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

[genarti]

As a kid in Ohio, I grew up with "In the Bleak Midwinter" as occasional rather than omnipresent Christmas music, though of course I can sing it as well; when we moved to Vermont, I found it to be a Christmas standard, sung every year at church, and I've heard it quite a bit in Massachusetts too. I'm with you rather than with Spatch on this one!

Mind you, I also think the wording echoes strongly enough to The Dark is Rising in particular that it lodged extra firmly in my memory; you may or may not have had the same phenomenon.

[sovay]

when we moved to Vermont, I found it to be a Christmas standard, sung every year at church, and I've heard it quite a bit in Massachusetts too. I'm with you rather than with Spatch on this one!

Thank you! It is difficult for me to argue from my own experience whether something is normative or not, often because I can't even tell.

Mind you, I also think the wording echoes strongly enough to The Dark is Rising in particular that it lodged extra firmly in my memory; you may or may not have had the same phenomenon.

No, that first verse has the spells of the deep cold all over it. "Rivers that had never frozen before stood as solid ice . . . People could do little more than wait for the snow to stop; but still the snow fell."