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.


 
 

AN ABOVE-AVERAGE JEW

About 20 Geauga County kids put on “I Never Saw Another Butterfly,” a play about the Theresienstadt concentration camp. I spoke to the actors at their theater in Chardon, Ohio.  “My voice is blown out. I destroyed it at a gig [at Nighttown],” I said. And I had no mic to talk to the kids. I figured they’d be obnoxious, but they weren’t. I explained what a Jew is. (On one foot.)

They sang a Theresienstadt-based song for me. I asked  them who, in their world, was the most famous Jew. I thought they would say Jesus. The answer: Billy Crystal.

The kids wanted to know about “the beanie “/ the hat / the yarmulke. I said the beanie (which I don’t wear outside of shul) shows the Jew’s humbleness, vis a vis God. Was I right?  I gave the actors a couple Yiddishe Cup CDs and said, “The people at Terezin didn’t listen to klezmer music but enjoy these CDs anyway.”

Was I extremely Jewish? No. But I was above average!

On One Foot

On one foot

 

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4 comments

1 Irwin Weinberger { 10.28.15 at 10:12 am }

As a representative of our people you did a fine job. With so many misconceptions about minorities I think it’s a good thing to be visible once in awhile.

2 Ken Goldberg { 10.28.15 at 10:17 am }

I generally enjoy explaining some aspect sf Judaism to non-Jews, as long as the listener is attentive, respectful, and thus not argumentative. I feel I have some control over how balanced the information is, unlike the way others might handle it.,

3 William Jones { 10.28.15 at 11:17 am }

Nu? How were you chosen to represent the Jewish community in this setting; happenstance?

4 Bert Stratton { 10.28.15 at 11:47 am }

To William Jones:

They just looked up a random Jew under “Stratton” in the phone book.

Seriously, it was somebody who knew somebody through Yiddishe Cup.

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