J-Streets:Newcastle:Jewgate

From the book "Definitive Guide to Jewish Miscellany and Trivia, which looks at town and cities which have Jewish 

Everyone (?)  knows that there is  a location in London called Old Jewry, so I wondered how many other street/road/way etc names had a Jewish flavour to them. Here's one - Newcastle.

Strange how things change. There is an interesting little area in Newcastle, bounded upon one side by the A167(M). At one time it was clearly bustling with commerce, for it was near the quayside on the River Tyne.

When Harry met Gracie

Occasionally a piece of trivia just falls into your lap. This one came completely from left field, and shows if nothing else that there were Jewish songsmiths in Britain in the 1930s who operated at the very top level. Two of them co-wrote one of the most iconic songs in British musical history.

My story began when I was researching a tune called Mazeltov which had been played by the Joe Loss Band in 1939.

Jews playing Italians and Italians playing Jews

One unusual aspect of film and television history is the frequency with which Jews play Italians and Italians play Jews. Also that some of the main Italian film gangsters have been played by Jews.

 Let’s go through them.

Italians portraying Jews:

Alex Rocco – Moe Green – The Godfather

 This was only a small part but memorable. Moe is shot in the eye by Michael Corleone’s hitman after refusing an ‘offer’ made to him for the Corleone Family to take over the Las Vegas hotels.

Mama, we have our son again.

So says Poppa at the end of the Jazz Singer as he hears the strains of Kol Nidre being sung with gusto by Al Jolson. 

Kol Nidre is a prayer that basically ‘kicks off’ a day and an hour of fasting for the most holy day in the Jewish Calendar, Yom Kippur.

It is, however, also our not so secret guilty pleasure,  whether you are a Ashkenazi or a Sephardi Jew. The Ashkenazi melody especially when sung by a half way decent chazzan is simply beautiful, and is known worldwide. The Sephardi, especially Moroccan version also wows the senses. 

There is a lot of controversy over the prayer itself over the years but here are things you may not know about the tune.

Samuel Pallache and the Age of Dissimulation

Dissimulation  

Many Jews went to Fez in Morocco at the time of the expulsion, and one of the families that did so was the Pallache. One of the progeny of that family was one Samuel Pallache, who had a remarkable career, and came to be known as the Pirate Rabbi to the modern generation.
 

To fully understand that career, though we have to understand dissimulation.

Gefilte Fish Line

Yottam Ottoleghi sneeringly says of “gefilte fish as “sweet, grey and smeared with gelatinous gunk, gefilte fish was perceived as a typical remnant of the old Ashkenazi world that was best left behind in Eastern Europe.”

Like many of his ilk he is keen to leave behind the rich Gefilte fish, but also fails to recognise how important said cuisine was back in the day. My Uncle Harry once said to us that he was sure that we came from Russia because we like our gefilte fish savoury rather than sweet.

606

Jordan Kutzik in the Jewish Daily Forward, November 2015, told us of a discovery of early klezmer music that had “lain in the EMI Music Archives in Hayes, England, untouched for many decades”

He pointed out that klezmer recordings were rare, and what existed nowadays was in the hands mainly of academics or musicians so that this discovery allowed the general public to be able to hear the early music that had been recorded in the Russian Empire Amongst all the dances and songs in this discovery was one called “606 Dance”, recorded in Odessa, celebrating Preparation 606, a treatment for syphilis.