Jewish Food in Unexpected Songs

This article was recently published in the Winter 2025 issue of Humanistic Judaism Magazine.

Cantor Jonathan L. Friedmann, PhD is admissions director and associate professor at the International Institute for Secular Humanistic Judaism, vice president, academic dean, and director of programs at Ezzree Institute, and community leader of Adat Chaverim—Congregation for Humanistic Judaism, Los Angeles. He is also director of the Jewish Museum of the American West, president of the Western States Jewish History Association, and co-host of Amusing Jews, a podcast/YouTube interview show celebrating Jewish contributors and contributions to American popular culture.

JEWISH FOOD IN UNEXPECTED SONGS

Cantor Jonathan L. Friedmann, Ph.D.

Paul Robeson, the incomparable bass-baritone, actor, and athlete, once remarked: “If it has been true that the Jewish people…have warmly understood and loved the songs of my people, it has also been true that Negro audiences have been moved by the songs of the Jewish people.” Robeson was no stranger to Jewish culture, having studied Yiddish informally at Columbia University and involving himself with Jewish leftists. His repertoire, best remembered for songs like the African-American spiritual “Swing Low Swing Chariot” and the Show Boat spiritual “Ol’ Man River” (written by the Jewish team of Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II), also included Yiddish songs like “Zot Nit Keynmol (Song of the Warsaw Ghetto)” and “Shlof Mein Kind” (Sleep My Child). Robeson recorded the Yiddish lament “Eli, Eli,” as did other major Black musicians, among them Duke Ellington and Ethel Waters.

 Much has been made of how Jewish Tin Pan Alley songwriters transformed blues, jazz, and spirituals into the Great American Songbook, and how popular Jewish singers corked their faces when blackface was an entertainment norm. Both phenomena have attracted defenders and detractors—Black, Jewish, and otherwise—who highlight similarities between Black and Jewish experiences, as well as the limits of such comparisons.

But there was also a time, specifically the 1930s and 40s, when Black-Jewish musical affinities took a delightful culinary turn. “Matzoh Balls” (1939), for instance, by Black jazz singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Slim Gaillard, proclaims, “matzoh balls, gefilte fish, best old dish I ever, ever had.” Gaillard later sang “Dunkin’ Bagel” (1945), which lays out a classic brunch of bagels (dipped in coffee), matzoh balls, gefilte fish, pickled herring, and lox. “Dunkin’ Bagel” was featured in a 1947 short film, O’Voutie O’Rooney, where Gaillard, bassist Bam Brown, and drummer Scatman Crothers perform the song to “prove that ‘Ovoutee Slanguage’ is absolutely Kosher.”

“Bagel and Lox” (1946), a Doo-wop song recorded by the Charioteers, recommends serving the Ashkenazi staple toasted “with the cheese in the middle and a slice of onion on the side.” Billboard dismissed the tune as a “trite and repetitious novelty” that “refers to the favorite dish of [the] Tin Pan Alley clan crowding Lindy’s”—but today’s (Jewish) listeners will happily eat it up.

Cab Calloway’s “Everybody Eats When They Come to My House” (1948) has some great nods to Jewish cuisine. Calloway is considered an “Afro-Yiddishist” for mixing scat, jive, cantorial stylings, and Yiddish phrases—as in his recordings of “Utt Da Zay (The Tailor’s Song)” and “Abi Gezunt” (As Long as You’re Healthy), both from 1939. It is thus unsurprising that “Everybody Eats When They Come to My House” not only has lines like “Have a banana, Hannah” and “Pass me a pancake, Mandrake,” but also “Oh, do have a knish, Nisha” and “Pass him the latke, Matke.”

These recordings speak to the natural, unpretentious ways Black and Jewish musicians shared their respective music and ate each other’s soul food. As a contemporary Jew, hearing my people’s menu extolled in these songs is nothing short of delicious.