<\/p>\n
My clarinet teacher, <\/strong><\/span>Harry Golub, was nicknamed the Bald Eagle.<\/p>\n Harry was hairless.<\/p>\n A student, Zuckerman, gave Mr. Golub that nickname.<\/p>\n Zuckerman, like many junior high clarinetists, dropped out of private lessons around bar mitzvah time.\u00a0 I hung in through eleventh grade.\u00a0 During my high school years, Mr. Golub asked me how the clarinet dropouts were doing.<\/p>\n Mr. Golub was often <\/strong><\/span>cranky because, for one thing, he didn’t get along well with the music department at the high school.\u00a0 They wouldn’t buy instruments and sheet music from him.\u00a0 The high school was in cahoots with another music store, the one out in goy<\/em> land, Lyndhurst, Mr. Golub said.<\/p>\n Mr. Golub’s store was in Little Israel, the Jewish quadrant of South Euclid. (Little Israel was across the park from the Italian neighborhood,\u00a0 where I lived. \u00a0 At least we had finished second floors. The bungalows in Little Israel were custom-built for Jews; nobody over 5-9 could stand up in the dormers.)<\/p>\n I ran into Mr. Golub frequently years later at Yiddishe Cup gigs. \u00a0He still railed against the school system . . . “those mumzers<\/em> [bastards], those anti-semits<\/em>.”<\/p>\n I don’t know . . . <\/strong><\/span>I don’t know if the school was truly anti-Semitic.\u00a0 Exhibit A: Steve, a loudmouthed Jewish kid, a NYC-style sasser, and one of the smartest guys in my grade.\u00a0 [Steve isn’t his real name.]\u00a0\u00a0 Steve and his father, from the East, read the Sunday New York Times.<\/em> Steve knew about Dylan way before the rest of us.<\/p>\n The high school administration — mostly non-Jewish grads of small Ohio teachers colleges, it seemed — didn’t believe in adjusting to different “learning styles” back then.\u00a0 Steve’s style was to question all authority and study like mad.\u00a0 Also, he wore jeans and got sent home.\u00a0 He talked back to teachers.\u00a0 He got straight A’s.<\/p>\n Steve was turned down by every college he applied to.\u00a0 Our guidance counselor wrote something like “rabble rouser” on Steve’s college applications.\u00a0 (Steve learned this when a classmate, working part-time in the Wesleyan University admissions office, snooped around a couple years later.)<\/p>\n I don’t think the high school administration was purposefully anti-Semitic.\u00a0 They just had no idea what to make of the insanely competitive, antic Semites — children of pawn shop owners, umbrella salesmen and Holocaust survivors.\u00a0 These students would ask: “Will this be on the next test?” “Are we responsible for all <\/em>of section A?\u00a0 “Can I skip marching band because I have SATs tomorrow?”<\/p>\n You can skip marching band and you’ll be out of the band.<\/p>\n Great!<\/p>\n —- My clarinet teacher, Harry Golub, was nicknamed the Bald Eagle. Harry was hairless. A student, Zuckerman, gave Mr. Golub that nickname. Zuckerman, like many junior high clarinetists, dropped out of private lessons around bar mitzvah time.\u00a0 I hung in through eleventh grade.\u00a0 During my high school years, Mr. Golub asked me how the clarinet dropouts […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-coming-of-age"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1489","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=1489"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1489\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1491,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1489\/revisions\/1491"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n[Credit to writer Josh Kun for antic Semites<\/em>.]
\n—-<\/span>
\n1 of 2 posts for 5\/12\/10.\u00a0 Please see the next post too.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"