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.


 
 

Category — Shul Talk

THE MIDWEST’S TOP 10 KLEZMER
. . . TOWNS

My nephew visits Big League baseball stadiums around the country as a hobby.

I visit Big League klezmer towns in the Midwest as a hobby. My remarks (below) are challah-to-challah comparisons.  I’m not comparing Milwaukee to Paris.

The best Midwest klezmer towns:

1. Pittsburgh . . .  Squirrel Hill, Shadyside. Everything you need. (Pittsburgh is not in the Midwest, but so what.  It is west of the Alleghenies.)

Hebrew clock. Pittsburgh JCC

Hebrew clock. Pittsburgh JCC

2. Chicago. The Midwest klez capital. Maxwell Street Klezmer Band is the band in the Midwest. A Cleveland boy — a Northwestern student — worked in the Maxwell Street office; I had that kid wired. Yes, a klez band with office help. Chi is that big. Powerful klezmer forces prevail in Chi. Max Street does not allow Ohio bands within 80 miles of The Loop.  Yiddishe Cup played Rockford, Ill., once.

3. Detroit. West Bloomfield, a Motown suburb, has Temple Israel, a very attractive modern temple. There is such a thing.  At concerts, the Temple Israel ark is curtained off by a striking yarmulke mandala.

Yiddishe Cup at Temple Israel, 2010

Yiddishe Cup at Temple Israel, 2010

4. Kansas City — as marvelously tough as Cleveland. KC’s Country Club Plaza is like Shaker Square but bigger and older.

5. St. Louis. Yiddishe Cup played there twice, then it all died out — the gigs. My Cleveland rabbi, who is from St. Louis, has a couple seats from the old Busch stadium. He should install the seats on our shul’s bima (altar) and invite Enos  Slaughter to give the d’var torah (torah lesson/sermon). Good custard — Ted Drewes — in St. Louis.  Similar to Cleveland’s East Coast Original Frozen Custard.

6. Milwaukee. Its claim to fame: songwriter Sigmund Snopek III, who wrote “Thank God This isn’t Cleveland.”

7. Minneapolis. There are a lot of klez bands up there: Prairie Heym Klezmorim, Klezmerica, etc. Too much klez in Minnie.  Yiddishe Cup will never play there.

8. Cincinnati. The Plum Street Temple, where Stephen Wise officiated, is the most rakish and Moorish synagogue in the country. Check it out.

Plum Street Temple

Plum Street Temple

9. Buffalo. Terrific art museum. Underrated.

10. Indianapolis. Overrated. A suburb of Atlanta.

Cleveland isn’t ranked. That wouldn’t be fair. But off the record, Cleveland is number one.

shareEmail this to someoneShare on FacebookTweet about this on Twitter

November 3, 2010   5 Comments

EXTREMELY EARLY HOLIDAYS

I sometimes celebrate the High Holidays a week or two before the real ones. I have the shul almost to myself.  The upside: no annoying people.

However, this plan defeats one of the purposes of the High Holidays– hanging out with large numbers of Yidn. My rabbi says if you attend the real High Holidays– and shul in general– you’ll feel less lonely.

I sometimes get agitated on Rosh Hashanah morning because there is so much commotion and noise in the shul.  Then the rabbi sermonizes about loneliness and community, saying, “Hell is other people according to Sartre, but what’s the alternative– sitting at home in your underwear watching reruns?”  Point taken.

In the sanctuary, I see a doc who gave me a colonoscopy.  I see, several rows over, a PhD scientist who is so anti-religious his seat needs an ejection button; his wife forced him to come.  The guy next to me, a real estate broker, says, “How’s occupancies?”

“Commercial, bad.  Residential, OK,” I say.  I don’t mind some biz talk on yuntif. No big deal.

I see a weight-loss doc in the loges (the elevated seating around the perimeter of the sanctuary). Her picture is occasionally in the Cleveland Plain Dealer next to the word “obesity.”   She’s in excellent shape.

A Jew visiting from New York gives me greetings from a New Rochelle cousin.  Nice.

A couple people say hi to me because of the band.  I don’t know their names.

After services, a worshipper asks if I remember him. Yes, I know him.   A few years ago Yiddishe Cup played his son’s bar mitzvah.  He is happy I remember him.

“You have to come over for shabbes,” he says.  “And you won’t have to bring your clarinet.”

Sweet.

Happy New Year.
—-
1 of 2 posts for 9/8/10.  Please see the post below too.

shareEmail this to someoneShare on FacebookTweet about this on Twitter

September 8, 2010   1 Comment

O.J. SIMCHA

Goys and many highly assimilated Jews think Yiddishe Cup plays primarily for Orthodox Jews.  Not true.  We play mostly for non-Orthodox Jews.

But we do play the occasional Orthodox Jewish gig.

Some of these gigs go NYC-style, fast-talking, cell-phones-beeping-everywhere frenetic.  You’re in Israel but without the jet lag.

We play mostly OrthoRock tunes at Orthodox affairs.  OrthoRock isn’t klezmer.  It’s rock with liturgical lyrics.  A classic OrthoRock tune is “Moshiach” (Messiah).  Another is “Chazak” (Strength).  These two tunes — plus a hundred others, some of which are popular only for a month or so– are the standard OJ (Orthodox Jewish) repertoire.  Yiddishe Cup doesn’t learn the new tunes frequently enough.  (We don’t get many OJ gigs either.)

The Orthodox families who hire Yiddishe Cup are typically left-wing Orthodox.  Left-wing, here, means on the liberal end of ritual observance.  The client might request, for instance, American rock and roll toward the end of the party.

Yiddishe Cup’s most right-wing gig was for the get (divorce decree) rabbi.  We played a Purim tish (table gathering) at his house.  All black hats and beards.  The rabbi’s drosh (speech on a liturgical text) was in Yiddish.

My Conservative rabbi, when he heard about the get gig, couldn’t believe I’d been in the get rabbi’s house.  He had never been in there.

Yiddishe Cup knows the rabbis the rabbis don’t.

Cleveland is large enough that Jewish denominations typically don’t party and pray together.  If you want a mishmash of Jews in the same room, go to a smaller town, like Akron, Ohio.   In Akron, the Orthodox and non-Orthodox will mix it up.  It’s a matter of survival.  Small numbers.  You’ll see every kind of Jew but Jews for Jesus at an Akron Jewish gathering.

Musicians, take note: Don’t play “Hava Nagila” at an Orthodox simcha (celebration). Too goyish.   Nevertheless, at one Orthodox wedding, the mom’s sister repeatedly requested “Hava Nagila.”  I said no.  Then some yeshiva buchers (students) from New York asked me for the song.  I said, “Are you trying to embarrass the band?”

“No, we heard you’re a klezmer band and we’d like to hear it.”

The mom didn’t want it.  Again, the mom’s sister said play it.  Again, the buchers said play it.  The mom finally relented.  We played it.

The buchers danced with ruach (spirit) to the tune.  “Hava Nagila” is originally a Hasidic nign (wordless melody) from Hungary.  It’s a great tune.
—-
1 of 2 posts for 12/2/09.  Please see the next post too.

shareEmail this to someoneShare on FacebookTweet about this on Twitter

December 2, 2009   2 Comments

SANCTUARY

Some Jews don’t like choirs in temple. Some can’t stand guitars.  Some can’t stand temple.

I have a friend who is down on “temple Jews,” meaning people who actively participate in synagogue life.  They’re too conventional, possibly.

I’m a temple Jew — at least on occasion.

My family belonged to Silver’s Temple, named after Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver.  The temple’s official name was The Temple.

“Which temple do you belong to?”

“The.”

“The Temple” morphed into  “The Temple – Tifereth Israel ” after the rabbi and his son — also a rabbi — died.   My family didn’t fit in there, in the 1960s, because many of the members were a lot richer, mostly from Shaker Heights.  One Shaker kid arrived in a  station wagon driven by a chauffeur in a shiny-visor cap.

My youngest son went through religious high school at The Temple.  The place had mellowed by then. Nobody cared anymore if you weren’t a descendant of the Deutsche Yehudim,  Cleveland’s original German Jewish settlers.

When my parents left Silver’s, they went to a more middle-class temple in the ‘burbs.  My mom taught macramé there.  Volunteered in the sisterhood gift shop.  Collected  “donor points,” to reduce her ticket price to the annual temple dance.

Yiddishe Cup has played some of these parties.  Not so many lately, because few people want to dance at temples.  They’d rather stay home and watch people dance.

My parents joined this heymish (homey) suburban synagogue after I was confirmed, so I didn’t much care what they did.

(Heymish, the word, should be banned, starting now. Too heymish.)

On the High Holidays, I sometimes went with my parents to the heymish temple, or I’d go to Hillel at Case Western Reserve. After Rosh Hashanah services, I’d eat at Tommy’s restaurant with my 20-something friends.

Years ago a woman told me, “I joined Fairmount Temple because I like the music there.”   She had another reason: Brith Emeth didn’t even have money to carpet, she said.   She liked Fairmount Temple’s bent toward classic Reform music.  That stuck with me: joining a temple for the music.

I go to my synagogue because, among other reasons, I like the music and the rabbi — who likes my band.  Yiddishe Cup is scheduled to play my shul’s (synagogue’s) holiday celebrations until roughly 5800.  (We’re at 5770 now.)

I played a different shul’s holiday gig, where the rabbi left early to attend a rock concert.  The rabbi told me the band’s name.  Famous.  I wasn’t impressed.  I was peeved.  The rabbi was walking out on Yiddishe Cup.

It’s impossible to be a rabbi.

My synagogue uses a choir once in a while. I like the choir.  Took me a while.  Some Jews think a choir is super-goyish.  Not true.  In Europe there were synagogue choirs as far back as the 1500s.

Some temples have rock bands.  I’ve subbed in one.  The congregants really enjoy that groove.

I can see picking a shul for the music.  Why not.

shareEmail this to someoneShare on FacebookTweet about this on Twitter

September 23, 2009   10 Comments