Category — Klezmer

 
Two Jews, three opinions . . .

Warfare. The cops were called. [This was at the 2022 Yiddish concert at Cain Park, Cleveland Heights.] The concert chairman, who had a temper, asked the Cleveland Heights police to eject a Workmen’s Circle (WC) person for passing out WC literature at a card table at the show. (WC is a 125-year-old national Jewish fraternal organization.)

The chairman was the head of a group called the Yiddish Concert in the Park (YCIP) committee, an offshoot of the Workmen’s Circle. Farshtey?

The YCIP chairman was annoyed with the WC. It appeared he wanted total control of the show. It was a pishing contest. The police escorted the Workmen’s Circle pamphleteer out.

Can’t we Jews get along?

(Don’t answer that.)

Back in pre-history (the 1980-1990s), the annual free Yiddish concert at Cain Park attracted up to 2,000 people. Acts included The Klezmatics, Pharaoh’s Daughter, the Klezmer Conservatory Band, Bruce Adler and Chava Alberstein.

Then the Yiddish-speaking audience dwindled. The target audience pretty much died out. Concert attendance was down to about 400 attendees typically, in the 2010s.

Today: The YCIP and the WC (Cleveland branch) don’t exist. The WC’s website shows nothing much has happened in the past several years. The YCIP hasn’t met in four years. Gornisht.

I’m a former member of both the YCIP and the WC. People sometimes ask me, “What’s going on with the Yiddish concert at Cain Park? I miss it.” I explain there’s a rump group of five people who use the name Workmen’s Circle, and these folks have self-funded the shows for the past two years. Funded it small-time. A couple grand, most. Not enough dinero to bring in high-quality talent.

Cain Park, which is a city-owned venue, has no time, or the resources, to deal with these tribal matters. Cain Park doesn’t know Yiddish from spinach. And lately Cain Park has run through two general managers and an interim manager.

Another entity seemingly in the dark about all this, too, is the Cleveland Jewish News, which vigorously promotes the WC’s low-rent shows, maybe because the CJN makes money by selling ads for printed concert programs.

In 2023 I met with the then-chief financial officer of the Jewish Federation of Cleveland, and he told me he was fed up with the squabbling committees and “we’re not giving another dime [to underwrite the concert] until we see accounting reconciliations and a financial statement.”

I remember when Yiddishist Henry Green donated approximately $50,000 to the concert fund. He had escaped Europe and started a business in Bolivia, made some dough, and then moved to Cleveland. He died in 1998.

The concert endowment now has more than $150,000, managed by the Jewish Federation of Cleveland. For the record, Henry’s son, Andy, wrote to the Federation in 2023 and said he wanted the dough to go to the YCIP, not the WC. Andy died last year.

Shortly after the cops visited Cain Park, I contacted a rump WC person. He said he wanted to revive the concert in a big way. He had a very talented, very well-known performer in mind. Top secret.

“Come on, tell me who you’re thinking of. I’m a musician,” I said. “Come on.”

“Bette Midler.”

What? “How do you get to Bette Midler?” I said.

“Somebody knows her. She was in Workmen’s Circle.”

Does Midler she still perform? Does she still breathe? Does she know any Yiddish? Would she work for less than rock-star gelt?

[Midler grew up in Hawaii, which never had a Workmen’s Circle branch.]

I called the Cain Park general manager and said, “We’re not able to attract a national act because the Yiddish Concert in the Park committee [YCIP] doesn’t exist and neither does the Workmen’s Circle.”

This was news to the park manager. He said people occasionally asked him, too, what’s up with the Yiddish concert. (This manager got fired from Cain Park after a year.)

Last year: The rump WC group produced a show which attracted approximately 75 people. The craziest part of the concert, for me, was when the WC raffled off a Glock gun at intermission.

This year: The Cleveland Jewish News just published a recap of the Aug. 23, 2026, show. Headline:

‘Phenomenal’ annual Yiddish Concert draws over 400 fans. 

 
I learned “Danny Boy” to play in Ireland, but nobody wanted to hear it there. I also learned “Irish Washerwoman,” another non-hit.

Yesterday I played  “Danny Boy” at a nursing home in Cleveland. Big success. My friend Irwin says the tune was written by a Jew. Not true, Itchie. An Englishman wrote it. But a lot of Jews and Tin Pan Alley types helped popularize it.

Irwin plays Irish music on occasion. I once saw him jamming at Horseshoe Lake with an Irish trad-music group. I’m not very knowledgeable about Irish music, although I certainly appreciate the fact the lyrics are in English and not, say, Romanian.

I busked in Ireland last month. I was at a public park in the middle of nowhere: County Wicklow. There was a food-truck area, featuring Blaa Burger and Mr. Whippy soft-serve ice cream. There were picnic tables. I often busk on holidays to meet people. The busking is most fun if people are seated and somewhat trapped. If they’re walking by on their way to some place else, that’s tougher. These folks were trapped, seated at tables, chomping on Blaa Burgers.

When I asked an Irishman if he knew “Danny Boy,” he said no. A second Irishman knew the tune; he had spent 10 years in the US as a CPA.

My swing tunes went over best. Also, a klezmer tune for Germans tourists. There were many teenagers at the park. I told them, “I don’t play for anybody under 19.” They were glad. A Brazilian wanted “Ipanema.”

I wore a chai necklace — a gift from former Yiddishe Cup dance leader Danny Ducoff.  In Cleveland, Danny had said if I got punched by an antisemite in Ireland, I should compliment the assailant on his knowledge of Hebrew.

Only one person in Ireland reacted to my necklace — a Russian tourist, who ripped open his shirt to reveal a Star of David pendant. The Russian was on vacation. I didn’t know Russians vacationed in the West. He told me he was one-eighth Jewish. One of his great-grandfathers had been Jewish. The Russian was Mark, and I went on and on about how Jewish “Marks”  in America, at least in the 1950s, were usually “Marc.” I should have asked Mark more about Russia, and talked less about “Marc.”

“Danny Boy” — I like it. The melody. I also like Andy Statman’s “Song of Redemption,” which sounds Irish to me. All major-key pentatonic.

If you’re ever in Ireland and want to jam with the trad bands there, you should learn up-to-date tunes. Not 1920s-era Irish-American classics like “Danny Boy.”

Everybody knows a Danny. At yesterday’s nursing home gig, at least four people said they were related to a Danny. I bet even Danny Ducoff has a Danny relative.

Danny Ducoff (w/ red maracas), 2004

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Yiddishe Cup  plays a free concert 2:30 pm this SUN. (Aug. 30) at the Coventry PEACE Park stage, which is at the corner of Coventry Road and Euclid Heights Boulevard in Cleveland Heights. The concert is part of the Heights Music Hop. Bring a blanket or a chair.

 
Yiddishe Cup takes a lot of breaks. Why kill ourselves; we aren’t kids. Some bands — Hungarian bands, say — play their asses off. They just keep on playing. Kill themselves. I’ve injured myself too many times. Tendinitis, in particular.

The cocktail hour is “wallpaper music.” It’s just ambience; nobody is paying attention to the music. And the dinner hour, don’t go full-bore.

But last month we went full-bore. We played an hour and forty minutes without a break at a national convention for cantors in Pittsburgh. The Cantors Assembly. Two-hundred cantors. They knew every tune (Jewish and American) we played, and they sang along to half of it, and some of the cantors jumped on stage (invited) and sang with us. They partied fairly hard. Many of the cantors were traveling without spouses, and since it was a convention, it was tres loose. The hazzonim were staying at the party-site hotel (Omni William Penn), so they didn’t have to drive anywhere. They had nothing to do but party.

When we stopped playing, the cantors kept on boogying until the hotel turned the lights off in the ballroom. The cantors then went into the hallway, outside the ballroom, and sang a capella.

Two attendees said they had hired Yiddishe Cup for their weddings back in the day. A cantor from Plano,Texas, and a guy from New York.

At more typical Yiddishe Cup party gigs, I usually get antsy. Like “Where’s my water?” Or my left ear itches. But in Pittsburgh, the band was in the zone for the entire party. Sarah Myerson, a cantor and dance leader from New York, did a straight-ahead, no-tricks bottle dance. (The trick is you fill the bottle one-third full. You get a lower center of gravity, which helps.)

Take me back to Pittsburgh.

 
Some musicians hear every microtone and nuance. They say “oh, he’s flat,” or “she’s pitchy.” Come on.

Yiddishe Cup’s keyboard player, Alan Douglass, hears everything. He tells me to “push in” my saxophone mouthpiece, because I’m often flat. (More on Alan later.)

I’m bringing back an old Yiddishe Cup tune from 2009. We originally learned the piece, “Sam Malik’s Tune,” from the New Shtetl Band, who learned it from one Sami Malik, a Macedonian village musician.

I tried the tune the other day and didn’t nail it right off. I figured out the first section, but not the second. I had forgotten a lot. Which reminds me, clarinetist Sid Beckerman, at a Klezkamp workshop, once said, “I haven’t played this tune in  20 years,” and then nailed some obscure freylekhs.

I didn’t nail “Sami Malik’s Tune.” But I want to perform it at Cain Park. [Alma Theater, Cleveland Heights. 7:30 Sun., June 28. Free.]

Alan listened to the tune, which he hadn’t heard in 16 years, and nailed it. He remembered every nuance. And “Sami Malik’s Tune” is not “Mary Had a Little Lamb”; it’s a strange Macedonian tune. Or maybe Albanian.

Jazz pianist Joey Hunter once said about Alan: “he hears everything.” Alan, on gigs, knows when the other musicians are off, but he doesn’t bug them, except me., because I ask him to bug me. Why not? I don’t want to sound bad if I don’t have to.

(L) Alan Douglass and Bert Stratton, Cain Park, 2022. (Photo by Lloyd Wolf)

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Yiddishe Cup’s violinist, Steve Greenman, flew back from Panama City, where he recently played a wedding gig. That’s class and must be noted. Steve is one of the world’s top klezmer violinists.

Then a couple nights later, he played — with Yiddishe Cup — a gig in Youngstown, Ohio, a town that gets  an end-of-the-world rap. But note, Youngstown has a Classic Reform shul built in 1915. Congregation Ohev Beth Sholom. It’s like a miniature The Temple, Cleveland (now the Maltz Performing Arts Center).

Elyria, Erie, New Castle, Sharon, Warren, Canton, Lorain, Akron. Yiddishe Cup has played them all. Many of these Rust Belt shuls are history.

Youngstown’s Ohev Beth Sholom has about 300 families, down from its peak in 1967 when it had 710 families and 395 kids in the religious school. There are a lot of yahrzeit plaques on the walls there.

At Yiddishe Cup’s Ohev Beth Sholom gig, a former Shaker Heights resident described her move to Youngstown as a “reverse exodus.” She said, “You can get everywhere here in eight minutes. Friendly people, too.” She married a doctor from Youngstown.

Yiddishe Cup’s most successful Y-town gig was more than 30 years ago at Temple El Emeth. The rabbi at El Emeth went on to become the head rabbi at a Boca Raton synagogue, and he brought Yiddishe Cup to Florida twice. Dead of winter both times. Nice.

Congregation Ohev Beth Sholom (formerly Rodef Sholom). Youngstown

 
I was butt-hurt when my wife disparaged my klezmer lecture that I had given to a group of senior citizens. She criticized me about this the other day, even though the lecture was more than a decade ago.

I had done an “edu-tainment” lecture at a JCC “LearnInn” retreat in 2011. I had gone light on the dancing (which Alice led) and heavy on the talking.

Alice, the lecture was not a concert. It was a lecture.

I’m doing a klez lecture next Wednesday at the Cleveland JCC. Alice wants to add a PowerPoint this time around.

I don’t do PowerPoints! Alice said she’ll assemble the PowerPoint. OK, maybe a couple photos of Yiddishe Cup from the good old days. That would be palatable. But no bullet points or text on screen  — no way. I don’t need PowerPoint. I’m a good lecturer. I’ve been on stage a million times. I don’t read from notes. I have spoken at the national Yiddish Clubs conference. I was stellar at the Shaker Heights Unitarian Church. I take questions, I talk about klez, I play clarinet.

I don’t want too many pics of random shtetl Jews with violins!

This is more fun:

Yiddishe Cup. 1993

 
Years ago I sent out two versions of Yiddishe Cup on a single night. We did business! But often the effort wasn’t worth the logistical contortions: Yiddishe Cup undergoing mitosis. Very messy.

I named the bands the “A” Band and the “B” Band; I should have called them the red unit and the blue unit. There would have been fewer bruised egos among the musicians. I was fortunate; I always got in the “A” Band.

I didn’t start the A/B band ploy until I was about 15 years into the band biz and had a full stable of subs who knew the Yiddishe Cup Method — whatever that is.

The “B” Band

Heads-up, bandleaders, don’t play the A/B game unless you’re very experienced and totally upfront with the clients. If you lie, you might encounter what the New York boys call a “screamer gig.” That’s when the mom screams, “I didn’t hire this band! Where’s your bandleader?”

Here’s what I said on the phone when booking the “B” band: “Bert Stratton won’t be there. Nobody will notice the difference.”

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Yiddishe Cup plays 7:15 Tues. (Oct. 14) for Simchat Torah at Park Synagogue, 27500 Shaker Blvd., Pepper Pipes, Ohio. Free.

 
The mayor’s assistant told us not to play any klezmer music — “nothing ethnic,” she said. Just American.

No klezmer? Why did the Orange Village (Ohio) mayor hire Yiddishe Cup for their city’s summer concert series?

This was 11 years ago. All forgiven now. By the way, Yiddishe Cup plays at the Cleveland Heights Rec Pavilion this Friday (July 18, 2025), 5:30-7:30 pm. Free. And well play whatever we want! (Part of the Coventry PEACE Pops event.)

At the Orange Village concert, our contract rider stipulated a fruit platter, bottled water and colas. A good gig, food-wise. But what were we going to play?

I said to the mayor’s assistant, “You don’t want to alienate anybody with ethnic music?”

“Exactly,” she said. “That’s the mayor’s thought.”

“How much non-ethnic music do you want?”

“All or mostly.”

“Can you give me a percentage?”

“Ninety percent American music,” she said.

Yiddishe Cup played “Dock of the Bay,” Motown, Beatles, “Hang on Sloopy” and “Old Time Rock And Roll.” A Chinese woman liked “My Girl” so much we played it twice.

I told the crowd that Yiddishe Cup started out as a deli — as opposed to a band — on Kinsman Road, then moved to Cedar Center, and ultimately wound up on the far East Side. I kept up that quirky patter throughout because “My Girl,” the second time through, wasn’t doing it for me. An Orange councilman asked where Yiddishe Cup had been at Cedar Center. I didn’t answer because I didn’t know. I should have said, “Between Abbey’s and Solomon’s.”

We snuck in “Miserlou,”a Greek tune. We did a Macedonian tune. We did an Israeli tune!

Think ethnic.

 
Violinist Yale Strom of San Diego led a terrific trad klezmer band at a recent Cain Park concert in Cleveland Heights. Then a Michigan bar band followed, playing klez-infused jazz improvisation. But neither was the highlight.

The highlight was when the emcee announced a raffle for a Glock gun. The audience — approximately 75  mostly elderly Jews — heard a Glock-shpiel.

Here (see below) is pretty much what the emcee said. [This is from a Facebook post, edited for clarity and length.] This is not fiction:

SAVE THE “CONCERT IN THE PARK” FUNDRAISER

July 13  1-5 pm
The Parma Armory
5301 Houserman Rd.
Parma OH

$40 per ticket. Each ticket gets you in the drawing for a chance to win a new Glock 9 mm pistol.

Only 50 tickets will be sold!!!

Shooting lanes open to ticket holders only.

Don’t have your own gun? You can rent one at the armory.

The Workmen’s Circle Educational Center of Ohio wants to thank you for your donation to help save the Concert in the Park.

To win the firearm you must pass the FFL background check.

If the winner fails the background check, another name will be drawn!!!

Thank you for your donation to help save the klezmer Concert in the Park.

 
My wife tells me to never play for free. I do it anyway. Like the other day I played a luncheon for seniors; I did “Tumbalalaika,” “Moscow Nights,” “Fly Me to the Moon,” and klezmer. I was supposed to get a free lunch out of it, but the organizers ran out of food. Did I make a stink about that? No, I relished the slight. I went home, ate a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and mumbled about my temporary low status.

At the gig I answered my phone in the middle of a tune. A friend had called to brief me on his bronchitis. I said, “I’m playing a gig right now and probably shouldn’t talk.”

Why did I take the call? Because I was playing for free and not getting fed, so I drifted into unprofessional behavior.

“Never play for free” — Alice.

When I’m not fed at a freebie gig, I give the client what they paid for.

 
I went to the Cleveland Clinic for tendinitis, caused by playing clarinet too much. The pain started in my right thumb and then went all over. The doc told me to bring my clarinet to the appointment. He was a violinist and regular attendee of the Marlboro Music Festival. He was a neurologist with a side hustle — music-related injuries.

The doc quickly shipped me off to a PT — the  real fix-it person at hospitals. The PT was good. He said, “You can’t stop playing. You’re a professional.” Right on.

But my thumb was not good (although it did eventually get better in a year and a half). I don’t know why it got better. I even drove down to Cincinnati to see a doc there who specializes in clarinet players. You do extreme things when, say, lifting a coffee cup feels like a bag of potatoes.

Cincinnati didn’t help. Musculoskeletal problems — they’re hard to put a finger on. An older friend said, “Just wait until your internal organs go.”

Waiting  . . .

 
I was on stage at Severance Hall (home of the Cleveland Orchestra) this month. My first time. Then I got kicked off.

I was at an Itzhak Perlman concert, featuring klezmer music. One of Perlman’s sidemen told me to come on stage post-show to chat. He was packing up his tsimbl. Then a security guard shooed me off. No biggie. I’ve played Severance Hall before.

The Severance Hall lobby. For a wedding.

Yiddishe Cup’s keyboard player, Alan Douglass, has played Carnegie Hall.

The Carnegie Hall Cinema. Alan accompanied Laurel and Hardy shorts at the Carnegie Hall Cinema in 1985. Alan was in the Kleveland Klezmorim at the time.

At Severance Hall, there was a line backstage to talk to Perlman. I was more interested in connecting with Perlman’s sidemen. These sidemen are my heroes. For instance,  Perlman’s klez-music director, Hankus Netsky, has influenced me, for the better, for the past 37 years. I first ran into Hankus at KlezKamp (the late, great, annual Catskills-based klez convention). Hankus was on staff at KlezKamp, and I was a student. KlezKamp was a little “scene” — a veltele. There were nametags, workshops, break-out sessions, dance concerts.

Perlman’s Cleveland concert was sold out. Half the audience, it seemed, was there to see Perlman-the-classical-violinist and didn’t realize the show was going to be hardcore klez. Perlman’s sidemen were Pete Rushefsky, Andy Statman, Ilene Stahl, Judy Bressler, Lorin Sklamberg, Michael Alpert, Frank London, Jim Guttman and Netsky, among others.

I told clarinetist Andy Statman that I occasionally play his evocative “Song of Redemption,” and I told bassist Jim Guttman about a KlezKamp photo he and I are in from 1987. Guttman is in a lot of KlezKamp photos. Doubt he was interested in my pic.

Guttman once told me his favorite gigs are nursing homes because the audiences are so appreciative. Great. (I play my share of nursing homes.)

How do you get to Severance Hall?

The Severance Hall stage.

Go to a klezmer convention. Here’s my badge:

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Henry Sapoznik and Adrienne Cooper founded KlezKamp, which ran from 1985 to 2015. My family attended about 10 of these gatherings.

Greg Selker started the Kleveland Klezmorim in 1983. My wife, Alice, encouraged me to attend  Greg’s klez workshop at the Cleveland Heights JCC in 1987. Greg had met Hankus Netsky and trumpeter Frank London at the New England Conversatory.

 
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.)

 
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!

 
The mother of the bride thought Thanksgiving Day would be a great time for a wedding because nobody would come. The groom’s side was from New York. Flights to Cleveland would be expensive. And many Cleveland guests would skip the wedding to eat Thanksgiving dinner at home with their kids. The cost-conscious mom was cutting serious corners.

Yiddishe Cup musicians rescheduled their personal Thanksgiving dinners to play the gig. Not an easy task, but doable. Then the mom called me again and said the bride wanted a different band. What? Who? I usually ask who the other band is, but I was so mad — mostly at myself because I had forgotten rule #1 in the wedding-band biz: it’s all about the bride. The bride, not the mom, picks the band.

I got a call from a bat mitzvah mom. She was a talker, just like the very frugal wedding mom. The bat mitzvah gig was going to be for TG weekend but not on TG itself. I didn’t pitch the mom too hard. I wasn’t crazy about playing on TG weekend. I said, “Yiddishe Cup has been around for decades. You’ve seen us. Everybody has seen us.”

She hired us. Then she canned us. She said her husband was sick. So what? Yiddishe Cup has played for sick people — even dead people; we once played a luncheon where the mom of the bat mitzvah had died the day before. We played in the family room instead of at the party center.

The bat mitzvah mom — the one who wanted us for TG weekend — said her husband had become depressed. The husband, a doctor, had lost a patient that week. Doctors lose patients all the time, right? The mom wanted to change the bat mitzvah date and the number of musicians.

Forget it.

What else can I say?

Happy Thanksgiving.

 
“Side Project”: A musician breaks away from his band and does his own thing. Almost all musicians do it, at least on occasion. But because my axe is clarinet, I can’t break away easily. Nobody wants to hear solo clarinet. I’m chained to my farkakte bandmates!

Not true. Last month I was hired at the last minute — a day prior to the gig — for a Holocaust survivors’ luncheon. My accompanist, pianist Alan Douglass, couldn’t make it. But Alan had fortuitously produced some backing tracks for me a while back, just in case.

And this was the case: Alberto Solo. I played “Besame Mucho,” “Di Grine Kusine” and “Moscow Nights.” I even blew shofar, clarinet-style. This was during the High Holidays.

Nineteen people, total. I reached all 19, I think. I sat with them; I ate with them; and played clarinet while seated at various tables. There was some sort of chicken roll, courtesy of the kosher caterer. “You Are My Sunshine,” “Misty,” klezmer instrumentals, and “Tumbalalaika,” of course.

I talked to a Romanian woman about her granddaughter, who plays drums in Broadway shows. A Polish woman jokingly said she has a German brother and an Italian brother. Her brothers were born in DP camps.

Former bandmate Irwin Weinberger, and his father, Herman, 1966. Herman was a Holocaust survivor from Poland.

I got paid by the Jewish Family Service Association and Germany, via an understanding called the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany — a worldwide Holocaust-reparations cultural-enrichment program.

I’ve previously played this gig with Alan. Two years ago I wrote about it: “Holocaust Remembrance at Cafe Europa. Everybody in the audience had an astonishing story.” (link, no paywall: Wall Street Journal.)

I needed Alan two years ago. Who needs him now?

Alan Douglass, 2011. He’s one of the best musicians in Cleveland. Ask anyone.

 
You are precious. You suck.

You are overrefined and inauthentic.

A cappella music is precious. All of it. A friend once told me that. Harvey Pekar called Willio & Phillio precious. (Willio & Phillio were a talented 1980s-era Cleveland comedy/music group.) Maybe Harvey called Willio & Phillio precious because they were not anti-social like he was.

Willio & Phillio — the name  — was certainly precious, and they should have changed it. Eventually Will Ryan (Willio) went out to Los Angeles to work for Disney, and Phil Barren (Phillio) became a cantor in Los Angeles.

2004

Yiddishe Cup — hate to say it — is precious. But only occasionally, like when we say “oy vey” followed by “olé.” Maybe we should disband.

Peter Laughner, the Cleveland guitarist, died from drug and alcohol abuse at 24. He was not precious. (He was part of the Pere Ubu underground scene.)

One last thing: You’re precious!

 
A musician told me he did 200 gigs a year. Impressive. He mentioned they were all nursing-home gigs. Not impressive. (I brag about my nursing home gigs but he can’t.)

The writer Donald Hall told me how much money he made for articles in the The New Yorker and Playboy. He had an audience.

Yiddishe Cup has an audience sometimes, sometimes not. Yiddishe Cup played for 30 people in Grand Rapids, Michigan. That was a long drive. (We’re playing tonight. Details below. A short drive — Pepper Pipes, Ohio.)

A neighbor recently asked my wife and me if we were available for dinner. No, Yiddishe Cup was going on a road trip; the band was flying to Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, for a wedding, then flying to Columbus the next day for a party, and driving home to Cleveland for something — probably a nursing home gig. The neighbor texted Alice and me: “Ahh, the Yiddishe Cup World Tour 2024! How could I forget? Keep on rocking!”

Musicians whine about “World Tour” road-trip trials and tribulations. And you think, “I’d like to do that — go on a tour. Shut up.”

Our recent Yiddishe Cup road-trip weekend was intense — and rare.

A woman asked me, “Does Yiddish Cup still exist?” She had been checking out our Yiddishe Cup website, which hasn’t been updated in years. Maybe I should update it.

—

. . . My cousin Howard Golden just updated the site. Here’s the new home page:

Is that legible? Probably not. Here’s what it says:

“This website is way out-of-date. We don’t need your business. That said, we want your business!

“Some readers — after checking out this historic website — ask, ‘Does Yiddishe Cup still exist?’

“Yes, Yiddishe Cup exists. In 2023 and 2024, Yiddishe Cup played weddings in Temecula, California; Washington, D.C.; Hillsdale, New York; and Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. And of course, we played in Ohio, at concerts, weddings, b’nai mitzvot and community celebrations.”

—

Yiddishe Cup plays tonight (Wed. Aug 28) at 7 p.m. at the outdoor, covered Wain Pavilion on the grounds of Park Synagogue, 27500 Shaker Blvd., Pepper Pipes, Ohio. There are chairs. The concert is free. And if you want, you can donate to Magen David Adom (the Israel Red Cross) at the show.

 
I talk a lot at nursing-home gigs. I like to get the audience talking, too. I ask the audience about their favorite delis and where they went to high school. One guy always heckles me – “Again with the high schools?” Yes, again with the high schools. And this guy is not even a resident; he visits a friend who lives in the nursing home.

I often ask listeners their names. At my last gig, there was a woman, Ona, who said she was named for the actress Ona Munson. Never heard of Ona Munson. I didn’t ask Ona where she went to high school because she’s from New Jersey and nobody in Cleveland knows about New Jersey high schools.

An elderly husky black man had some musical requests. He was a visitor. He wanted “One O’Clock Jump.” I didn’t know it. Then he said, “Anything by Glenn Miller?” I played “I Got Rhythm.” Close enough. He rocked-and-rolled to every song – clapping and singing along. Alan Douglass (my piano accompanist) and I played all kinds of music: klezmer, American pop, Israeli. The man grooved to everything. He said his name was Roland Hanna.

“Roland Hanna! I guess Alan and I better go home now,” I said. Alan and I would leave and let Roland take over. Roland smiled. Roland Hanna, the renowned pianist. Roland told us to continue.

Roland Hanna

Alan asked Roland if he liked “sweet soul,” a favorite genre of Alan’s. Roland was cool with that. Alan did “Stone in Love With You” by the Stylistics. Roland knew every word. Then Roland requested Billy Joel. It’s affecting when black musicians request songs by white artists. Roland said, “You can do Billy Joel! You’ve got a harmonica player.” I did have a harp. We played “Piano Man,” featuring harp.

Alan did a country tune, “Behind Closed Doors” by Charlie Rich, and  we did the soul tune “My Girl,” and Alan did a funk tune, “Will It Go Round in Circles.” All for Roland Hanna.

Before the final tune of the set, I asked Roland if he wanted to play something with us. He passed. After the gig, we schmoozed. I asked if he still played. He said he had never played. He said he was Rollin Hannah, Cleveland Heights High class of ’69. He said, “It’s Rollin like in Sonny Rollins, and Hannah, spelled the same backwards and forward.”

—

Pianist Roland Hanna was a Detroit musician who played in the Thad Jones –Mel Lewis Big Band in New York in the 1970s. “Roland Hanna” — the name — stuck with me all these years. Stuck a bit too hard.

 
I landed a gig. Other musicians wanted in on it. We played for a Russian immigrants’ club at the Mayfield Road JCC, in 1988. The Russians liked the waltzes. Screw klezmer. I had hired two musicians who played with the Kleveland Klezmorim, Alan Douglass and Joel O’Sickey; and a Swiss jazz bass player, Francois Roland.

For the next gig, I hired a black jazz guitarist. All his Dm chords came out like Dm7’s (jazz chords). His name was Jewish though: Larry Ross.

Those were the first two paying Yiddishe Cup gigs. The very first Yiddishe Cup gig was non-paying. We played on John Carroll University’s Jewish hour. The radio show host — a cantor, my cantor — couldn’t turn down a fellow congregant. Also, he often requested Jewish musicians stop by John Carroll to play on his show, and few did. John Carroll is a Jesuit school. Does Yeshiva University have a Catholic hour? The line-up for the John Carroll radio gig was Sandy Starr, fiddler from Indiana U.; Francois the Swiss; and me.

The rest is  . . . whatever.

—

Here’s my essay that was in the Cleveland Plain Dealer on Friday:

Keeping Faith with Israel

CLEVELAND HEIGHTS, Ohio — I’ve been hearing bad things about Zionism since at least 1975. That was the year I wore a sticker which read “I Am a Zionist.” I got the sticker at the El Al ticket counter at Ben Gurion Airport. The United Nations had just passed the Soviet-sponsored “Zionism is racism” resolution. (The U.N. revoked that conclusion in 1991.) I wore the sticker in Greece — my next stop after Israel. I was 25. In Greece, a slightly drunk Greek man kissed the sticker, mistaking it for the blue-and-white Greek flag.

Back home, several of my friends were into edgier causes than Zionism. One friend said he was going to Cuba to harvest sugar cane. He didn’t go to Cuba, but he talked about it. I took a Hebrew class at Hillel at Case Western Reserve University to pick up basic Hebrew expressions, which I then used in Israel. I had grown up attending The Temple (also known as The Temple-Tifereth Israel and Silver’s Temple) in University Circle, and hadn’t learned much conversational Hebrew. (The Temple in University Circle is now the Maltz Performing Arts Center.)

”The Temple” — the name — sounded snobby, and it was. One Shaker Heights boy got a ride to temple in a limo. The driver wore a chauffeur’s cap. The limo wasn’t a Rolls; it was a Buick station wagon. The Temple was founded in 1850 by German Jews. The Temple moved to Beachwood 25 years ago. The Temple is not snobby these days.

Last century, The Temple wore its Zionism elegantly, in a Theodor Herzl, well-bred, top-hat way. Abba Hillel Silver was the senior rabbi. He was God-like –or at least Moses-esque –with a mane of silver hair and a booming voice. Rabbi Silver — along with Rabbi Stephen Wise of New York — were the two most prominent rabbis in post-war America. In 1947, Silver addressed the U.N. General Assembly. Silver said, “We are an ancient people and though we have often on the long, hard road which we have traveled been disillusioned, we have never been disheartened. We have never lost faith in the sovereignty and the ultimate triumph of great moral principles.”

The Temple, in the 1950s, sometimes held Sabbath services on Sundays instead of Saturdays, in a nod to their congregants’ acculturation into mainstream Christian-dominated America. My family put out Easter eggs, and I got Christmas presents. (No Christmas tree, though.) On the Jewish High Holidays, my mother wrote to my teachers: “Please excuse Bert’s absence from school due to religious observances.”

In the run-up to the 1967 Six-Day War, my parents attended an Israel Bond rally for the first time. They, and a lot of other Jews, thought there might be a second Holocaust. But after the quick Israeli victory, my parents began to utter “Jew” — the word — in public places in, for instance, restaurants, not caring whether other diners overheard them. In 1967, several of my high school friends wore “Jewish Power” buttons, purchased via mail order from a hippie button shop in Greenwich Village. I didn’t wear the button. The button-wearing kids had grown up in the Jewish section of South Euclid, near Cedar Center, not with the Italians like I had, closer to Mayfield Road. That Italian bread at Alesci’s, on Mayfield Road, was my go-to purchase on my walks home from elementary school.

My “I Am a Zionist” sticker is long gone, but I recently picked up a Jewish-star pin at a benefit for the American Friends of Magen David Adom (Israel Red Cross). I have played klezmer music at many community events and dozens of Israeli Independence Day celebrations. This year’s Israeli Independence Day celebration is Tuesday, and my band will be there.

Non-Jews, intrigued by the music, sometimes come up to me after performances and ask me some tough questions: “Do Jews believe in Jesus?” “How do you say c-h-a-l-l-a-h?” “Is Israel going to make it?”

My answers are: a) Jesus was a great man, but Jews don’t consider him the son of God; b) “Challah” is pronounced with a guttural “ch,” like you’re clearing your throat; c) It’s always a bad bet to count the Jews out. We’ve been around a long time.

The Jewish community in Cleveland numbers about 80,600. A Cleveland State University professor, Samantha Baskind, recently wrote an essay about Cleveland’s Jewish community for Tablet, an online magazine. She mentioned how Cleveland sent 1,700 Jews to Washington on buses for a pro-Israel rally in Washington last year. The headline of the article was “Cleveland’s Jewish Community Punches Above Its Weight Class.”

Here in Cleveland, we hope and pray that Israel punches above its weight, too. On Tuesday, my band will play the tune “Am Yisrael Chai” for Israeli Independence Day. “Am” means “people” in Hebrew. “Yisrael” means “Israel,” but in a biblical sense, as in “children of Israel,” meaning the Jews of Israel, Cleveland, and everywhere else. “Chai” means “lives.” Put it all together and you get: The Jewish People Lives.

Bert Stratton, a frequent contributor, lives in Cleveland Heights and has also written for The Wall Street Journal and New York Times. He writes the blog “Klezmer Guy: Real Music & Real Estate.”