My first shul was called Sof Ma'arav — The End of the West, and we had a Hawaiian-print Torah cover. I grew up in the land of hula and banyan trees, and yet the first song I ever learned started with Shteyt a bocher, shteyt un tracht. My grandfather spoke with that familiar New York Yiddishkeit accent — just a little tinged, in a way I couldn't explain but instantly recognized whenever I met another bubbe or zayde. I hardly knew any other Jews but my mom played me Fiddler on the Roof and told me that it was "basically our family story."

One of my mother's favorite performers was Bette Midler, and my instinct for Jewish humor was nurtured by Beaches, whose soundtrack lived on repeat for at least a year. My favorite song was, oddly, about a fictional German inventor named Otto, and was probably very inappropriate for me to be singing at not-quite-nine years old. If you know, you know. Much to my delight, every few years I would have a teacher who had actually taught The Divine Miss M, and the constant comparisons were more than welcome.

Yiddish music was part of my cellular construction before I was even a speck in my mother's eye. In the old world — Kuty, a town still unclaimed by any flag when my grandfather was carried out of it as an infant — my family were klezmers, chazzanim, and rabbis. In the new world they were storytellers and creators — so no change really! My mother learned Yiddish songs at her father's knee. She grew up singing in the legendary Greenwich Village nightclub El Avram, partly owned by my grandfather, Al Sander.

In the old world they were klezmers, chazzanim, and rabbis. In the new world they were storytellers and creators — so no change really!