamp again!”

Jack Stratton, Merlin Shepherd (kneeling) and Lucy Stratton. KlezKamp 1993.

Finally, after 12 years, the brainwashing was complete; the kids knew more Yiddish than oy vey and farklempt, and they knew a lot about klezmer music, and Alice could have, by then, taught the dance classes. And I had met all the old klez guys: Max Epstein, Felix Fibich, Danny Rubenstein, Velvel Pasternak. Paul Pincus, Leon Schwartz, Ray Musiker, Ben Bazyler, Sid Beckerman, German Goldenshteyn, Howie Leess, Elaine Hoffman Watts.

They’re probably all dead now.

I paid my dues.

—

“Merry Christmas” is OK with me. Beats “Happy Holidays.” I once went to a West Side house for Christmas and about 12 Ukrainian girls walked in and caroled us. And they were in full regalia. That was my most Christmas-y experience – until this year.

I went to Mass yesterday. Midnight Mass (which was actually at 4 pm for AKs like me and families with young kids). Joint was jumping. St. Ann Church, Cleveland Heights. A field trip. Park Synagogue’s senior rabbi, Joshua Skoff, led the outing.

The priest prayed for the well-being of the pope, Cleveland’s bishop, etcetera, on down to the “millions of Catholics” throughout the world. Millions — that word hit me. We Jews don’t bandy millions around lightly. That’s some big tent those Catholics have.

I miss KlezKamp. I like the small-ball game of Judaism. Only 15.8 million of us, and we all know each other!

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The cops had 66% retirement pensions and hung around McDonald’s on Lake Shore Boulevard in North Collinwood. Mostly Slovenians. They were hard-pressed to find a Jew — besides me — to share stories with. These cops had worked with Jews back when Jews lived in the city.

Bill Tofant, a retired cop, said he had worked out every day at the “Yiddishe Meat Cutters Union,” a k a the YMCA. He said, “I can still run a mile at age 73 and can hold my own in fisticuffs, and I can turn my head to see if traffic is coming.”

Tofant said my Great Uncle Itchy Seiger would throw his arms around Bill every time he came into Seiger’s deli on East 118^th Street and Kinsman Road. “I couldn’t even spend a nickel in Seiger’s. I had corned beef, turkey, you name it.”

Tofant and fellow retried policeman Ray Lonchar ignored the sign in McDonald’s dining area: 30 Minute Time Limit While Consuming Food. The manager must enforce these rules. Your cooperation is appreciated. Tofant and Lonchar had known Botnick the pawnbroker — “a good sharp yidl.” Botnick got shot and killed in 1981 at his pawnshop at East 59^th Street and Euclid Avenue. I knew Botnick. My dad used to play tennis with Botnick. Lonchar said, “That was done by a jig. Three colored guys went in back and they stuck the place up, and the cameras were just installed. One guy had a horse pistol, yea-long, it stuck out like a sore thumb. It was a military weapon. They picked him up in Rolla, Missouri.”

There had been another Jewish pawnbroker, at East 79^th Street and Hough Avenue. “He would buy a stove [gun] that was red hot and smile,” Lonchar said.

There was Uncle Ben, too, at Woodland Avenue and East 55th Street. “He was kind of lax with his records, but he was good to our pawn unit,” Lonchar said.

When the cops ran out of Jew-lore, they segued to Italians, or even Lithuanians. Blacks — nope. “Shondor Birns [a Jewish gangster] — he had the colored in line,” Lonchar said. Birns had controlled the city’s numbers racket.

I patronized the Lake Shore Boulevard McD’s in the mid-1980s, during the dying days of white ethnicity. Back when cars had bumper stickers like “Thank God I’m Slovenian,” “Thank God I’m Irish” and “Thank God I’m Polish.”  Funny, I never saw a “Thank God I’m Jewish.”

The Lits (The Lithuanians) . . . They lived near Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church — very close to McDonald’s. Lonchar said, “DPs — I don’t care what nationally they are — they’ll eat nothing but soup for 20 years, three times a day, and save their money, and all of a sudden they buy apartment buildings, invest, and they start rolling. They found out that the streets of America didn’t have gold in them. They had to work for it.”

The Italians . . . with all their “goddamn Italian bullshit.” The Italians lived near Holy Redeemer Church, approximately two miles from McDonald’s. Tofant said, “One thing about Italians, they stick together. If you’re Italian, you’re better than me. You might be the dumbest SOB on two feet, a goddamn dunderhead, but just because you’re Italian, you’re it. The Irish get the way, too, around St. Patrick’s Day.”

The Poles . . . Tofant said, “There was one Polack, Frankie Schant, a safecracker. He bit the cheese and left an imprint. He bit the cheese at the grocery store and they matched his teeth marks. At Pick-N-Pay. And there was this South Side Polack who cut a wire, it was live, and he died.”

Slovenians . . . the best for last, here. Take Charlie Broeckel. (He might not have been Slovenian but the Slovenians claimed him.) Tofant said, “He had class. He went out to Laguna Beach, California, and did a bank heist there. Burned through seven mill worth of shit and negotiable papers. I knew him when he was 10 years old. He was a runner. He always found his way out. And you know what, his mother held a very respectable job. She was beyond reproach, nothing like a stumblebum or anything like that. They lived at 8815 St. Clair.”

Nail a historical plaque to that door!

—

I was doing research — and legwork — for a cop novel back then. (Unpublished novel.) I’ll  briefly quote the manuscript, if I can find it. Found . . .

“Stan Zupancic had a glazed turquoise ashtray contoured in the shape of a .44 magnum. His pencil holder was made from World War II antitank shells, and he used a bowie knife to open his mail. A young man, with a growth of brown curly hair that looked like a dead shrub, sat on the other side of the desk.”

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This essay was in the Cleveland Plain Dealer last week . . .

“Genocide” — what does it mean?

CLEVELAND HEIGHTS, Ohio — Sean Martin, the assistant curator for Jewish history at the Western Reserve Historical Society, once taught an online course called “Comparative Genocide.” The course was offered through Gratz College, in Philadelphia. I said to Sean, “I think Don DeLillo wrote about Hitler Studies in a novel. That was a novel. ‘Comparative Genocide,’ is that a real course?” It was. (This was 13 years ago.) Now it’s called “Genocide in the Modern World.”

“Genocide” – the word – what does it mean?

Pope Francis, in his new book, says that Israel’s retaliation in Gaza should be investigated to determine if it meets the legal definition of genocide. Patricia Heaton — a former Clevelander, Catholic, and TV actor – said the pope should “look up the definition of genocide.”

Heaton also said on “Elizabeth Vargas Reports” that, “Israel is trying to find the hostages, release them, take out the Hamas leaders and end the war.” She said, “It’s time for every American, and in particular Christians, to stand up and make sure our representatives know they have to help Israel.”

(Illustration by Ralph Solonitz)

The word “genocide” was coined by a Polish Jewish lawyer, Raphael Lemkin, in 1944. He ingeniously combined the Greek “genos” (tribe) and Latin “cide” (killing). Genocide, he wrote, is the slaughter and attempted elimination of a people, a culture, an ethnicity.

Killing a lot of people – is that genocide? It’s most often war. For instance, America bombed Germany. That was war. Germany sidetracked its military effort specifically to gas Jews-for-being-Jews. That was genocide.

I visited an old college friend, John, in Chicago. His front door had a poster, “Stop the Genocide in Gaza.” We talked about old times. Toward the end of our what’s-up conversation, I said, “What’s with the sign?” He had gotten it from the radical group Jewish Voices for Peace, so the sign was “kosher,” John said. John isn’t Jewish.

One question, John: If the Israelis are committing genocide, why are there some 7 million Palestinians in the Middle East today, including more than 2 million in Gaza alone? There had been about 1.2 million Palestinians in 1947. Israel is doing a lousy job of committing genocide, apparently. I didn’t mention any of this to John because I was timid.

Earlier this month, I finally spoke up — at a Cuyahoga County Council meeting downtown. I spoke during the “public comment” portion. Granted, speaking to 11 somewhat-bored council members was a lot less fraught than telling an old friend where to go. The council members probably would have preferred hearing about countywide childhood mental-health issues or summer youth-employment programs, but a lot of commenters wanted to talk Israel/Gaza. I said to the council, “Some people think there are three kinds of Jews: Reform, Conservative and Orthodox. Wrong. There are these three types: American Jews, Israeli Jews, and victims of the Holocaust. Six million to 7 million each. We don’t want the Jews of Israel to be wiped out.”

The county has invested $16 million in Israel Bonds. (The bonds aren’t a gift. The county gets the money back plus interest.) Some anti-Israel speakers used the word “genocide.” A woman talked about local issues – and even used the word “genocide.” She said, “Think about the genocide here in Cleveland with the homelessness.”

Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran have repeatedly said – and acted on – their desire to eliminate Israel — the one Jewish state, home to half the Jews in the world.

That’s genocide. Update your dictionary.

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“I’ve read every word of your blog,” a musician told me.

Hooray for him. I wrote every word.

At shul, a reader told me, “You found your subject. Toby.”

No, you did. I’ve had Toby (my father) on the brain for decades.

Toby Stratton, 1938. OSU graduation.

A woman told me, “I look forward to your Wednesday-morning posts. I don’t do comments.”

My comment: 95% of readers don’t do comments. They’re above that.

Several readers claim they’ve read every word of this blog. OK, prove it:

1. What was the name of Yiddishe Cup before it was Yiddishe Cup? A. Wild Horses  B. Funk a Deli  C. Kosher Spears.

2. Who invented klezmer? A. The Jews  B. The Klezmorim (Berkeley)  C. Henry Sapoznik.

3. What was Toby Stratton’s legal first name? A. Toby  B. Theodore  C. Wayne.

4. What did Toby want buried with him in his coffin? A. Chlortrimeton allergy pills  B. An Indian-head nickel  C. The Wall Street Journal.

5. How do Yiddishe Cup musicians refer to their bandleader? A. Ding-a-ling  B. Pissant  C. Sir.

6. Yiddishe Cup has played: A. Brooklyn, N.Y.  B. Brooklyn, Ohio  C. Neither.

7. A landlord’s biggest problem is: A. water leaks  B. bugs  C. tenants.

8. Toby’s favorite sport was: A. tennis  B. counting Jews in Chinese restaurants  C. depositing rent checks.

9. Most often a working musician’s main interest is: A. music  B. the food situation.

10. Does Jack Stratton play with Yiddishe Cup? A. Depends on what decade you’re talking about.

11. Which group can you make fun of in Cleveland?: A. Slovenians  B. Blacks  C. Orthodox Jews  D. Slovenians.

12. Which is the hardest to find? A. A plumber  B. roofer  C.  electrician  D. door-buzzer guy.

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I was putting away my tenor sax. I was seated. The wooden chair leg snapped and I fell into a bunch of flower bouquets stage-side. Wet flowers. Luckily I had on a heavy tux jacket. I landed on my shoulder. I wore the heavy tux because it was cold out (earlier this month); the wedding gig was in a tent with no heat. Good news. I didn’t injured anything.

When an old person tumbles, it’s newsworthy, at least to the tumbler. I see falls occasionally on gigs – old people doing the hora and tripping. Once a young woman tripped and broke her ankle. She was scheduled to run a marathon. It’s all about the shoes.

Seven steps in Michigan. (Camp Michigania)

Seven steps in Michigan . . . I was walking down some steps in Michigan last month. The stairs were outside, it was dark and everybody was saying “Look at the blue moon — the super moon!” I did, and I went flying. I had just seen the Olympics on TV; maybe that’s why, in mid-air, I decided to “plant” like a gymnast and then roll on my right shoulder. I had on a polar fleece jacket. Again, nothing happened. 2-for-2.

A friend sprained her ankle hiking in Colorado on vacation. An acquaintance broke her hip in Cuba on a trip (literally); she wound up staying down there a couple extra weeks. In Mexico I fell off a mountain bike and injured my ribs. That was five years ago. I’d like to blank that out. I bruised my ribs. Not broken, not fractured, just bruised. At least I think I was just bruised; I never got an X-ray to find out. I could breathe. It was a little difficult to play the clarinet but I could.

Roll with it. Hope your luck holds.

—

Yiddishe Cup plays the University Heights Fall Fest 12-1 pm this Sunday (Aug. 29) at Walter Stinson Park, 2301 Fenwick Rd, University Heights, Ohio. The event is free.

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English novelist Howard Jacobson described himself as a “stomach Jew” in an interview. He’s a bagel-and lox guy. He doesn’t go to synagogue. He’s a stomach Jew. How about a lung Jew? A vein Jew?

I bumped into Jacobson in London. Former Yidd-Cupper Irwin Weinberger and I ran into him on the street. Irwin and I were over in Londres in 2016. Irwin feigned a British accent while we busked. We did “When I’m 64.” Nothing much happened when we played it. London is big; people ignore you.

Howard Jacobson

I recognized Jacobson’s punim from his book dust- jacket head shots. He won the Booker Prize in 2010. I said to him, “Are you the English Philip Roth?” I couldn’t remember his actual name when I bumped into him. Jacobson acknowledged he was, in fact, the English Philip Roth. Some American book reviewers call him that.

Irwin and I told him we play klezmer and some Catskill’s comedy tunes, and Jacobson said, “Like ‘Bar Mitzvah Ranch?’” (Mickey Katz used to dress up as a Bar Mitzvah rancher in cowboy boots and chaps.) Katz, the musician, was from Cleveland. Jacobson said, “You play for ranchers?” Ohio is ranches.

Goodbye. Jacobson had places to go. A half hour later we ran into him again. What are the chances of that in London? He was with his wife. I should have asked about the “stomach Jew” quote. In America we say “deli Jew.” My dad, Toby, was the king of deli Jews — borscht, halvah, corned beef. He grew up in a deli.

I was once a bagel Jew. I’d go to Bialy’s in University Heights, buy 15 bagels, eat two bagels right away, and drive to my mother’s and give her three, and take home 10. I was more than a bagel Jew. I was a bagel. Next time I run into Jacobson we’ll talk bagels.

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Some of my friends and relatives are extremely cheap. I know two people who reuse dental floss. I’m not like that, but the one thing I do like to save money on is postage stamps. I won’t use two first-class stamps on a two-ounce letter. I go with one first-class, 73-cent ‘forever’ stamp, plus one “additional-ounce” forever stamp, 24 cents.

I’m a former philatelist. I have a U.N. souvenir sheet from 1965. United Nations stamps were a hot item back then. I got the souvenir sheet as a gift for my Confirmation. It cost my parents $75 ($749 in today’s dollars). The sheet is worthless now. U.N. stamps tanked just like the org.

I made a trip to the P.O. to buy “additional ounce” stamps. Also, I decided to get some extra 2-centers, too. Yes, I use Quickbooks and Venmo, but I use the USPS as well. The P.O. clerk handed me the 2-centers  and informed me she had no “additional ounce” stamps.

“Do you sell milk?” I said. “This is a post office. You sell stamps! You don’t have stamps? Where can I get the stamps?”

She said try another branch.

I left. I’m not doing any more runs to the P.O. for “additional ounce” stamps. I’ll simply put two first-class stamps on two-ounce mail from now on. So it’ll cost me an extra 49 cents each time. (Maybe my son Ted will get me some additional-ounce stamps if he reads this.) I’ll be spending about $10 more per year by not using the additional-ounce stamp.

—

By the way, I didn’t say “Do you sell milk?” at the P.O. I dreamt that retort up in the P.O. parking lot, post-visit. But the dialogue looks good here, in writing, so pretend I said it.

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Every two years I prune my library. My wife insists. If you want any of these books (see list below), stop by my tree lawn before Tuesday — garbage day.

Glenn E. Schembechler

Bowl Game Disasters by Glenn E. Schembechler

Stupid Bastard: The Life of Harry Purim by Meier Meier

10 Days to a Hairless Body by Anne Greune

The Whim of Grit by Malcolm Bolivia

So You Want to Be Jewish? by Miriam Roth

The Story of the Harlem Cooperative Bakery by Rose Lee Pak

Cover Your Lawn with Green Sheet Metal by Jennifer Budzowski

Throw Away Your Truss by Jon Kades

So You Want to Dance, Act, and Play the Clarinet! by Pippi

Kreplach in the Congo by Reb Yellen

Amusing Car Sales by Sid Halpern

Spelling Made EZ by Jaimi Michalczyk

The Peacock Invasion by Morry Corriendo

Good Riddance, Chancres! by Rodney Benton

Cryptic Tokens of Praise (poetry) by Del Spitzer

Whoring in Milan, Rome and Naples by “Lilly”

Goldwater by William E. Miller

The Streets of San Francisco and Richmond, California by Cindy L. Barbour

The Man: Susan B. Anthony by Janice Kugelman-Sugerman

Milk Will Kill You by Len Saltzberg, M.D.

Pet Insurance for Dummies by Buster

Guess Your Friends’ Net Worth by James Kirston

Barbados: Our Key Ally by Cecil Hernandez

Thinking is the New Smoking by Amos The Bison

No Mo’ Boca: A Baby Boomer’s Guide to Retirement by Esther Palevsky

Cuckoos and Grosbeaks by Nancy Dubick

Carolina: The New Promised Land by Irv Weinberg

Visceral Robotics by Suellen Montague

Garbage: A History of Waste Management Inc. by Lake Koonce-Katz

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There are three types of Jews. No, not Reform, Conservative and Orthodox. Try American, Israeli and victims of the Holocaust. Each about a third.

The Israeli contingent is top of mind right now, with Iran and its proxies wanting to turn Israel into dead Jews. In America — in Cleveland — what is a Jew to do? I called my friend Shelly Gordon, who moved to Israel after college to become a tennis pro. He played for Ohio State. He still gripes about my childhood private lessons; I violated the South Euclid Tennis Court Oath, which was Don’t Be a Tennis Snob. Shelly‘s strokes are bad but he’s good. He never took a private lesson.

He said, “Ninety percent of Israel is business as usual — going about our lives. I play tennis.” Shelly is a sports nut. He follows the Browns, Buckeye, Cavs and Guardians. In Israel he logs on at 3 a.m. to catch Cleveland sports scores. He once had a yarmulke that read “Cleveland Cavaliers.” On his off days, he visits his children and grandchildren and hopes they don’t get killed.

What‘s a Cleveland Jew to do? Here’s an option. Yiddishe Cup plays a benefit concert for Magen David Adom — the Israeli emergency blood and medical services operation.

The concert is 7 p.m. Wednesday, Aug. 28, at the outdoor, covered Wain Pavilion, Park Synagogue, 27500 Shaker Blvd, Pepper Pike, Ohio.

Magen David Adom is like an Israeli Red Cross. The concert is free but donations are encouraged. Money from the concert — along with gelt from other Cleveland-area contributors — will go toward buying an ambulance.

Yiddishe Cup will play songs from Holocaust-haunted Eastern Europe, America, and songs from Holocaust-avoiding Israel.

Cleveland stands (and sits) with Israel. There are chairs.

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When I traveled in Latin America in the early 1970s, I was constantly on the lookout for American culture. American culture, not Latin American culture. I was homesick. In Mexico City I heard Kurt Vonnegut give a lecture. I went to American movies. I remember Paper Moon. I attended a Charlie Byrd concert in Bogota. Bryd — a jazz guitarist — had played with Stan Getz. Byrd introduced his band in Spanish, saying “en la batería” for “on the drums” and “en el bajo“ for “on the bass.” Byrd connected linguistically and I admired that. His concert was part of a U.S. State Department tour.

I did an Charlie Byrd imitation last week. I introduced Vulfpeck in Spanish at a concert in Madrid. I spoke Spanish to 3,500 Spaniards!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8P-e3bGDSak

Outdoor concert, Vulfpeck, Madrid, 7/21/24.

I told my son Jack that my intro would take a minute. It took 4:19 minutes. While I blabbed on, Jack became slightly agitated stage-left, in the wings. He signaled me to speed it up but I didn’t see him.

I hate it when a musician says he’ll do a minute and then solos for two minutes. In my defense, re Madrid, some of my stage-hogging time consisted of applause and laughter.

Here’s a translated joke from my intro: “Ladies and gentlemen, I was so excited when I first heard Vulfpeck was going to play Madrid that I immediately went on the internet and checked out the lineup for tonight’s show — Apertura de puertas 7:30 pm, Judith Hill 8:45 pm, Vulfpeck 10:15 pm. I wondered, What is this band Apertura de Puertas?”

“Apertura de puertas” means “Doors open.”

Maybe you had to be there.

—

I had a terrific Spanish teacher, Judith Worth, at Brush High. She wrote me in 1980: “Bert, I was glad to have news of all your classmates, and to know that they are doing well — and have used their Spanish. I was very attached to all of you, as if you were my own kids.” I’ll send her this post. (According to the internet, she’s 87 and living near Austin. I last talked to Mrs. Worth four years ago.)

Charles F. Brush High yearbook, 1968.

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