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A klezmer virtuoso, Joseph Moskowitz was a cymbalist of Jewish progress in America

JL;DR SUMMARY Joseph Moskowitz was a pioneering klezmer virtuoso and restaurateur who played the cymbalom, a hammered dulcimer popular in Eastern Europe. A way out west there was a fella, fella I want to tell you about, fella by the name of Jeff Lebowski. At least, that was the handle his lovin' parents gave him, but he never had much use for it himself. This Lebowski, he called himself the Dude. Now, Dude, that's a name no one would self-apply where I come from. But then, there was a lot about the Dude that didn't make a whole lot of sense to me. And a lot about where he lived, likewise. But then again, maybe that's why I found the place s'durned innarestin'.

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Tags

Jewish MusicLower East SideKlezmerRomanian JewsLibrary Of CongressRestaurantsCultural LegacyJoseph MoskowitzCymbalomMusic Recordings

Places mentioned

New York, United States
"The restaurant occupies a long narrow basement on the Lower East Side."
Akron, Ohio, United States
"Then, after a performance in Akron, Ohio, he ran a restaurant there called The Romany."
Washington, Washington DC, United States
"so Moskowitz moved to Washington, D.C."
Cleveland, Ohio, United States
"a box of artifacts was discovered in the home of one of Moskowitzs descendants in Cleveland."
Romania
"one of Nixons first foreign trips as president was actually to Romania, where he was photographed dancing the hora at the Museum of the Romanian Peasant with Nikolai Ceausescu, the Romanian dictator,"

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Cairo Item ID 86092
Cairo Source ID 35
Retrieved 2026-06-25 05:31:13 UTC
Curated 2026-06-25 08:31:18 UTC