DON'T LECTURE ME ABOUT COCKTAIL PARTIES!

So there I sit, captive in my car, navigating the construction on 385, when this mellifluous nitwit comes on "All Things Considered" preaching about contemporary cocktail rituals. He pronounces the age of sushi and sashimi dead and extols the return to "authentic, traditional cocktail fare": finger sandwiches and canapes.

Literally and figuratively . . . baloney!

I hate to pull rank, but don't ever lecture a Member of Our Tribe about "authentic, traditional" hors d'oeuvres. I come from the chosen people who invented the cocktail hour while the Mayflower crowd was still chowing down on kidneys and haggis.

We Jews invented the cocktail hour. All right, all right, so we didn't call it "cocktail hour." It didn't precede the annual debutante ball in Kishinev or the opening of opera season in Bialystok. Nevertheless, come with me to a traditional chasseneh (wedding), Bar Mitzvah, or better yet, a bris - yes, a circumcision, Dr. Freud - and I will show you cocktail goodies that will forever confirm the suspicion that the best of your goyishe finger sandwiches are Spam-putty on surgical cotton.

Hors d'oeuvres, meaning, "set apart from the main work," best describes Jewish cocktail eats: The magnitude of the ensuing meal is irrelevant. Bring on another platter of knishes. Presbyterians may speak of "finger sandwiches" and "munchies." The undernourished English language lamentably has no equivalent for "up-to-the-elbows sandwich" and "bloaties."

Alas, outsiders do not commonly know Jewish cuisine for its extensive palette of cocktail foods. We hide the best for ourselves. Indulge me, as I now wax rhapsodic over my three favorites:

THE KNISH - The knish is sodden dough enveloping leaden filling. The egotistical knish never lets you forget its presence. It leaves its calling card, an indelible grease stain, wherever it momentarily rests its oily head. The filling may be oniony beef, oniony potato or oniony buckwheat. Its closest Episcopalian cousin is the potato puff. The knish is the potato thud.

CHOPPED LIVER - I caught grief when I recently made sport of folks who bind their chopped liver with mayo. Go ahead, if you must. We won't. Ever. Never. It's just too close to Miracle Whip. For the same aggregate of arterial goo, why not commune with authentic Jewish nirvana?

Nap your chopped liver in schmaltz, onion-flecked chicken fat, liquid heartburn. Grind in some gribenes, crispy shards of greasy chicken skin. When no one is looking, eat some straight from the bowl. Sam Levenson called it "Jewish Popcorn." Gribenes are solely responsible for my 200-pound girth and terminal acne at the tender age of 13. Do not mention chopped liver in the same paragraph as . . .

. . . pâté. Pâté contains hostile adulterants like cognac and mace. If you were a calf or chicken, would you want your liver's final repose to be cognac and mace, or real-people stuff like schmaltz and gribenes? I rest my case.

HERRING - When the final chapter of history is written, scholars will prove that Jewish explorers introduced herring to the Swedes. As a rotund pre-teen, I loved herring: au naturel ("schmaltz"), pickled, chopped, fried, baked. My dad would kid about chocolate-dipped.

The family herring ritual would start at 6:15 with an insistent rap on our back door. My grandfather, a retired grocer, would trek to Municipal Market before dawn and bestow my mother with a "surprise" gift of a tub of herring. At age four, I was delighted by such affection. I could never understand my mother's rancor. So what if the herring had to be prepared NOW or start to stink like, well, old fish? So what if it meant canceling a day's worth of her plans? So what if the world had to mark time in deference to herring?

That evening, the air still pungent with the volatile fumes of pickling brine, the Wilson's celebrated herring-fest. Guests were never invited. We still had our dignity, however tarnished by a day spent knee deep in fins and scales. True, some of my co-religionists consider herring beneath their dignity. Then again, some of my coreligionists consider the Jackie Mason tasteful. Yet, show me a bris without herring, and I'll show you a Son of Israel destined for the analyst's couch.

What of the cocktails at an "authentic, traditional" Jewish cocktail hour? Entirely secondary. Nearly irrelevant. Just bring on the chopped liver. Wine means thick, syrupy, grapy goo in which a knife could stand perpendicularly until it decomposes. All liquor -- scotch, bourbon, Canadian -- is interchangeable, generically known as "schnapps" and drunk straight from a shot-glass. It wasn't until I spent some time amidst proper company that I learned that the Upper Middle Class uses a shot-glass for measuring, not drinking. So much for Jews and hoity-toity cocktails.

But, as far as eats are concerned, don't ever prate at me about "authentic, traditional" cocktail fare. I'll match you knish for canapé any time. And, when you've come to see the error in your ways, talk to me for a moment about your tomato aspic and calamari. Feh. C'monna my house. I'll show you better.