Yehuda Poliker’s Promising Mix of Beat and Sadness
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
Crossposted from Haaretz
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.”
It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news.
This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions.
We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.
As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday!
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
