{"id":31201,"date":"2023-12-20T08:47:45","date_gmt":"2023-12-20T13:47:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/?p=31201"},"modified":"2024-09-13T16:23:05","modified_gmt":"2024-09-13T20:23:05","slug":"poles-italians-greeks-slovenians-and-jews","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/2023\/12\/20\/poles-italians-greeks-slovenians-and-jews\/","title":{"rendered":"POLES, ITALIANS, GREEKS, SLOVENIANS AND JEWS"},"content":{"rendered":"

 
\nI <\/strong>went<\/strong> <\/span>to about three bar mitzvahs. Just three. That’s nothing. My family lived on the wrong side of the tracks, with a bunch of Italeyners<\/em> (Yiddish for \u201cItalians\u201d). The tracks were a South Euclid public park — Bexley Park. The Yidn<\/em> lived on the south side and the ‘Taleyners<\/em> — plus my family and assorted other ethnics — lived on the north side. \u201cAssorted other ethnics\u201d meant PIGS: Polish-Italian Greek Slovenians. This was during the dying days of white ethnicity.<\/p>\n

The fact my parents lived with ‘<\/em>Taleyners<\/em> is an accident of history. My parents were shopping for their first house, in 1951, and the realtor told them the house was in the Jewish elementary school district, but it was actually in the ‘<\/em>Taleyner<\/em> district.<\/p>\n

It was like I grew up on Kinsman or in Lower Manhattan. Italians everywhere. I got in a couple fist fights. \u201cKike\u201d and stuff like that. The trouble with \u201ckike\u201d was I couldn\u2019t figure out what to yell back. My nadir was when I called a kid a \u201cBig L,\u201d for Lutheran. He wasn’t offended.<\/p>\n

Genug<\/em> with the Italians. Move on . . .<\/p>\n

We had a Slovenian king, Yonkee, in our neighborhood.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy father<\/strong><\/span> is the poker king,\u201d Yonkee\u2019s son told me.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s that?\u201d<\/p>\n

I had misheard him. \u201cMy father is the polka<\/em> king.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Frankie Yankovic was the king of Slovenian-style polka. Yonkee\u00a0 lived on the-somewhat-grand Belvoir Boulevard. He had a pool in his back yard. Yonkee was Hollywood. He had played a club in Los Angeles where Sinatra and Doris Day had hung out.<\/p>\n

I rarely saw Yonkee. He was on the road more than B.B. King . . . Wausau, Wisconsin; Edna, Minnesota; Muskegon, Michigan. I read his bio. In 1983 Yonkee was arrested for stealing a pound of bacon from a grocery store. He settled out of court. Who stole the kishke?<\/p>\n

I’m settling this; I was part of the last generation that featured white ethnic rivalry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  I went to about three bar mitzvahs. Just three. That’s nothing. My family lived on the wrong side of the tracks, with a bunch of Italeyners (Yiddish for \u201cItalians\u201d). The tracks were a South Euclid public park — Bexley Park. The Yidn lived on the south side and the ‘Taleyners — plus my family […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellaneous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31201","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=31201"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31201\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32230,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31201\/revisions\/32230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}