Every time we reached the words, “Ain’t gonna work on Saturday,” and Goomber would turn to the audience and shout, “WHY?!” and the entire audience would shout back, “It’s Shabbos Kodesh!” we knew we hit the mark.
We gave Big Gedaliah Goomber a few more Erev Shabbos sagas, but he always made it to the finish line before shkiyah
When I think about all the fun times we had doing children’s concerts over the years, the most memorable character to grace our stage was surely Big Gedaliah Goomber. The iconic song “Big Gedaliah Goomber” was composed by Yosaif Silverman a”h in Toronto back in 1962, but wasn’t released until 1969, on a record he called Big Gedaliah Goomber and Other Songs. Ten years later, we had the pleasure of featuring Yosaif’s beloved character on our first Uncle Moishy album. We found that the character who declared, “Ain’t gonna work on Saturday,” was still a magnet for children (and for children who had in the interim become adults).
As soon as we began doing Uncle Moishy concerts, the song took on a life of its own and suddenly became a major part of every concert we did. We would act out each stanza, describing all of Gedaliah Goomber’s peculiar Erev Shabbos episodes. This would always be the song that followed intermission, and when the curtain went up, the audience would see a huge barbell sitting center stage. To much cheering from the kids in the audience, the performers would come on stage and take turns attempting to lift this “very heavy”’ barbell, to no avail. When all the characters finally gave up, Zale Newman would address the audience and plead, “Is there anybody out there who can help us lift this off the stage?” And suddenly, the music would begin, and Gedaliah Goomber would come onto stage, wearing his trademark “Think Big” T-shirt, walk over to the barbell, and casually lift it with one finger. The audience cracked up, even though they already knew full well that the barbell was actually just a piece of plastic.
When we recorded Uncle Moishy Volume 2, we decided to write two brand new verses to the Gedaliah saga: One was Gedaliah Goomber as a fire chief, a.k.a. Chief Goomber, and the other was Gedaliah as a baseball player on a team called Shomer Shabbos, where we had Goomber standing ready and then hitting the ball, while the umpire would shout, “foul ball,” and Goomber would argue, “but I hit that ball to Mexico!” to which the umpire would reply, “Mexico is foul!”
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