SCHMALTZ AND THE PORNOGRAPHY CONNECTION

Schmaltz, that mystifying alchemy of onion-infused rendered chicken fat, is Jewish pornography. It corrupts ones brain and heart. We hide it from our children at the back of the shelf, where only the adult hand may reach. It tempts us, and if we capitulate even a little, it punctuates our otherwise bland existence with a little randy diversion into vaguely illicit pleasure – the fantasy, not the pursuit, of a voluptuous mistress. Those of my coreligionists who eschew schmaltz do it with the credibility of the quasi-prudes who announce that they peruse Playboy “only for the articles.”

My mother used to render a sublime schmaltz, drawing forth globules of fat and the skin thereunto attached from well-bred chickens. This, too, is a sign of the times, as today’s frozen kosher poultry is largely denuded of its finest fat. It leads me to believe that it disappears into a huge, bootleg schmaltz cauldron in the Catskills or is sucked up in the Ronkonkoma triangle.

Rendering schmaltz typically involves the addition of chopped onions that sizzle and seethe with the liquefying fat until their brown-black shards join gnarled skin-cracklings at the bottom of the shimmering virginal pool. This lowly residue is so highly prized that attains the status of “gribenes,” Church Slavonic for “scraps.”

Gribenes may attain their destiny by lovingly fortifying an otherwise mundane blob of mashed potatoes or by adding a dimension of bawdiness to a too-tame bowl of chopped liver. Or, one may recklessly tempt fate by eating the gribenes au naturel, like popcorn. At 13, my 200-pound heft and terminal acne attested to mother-love run amok in the bowl of gribenes that my mom dotingly placed beside me once or twice a week while I watched American Bandstand. And, of course, the wages of sin are still manifest in the two coronary stents and pacemaker that took up residence in my body by the age of 50.

Schmaltz, thus, has omnipotence second only to the Greek male’s application of a therapeutic schpritz of Windex to all of life’s vicissitudes. Fry an egg or some hamburgers in it. Wondrous. Slather it on a piece of matzo, sprinkle some coarse salt and broil for a moment. Nirvana. Schmaltz enriches mashed potatoes, binds chopped liver, and perfectly melds together the elements of an egg salad unlike any that Mrs. Loopner ever concocted for Todd and Lisa.

Indeed, herein lies an immigrant’s tale of acculturation: Mayonnaise was entirely foreign to first-generation Jewish-American homemakers. Moreover, they refused to believe that its creamy texture could be achieved without the addition of some dairy product, thus making it unfit for home-cooked meals, which were usually meat-based. Likewise, Pa and Bubbe could not give away Crisco or margarine to their customers, because it looked so much like . . . feh . . . lard. Thus, for decades schmaltz was pressed into service for all sorts of culinary processes, until Jewish homemakers either stopped being so meticulous in kosher observance or they started believing (“What do men know?”) the orthodox rabbinate’s reassurance that mayo and vegetable shortening were indeed fit for Jewish consumption.

In the lowest circle of Dante’s Inferno there must be a repertoire of stories about the toxic relationship between gentiles and schmaltz. Archetypical among them is surely a cautionary tale that I witnessed late one night while forcing myself to finish a Brobdingnagian hunk of cheese strudel at the legendary Carnegie Deli. Next to me sat a classically Upper West Side couple and their guest, a businessman from Texas.

Allowing him no choice, they ordered a platter of chopped liver “just for the experience.” Then they requested from the waiter a pot of schmaltz from the back room “to complete the effect.” They heaped spoonfuls of the viscous schmaltz onto the already greasy-shimmery chopped liver, handed a piece of rye bread to Tex and insisted he dig in. They snickered furtively at the unsuspecting rube. But he loved it. And I betcha he loved it again and again and again all night long until he hated it. And if he slept at all, I guarantee that he arose with a Jewish intestinal hangover that only a Bromo could fix. And I betcha that he hightailed his way back to Big D fully aware for the first time that the most dangerous part of the steer is not its long horns.

Everything in moderation, I parrot the cliché. And, in fact, it has been years since I have been so brazen as to render a pot of schmaltz, or enrich my chopped liver with it, or baste my Thanksgiving turkey in it (Try dry sake instead), or nosh on gribenes a-nekkid. But, I still yearn for it, crave it as one craves the love of his youth and the delicious temptations that tried his innocence. I dare not, I say to myself. I cannot. I ought not. And, God give me the strength, I will not.

Capitulation, though, is an ever-present urge. That day may come. When it does and you read my obituary, do not believe what it says about succumbing to aortic stenosis or cerebral embolism. You will know the truth: Schmaltz was my lethal paramour. Thus, you may be certain that just as my pacemaker shorted out and my stents collapsed, I toasted my Jewish heritage, went gently and well greased into that dark night, and died one happy, corpulent guy. Inscribe this on my tombstone: He liked his mayo, but gave his life for his schmaltz.


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