Speaker 1: The ALKI wow, I feel got it? You want to go? Do?
Speaker 1: I want to go? Now? What do I do? Pick one?
Speaker 1: How do you do it? Take that can of.
Speaker 2: Gasolina and put it by the door.
Speaker 3: Take homatchet'st and no more candy store.
Speaker 1: How you can throw in a little harmony.
Speaker 4: Kugol is probably the most nostalgic game of my childhood.
Speaker 4: It's these five stones. I want to tell you about Kogola,
Speaker 4: how you can play it, and the larger category of
Speaker 4: oldie games that exist in the Hasidic world. Some of
Speaker 4: them you might know even if you're not Hasidic.
Speaker 5: Hi.
Speaker 4: My name is fre Devisel and I'm a YouTuber specializing
Speaker 4: in a c Brooklyn. Besides for my study of Acitic culture,
Speaker 4: I have a fascination with children's play of your Before
Speaker 4: there were toy stores and actual products designed for children's play.
Speaker 4: We now take it for granted that toy stores are
Speaker 4: a thing. We even have these giant chops that are
Speaker 4: landmarks of childhood play, culture making, and a reflection of values.
Speaker 4: Take Fao Schwartz in Manhattan with the dolls, trends, characters,
Speaker 4: fantasies of Western society. Or take toys for You in
Speaker 4: bar Park, Brooklyn with the Jewish Orthodox puppets, mencheese, costumes
Speaker 4: for children, and Yiddish board games, all reflecting a very
Speaker 4: different society and imparting of values. Once toys were not
Speaker 4: an industry, as Shoshana Hnfeld, who lived in Williamsburg, Brooklyn
Speaker 4: from nineteen thirty seven to nineteen four remembered, they made
Speaker 4: their own toys.
Speaker 6: We had stoops going that one.
Speaker 7: We used to play stoop balls, and we used to
Speaker 7: play hopscotch. We used to roller skates, and we used
Speaker 7: to take a crate. Not us, the boys would do it.
Speaker 7: They would take a crate orange brake or whatever and
Speaker 7: they would nail it with a piece of wooden two
Speaker 7: pieces of roller skate.
Speaker 6: And we would have a scooter.
Speaker 7: Those were fun days. It was you know, you didn't
Speaker 7: go into the store and by this and I because
Speaker 7: it wasn't there, and it was so much better to
Speaker 7: make your own.
Speaker 4: Old footage of the nineteen fifties just children playing with
Speaker 4: jump ropes, with various pieces of trash, with balls, with
Speaker 4: bikes and trikes, and especially girls. Lots of circle games
Speaker 4: and clapping games where you clap and chent in the
Speaker 4: Ascidic Jewish community. Many of these forms of play have
Speaker 4: survived even when forgotten Elsewhere. Of Brooklyn, I see children
Speaker 4: playing for hours with things like crates, boxes, cups, making
Speaker 4: even a vending machine of refrigerator boxes. They do lemonade,
Speaker 4: stand like projects that they call carnivals, where you can
Speaker 4: turn in a book, they sell fresh popcorn slush, or
Speaker 4: you can participate in booths where you can pick challen
Speaker 4: beans out of a plate of flour by sucking on
Speaker 4: a straw. At other times, I see jingle jump or
Speaker 4: lots of rope, hopscotch, tag, hide and seek, kick the can,
Speaker 4: many versions of ball like elimination, hit the deck, machanaium, chalk.
Speaker 4: Of course, drawing on various levels. Art can be seen everywhere. Cards,
Speaker 4: trading cards, collector's cards, rubber, and of course koko. It's
Speaker 4: my theory that the strong prohibition against television and nowadays
Speaker 4: the internet, especially the strict campaign against smartphones, has created
Speaker 4: a space for continuation of old school play while it
Speaker 4: died out elsewhere, replaced perhaps by video games and more
Speaker 4: organized forms of play. Of all these nostalgic games, Kugler
Speaker 4: is most interesting to me because, for one, really embarrassingly
Speaker 4: left footed or left handed at it, and for another
Speaker 4: because it's a variation of the world's oldest game that
Speaker 4: we have evidence that it once existed, that is the
Speaker 4: game of five Stones or knucklebones. Five Stones can be
Speaker 4: played with nothing but five pebbles that you collect from
Speaker 4: the street, like you would perhapscotch. There's no need for
Speaker 4: toy stores, although of course someone is bound to create
Speaker 4: a need and box up the stones into a purchasable product.
Speaker 4: And it looks like this. This holding the Kogler is
Speaker 4: Ricky Rose, a Yiddish singer from the Citic Williamsburg community
Speaker 4: with the voice of an angel. When we visited her
Speaker 4: old Hans recently, we came upon some wild oldie things
Speaker 4: in a store, and that's how I learned that another
Speaker 4: one of Ricky's talons is cookola. She's really good at it.
Speaker 4: So we bought some, brought it back to my place,
Speaker 4: and Ricky tried to teach me how to play it,
Speaker 4: and while she did, we trailed off into remembering many
Speaker 4: other old forms of play.
Speaker 1: Ah nice.
Speaker 4: The cookolar have a nice little heft. They make this
Speaker 4: satisfying clinking sound. They're like mini weighted blankets. The floor
Speaker 4: is the board it's raining outside, it's cozy, and we're
Speaker 4: playing like in the olden days. The objective of the
Speaker 4: game is to throw some cookola and while some are
Speaker 4: in the air, collect others from the floor. Sometimes you
Speaker 4: throw up one, hold one in your palm, grab one
Speaker 4: off the board, all in one swoop. Sometimes you throw
Speaker 4: up one but grab four. Sometimes you throw up four
Speaker 4: and grab one. You might throw, you might hold, you
Speaker 4: might grab various amounts. See, there are phases, and each
Speaker 4: phase contains nine levels with different ways of throwing and
Speaker 4: catching the coo.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 8: Level one, level two, level three, how's the fourth called?
Speaker 8: Within each level there's onesies, two, four, zayad co coogola, exchange, exchanges,
Speaker 8: puts toy.
Speaker 1: Toyot and bridges. Oh, and there's no patches. Is at
Speaker 1: the end of cool God? You catch everything you do.
Speaker 4: Ricky is really a pro player at this game.
Speaker 1: Okay, beautiful, am I fill? You got it? I'm really useless.
Speaker 1: Now what do I do? Pick one? Oh? Try, it's right,
Speaker 1: hold on? How do you do it? You have to
Speaker 1: throw it higher and faster, and you have to be
Speaker 1: like that.
Speaker 4: What I love about this old sensory game is that
Speaker 4: as you play it and sit on the ground, throwing, catching,
Speaker 4: you drift off into a zone. A conversation, a nostalgic
Speaker 4: trip down memory lane of the games we played. I
Speaker 4: never played coogloss really, maybe because they were much more
Speaker 4: popular among the boys than the girls.
Speaker 1: Who did you play with? I played with my neighbors
Speaker 1: and with the girls in the school.
Speaker 9: Actually, my school was a very boyish girls, you know, so.
Speaker 1: I find it interesting, you know.
Speaker 8: For a long time I wanted to do a video
Speaker 8: about coogolok, to document how it's played. Yeah, And I
Speaker 8: was always thinking who to ask, And I didn't think
Speaker 8: that the person i'd ask would have written nail polish,
Speaker 8: pink and egglis.
Speaker 3: It's not red, it's it's it's I was like the
Speaker 3: best in my class, but when I played with the boys,
Speaker 3: the boys were better than me.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the girls were usually much more into ball. One
Speaker 4: of the most popular girls games was bouncing a ball
Speaker 4: and reciting chance.
Speaker 5: Larry Ary.
Speaker 4: It was like this, and yes, we all knew the
Speaker 4: chant one two three h larry, although I thought it
Speaker 4: was hilarry.
Speaker 3: Do you know the chance like a My name is
Speaker 3: Alice and my husband's name is We come from Alaska
Speaker 3: and apple do you know miss Lucy. No, miss Lucy
Speaker 3: had a baby. She named him him. No, no, what
Speaker 3: other chance do you know?
Speaker 1: Once I had a candy shop and business was so bad.
Speaker 3: I asked my mother what to do, and this is
Speaker 3: what she said.
Speaker 10: Take that can of gasolina and put it by that north.
Speaker 1: Take a match it scratch, and.
Speaker 9: No more candy store.
Speaker 1: You can run a little harmony. This song doesn't make sense.
Speaker 1: It's so dark. What is that? Yeah? And we would
Speaker 1: sing it as kids.
Speaker 4: Speaking of dark, we all knew ring around a rosie
Speaker 4: or ring around the roses this oldie. We knew that
Speaker 4: there was some dark history to the song. Ricky decided
Speaker 4: she didn't want to sing it.
Speaker 10: I don't want so many any demons.
Speaker 8: Oh no, okay, we're not gonna Sam and Andy demons.
Speaker 1: We never want to do that. I don't think I
Speaker 1: ever played this. What did you play Rubber? Oh you
Speaker 1: didn't play rubber. I did, but I didn't like. It
Speaker 1: wasn't as fun. Actually it was, Oh my god, we
Speaker 1: should do a rubber video. Yeah.
Speaker 11: One to three, one to three, one to three to three.
Speaker 8: You remember episodes of the Yeah and then you bring
Speaker 8: the rubbers over?
Speaker 7: Oh?
Speaker 1: Yes, Wow, that was hard.
Speaker 4: I'm fascinated by these because I still see these games
Speaker 4: played by acidic girls in the streets. I still see
Speaker 4: so many of these oldies around. So many young people
Speaker 4: in Western socidy today know nothing about them. But once
Speaker 4: upon a time, children everywhere knew them.
Speaker 10: In the del Hi hold the day the farmer in
Speaker 10: the Dells, the farmer.
Speaker 6: Takes the white.
Speaker 1: Do you know?
Speaker 10: The farmer and the dell farmer and the bell, The
Speaker 10: farmer and the dell high Onnitaria, the farmer and the bell,
Speaker 10: the farmer and the farmer makes a right, picks a wife.
Speaker 1: Oh, the farmer picks a wife. I remember that one.
Speaker 11: No cheese, the cheese stays alone.
Speaker 1: Is that the cheese stays alone? Yeah, that's a little. Yeah.
Speaker 8: Nobody wanted to be the cheese, even though cheese is great,
Speaker 8: because everyone got picked for the wife and then the cow.
Speaker 1: And these games.
Speaker 9: Are so messed up they make no sense.
Speaker 1: Do you know kind of Silissa?
Speaker 9: Who?
Speaker 4: I asked her if she knows Yiddish version of Little
Speaker 4: Sally Walker. It involves a kid in the center of
Speaker 4: a circle, pretending to cry and picking someone out.
Speaker 6: In a weekend shut down.
Speaker 1: Klinas the lesso so.
Speaker 9: And that sounds like tip pizza Pizzoco episodes like you
Speaker 9: know that the kids you play the game with the
Speaker 9: kids you do this, Oh do you know x MAXI
Speaker 9: no xe.
Speaker 1: It goes like this. You turn around and everyone will
Speaker 1: be a line.
Speaker 8: Xy maxi dot dot dot, a line, a line, a
Speaker 8: circle around a line, a bump.
Speaker 1: Getting a free massage. Then you blow, but I'm not
Speaker 1: going to blow into your back. These games are so funny.
Speaker 1: Do you know?
Speaker 4: We reminisced about using the word gay as happy all
Speaker 4: the time.
Speaker 10: Alex went to the barbershop, barbershop, barbershop.
Speaker 1: Alex went to the barber shop on a bright and
Speaker 1: sunny day. He got a haircut that.
Speaker 8: Was sweet and gay, sweet and gay, sweet and gay.
Speaker 3: He got eh haircut that was sweet and gay and
Speaker 3: ran home right away.
Speaker 9: Home or ran home, I don't know right away.
Speaker 11: Why did they?
Speaker 4: By the way, my theory as to y we sheltered
Speaker 4: Yiddish speaking Hasidic kids in the nineteen eighties and nineteen
Speaker 4: nineties two thousand's knew these English songs with all American
Speaker 4: names like Alex and Alice is because when Hassidim originally
Speaker 4: came to America after the Holocaust in the nineteen forties
Speaker 4: and nineteen fifties. For the first ten to twenty years,
Speaker 4: their community was not yet homogeneous, closed off, set up
Speaker 4: this entire ecosystem of insularity. They had not yet developed
Speaker 4: their insular bubble of their own homes and culture, their
Speaker 4: own fortress in Brooklyn, as the Satmareba called it, with
Speaker 4: their own schools and shops and fashions and toys, media
Speaker 4: and culture. They lived among people of different levels of faith.
Speaker 4: South Williamsburg wasn't yet only Hasidic, and so little Hasidic
Speaker 4: children played and mixed with non Acidic neighbors, absorbing the
Speaker 4: American nineteen fifties culture and then slowly closing off and
Speaker 4: bottling it up, becoming as if frozen in time. Some
Speaker 4: of the fashions like pillbox hats or the chans and
Speaker 4: names for food like supper gutter, foxy aspring candy reflect
Speaker 4: the American nineteen fifties. It's an interesting phenomenon that you
Speaker 4: can still to some degree see in the streets people
Speaker 4: calling strollers carriages and look like the fashions of that time.
Speaker 4: But oftentimes the Yiddish speaking Asciitic kids misunderstood what their
Speaker 4: English speaking, neighbors said or censored things.
Speaker 6: Mountains, The lady she is.
Speaker 4: No here, Nellie Groskett and I are singing on the mountain.
Speaker 4: Nellie lived in Williamsburg in the nineteen thirties and wasn't Hassidic.
Speaker 4: I played with our Hasidic grandmothers.
Speaker 6: I loved jumping rope.
Speaker 8: What did you chant when you jumped rope?
Speaker 6: My mother, your mother live across the way two fourteen
Speaker 6: East Broadway. Every night they have a fight, and this
Speaker 6: is what they say, Nellie, Nellie, jump out, stella, stella,
Speaker 6: jump in. I love it the mountains. The lady she
Speaker 6: is no. What she wants is what she wants as
Speaker 6: a nice young man.
Speaker 1: So jump Oh wait, it's what she wants is a
Speaker 1: nice young man.
Speaker 8: Yes, we're saying it as kids, but this part we
Speaker 8: never know that too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it was all she wants is gold and silver.
Speaker 1: All she wants is a punch in the boat. You
Speaker 1: know you didn't say those.
Speaker 6: It was some incomprehention.
Speaker 11: Sounds like a fund and then punch in the boat.
Speaker 4: It's so funny to look back to how we repeated
Speaker 4: things having no idea what we were saying.
Speaker 1: I heard a punch in the boat punch. That's it.
Speaker 1: I think they have a whole list. Huh yeah, I've
Speaker 1: been collecting them. I'm trying to figure out what was no, No,
Speaker 1: what was not known? One potato two, potato three, potato four.
Speaker 9: But it's one tequila two tequila three tequila for.
Speaker 1: Five six more. Really I heard that somewhere. Maybe it's offensive.
Speaker 10: I don't know.
Speaker 11: I don't know what's offensive considered offensive anymore.
Speaker 1: No, it's not offensive. It's not offensive. He's dying, okay.
Speaker 1: Last one, do you know the quilla? I don't think
Speaker 1: we sang that. No, we didn't, do you know? I'm one, two,
Speaker 1: three and a six? But do you know what?
Speaker 9: I know what?
Speaker 11: Alta Baba sua licked in bed Oh mat that.
Speaker 9: But my mother didn't let us sing out of Shine
Speaker 9: magazine and malamaed.
Speaker 1: Licked oh by game tie die is.
Speaker 11: Bitter gam the ticket Isa ticket is ease as fish.
Speaker 11: The fish ish is mass.
Speaker 1: Like please, this is no, that's an idol.
Speaker 11: So as fish, the fishes mass.
Speaker 2: Guy and Gus and Gus guy and Vinkle and Vincola
Speaker 2: lid and to high as baint.
Speaker 1: So silly, that's very funny. It's happening with the culture
Speaker 1: Shaw and thank you so much. I appreciate it, Ricky,
Speaker 1: thank you. It's just fun.
Speaker 8: Yeah, you're amazing, very impressed.
Speaker 1: You're amazing. You have a lot of talent. You have
Speaker 1: a lot of talent.
Speaker 10: Can I know?
Speaker 5: I love that you called me that. No one calls
Speaker 5: me call me lift to I know you go better too. Yeah,
Speaker 5: you know our Hungarian Grandma's.
Speaker 4: And here we are hours later and have not passed onesies.
Speaker 4: I will later pour over the footage to zoom in
Speaker 4: and understand what Ricky was doing better and put it
Speaker 4: all together for a separate video, a titorial of Kogol
Speaker 4: Phase one levels one through nine.
Speaker 1: Nice.
Speaker 4: Wow, nice, because those who can play teach right. And
Speaker 4: isn't that a kind of winning anyway?
Speaker 1: I'm out, but where are you up to? You're still
Speaker 1: up to onesies? Don't rub it in.
Speaker 9: The out.
Speaker 1: Hold on, I'm gonna get its elephant. Remember, no, so.
Speaker 11: The little kids who didn't know how to play, okay,
Speaker 11: we would let them play elephant.
Speaker 1: You make you make them this with your hands. I
Speaker 1: swear to god, you make it sounds so.
Speaker 11: You knew this her and and you have to throw
Speaker 11: it in here you can play elephant.
Speaker 4: It's so great to look back at these games and
Speaker 4: chants and to connect the past to the present in
Speaker 4: a world that's so modern, so fast evolving, so far
Speaker 4: away from the memory and experiences of just a mere
Speaker 4: hundred years ago. Here in these innocent childhood games, the
Speaker 4: connection between the present and the past still feels strong.
Speaker 4: The games that continue to be alive, The great old
Speaker 4: game of five Stones of cook Lich, which I now
Speaker 4: hope some of you know how to play, as I
Speaker 4: do not. The games of bouncing ball, playing in the ground,
Speaker 4: playing with chalk, with bikes, and singing on the mountain.
Speaker 4: The farmer in the dell, Little Sally Walker, Ringeranga, Rosie,
Speaker 4: one Potato, two potato, who stole the cookie from the cookie?
Speaker 4: And jump in rifts you and jump out Friday Nanny,
Speaker 4: And then we all have a little bit of children
Speaker 4: in us forever