Introduction
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Hi, I’m Marc, I go by alter kaker (AK) because I like Yiddish and I’ve been startinf to feel old in the last few years.
I am an Orthodox Jew, and not very good at it. I didn’t grow up that way. I was born in the Former Soviet Union, and moved to Israel with my family at 5. At 21, I moved to the US. For years I identified just as Russian, but eventually I learned to embrace my Jewishness, eventually beginning a process of Teshuvah.
I have 5 children from two marriages. They are 15, 13, 11, and two twins thet are about 15 months old.
I work as a software engineer. I’m self taught; I’ve been a gas station attendant, dishwasher, canvasser, welder, driver, janitor, teacher, and probably some other things too. I am one of those computer nerds who actually enjoys computers most of the time. I have a blog where I talk about that. I also have an older blog called Shabbos Tish where my wife and I I talk about more Jewish topics, but that’s been inactive for a few years.
I play banjo.
Anyway, that’s enough for now, I look forward to getting to know everyone better.
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I’ve been playing banjo for a pretty long time, I started in the Old Time style, but ran into a problem, because even though I was learning the techniques and getting pretty good at it, I didn’t really understand the music. So I started playing music I did understand—Jewish music from Eastern Europe, in the Polish and Lithuanian styles which are very close to the sounds of Russia and the USSR that I grew up on, along with Yiddish lyrical music. I had to develop my own playing technique from scratch, since existing Klezmer banjo styles grow out of Bluegrass rather than Old Time.
