Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
The Schmooze

Yehuda Poliker’s Promising Mix of Beat and Sadness

Crossposted from Haaretz

Yehuda Poliker performing at the Caesarea ampitheater last week. Image by David Bachar

Yehuda Poliker sang his new song, “Fuma, fuma,” not once, but twice at his concert in Caesarea last Thursday. The first time, toward the middle of the concert, the attention focused on the image of the small Romanian (“half a raisin”) that Poliker meets in south Tel Aviv, the person who offers to sell him a little marijuana. Poliker did an excellent job of recreating the slangy street-talk Hebrew of the Romanian, and the upbeat Greek melody topped off the celebration.

An hour and a half later, at the end of his encore, Poliker sang “Fuma, fuma” again; but this time, the scrawny Romanian moved to the background, despite his stubbornness, and the second hero of the song, Poliker himself, moved to the forefront. Every time the Romanian offers him grass, he gets the same response from Poliker: “Thanks pal, I say, I don’t toke.”

Read more at Haaretz.com

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.