<\/p>\n
I liked KlezKamp<\/a>, the klezmer convention,<\/strong><\/span> because it wasn’t just Mahjong Jews. \u00a0(Mahjong Jews don’t camp and, for that matter, can’t imagine camping.)<\/p>\n KlezKamp, in its first years, was in a ratty old Catskills hotel.\u00a0 Going there was like camping indoors. Many bathrooms had plungers.\u00a0 Heat was erratic.\u00a0 The halls smelled of disinfectant.<\/p>\n Most of the male campers looked like they had just crawled out of sleeping bags.\u00a0 They looked like Abbie Hoffman or Eugene Levy.\u00a0 No other choices. \u00a0These guys were professors, shrinks, music students and Jewish hippie farmers from New England.<\/p>\n Four-hundred twenty-five people, total — half of whom were musicians. \u00a0Twenty clarinet players in one room.\u00a0 We had to audition.\u00a0 Sid Beckerman, musician and clarinet arbiter, had rachmones <\/em>(pity) on us. \u00a0Everybody sounded “nice” to Sid.\u00a0 I wound up in mid-level.<\/p>\n I took clarinet classes,<\/strong><\/span> and also heard a professor named Brown, from Brown, talk about Brown’s, the resort.\u00a0 I heard Leon Schwartz, a legendary violinist, reminisce about gypsies.\u00a0 He said the gypsies in his Bukovina village had had it worse than the Jews.\u00a0 “The Jews had the stores,” he said.<\/p>\n I went to KlezKamp for more than a decade.<\/p>\n At first I couldn’t get my wife, Alice, to go.\u00a0 We had young kids.<\/p>\n One year I took the two oldest kids and went without her.\u00a0 I spent a lot of time in the game room and swimming pool that year. \u00a0That chlorine vat\/pool was slightly bigger than a half dollar.\u00a0 You had to coat yourself with skin conditioner or get a rash.\u00a0 Thankfully, several lesbian musicians helped me with the babysitting.<\/p>\n The kids and I went to New York City afterward.\u00a0 My daughter, When we returned home to Cleveland, my wife said at the doorway, “The kids look anemic!”<\/p>\n But we had beans and rice <\/strong><\/span>and lemonade at Popeye’s, Alice.\u00a0 (The kids hadn’t been too crazy about the borscht and herring at KlezKamp.)<\/p>\n Alice never trusted me with food vis-a -vis the kids.<\/p>\n So the following year she came with us. \u00a0All five of us.\u00a0 Alice was a folk dancer and exercise nut; however, Jews at klezmer conventions think exercise is something in an etude book.\u00a0 Alice found an indoor tennis court which was so dusty the balls turned black after one set.\u00a0 It was like playing in a parking garage.\u00a0 We went skiing on Christmas.\u00a0 I thought the slopes would be empty.\u00a0 No, a lot of Asians and Jews from New York City were there.<\/p>\n We sneaked over to The Pines resort for ice skating.\u00a0 That place was a staging area for the Mahjong Jew takeover of the world.\u00a0 We had a good time.\u00a0 There were interesting trivia games in the lobby.\u00a0 \u00a0I’ve got nothing against middle-class Jews. \u00a0I am one 51 weeks out of the year.<\/p>\n My family kept going back <\/strong><\/span>to KlezKamp.\u00a0 Every Christmas.\u00a0 Ikh khulem fun a vaysn nitl<\/em>.\u00a0 (I’m dreaming of a white Christmas.) \u00a0And every year Alice would complain: “I can’t believe we’re going to KlezKamp again!”<\/p>\n Finally, after 12 years, the brainwashing was complete; the kids knew more Yiddish than just oy vey<\/em> (woe is me) and farklempt <\/em>(choked up); and Alice could have, by then, taught the dance classes.\u00a0 And I had met all the old klez guys: Max Epstein,<\/a> Felix Fibich<\/a>, Danny Rubenstein<\/a>, Velvel “Billy” Pasternak <\/a>. . .<\/p>\n Attention must be paid.\u00a0 Mas <\/em>. . . Paul Pincus,<\/a> Leon Schwartz<\/a>, Ray Musiker<\/a>, Ben Bazyler<\/a>, Sid Beckerman<\/a>, German “That’s Herman in Russian” Goldenshteyn<\/a>, Howie Leess<\/a>, Elaine Hoffman Watts<\/a>.<\/p>\n The majority are now dead.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n I had paid my dues — family-rate.<\/p>\n And I was through auditioning.<\/p>\n KlezKamp’s 25th encampment is next week.\u00a0 Did you know Yiddishe Cup’s dance leader, Daniel Ducoff, was at the first KlezKamp, 1985? \u00a0Less than 100 people were there.\u00a0 They planned to take over the (klezmer) world, and they did.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I liked KlezKamp, the klezmer convention, because it wasn’t just Mahjong Jews. \u00a0(Mahjong Jews don’t camp and, for that matter, can’t imagine camping.) KlezKamp, in its first years, was in a ratty old Catskills hotel.\u00a0 Going there was like camping indoors. Many bathrooms had plungers.\u00a0 Heat was erratic.\u00a0 The halls smelled of disinfectant. Most of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-klezmer","category-on-the-road"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1134"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1134\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8817,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1134\/revisions\/8817"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
then 5, made me carry her everywhere.\u00a0 We weren’t going too far.\u00a0 We went to Popeye’s on Times Square for dinner.<\/p>\n