Yawn. No one but Chassidim wear that dress today. It has become Jewish precisely because everyone else discarded it. I don’t even know when the pritzim stopped wearing it but it was well before the time of the Communist revolution – and you had Jews who were moiser nefesh to dress that way after the Communists took over and it was a good way to end up in a Gulag uniform.
Yiddish was never standardized. You don’t need one word of Yiddish to understand the Lubavitcher Rebbe if you understand loshon hakoidesh because he turns roots in laha”k into Yiddish words (not uncommon among my friends who are from EY and speak Yiddish) – and an average yeshivish speaker probably can understand (lehavdil) Lipa’s songs except for a few words he has to ask his friend to ask his baabe. The real non-Jewish Yiddish was the shund from the Bund who purposely replaced laha”k with Slavic words.
When you go to NY and look for hummous and falafel, even as far back as 1984, 50% chance you are going to find it in an Arab grocery or restaurant (or in a health food place).
Maoz Tzur was uplifted (not that I sing it myself – to me that tune is a part of the misbegotten secular Jewish culture of my youth – I don’t sing very well so I don’t care to sing anything in public but if I listen to Chanuka songs I have albums from R Damen/Belz and R’ Banet/ Seret-Vizhnitz with parts of Maoz Tzur).
The food was not uplifted, except for the 10% of it or so that is sold to people who make brochos on it. And the problem is that this non-Jewish food is a symbol of the non-Jewishness and the new “Israeli” identity of the medine. Chinese food is (mock) Chinese in Y-m as it is in Flatbush and in Paris and when our restaurant here in Ukraine decides to feature it. We know it isn’t ours – but we eat it and make a brocho on it so it is. It’s not a symbol of anything – only challah is out of anything we eat during the year. Falafel, which comes from the pere odom’s descendants, is now “Israeli”. Why couldn’t the oisvorf Zionists hollow out a piece of challah and fill it with salad? Actually tastes good and just as convenient as an Arab pita (which actually may have come from ancient Judea but I think that’s a false theory).
I judge a Jewish neighborhood by the covered heads (male and female), the sforim shops and store names like “Refuah Pharmacy” (actually it’s Rafieh spelled just like that because it’s on Lee Ave in Williamsburgh!) and “Rechev Car Service”. I don’t remember if there is a Chinese restaurant in Syrian Flatbush (where they’d be the first ones to tell you they’re eating what their Arab neighbors ate) – there is a pizza shop.