arts & entertainment
An Ode to Brisket And More
With some kvetching and a healthy dose of nostalgia, new CD mines Jewish tradition for laughs.
I
Sandee Brawarsky
RICK IIOR 1NIS
Special to the Jewish News
y
ou can hear the rabbi whispering directions in
the background. To the melody of a Haftorah,
Rick Moranis chants a story about a red-diaper
baby — now running his father-in-law's auto-parts busi-
ness — who is having his bar mitzvah at age 46.
"Well, here I am. I made it. Still can't believe I did this,"
he begins, in the familiar bar mitzvah boy singsong.
Moranis is the boy/man in the new suit, and he's also the
rabbi — and he's having a good time up on the bimah by
the end of the blessings.
"Belated Haftorah" is one of 13 very funny songs that
Moranis has written and sings on his newly released CD,
My Mother's Brisket & Other Love Songs. The music is an
eclectic mix of klezmer, jazz and lounge music, with Latin,
Asian and country rhythms and some schmaltz, too.
In an interview at the kitchen table of his Central Park
West apartment, Moranis explains that the bar mitzvah
song isn't autobiographical — he had his bar mitzvah at
13 in Toronto. These are songs about aspects of Jewish
life he knows more than a little about, the kinds of things
that might have been deemed "too Jewish" for his earlier
projects. I wonder if anyone has written a funny song about
shivah before.
In the spectrum of how Jewish, Moranis is very Jewish.
But it's about culture and sensibility, not about going to
shul. Some songs express a bit of nostalgia, some play the
Jewish customs of his youth forward.
Now 60, he says that he's noticed, in the last decade, that
as friends have lost parents and their kids have come of age,
they're feeling a need to pass on certain values. "Specific
language is creeping back into conversation," he says.
"All these people are starting to sound like old Jews:' he
says. "Is that nostalgia or is that Darwinian?"
"My sister, who's 63, is saying `pu-pu-pu' whenever you
say anything to her:' He defines that in his lively song
"Pu-Pu-Pu" with the refrain, "When it's too good to be
true He continues, "Call it what you like, a superstition/
For me, it's just a logical position:'
He sings out about a Sunday night Chinese dinner that
gets delivered to the wrong apartment ("Asian Confusion")
and a woman named Parve he meets in an all-night deli.
In "Oy, The Mistakes I Made," he does some fine kvetching.
"Oy, the money I spent/Why'd I have to buy in Boynton/For
three weeks I could rent:'
The title song is an ode to his mother's signature dish.
"The smell first hits me from five blocks away/It's Friday,
and I can't stay away:'
That song is also a tribute to his mother. His father died,
but she is 87, still living in the Toronto house he grew up
in, still making brisket. Moranis speaks to her every day.
Sometimes, they talk about what they're making for dinner.
"You're such a balabusta. Who knew?" she'd tell her son,
a widower raising two children. He'd then comment that
his balabusta was coming in the next day, referring to the
housekeeper. Those conversations inspired "My Wednesday
Balabusta:'
The CD is more Catskills than Hollywood, another new
direction for Moranis, who has had a varied and successful
career beginning in the world of comedy.
In 1980, he played in the sketch comedy show Second
120
August 29 • 2013
JN
MY MOTHEIrS BRISKET
City Television. He had memorable roles in films includ-
ing Ghostbusters, Spaceballs, Little Shop of Horrors (playing
Seymour) and Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (and its sequels).
He took a sabbatical from the movie world after his wife
died of cancer in 1991, and he hasn't gone back.
"I found that I didn't miss what I had been doing," he
says.
In 2005, he released an album of funny country-western
songs, The Agoraphobic Cowboy, which was nominated for
a Grammy.
Moranis grew up in a Jewish neighborhood in Toronto,
"in a tiny bungalow on a street of bungalows:' His father
had a beverage room and held the liquor license in a small
hotel, and then became a liquor salesman.
While Moranis was growing up, his mother didn't work
but was very active in Hadassah and sisterhood Later on,
she went back to work for Jewish Vocational Service in
their placement office, helping Russian immigrants with
resettlement.
"She's pretty extraordinary," he says of his mom, who is
visible on the CD cover in her flowered duster that almost
matches the tablecloth.
Moranis remembers the moment when he and all of his
Toronto buddies put down their hockey sticks and took up
electric guitars, aspiring to be like the Beatles. One of his
friends, Gary Weinrib, went on to become the lead vocalist
for the rock group Rush, Geddy Lee. He took on his child-
hood nickname, Geddy, which was the way his immigrant-
accented mother pronounced Gary.
Moranis says that he has always been writing songs.
Among the inspirations for this new CD are songs and
prayers from the Zionist youth camp he attended in Canada,
Camp Kvutsa on Lake Erie, along with lots of cousins.
This was "the real deal, where Fridays you polished your
own pair of sneakers and ate communal style. Saturday
morning we'd sleep in, folk dance and have hot cinnamon
sweet buns.
"The melodies started coming back, and the next thing, I
had all these songs:'
During the creative process, he felt like he was writ-
ing songs for eight people — he didn't expect to publish
them commercially. But when he called a lawyer at Warner
Brothers with questions, the lawyer ("he probably wanted to
be a Beatle, too") urged him to publish it, and Warner took it
on. Gary Schreiner produced and arranged the music.
In the 1960s, Moranis listened to Allan Sherman
and the album You Don't Have to Be Jewish. He says
that comparing his songs to Sherman's helps people
locate what he is doing, but his songs are very different,
not parodies. Perhaps the song that's most in the best
Sherman tradition is "The Seven Days of Shivah," to the
tune of "The Twelve Days of Christmas:'
Here, like Sherman did, he has a way of combining
and rhyming Jewish-sounding names and, in this case,
food, in most original ways.
Others have spoken about the connection of Jewish
humor and pain. For Moranis, this doesn't resonate.
He describes the routine of being in writing rooms
with other writers when someone throws out an idea,
and someone else comes up with a gem.
"Jews tend to be pretty facile at that, disproportion-
ately, like they are in many areas. I'm not a sociologist
or behavioral scientist. I've written with Jewish partners,
close friends who are Jewish comedy writers, and the
conversations bring me to tears, they're so funny.
"What I have discovered is that it's logic — no differ-
ent from music or mathematics or symbolic language.
It's about going through the possibilities and picking out
the right one.
"Laughing is fantastic. People like to laugh. Is it
because of growing up with pain? No. It's a short form
for getting the truth across:'
"Live Blogging The Himel Family Bris" is the CD's
most hora-danceable as he sings, "I'm posting, I'm host-
ing, I'm filing, I'm sharing/That Marky's Uncle Manny
smells a lot like herring:'
Moranis can't stand blogging and its invasion of pri-
vacy. Here, as the blogger describes the mohel, the table
overflowing with "blintzes and bialys and cream cheese
with chives," he also violates the hosts, poking through
their things.
His son and daughter, now in their 20s, had bar
and bat mitzvahs, respectively, at B'nai Jeshurun on
Manhattan's Upper West Side, but he ended his affilia-
tion when they were done. "Synagogue didn't matter to
me. I knew they were being raised in a very culturally
traditional Jewish household:'
"I took a left turn from that a long time ago:' he says,
looking back at his childhood. "I got sent to a little
too much Hebrew school. I went to a little too much
Conservative temple. Now I can't do it.
"You know that song 'Tie A Yellow Ribbon; how you'd
turn the station when that came on the radio. That's
what I feel when I hear "Adon Olam," he says, referring
to the synagogue prayer. "I can't listen:'
When I ask Moranis if he'll perform these songs
in public, he says he is getting lots of requests and is
intrigued by the idea. He hasn't performed before a live
audience since doing stand-up comedy in 1975. Stay
tuned.
❑
My Mother's Brisket & Other Love Songs ($9.99)
can be ordered through Moranis' website,
rickmoranis.com . Also available, a deluxe version
with an inscribed velvet kippah, a Minyan Pack (10
copies, "for the cousins") and a L'Chaim pack (18
copies, "include the second cousins").