The Clarmont Restaurant was our favorite go-to place for family celebrations. It was where politicians and local titans came to be seen and where business deals were made. The restaurant was known for its excellent steaks, lemon meringue pie, and perfectly mixed drinks. The servers memorized every order, regardless of how many people sat at the table.

Anyone who’s ever been to the Clarmont in the sixties or seventies will remember the organist, Vivian Boeshaar. She was known for playing the first few measures of a couple’s favorite song as they entered the dining area. When our family came for dinner, Vivian would stop what she was playing and flawlessly transition into my Dad’s favorite song, “My Yiddishe Mama,” and that was his cue to join her at the organ. The song is about a Jewish man who assimilates into American society and his sense of nostalgia for the old world as he mourns the loss of his mother. Dad sang the lyrics with such passion that the restaurant broke into applause when he finished. Jack Yellen and Lew Pollack wrote the song in the early twenties, and it became famous after Sophie Tucker started singing it in English shortly after her mother died in 1925. By 1928, it was a top hit in the United States.

When I hear My Yiddishe Mama sung by one of the great masters - Sophie Tucker, Ray Charles, Connie Francis, Billie Holiday, or Barbra Streisand  - I’m reminded where I came from, and the feeling is so good. I get nostalgic thinking about the Clarmont, our family celebrations, and how beautifully my Dad sang one of the most moving pieces of all time. Oh, how I wish I could have known his Yiddishe Mama.

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MY YIDDISHE MAMA

Of things I should be thankful for I’ve had a goodly share

And as I sit here in the comfort of my cozy chair

My fancy takes me to a humble eastside tenement

Three flights up in the rear

to where my childhood days were spent

It wasn’t much like Paradise

but ‘mid the dirt and all

There sat the sweetest angel, one that I fondly call

My Yiddishe Mama, I need her more than ever now

My Yiddishe Mama I’d like to kiss her wrinkled brow

I long to hold her hand once more as in days gone by

And beg her to forgive me for things I did that made her cry

How few were her pleasures

She never cared for fashion’s styles

Her jewels and treasures, she found them in her baby’s smiles

And I know that I owe what I am today

To that dear little lady so old and gray

To that wonderful Yiddishe Mama of mine

I was five years old when Eva passed away. My Dad talked about how wonderful she was and how much he loved her, but that’s all I can remember. I reached out to my cousin, David Sloan, who’s researched the Slomowitz/Sloan family, and paraphrased some information he sent:

Eva Berkowitz was born in 1892 in Rumania. She immigrated to the United States in 1905 at age twelve. Eva married Harry Slomowitz in 1908 when she was only fifteen. They had four children: Joe, Sylvia, my Dad, and Dorothy, who passed away before Dad was born. My Dad, Paul Slomowitz, was born on May 23rd, 1919, in the Bronx. Eva’s family name, Slomowitz, was changed in 1930 to Sloan. Eva’s husband, Harry Slomowitz/Sloan, died in 1931 when Dad was twelve. Eva later married Abraham Teitler. Eva Slomowitz/Sloan became an American citizen in 1939. She died in 1953 in the Bronx at sixty-one years old. My Dad, Paul Sloan, passed away at the same age in 1981.