{"id":2321,"date":"2010-11-03T08:00:22","date_gmt":"2010-11-03T12:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/?p=2321"},"modified":"2017-02-03T14:36:17","modified_gmt":"2017-02-03T19:36:17","slug":"the-best-midwest-klezmer-towns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/2010\/11\/03\/the-best-midwest-klezmer-towns\/","title":{"rendered":"THE MIDWEST’S TOP 10 KLEZMER
. . . TOWNS"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

My nephew visits<\/strong><\/span> Big League baseball stadiums around the country as a hobby.<\/p>\n

I visit Big League klezmer towns in the Midwest as a hobby. My remarks (below) are challah-to-challah comparisons.\u00a0 I’m not comparing Milwaukee to Paris.<\/p>\n

The best Midwest klezmer towns:<\/p>\n

1. Pittsburgh . . .\u00a0 Squirrel Hill, Shadyside. Everything you need. (Pittsburgh is not in the Midwest, but so what.\u00a0 It is<\/em> west of the Alleghenies.)<\/p>\n

\"Hebrew

Hebrew clock. Pittsburgh JCC<\/p><\/div>\n

2. Chicago. The Midwest klez capital.<\/strong><\/span> Maxwell Street Klezmer Band is the <\/em>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<\/em> big. Powerful klezmer forces prevail in Chi. Max Street<\/a> does not allow Ohio bands within 80 miles of The Loop.\u00a0 Yiddishe Cup played Rockford, Ill., once.<\/p>\n

3. Detroit. West Bloomfield, a Motown suburb, has Temple Israel, a very attractive modern temple. There is such a thing. \u00a0At concerts, the Temple Israel ark is curtained off by a striking yarmulke mandala.<\/p>\n

\"Yiddishe

Yiddishe Cup at Temple Israel, 2010<\/p><\/div>\n

4. Kansas City — as marvelously tough<\/strong><\/span> as Cleveland. KC’s Country Club Plaza is like Shaker Square but bigger and older.<\/p>\n

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<\/em> bima <\/em> (altar) and invite Enos\u00a0 Slaughter to give the d’var torah <\/em>(torah lesson\/sermon). Good custard — Ted Drewes — in St. Louis.\u00a0 Similar to Cleveland’s East Coast Original Frozen Custard.<\/p>\n

6. Milwaukee. Its claim to fame: songwriter Sigmund Snopek III, who\u00a0wrote “Thank God This isn’t Cleveland.”<\/p>\n

7. Minneapolis. There are a lot of klez bands up there: Prairie Heym Klezmorim, Klezmerica<\/a>, etc. Too much klez in Minnie. \u00a0Yiddishe Cup will never play there.<\/p>\n

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

\"Plum

Plum Street Temple<\/p><\/div>\n

9. Buffalo. <\/strong> <\/span>Terrific art museum. Underrated.<\/p>\n

10. Indianapolis. Overrated. A suburb of Atlanta.<\/p>\n

Cleveland isn’t ranked. That wouldn’t be fair. But off the record, Cleveland is number one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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.\u00a0 I’m not comparing Milwaukee to Paris. The best Midwest klezmer towns: 1. Pittsburgh . . .\u00a0 Squirrel Hill, Shadyside. Everything you need. (Pittsburgh is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,21,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-klezmer","category-on-the-road","category-shul-talk"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2321","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=2321"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2321\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24927,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2321\/revisions\/24927"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}