I bopped my shokl on the off–beat by Purim of my junior year, intoned my Torah with the fifths all flatted every Monday, Thursday and oo-bop-a-Shabbes. Nine times through On the Road, and I still didn't get it – if getting drunk and driving too fast was the wave of the future, then the Yiddish papers were hip, as hep to the shlep as they come – but I wasn't going to argue with success. Beth Jacob girls waned to beat my bongos, and compared to a plain old yarmulke, my new black beret was the bendin', solid-sendin', the all-offendin' – you know where Im coming from – END. I'm swung with my undergarment–fringes, flipped my sidelocks – those Little Bo-peyes – into beat generation sideburns while scatting my daily Talmud to A Night in Tunisia. I was driving the rabbis insane. "Beatster!" The ruler almost

broke my fingers. "Hipnik!" My cheek was half-way out the door. "You're telling lies to the English teachers again? Don't tell me no; I heard all about it. I had to tell them that you're still called Israel in English, that in no language known to man does Yisroel really mean" – he reached in his pocket for a piece of paper – "Bobby isn't good enough?" He tore the paper into little pieces. "You had to tell them your name means" – whack, zets, boom – "You had to tell them your name means Jelly Roll?"

Rhythm + Jews - the sound of one hand clapping on someone elses tukhes? Not, thank God, anymore.

Michael Israel Wex

[N.B. Nothing not as good as Rhythm + Jews could ever have pressured me into revealing my full, real name. MIW.]