אַ ניקל פֿאַר זיי, אַ ניקל פֿאַר מיר

[sovay]

Apparently I can no longer re-toast myself a signature half pastrami, half corned beef sandwich from Mamaleh's without spending the rest of the evening singing the same-named hit from a 1917 American Yiddish musical. The Folksbiene never seems to have revived it and if the rest of the score was as catchy, they really should. (I am charmed that the composer clearly found the nickel conceit tempting enough to revisit in a later show, but that line quoted about the First Lady, didn't I just ask the twentieth century to stay where we left it?)

At the other end of the musical spectrum, spatch maintains it is not American-normal to be able to sing the Holst setting of "In the Bleak Midwinter," which until last night I had assumed was just such seasonal wallpaper that I had absorbed it by unavoidable dint of Christmas—it's one of the carols I can't remember learning, unlike others which have identifiable vectors in generally movies, madrigals, or folk LPs. Opinions?

Thanks to lunisolar snapback, Hanukkah like every other holiday this year seems to have sprung up out of nowhere, but we managed to get hold of candles last night and tomorrow will engage in the mitzvah of last-minute cleaning the menorah.

P.S. I fell down a slight rabbit hole of Bruce Adler and now feel I have spent an evening at a Yiddish vaudeville house on the Lower East Side circa 1926.

Comments

[moon_custafer]

*reads the plot summary of the musical*

Then comes an equally startling “revelation”: Yukit is not Yukit, but a disguised Jew, and a litvak (Lithuanian Jew) at that, which itself represented an internal stereotyping for comic purposes.

*an hour later, sits up in bed* —Wait, was Daniel Pinkwater referencing this when he created Heinz, the Chinese Butler in Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death?

[sovay]

—Wait, was Daniel Pinkwater referencing this when he created Heinz, the Chinese Butler in Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death?

Frankly there is no reference so obscure I wouldn't put it past Daniel Pinkwater.

(A con man who claims that his grandmother once looked through a machzor with Queen Victoria practically is a Pinkwater character. I mean you could drop a line like that in Borgel and nobody would blink.)