Old Jews Telling Jokes: Crying Old Man, a Classic Joke Told by Bea Slomin

The old jokes and the old Jews keep coming. The Old Jews Telling Jokes off-Broadway show is doing well and one of these days we'll get around to seeing it. But the web site keeps adding new jokes each week, and it looks like they will never run out of new old jokes.

We'd love to share all of them with you, but we'd have to break our pledge to keep the Jewish Humor site family-friendly. So we keep an eye on our friends over at OldJewsTellingJokes.com and whenever they post a clean or mildly off-color joke we give them an extra few thousand hits by reposting it here.

Today's old joke is The Crying Old Man, a classic, retold with great feeling, by Bea Slomin.

Enjoy!

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Jewish Traces in Unexpected Places: An Upside-Down Kosher L'Pesach Tombstone in Namibia

Photo: Moshe Silberhaft

Last week we posted a story about a tombstone that appeared in a British sitcom with Hebrew lettering that was backwards and inadvertently stated that the occupant of the grave was "pickled at great expense."

Now comes a kindred story far removed in time and space that was published yesterday in the Washington Jewish Week. It seems that in the country of Namibia, formerly called Southwest Africa, there is a tombstone in a cemetery in the capital city of Windhoek that once was engraved with the Hebrew words "Kosher L'Pesach" upside down. 

This has been a sort of urban legend for the last few decades, with various versions appearing on the internet, sharing the basic story line but with conflicting details such as the name of the man who was described as Kosher L'Pesach. But out of the mists of history the true story has finally come out, thanks to Harvey Leifert, who served at the American embassy in Namibia twenty years ago, and who wrote the article in the Washington Jewish Week.

As Leifert reported yesterday in the paper,

Photo: Moshe Silberhaft

The Jewish community was small when I lived in Windhoek, and has dwindled since, but some Jews have always lived far from the capital, in small towns and on farms. One such person was Walter Galler, a resident of Swakopmund, then a small German port on the Atlantic, up the coast from the larger and better situated British port of Walvis Bay. We know little of Galler, who was born on Aug. 8, 1888, and died on Sept. 28, 1939.

Galler was married to a non-Jewish "colored," or mixed-race, woman, and when he died, the story goes, his widow arranged for a Jewish burial in the Swakopmund Cemetery, on the edge of the Namib Desert. Mrs. Galler then ordered a simple tombstone to mark her husband's grave, and she felt it must include an acknowledgement of his Jewish faith. She somehow knew that a Hebrew inscription was appropriate, but the only Hebrew text in her home was the certification "kasher l'Pesach," found, along with a Star of David, on the label of a bottle of wine.

Mrs. Galler apparently cut out the Hebrew words and star and handed them to the stone mason. He chiseled the letters into the tombstone, but, not knowing the Hebrew alphabet, he inscribed them upside down.

There the story might have ended, but decades later, word of a "kasher l'Pesach" tombstone in a far-off cemetery was circulating in Windhoek's Jewish community. Almost uniformly, from what I have heard, members praised Mrs. Galler for making an effort to recognize and respect her late husband's religion, regardless of the, er, unorthodox result. One day in the 1970s, however, a visiting rabbi from neighboring South Africa drove to Swakopmund and inspected the grave. He determined that the upside-down Hebrew inscription must go, and so it was done. The Star of David remains, now flanked by two blank rectangles.

But, why was the inscription excised? According to Rabbi Moshe Silberhaft, the current country communities rabbi, who was not involved in the decision, "the reason it was removed is that the gravesite was becoming a tourist attraction, and it was felt that it was 'unsettling' and disrespectful for the deceased." 

Over the years, Swakopmund developed into a lovely seaside resort town, attracting both Namibian and foreign visitors. Some still find their way to the local cemetery and leave a pebble on the grave that once was kosher for Pesach.

Oy Vey! What a Way to Start Your Day! Decor Tips From Rona and Devorah

Rona Oyveyski and Devorah Schlepperstein are a more extreme version of the team of Ronna and Beverly, the politically incorrect yentas whom we profiled in December 2009. They just posted their first 10 minute web video in what looks like a new series. It's called Episode Three, so there may be prequels on the way.

The loud, overbearing pair refer to themselves as the most fashionable, glamorous, witty women out there. And they also claim to be very intelligent.

Follow them as they guide us through their house, offering their very own decoration and organizational tips. This episode includes Powerful Pillows, Knick Knacks Galore (you can never have too many tchochkes), The Elegance of Animal Prints, and Secrets of Organizing a Pantry and Closet.

We'll be carefully watching your "like" and "don't like" votes for this one. Enjoy!

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Kosher Comedy Returns With Fourth Episode of "Verplanck"

In February, we posted the first three episodes of Verplanck, a new "kosher comedy" series that follows the exploits of four different types of Orthodox Jews, as they act on their plans to build a new Orthodox Jewish community in Verplanck, an actual city in upstate New York with just a few hundred residents. The locals are portrayed as hicks who have no clue as to what Orthodox Judaism or these newcomers are about.

The main characters include Mitch, a "left-center" Orthodox type; Avi, representing the "right-center"; Feishy, the chassid; and Yechiel Michel Raphael Menachem, the yeshivish (hareidi) guy who insists on using all four of his names.

The first three episodes, which you can see in our February blog post, include some funny confrontations between the foursome and the townies, some of whom are confrontational, some accepting, and some neutral, and highlight some differences in observance within the Orthodox circle. 

The show is presented as if it were a documentary but the viewer knows it’s fake. This format is referred to as a mockumentary. The genre can also be categorized as a dramedy -- a blend of drama and comedy.

If you have the time, we recommend watching the first three episodes before seeing the fourth episode below, but this new episode includes enough of a recap to let you enjoy it as a standalone episode. Enjoy!

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Actress Mayim Bialik on Her Journey to Jewish Observance

 

Mayim Bialik, 36, an American actress famous for her TV roles as Blossom Russo on NBC's Blossom and as Amy Farrah Fowler on CBS's The Big Bang Theory, has been on a lecture tour of synagogues and other Jewish venues. She's also a neuroscientist and a professor of neuroscience. Hayim Nahman Bialik, Israel's national poet, was Mayim Bialik's great-great-grandfather's uncle.

A year ago, she spoke at the Tribefest conference in Las Vegas about her early life, her education, and her journey from the Reform world of her Bohemian leftist parents to a growing appreciation and observance of halachic Judaism.

Only last week she delivered a lecture at The Jewish Center in Manhattan that we posted here in its entirety, more than an hour in length. Unfortunately the owner of the video, who originally posted it on YouTube, had second thoughts about sharing it and removed it. So we're posting instead the 14 minute talk at Tribefest, a talk that covers much of the same ground.

At the Jewish Center she told of how she now practices something close to modern Orthodox Judaism, but bends the rules when strict Orthodoxy comes into conflict with the realities of starring in a TV series produced in Hollywood.

If you haven't seen The Big Bang Theory or want to revisit a favorite scene, check out the short video just below Mayim's speech. Enjoy!

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Latma TV, Israel's Saturday Night Live, Keeps Them Laughing

If you're a regular watcher of Saturday Night Live like we are, you're probably missing some of the biting satire of its Weekend Update segment now that the show is over until the fall. But the Israeli equivalent, Latma TV's Tribal Update, is still going strong.

We're always on the lookout for current episodes that have English subtitles, two of which we brought you last year. Now it's time for a new one.

Latma TV was created to serve as a vehicle for lampooning Israel's left-leaning media. It, too, has a regular weekly news segment called Tribal Update, which is used to sock it to institutions and individuals that take leftist positions, especially in the ongoing conflict between Israel and its neighbors.

Latma was awarded the Israel Media Watch 2011 prize, given to "organizations that made courageous, meaningful, and quality contributions to the criticism of the media in Israel". It was chosen by an online poll involving over 4,000 voters.   According to Israel Media Watch, Latma brings balance to the left-wing bias of mainstream Israeli satire.

Today's ten minute segment is a mock news show that the anchors call the most objective news on television, without bias.  American viewers might find the political commentary a little rougher and the satire a little more edgy, but that's what comes with living in a tough neighborhood.

Topics covered in this episode include the Egyptian elections, deportation of illegal Eritrean and Sudanese immigrants, and picking a European soccer team to root for that is not anti-semitic or anti-Israel.
 
You may want to watch the show more than once because the dialogue moves fast.  Very fast.  And remember, it's a parody, not real news.  Enjoy!
 

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The Old Jokes Fly on Comedy Night for Old Jews in Boca Raton

No, it's not the cast of the off-Broadway show, Old Jews Telling Jokes. And it's not the lineup of seniors who were recruited to deliver the short jokes on the popular website, book, CD, and DVD of the same name. But the concept of old Jews standing in front of a microphone and retelling some very old jokes seems to be catching on.

Last month An Evening of Old Jews Telling Jokes was presented before a live audience at the Adolph and Rose Levis JCC in Boca Raton, FL. Amateur comedians from their mid 60s to their late 80s performed in front of a packed house for an evening full of laughs and smiles. Enjoy!

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How Eve and Adam Met - A Very Modern Version

Limmud (learning) is a Jewish education conference that's been going on in England for the past 30 years, with spinoff versions taking place in more than 24 countries on six continents.

Taking their inspiration from the Limmud festival, a grassroots group of Jewish young adults in Montreal created a version that they named LE MOOD, taking a very modern approach to explore Jewish life as they define it.

To generate interest in last year's conference, the LE MOOD organizers produced a short video purporting to show a modern view of how Eve and Adam met. You'll recognize the basic characters in the story, but probably not the clothes they're wearing, or Cain and Abel's, the cafe where they tell some of their friends about their first meeting in a garden.

Enjoy!

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Yiddish Theater is Alive and Well on Second Avenue (in Montreal)

Yiddish Theater is seeing a revival of sorts, with productions popping up in various locations.

Last year we attended a Folksbiene Theater production of Shlemiel the First at the Skirball Center in New York City. Now a new musical production by the Dora Wasserman Yiddish Theater called On Second Avenue has opened at the Segal Center for the Performing Arts in Montreal. The show pays tribute to the Yiddish theater and will be running from June 10 through July 1.

We're posting two videos about the show today. The first has two excerpts from On Second Avenue. The second video is a look behind the scenes narrated by the director, musical director, and some of the actors. As one of the actors says, "You can't go to the movies, you can't put on your satellite TV and see this. You've got to get off the couch, get into the car, come here and put your tuches in the seat and witness something live. What you're seeing is unique.

Enjoy!

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BBC Comedy Uses Google to Translate Hebrew and Gets in a Pickle

With a quarter of a million Jews in England, you would think that a television production company wanting to put a Hebrew phrase on a tombstone for an upcoming episode of a comedy series would find at least one who could come up with a good translation.
 
But the producers of Episodes, a sitcom in its second year starring American actor Matt LeBlanc, either didn't have the time or the smarts to do so. What did they do instead?

When they wanted to put the phrase "dearly missed" in Hebrew on the tombstone of a character in the series, they turned to Google Tranlsator. Unfortunately, Google must have giggled when it translated the phrase as "pickled at great expense." And it compounded the error when it reversed the Hebrew letters.

Line by line, when read from left to right, the inscription says:
BA'AL V'AV AHUV (Beloved husband and father)
HECHEMITZ B'YOKER (Pickled at great expense)
AHUV BA'AL MISHPACHA (Beloved head of family)

As Nathan Jeffay wrote in The Guardian on Sunday,

Everyone in Israel is talking about the British-American BBC comedy Episodes. Not that it is airing there, but the show has recently become famous for its disastrous use of freebie online translation.

In episode three, Merc Lapidus, one of the lead characters, attends the funeral of his father. The episode was shown in the UK several weeks ago and is airing in the US later this summer.

The gravestone, as per Jewish tradition, is bilingual – the local vernacular, in this case English, along with Hebrew. But the entire Hebrew inscription is written backwards, starting with the last letter and working back to the first. The reason, of course, is that Hebrew runs in the opposite direction from English, from right to left. And it gets worse. If you go to the trouble of reading the text, you'll discover that the man commemorated, a certain Yuhudi Penzel, has been "pickled at great expense". This is what you get if you use Google Translate to render "dearly missed" into Hebrew. The blooper is now going viral in Israel.

Hebrew, with a particularly high number of words with multiple meanings, and complex linguistic relationship between the ancient and modern language, poses particular problems. I recently bought a bottle of grape juice. Kosher laws require that fruit is only picked from a plant over four years old – pick it younger and the fruit is called orla and can't be eaten. Seemingly an online translation threw up the more common meaning of orla: my bottle reassured me that I could drink it "without fear that it contains foreskin".

 (A tip of the kippah to Esther Kustanowitz for bringing this story to our attention.)

Israel's Chief Rabbi Blesses New Jersey Supermarket

Rabbi blesses Motel's sewing machine in Fiddler on the Roof

“Rabbi, is there a blessing for a sewing machine?”

“There is a blessing for everything.”

.....Fiddler on the Roof, 1971 

“Rabbi, is there a blessing for a supermarket?”

"Chief Rabbi Of Israel To Bless Fairway Market’s Extensive Kosher Offerings"

.....Paramus Post, June 2012
 

Yes, there is a blessing for a supermarket, if it’s the Fairway Market on Route 17 in Paramus, New Jersey.

Last Tuesday and Wednesday, Israel's Ashkenazi chief rabbi, Yonah Metzger, made a stop at Fairway Supermarkets in Paramus, New Jersey, and Plainview, Long Island, to tour the newly expanded kosher departments in the stores and to affix a mezuzah to the front doors.

Rabbis after affixing mezuzah to Fairway Market door

As Larry Yudelson wrote in an article titled "On Tuesday, the Chief Rabbi Toured Fairway" in The Jewish Standard, the oldest Jewish weekly in New Jersey,

“Let me emphasize, I’m here for a private visit,” Rabbi Yonah Metzger said on Tuesday after touring the Fairway Market in Paramus, affixing a mezuzah to its entrance, and blessing it using a formulation that did not include God’s name.

Metzger, Israel’s Ashkenazi chief rabbi, presumably did not sign off on the press release sent by Fairway’s public relations firm. It trumpeted: “Chief Rabbi of Israel to Bless Fairway Market’s Extensive Kosher Offerings.”

Metzger was in the United States for a two-day visit, primarily to speak at the Lubavitch Youth Organization’s dinner on Tuesday night. Metzger is “old friends” with Rabbi Shmuel Butman, head of the Lubavitch organization and organizer of the dinner, who said their connections go back decades.

The Fairway connection came from the honorees at Butman’s dinner: Howard Glickberg, Fairway’s chief executive and co-owner, as well as Richard Whalen, a leader of the United Food and Commercial Workers union, which represents Fairway employees.

“We have good labor relations,” Moshe Morrison, director of kosher foods for Fairway, said. Morrison’s position at the family-owned supermarket firm is proof that, in his words, “Kosher is a huge program for us.”

Rabbi Avrohom Marmorstein, Fairway’s longtime kosher supervisor, and Rabbis H. Zecharia and Daniel Senter of Kof-K Kosher Supervision also were on the supermarket tour. Kof-K has begun supervising the kashrut at the Paramus store and at Fairway’s other suburban locations, including the newly opened store on in Woodland Park. Marmorstein now works with Kof-K.

“Marmorstein is known in the city. He’s a great hashgacha,” Morrison said. “But people in the suburbs haven’t heard of him.”

Marmorstein, who heads a small Orthodox synagogue on Manhattan’s 100th Street, began supervising Fairway when it was just one market on Broadway at 74th Street. The same mashgichim, or kashut supervisors, are working in the stores under the Teaneck-based Kof-K supervision, said Marmorstein, who also is a hospital chaplain in Hackensack and Ridgewood.

In the video below, Rabbi Metzger affixes a mezuzah to the door of the store as Rabbi Shmuel Butman, head of the Lubavitch Youth Organization, looks on.

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Moses, Aaron, and Miriam Star in New Music Video

G-dcast.com,  the website that has created 66 short films based on Jewish texts including every parsha (weekly portion) of the Torah, has extended their range to include a music video that is making its debut this week. 

This work was created and performed by six families from Berkely, California, who after studying Torah together, decided to write a song about three famous siblings in the Bible: Miriam, Aaron and Moses. The song focuses on the relationships between them, and how they were there for each other when needed.

This is their music video, "I'll Be There For You" - from the words to the watercolors you see in the background to all the little choices about what color everyone's hair would be. 

Enjoy!

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Stuff Rabbis Say - Quotations From the Pulpit, the Classroom, and the Kiddush Room

Everyone who attends synagogue has encounters with the rabbi, both formal and informal. Rabbis give sermons, treach classes, preside at life cycle events, make small talk with congregants after services, and also socialize with members. Every encounter is unique, but patterns inevitably emerge, Expressions will  be repeated, and sometimes rabbis are pressed to remember personal details about their members that are not at the tip of their tongues, like the names of all of a bar mitzvah's aunts and uncles.

Most rabbis also have a sense of humor that really comes out when they go on retreats with their fellow rabbis. The most common rabbinic expressions were turned into a funny video that was made at the  CLAL Rabbis Without Borders Alumni Retreat Center in late February, led by Michigan Rabbi Jason Miller, who also has credentials as a stand-up comedian. What follows is a succession of 16 rabbis voicing one-liners and partial liners representing things that the rabbis find themselves saying repeatedly, or at least what they think they say.

The video features Rabbi Jason Miller, Rabbi Michael Ross, Rabbi Rachel Kobrin, Rabbi Geoffrey Mitelman, Rabbi Michael Bernstein, Rabbi Hillel Norry, Rabbi Tsafi Lev, Rabbi Rachel Brown, Rabbi Ruth Abusch-Magder, Rabbi Tamara Miller, Rabbi Rebecca Ben-Gideon, Rabbi Amy Small, Rabbi Alana Suskin, Rabbi Rachel Gurevitz, Rabbi Heidi Hoover, and Rabbi Rebecca Sirbu. 

It was written by Rabbi Jason Miller, Rabbi Rachel Kobrin, Rabbi Geoffrey Mitelman, Rabbi Michael Bernstein, and Rabbi Heidi Hoover, and edited by Rabbi Jason Miller.

If you're in synagogue this Shabbat, see if you can catch some of these phrases and expressions in any encounters you have with your rabbi. Shabbat Shalom.

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In Israel, a Bris Party to Remember, With the Guest of Honor Arriving by Remote Control Car

With a bris on our mind (we're attending a friend's grandson's brit milah today -- Mazal tov, Joyce, Amy, Noah, and Ruby) -- we just happened to come across a new YouTube posting from Israel that features a bris party like we've never seen before and we're unlikely to see again.

We think it's fun to celebrate simchas even if we don't know the celebrants, especially if there are some unusual and unexpected aspects. In this video, the celebrant arrives at the reception in style, in a remote controlled car. From the baby's size and alertness, we think that the party took place not on the day of the brit milah, but a few days later. But hey, you never know.

Watching the baby arrive in the car, we couldn't help remembering one of our favorite Saturday Night Live commercial parodies, the one for the 1978 Royal Deluxe II luxury car with a ride so smooth, a rabbi could perform a circumcision in the back seat. Well, we found the video, featuring Dan Ackroyd and Gilda Radner, and you'll see it below, just after the bris party video. Enjoy, and Mazal Tov to all!

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Jewish Comedy From Down Under: Australian Comic Jack Felman as Everyone's Favorite Jewish Grandmother

Jack Felman is a medical doctor in general practice in Melbourne, Australia.  He has been writing and performing comedy for 30 years. Twenty years ago he created the Bubba, everyone's favorite Jewish grandmother, a character who loves to give unwanted advice and who is well known to Melbourne and Sydney audiences. In this segment she (he) carries on about wedding gowns, brides, collagen and botox injections.

It seems that Australian comics have dual careers. We give a tip of the kippah to Robert Weil whom we profiled in October 2010 -- a Melbourne businessman who does his comedy shtick at weddings in the persona of Rabbi Mordy Katz, and who brought the Bubba to our attention.  Enjoy!

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Lipa Schmeltzer Music Video "Hang Up the Phone" Offers New Haredi Spin on Electronic Devices

Lipa Schmeltzer, a 34-year-old Skverer Chasid from New Square, New York has made a career as a singer at weddings and concerts. His CDs, DVDs, and YouTube videos have been big hits in Haredi circles. 

On Sunday, he released a new music video called "Hang up the Phone," in which he plays a robot (with a stubbly beard and peyot) among other robots who come to life in a Boro Park electronics store after the store closes for the night. The song is commentary on our ever growing infatuation with gadgets -- equal parts science fiction and practical advice for today's technologically obsessed society.

As Uriel Heilman wrote in a JTA news service release yesterday,

On Sunday, Schmeltzer posted the latest video from his new album, "Leap of Faith," with a song called "Hang Up the Phone." The lyrics include such gems as "All the hocus-pocus / forever tries to choke us / It's making such a ruckus / we can barely focus / Davening and driving / eating work and sleepin' / Why keep on replying / to all the rings and beepin'?"

No doubt the Haredi leaders who railed against unfettered internet use at last month's rally at New York's Citi Field would applaud this line: "Instead of searching Google / I'm busy making kugel..."

At just over six minutes long, the video offers a light hearted look at what we become when we spend more time interacting with our electronics than with our families and the people around us. 

Enjoy!

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Comedy Classics: Henny Youngman - "Take My Wife. Please."

It's Monday, a good day to start the work week with a joke. Not just any joke, but a Henny joke -- a series of rapid-fire classic golden oldies by Henny Youngman (1906-1998), who was known as the king of one-liners.

Youngman, a British-American Jewish comedian and violinist, was very popular in the 1950s and 1960s, with many appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show and on Laugh-in.

Watching one of his classic performances on the Sullivan show (see video below), it becomes apparent how much standup comedy has changed over the years.

As his biography in Wikipedia reads,

In a time when many comedians told elaborate anecdotes, Youngman’s comedy routine consisted of telling simple one-liner jokes, occasionally with interludes of violin playing. These gags depicted simple, cartoon-like situations, eliminating lengthy build-ups and going straight to the punch line. He was known as the King of the One Liners, a title bestowed upon him by columnist Walter Winchell. A typical stage performance by Youngman lasted only fifteen to twenty minutes, but contained dozens of jokes, delivered in rapid-fire fashion.

Many of his jokes were put-downs of his wife, including his most famous line, "Take my wife...please."  That line is included in the clip that we're sharing today, but you'll have to listen carefully because it comes and goes very quickly.

His Wikipedia biography continues:

Youngman's wife, Sadie Cohen, was often the butt of his jokes ("My wife said to me, 'For our anniversary I want to go somewhere I've never been before.' I said, 'Try the kitchen!'", or "my wife's cooking is fit for a king. (gesturing as if feeding an invisible dog) Here King, here King!" Also, "Last night my wife said the weather outside was fit for neither man nor beast, so we both stayed home.") but in reality the two were very close, with Sadie often accompanying her husband on his tours.

Youngman remained married for over sixty years until his wife's death in 1987, after a prolonged illness. While she was ill, Henny had an ICU built in their bedroom, so she could be taken care of at home, rather than in the hospital (Sadie was terrified of hospitals).

Henny explained the origin of his classic line "Take my wife, please" as a misinterpretation: in the mid-1930s he took his wife to a show and asked the usher to escort his wife to a seat. But his request was taken as a joke, and Youngman used the line countless times ever after.

Enjoy the video (from a May 1966 appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show.)

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Tracing the Origins of Hatikvah - The Search Goes On

Two years ago, we wrote about the origins of Hatikvah, Israel's national anthem, tracing its words to Naftali Imber and its melody to an Italian folk song and Smetana's symphonic poem, The Moldau.

But the song has become so important to the State of Israel and to the Jewish people worldwide, that new research continues to uncover details that were previously unknown and that add color and insight to the story of this beloved tune.

Pianist Astrith Baltsan, Israel's most popular classical performer, is also a musicologist who has undertaken a personal quest to find the complete story behind the song that brings Jews to attention whenever it is played.

Baltsan discovered some surprising facts about the words and the music that she shares in the video below, revealing this information amid scenes of the song being performed by children in Hungary in 1933, by survivors of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp on their day of liberation, in Israeli films, by Barbra Streisand, and at soccer games. Enjoy!

(A SPECIAL NOTE FOR NEW EMAIL SUBSCRIBERS:  THE VIDEO MAY NOT BE VIEWABLE DIRECTLY FROM THE EMAIL THAT YOU GET EACH DAY ON SOME COMPUTERS AND TABLETS.  YOU MUST CLICK ON THE TITLE AT THE TOP OF THE EMAIL TO REACH THE JEWISH HUMOR CENTRAL WEBSITE, FROM WHICH YOU CLICK ON THE PLAY BUTTON IN THE VIDEO IMAGE TO START THE VIDEO.)

(A tip of the kippah to Sheila Zucker for bringing this video to our attention.)

Israel Day Celebrated in Maryland with Kaveret Poogy and Dance

Last Sunday Israel was celebrated not only on Fifth Avenue in New York City, but also in Rockville, Maryland, where we were spending the weekend. 

Thousands of adults and children gathered at Rockville Town Square to enjoy an Israel @64 Festival sponsored by the Jewish Federation and Jewish Community Center of Greater Washington.

On a glorious sunny day, the square was filled with booths displaying Judaica, jewelry making, sand art, face painting, tefilin demonstrations, and lots of Israeli food. 

For us the highlight of the event was a one hour concert by Danny Sanderson and a musical troupe that brought to life many of the most popular songs by his band, Kaveret (Poogy) which has been a major presence on the Israeli music scene since 1973.

The band, several of whose members met during their service in the Israel Defense Forces, was formed in 1973. It broke up in 1976 by consensus of the band members. Subsequently, Kaveret veterans Gidi Gov and Danny Sanderson along with female vocalist Mazi Cohen and other musicians, formed a spinoff band named Gazoz, and later, another named Doda. As it turned out, six of the seven band members became stars in the Israeli music and entertainment scene in their own right after the band broke up.

The seventh, drummer Meir Fenigstein (whose nickname "Poogy" served as inspiration for the band's name abroad and for some of its material), went on to become a film festival producer.

Many songs by Kaveret became embedded in Israeli culture and are familiar also to the new generation of Israeli youth.

In 1974, Kaveret represented Israel in the Eurovision Song Contest with their song, Natati La Khayay ("נתתי לה חיי", "I Gave Her My Life"). It finished 7th. In the same year, Kaveret played one of the biggest concerts in Israel ever. While the population of Israel was only 3 million people, over 500,000 fans came to listen to the band perform. "The streets of Israel were empty", said band member Efraim Shamir after the event took place.

Here's a video of Sanderson and the band playing Natati La Khayay and Shir HaMakolet, and a Chassidic dance set to music from Fiddler on the Roof.  

For Poogy fans, we're including a video of the original performance of Natati La Khayay by the band at the Eurovision contest in 1974. For a transliteration and English translation of the song, click here. Enjoy! 

(A SPECIAL NOTE FOR NEW EMAIL SUBSCRIBERS:  THE VIDEO MAY NOT BE VIEWABLE DIRECTLY FROM THE EMAIL THAT YOU GET EACH DAY ON SOME COMPUTERS AND TABLETS.  YOU MUST CLICK ON THE TITLE AT THE TOP OF THE EMAIL TO REACH THE JEWISH HUMOR CENTRAL WEBSITE, FROM WHICH YOU CLICK ON THE PLAY BUTTON IN THE VIDEO IMAGE TO START THE VIDEO.)

 

 

Sholem Aleichem Variety Show: Five Minutes of Smiles

Here's a bit of Jewish humor that we find hard to characterize, except to say that we think it's funny and it will keep you laughing or at least smiling for five minutes.

The editors of Jewish Currents, a printed and online magazine that labels itself "A Progressive, Secular Voice" have come up with a collection of quotations from the famous Jewish storyteller, Sholem Aleichem, interwoven with an eclectic group of cartoons, mock baseball cards, and graphic comments and observations on Jewish life. The slide show is set to music with a distincive Jewish feel.

While we would never consider ourselves progressive or secular, and we don't agree with some of the political views expressed in this video, we're always delighted to see any segment of the Jewish community, wherever they are on the scale of observance or belief, devoting resources to creating and sharing Jewish humor in any form.

The cartoons are from Richard Codor's funny collection of illustrations, Babushkin's Catalog of Jewish Inventions, edited by Lawrence Bush. The baseball cards are fanciful imaginings of Biblical scenes featuring real baseball players with names like Tom Edens, Curt Flood, Les Cain, and Gerry Moses.

Enjoy!

(A SPECIAL NOTE FOR NEW EMAIL SUBSCRIBERS:  THE VIDEO MAY NOT BE VIEWABLE DIRECTLY FROM THE EMAIL THAT YOU GET EACH DAY ON SOME COMPUTERS AND TABLETS.  YOU MUST CLICK ON THE TITLE AT THE TOP OF THE EMAIL TO REACH THE JEWISH HUMOR CENTRAL WEBSITE, FROM WHICH YOU CLICK ON THE PLAY BUTTON IN THE VIDEO IMAGE TO START THE VIDEO.)

Oldies But Goodies: Three Classic Jokes From Deb Filler

Today we're doing a 3-in-1 special for our readers who keep asking for more jokes in our Jewish humor mix. 

Deb Filler, a veteran Jewish stand-up comic from New Zealand whom we profiled last year, weighs in with three classic jokes in one video. Sure, you've probably heard them before, but isn't that true of most Jewish jokes? Enjoy!

(A SPECIAL NOTE FOR NEW EMAIL SUBSCRIBERS:  THE VIDEO MAY NOT BE VIEWABLE DIRECTLY FROM THE EMAIL THAT YOU GET EACH DAY ON SOME COMPUTERS AND TABLETS.  YOU MUST CLICK ON THE TITLE AT THE TOP OF THE EMAIL TO REACH THE JEWISH HUMOR CENTRAL WEBSITE, FROM WHICH YOU CLICK ON THE PLAY BUTTON IN THE VIDEO IMAGE TO START THE VIDEO.)