Ed Brayton is a freelance writer and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
Saw this list the other day and it cracked me up. It's the Billboard charts for country music in Israel:
1. "I Was One of the Chosen People ('Til She Chose Somebody Else)"
2. "Honkey Tonk Nights on the Golan Heights"
3. "I've Got My Foot On The Glass, Where Are You? "
4. "My Rowdy Friend Elijah's Comin' Over Tonight"
5. "New Bottle of Whiskey, Same Old Testament"
6. "Stand by Your Mensch"
7. "Eighteen Wheels and a Dozen Latkes"
8. "I Balanced Your Books, but You're Breaking My Heart"
9. "My Darlin's a Schmendrick and I'm All Verklempt"
10. "That Shiksa Done Made off with My Heart Like a Goniff"
11. "The Second Time She Said 'Shalom', I Knew She Meant 'Goodbye'"
12. "You're the Lox My Bagel's Been Missin'"
13. "You've Been Talkin' Hebrew in Your Sleep Since that Rabbi Came to Town"
14. "Why Don't We Get Drunk - We're Jews!"
15. "Mamas Don't Let Your Ungrateful Sons Grow Up to Be Cowboys (When They Could Very Easily Have Just Taken Over the Family Hardware Business that My Own Grandfather Broke His Back to Start and My Father Sweated Over for Years Which Apparently Doesn't Mean Anything Now That You're Turning Your Back on Such a Gift)"
Comments
Wow. That's all I can say. Great way to end a saturday night.
Posted by: kehrsam | December 2, 2006 8:51 PM
This list forgot all about Mizrakhi Jews (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mizrahi_Jew)
All the Yiddish came from Ashkenazi Jews (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashkenazi_Jews)
Mizrakhi Jews do not speak Yiddish. This language was developed far away from them.
meh, all of the Jews YOU know are all probably ashkenazi because they were the ones who imigrated into the USA after being persecuted in eastern europe.
Wikipedia says that in Israel there are about 2 mil Mizrakhi Jews and 3.7 mil Ashkenazi Jews living in Israel.
The history of Mizrakhi Jews in Israel is quite charged because a whole lot of cultural differences. Many Ashkenazi Jews looked down on Mizrakhi Jews because they didn't have european cultural education and didn't like classical music, for example. The Ashkenazi Jews on their hand didn't like the Mizrakhi Jews' music because they didn't had the middle eastern cultural education.
What am I trying to say here...? I started babeling... um. Your list is purely ashkenazi.
Posted by: cow_2001 | December 3, 2006 6:50 AM
I think you've been done in by a joke here.
1. Billboard only does charts in the nations where it (the magazine) is published - ie. the US and pretty much nowhere else, and definitely not Israel
2. I googled and could not find any country music chart in Israel, but it appears there is an Official top 30 and one or two others all of which appear to be focussed on mainstream pop.
If there *is* a country music chart in Israel, it isn't run by Billboard and it seems to be tracking a minority taste.
Posted by: James | December 3, 2006 7:44 AM
As a resident of Israel, I can assure you that this list is one very bad joke, and would be more accurately described as potential Kinky Friedman song titles than Israeli hits. Having lived here for three years now, I have not heard a single country song on Israeli radio ever (Israelis prefer G-d awful European techno, bootyhouse hip-hop, 80s crap, and Middle Eastern music), nor have I heard anyone other than a handful of Hasidim speaking Yiddish.
More apropos titles would be, "You're the tehina my falafel's been missing, "I ran out of hair gel, you ran off with my heart," or "I gave up my seafront property in Gaza for a hilltop trailer in the West Bank."
Posted by: Mobius | December 3, 2006 9:06 AM
Methinks Mr. Brayton knows fully well that this is a joke.
Posted by: John | December 3, 2006 10:19 AM
LOL. Of course I knew it was a joke. For crying out loud, jokes don't get much more obvious. Stand By Your Mensch?
Posted by: Ed Brayton | December 3, 2006 1:55 PM
"I ran out of hair gel, you ran off with my heart" that's a classic.
Posted by: cow_2001 | December 3, 2006 4:48 PM