There are three acceptable responses to \u201cHave you ever been to The Schvitz?\u201d
\na) I held my stag there.
\nb) I was there with my father.
\nc) My grandfather took me there.<\/p>\n
The Big Five in Russian-Turkish\u2013style schvitzes are in New York, Los Angeles, Detroit, Chicago and Cleveland. I got this list from Billy Buckholtz, the pleytse guy at the Cleveland schvitz. Billy\u2019s grandfather was the original pleytse guy. Pleytse is the rubdown, traditionally done with a broom of soaked oak leaves. Billy uses a seaweed broom and horsehair brush.
\n![\"schvitzers\"](\"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/home\/yiddis6\/public_html\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/schvitzers-226x300.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Cleveland\u2019s schvitz isn\u2019t coed. Most of the other schvitzes are. The Detroit schvitz even used to have an orgy night. The Cleveland schvitz never went coed, aside from a short experiment in the 1970s, because the neighborhood is so bad. Why encourage women to come to Kinsman?<\/p>\n
In The<\/strong><\/span> Schvitz\u2019s heyday, it catered to immigrant factory workers who dropped by after work \u201cto get the creosote off their skin, knock down a few shots and get a pleytse,\u201d Billy said. \u201cThe immigrants didn\u2019t want to wait in line with their eight kids for the only bathtub at their house.\u201d Billy told me all this at a Yiddishe Cup gig at an art gallery, not at The Schvitz.<\/p>\n I\u2019m not crazy about steam. I get periodic Schvitz invitations from the Brothers in Perspiration, an ad-hoc group of Cleveland Heights Jews. The email subject-line reads: \u201cHave a serious jones for the stench of sweat, mildew, steak, cigar, garlic?\u201d That sounds good, except for the cigar, sweat, mildew and steam.<\/p>\n — If you\u2019re a Cleveland Jewish male and have never been to The Schvitz, you are a disgrace. Real Cleveland Jewish men will malign you, impugning your Jewish bona fides. The Schvitz is at East 116th Street and Luke Avenue, off Kinsman Road, in a lousy neighborhood. The Schvitz has no sign. The Schvitz\u2019s official name […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25350","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cleveland-full"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25350","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=25350"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25350\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25352,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25350\/revisions\/25352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nRerun<\/em><\/small><\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"