{"id":20963,"date":"2015-01-28T08:00:47","date_gmt":"2015-01-28T13:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/?p=20963"},"modified":"2015-02-03T09:34:17","modified_gmt":"2015-02-03T14:34:17","slug":"my-french-connection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/2015\/01\/28\/my-french-connection\/","title":{"rendered":"MY FRENCH CONNECTION"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

My French<\/strong> <\/span>connection is Samy Hochmic, a Parisian Jew who mostly wears a French beret or English cap, but the last time I saw him he had on an American baseball cap.\u00a0 All his berets were dirty, he said.\u00a0 Besides, he wanted to display his fondness for America:<\/p>\n

\"rock<\/a><\/p>\n

(\u201cRock Your World,\u201d Rock Hall.)<\/small><\/p>\n

\"Samy<\/a>

Samy Hochmic, 2014, Paris
(Photo by Eric Schreiber)<\/p><\/div>\n

He wore the “Rock Your World” cap to my daughter’s wedding (2013).\u00a0 Major fashion faux pas — that hat.\u00a0 When Samy left the wedding, he said, \u201cDrop me a line.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s that mean?\u201d I asked.\u00a0 Did he want a postcard?\u00a0 (Samy doesn’t do email.)<\/p>\n

Samy and<\/strong> <\/span>I go back to 1974, when he got my name off the ride board at Case Western Reserve, and we drove to New York.\u00a0 Samy had interviewed Bellow in Chicago for his Sorbonne thesis.\u00a0 Samy spoke an idiosyncratic English: \u201cI don\u2019t have a red cent\u201d . . . \u201cShall we go?\u201d\u00a0 Samy liked the Midwest for its standard American accent.<\/p>\n

Samy’s parents had been Polish Jewish immigrants, rounded up by the Nazis at the Paris Velodrome.\u00a0 Samy was raised by farmers for money during the war.\u00a0 He was a foster child after the war.\u00a0 A distant cousin in Canada offered to adopt him, but Samy’s French foster parents wouldn\u2019t let him go.\u00a0 Samy trained as a tailor, then an English teacher. He made aliyah<\/em> to Israel in 1975 and stayed five years.\u00a0 The Israelis didn\u2019t take to a Frenchman teaching English, he said.\u00a0 Also, Samy didn’t like the brusqueness of the Israelis; he railed against the “Levantine mentality” — Israelis not lining up at bus stops and pushing too much.<\/p>\n

If you visit Paris and want to meet Samy, let me know.\u00a0 Your treat, s’il vous plait, <\/em>but if he wears the “Rock Your World” cap, make him pay!<\/p>\n

Last year<\/strong><\/span> in Paris, Samy was trapped in a synagogue for several hours while anti-Semites rampaged outside.<\/p>\n

—<\/span><\/p>\n

The Bert & Irwin Show: Irwin Weinberger and I play
\n7-9 p.m. Tuesday (Feb. 3)\u00a0 at Gigi’s on Fairmount<\/a>, Cleveland Heights. \u00a0 We’ll play mostly American standards and some klezmer.\u00a0 (Guitar\/vocals + clarinet.)
\n<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My French connection is Samy Hochmic, a Parisian Jew who mostly wears a French beret or English cap, but the last time I saw him he had on an American baseball cap.\u00a0 All his berets were dirty, he said.\u00a0 Besides, he wanted to display his fondness for America: (\u201cRock Your World,\u201d Rock Hall.) He wore […]<\/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-20963","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellaneous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20963"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20963\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22662,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20963\/revisions\/22662"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}