Over the Labor Day weekend, music lovers worldwide mourned the death of singer-songwriter Jimmy Buffett. The 76-year-old artist turned “Margaritaville,” his first big hit, into a marketing and lifestyle empire with a chain of cafes and resorts. Two years ago, one of Buffett’s songs was covered in Yiddish by Journalist-playwright-Yiddishist Rohkl Kafrissen.

Buffett’s songs sometimes referenced his Catholic upbringing, usually in a wry context. In his 1983 ode to aging Baby Boomers, “We Are the People Our Parents Warned Us About,” Buffett sung:

I was supposed to have been a Jesuit priest
Or a Naval Academy grad
That was the way that my parents perceived me
Those were the plans that they had
But I couldn’t fit the part too dumb or too smart
Ain’t it funny how we all turned out
I guess we are the people
Our parents warned us about

Two Buffett songs specifically addressed Judaism. The 1994 song “Fruitcakes,” his observation about eccentric people, includes the passage:

Television preachers with bad hair and dimples
The g-d’s honest truth is it’s not that simple
It’s the Buddhist in you, it’s the Pagan in me
It’s the Muslim in him, she’s Catholic ain’t she?
It’s the born again look its the WASP and the Jew
Tell me what’s goin’ on, I ain’t got a clue

And the 1986 song “You’ll Never Work in Dis Bidness Again,” about the duplicitousness of Hollywood, has this middle stanza:

I parked cars at the Rainbow
I sold maps of the stars
I got my nose broke in Spago’s
When I puked on the bar
And all I played’s a double bar mitzvah
(chorus) Bubba played a double bar mitzvah