Oh dear me...
I am not Jewish, but I worked closely with a major Jewish charitable organisation for ten years, and spent many nights sitting up over a glass or three with their Rabbi and other officers putting the world to rights. Funny thing is, they had a great store of humour about Jewish stereotypes, and they weren't being defensive - they loved their heritage as much if not more than the next man, were of the generation of holocaust survivors and capable of being very serious indeed, but a number of them also came from the same roots as David Kossoff, Marty Feldman, Wolf Mankowitz and Unity Theatre, and they were some very politically aware people.

If we have a fault here on the Mudcat (perish the thought), it seems to be the urge to deconstruct everything to a minute degree. Sometimes it's useful, informative and occasionally uplifting; others, with the greatest respect, it's something of a pain in the arse. Context is a hugely important concept - all sorts of things get lost forever if we don't take account of it, and I suspect this may apply to the performance of songs, including the awful, mawkish "A Mon Like Thee". Perhaps we should just accept that some part of the function of a folk club is to act as a rather dowdy and beery sort of museum.

Oddly enough, the only time I ever heard my friends use the words "Oy vay", other than in exasperation, was in the context of a joke taking the p*** out of a Jewish stereotype. That said, there will probably always be instances of bigotry out there, and people who will set out to be offensive. I just hope that this isn't one such example, rather that it may be a roomful of people somewhat ignorantly shooting themselves in the foot.