CALLING ALL FAT GUYS WITH WHITE BEARDS! (12/27/03)
May I have the final say on the local controversy about having to pay for pictures of little Anjou and Bartlett sitting on Santa’s lap?
When you go to the mall, you should expect commercialism, just like when you go to the mafia, you should expect loan sharking. Oh, sure, a Toys for Tots barrel here and a bell-ringer with kettle there. But the mall is otherwise driven by filthy lucre, plain and simple, even when it comes to taking a picture with Santa, so get over it.
That being said, I still believe that regardless of where you get little Pete or Moss’s Santa-picture taken, you should pay for it. And you should pay for it in the truest holiday spirit.
This I propose as the only win-win solution to the Santa-picture dilemma:
The Upstate is blessed with lots of fat guys with white beards. I am a perfect example. I bet you that the vast majority of us are benevolent folks who would love dressing up as Santa. I bet you that we would love to have kiddies sit on our laps while parents snapped pictures to their hearts’ content, especially if it were for a good cause. We could suggest a minimum contribution of a buck or whatever per child, but no coercion or shakedown. The proceeds could go to worthy causes like eradicating homelessness and childhood diseases.
As a counterpoint to corpulent, out-of-breath Santas, we could get skinny (“well toned”) women from the Life Center to play Santa’s Helpers and reindeer. And each child would receive a sugar-free candy cane, so there would be no ranting from the dentists and the Juvenile Diabetes Association.
“But where?” you ask. As far as I am concerned, I can set my Santa-throne up on my driveway, and you can come right up with your kids and cameras. But, if the Grinch from the County or City shows up complaining about a zoning infraction, we might be able to do it at County Square or City Hall Plaza, or in front of the statue of Shoeless Joe, or send a couple of souvenir pictures back from Plaza Bergamo to show them how kindly a town we are. Or, maybe a couple of nice business folks would let us use their parking lots or stores. Or maybe some of the churches/synagogues/masjids/ashrams. Hard to believe that location would be an issue. And we could accomplish it around town in a couple of weekends in November-December.
If you start planning ahead, renting a pricey Santa costume should be a non-issue. After three years of my playing Santa for homeless kids in Anderson, a thoughtful friend took advantage of an after-Christmas sale at Target and bought me my very own Santa outfit for twenty bucks.
Clean-shaven right now? You have over eleven months to cultivate those whiskers, or OK, you can even fake it with the beard that comes with the costume. Not sufficiently pudgy? No prob. The Colonel awaits, despite all the Madison Avenue hype about how healthy KFC is for you. And for the handful of us of the kosher persuasion, there is always chopped liver, oozing schmaltz (rendered chicken fat), and let the cardiologist be damned. It’s all for a good cause.
We will not, won’t we, feel sorry for the malls. Not so long as Game Boy, Play Station, Barbie and Hokey Pokey Elmo still captivate the childish imagination and the adult pocketbook.
Hey, folks, this is not all in fun. If you think I am kidding, try me. I am serious. I may not be a Christian, but I believe as much as anyone in the holiday spirit. Money has its place in the scheme of how the spirit is actualized, and so do those wonderful memory-photos of little Persimmon and Loquat on Santa’s lap. We can merge both of those to do tremendous good for we who are blessed and for those who need our blessing. And meanwhile, we can decide for ourselves where commercialism ends and where the true radiance of the holiday season begins.
So, all you fat guys with white beards and all the rest of Santa’s little helpers, belly up to the throne. Send me an email or give me a call. I have yet to figure out the first bit of the logistics, but I do know that we may have chanced on a great way to convert greed into an answer to need.
December 29, 2003
December 21, 2003
JOE, MY YARMULKE AND ME
With the South Carolina primaries just a few weeks away, Joe and Hadassah Lieberman have been campaigning extensively in my hometown of Greenville. Joe might actually do quite well here. Fundamentalism still holds sway and its bipolarity toward Jews has us vacillating between The Damned and The Chosen People.
I have attended a couple of Lieberman events. They have been small affairs, largely attended by African Americans and liberal white folks, and not too many Jews. The get-togethers were the anticipated press-the-flesh-parrot-a-stump-speech-and-get-outa-Dodge stuff, consummated over onion dip. As a local minor-league curmudgeon, my attendance gained passing mention in the morning newspaper and even a brief, albeit unaired, interview with CNN.
An officious busybody, quick with her camera, however, demanded a photo op for the local weekly, with Joe and me – orthodox Jewish candidate and yarmulke-adorned rabbi – smiling broadly at each other, arm in arm. Instinctively, I chafed, and despite her insistence, I refused, because of the visual statement it would make. Intuition told me that Joe felt the same and was grateful that I bore the brunt of her ire. The uncomfortable encounter took less than 15 seconds but it spoke volumes about lingering suspicions of Jewish marginalization even as Jews seem to have taken up residence in the American political mainstream.
Forty years ago, my parents, otherwise proud Jews, taught me to feel self-conscious about wearing my yarmulke in public. Charles Silberman wrote that in his family, the code word for such behavior was “not nice.” Thirty-three years ago, I was bodily ejected by US Marshals from the infamous Chicago Seven trial because I refused to remove my yarmulke in the courtroom. As I was dragged away, Abbie Hoffman shouted at coreligionist Judge Julius Hoffman, “It’s a shondeh far die goyim (disgrace for the gentiles)! They’re taking a yeshiva bochur (student) away!”
Twenty-five years ago, I witnessed a young man wearing a yarmulke delivering Harvard’s valedictory address (in the traditional Latin). A short time later, I sermonized (in English), yarmulke on head, from the pulpit of Atlanta’s august St. Philip’s Cathedral. Not long ago, Donald Trump supposedly walked into one of his accounting departments and complained, “I don’t see enough yarmulkes in here!” Now, with The Donald’s approval, I feel no self-consciousness whatsoever.
Joe has no obligation to act any more overtly Jewish than he already does. He has already taken the posture of observant Judaism well beyond where even we who believe in the limitless opportunities of America would have dreamed possible. Joe need not wear a yarmulke – literally and figuratively – to establish his Jewish credentials. He has done enough. More might even be “not nice.”
The question for Joe and his supporters is whether he should be seen surrounded by yarmulkes, that is, too closely associated with Jewish leaders, people and causes. Would we ask the same of Kerry, Dean or Bush? Certainly not. Their credibility would rise on the premise, not fall. For Joe, the question at best gives birth to ambivalence.
Pundits and politicos have not openly suspected Joe of “dual loyalty,” the way they did of JFK and the Vatican. Perhaps today’s campaign slime has not gotten so grimy as we had thought. Then again, we really do not know what xenophobia is murmured among confidants or contemplated behind the polling-booth curtain. The best we can say is that despite our sense of welcome to the political mainstream, many Jews are concerned – consciously or unconsciously – that a critical mass of gentiles is still suspicious that a Jewish plot is poised to dominate the American agenda.
The more that Joe is visibly associated with fellow Jews and Jewish leadership, the more the image of conspiracy looms ominous and obscures his essential message. I could not help but pick it up from between the lines of how he and Hadassah campaigned in this arcane little corner of Americana. Sadly, I felt precisely the same.
So, do not call me paranoid, but do call me ambivalent, and certainly do consider indicting me for unjustified self-importance. I like Joe, and I support him. But, I do not think that his campaign benefits from media ops of yarmulke-adorned rabbis fawning over him. He already has enough stigmata to overcome, whether folks talk about them above a whisper or not.
Joe’s presidential bid is compelling evidence that even observant Jews have arrived at the American political mainstream. Arrived, yes. But, we will only really start feeling at home when who-is-seen-wearing-a-yarmulke-next-to-whom loses its inference of a national Jewish cabal.
With the South Carolina primaries just a few weeks away, Joe and Hadassah Lieberman have been campaigning extensively in my hometown of Greenville. Joe might actually do quite well here. Fundamentalism still holds sway and its bipolarity toward Jews has us vacillating between The Damned and The Chosen People.
I have attended a couple of Lieberman events. They have been small affairs, largely attended by African Americans and liberal white folks, and not too many Jews. The get-togethers were the anticipated press-the-flesh-parrot-a-stump-speech-and-get-outa-Dodge stuff, consummated over onion dip. As a local minor-league curmudgeon, my attendance gained passing mention in the morning newspaper and even a brief, albeit unaired, interview with CNN.
An officious busybody, quick with her camera, however, demanded a photo op for the local weekly, with Joe and me – orthodox Jewish candidate and yarmulke-adorned rabbi – smiling broadly at each other, arm in arm. Instinctively, I chafed, and despite her insistence, I refused, because of the visual statement it would make. Intuition told me that Joe felt the same and was grateful that I bore the brunt of her ire. The uncomfortable encounter took less than 15 seconds but it spoke volumes about lingering suspicions of Jewish marginalization even as Jews seem to have taken up residence in the American political mainstream.
Forty years ago, my parents, otherwise proud Jews, taught me to feel self-conscious about wearing my yarmulke in public. Charles Silberman wrote that in his family, the code word for such behavior was “not nice.” Thirty-three years ago, I was bodily ejected by US Marshals from the infamous Chicago Seven trial because I refused to remove my yarmulke in the courtroom. As I was dragged away, Abbie Hoffman shouted at coreligionist Judge Julius Hoffman, “It’s a shondeh far die goyim (disgrace for the gentiles)! They’re taking a yeshiva bochur (student) away!”
Twenty-five years ago, I witnessed a young man wearing a yarmulke delivering Harvard’s valedictory address (in the traditional Latin). A short time later, I sermonized (in English), yarmulke on head, from the pulpit of Atlanta’s august St. Philip’s Cathedral. Not long ago, Donald Trump supposedly walked into one of his accounting departments and complained, “I don’t see enough yarmulkes in here!” Now, with The Donald’s approval, I feel no self-consciousness whatsoever.
Joe has no obligation to act any more overtly Jewish than he already does. He has already taken the posture of observant Judaism well beyond where even we who believe in the limitless opportunities of America would have dreamed possible. Joe need not wear a yarmulke – literally and figuratively – to establish his Jewish credentials. He has done enough. More might even be “not nice.”
The question for Joe and his supporters is whether he should be seen surrounded by yarmulkes, that is, too closely associated with Jewish leaders, people and causes. Would we ask the same of Kerry, Dean or Bush? Certainly not. Their credibility would rise on the premise, not fall. For Joe, the question at best gives birth to ambivalence.
Pundits and politicos have not openly suspected Joe of “dual loyalty,” the way they did of JFK and the Vatican. Perhaps today’s campaign slime has not gotten so grimy as we had thought. Then again, we really do not know what xenophobia is murmured among confidants or contemplated behind the polling-booth curtain. The best we can say is that despite our sense of welcome to the political mainstream, many Jews are concerned – consciously or unconsciously – that a critical mass of gentiles is still suspicious that a Jewish plot is poised to dominate the American agenda.
The more that Joe is visibly associated with fellow Jews and Jewish leadership, the more the image of conspiracy looms ominous and obscures his essential message. I could not help but pick it up from between the lines of how he and Hadassah campaigned in this arcane little corner of Americana. Sadly, I felt precisely the same.
So, do not call me paranoid, but do call me ambivalent, and certainly do consider indicting me for unjustified self-importance. I like Joe, and I support him. But, I do not think that his campaign benefits from media ops of yarmulke-adorned rabbis fawning over him. He already has enough stigmata to overcome, whether folks talk about them above a whisper or not.
Joe’s presidential bid is compelling evidence that even observant Jews have arrived at the American political mainstream. Arrived, yes. But, we will only really start feeling at home when who-is-seen-wearing-a-yarmulke-next-to-whom loses its inference of a national Jewish cabal.
December 07, 2003
MONOGAMY AS THE CRITERION FOR CIVIL MARRIAGE (12/7/03)
The moment that various judiciaries struck down anti-sodomy laws and sanctioned same-sex marriage, the talking heads started bombarding us with alarmist prattle about opening the door to legalized polygamy, incest, pedophilia and the rest of the litany of sexual horrors.
“What is the difference between one kind of aberrant behavior and another?” they ask. Before cooler heads can offer a cogent difference – as if it would matter – they launch into the absurd reductio ad absurdum argument that legitimizing one form of “aberrant” behavior would set a legal precedent for sanctioning all other sexual aberrations.
The State typically sinks into a conundrum whenever it tries to legislate private morality. Regulation of private morality has best been left the province of religion, and even then, it can leave messy paradoxes. Traditional Judaism, for example, does not allow marriage between a divorcee and a descendent of Aaron the High Priest. Yet, rabbis will routinely remove the obstacle by granting the equivalent of an annulment to the divorcee. Likewise, the Catholic Church frequently sanctions annulment in the case of remarriage, to the point that it is no longer the exception so much as it is the de facto rule. And, what of some Fundamentalist denominations that will not sanctify the marriage of a couple that has cohabited, but will grant “retroactive virginity” to people who pledge renewed chastity?
The State, however, does have every responsibility to regulate aberrant behavior to protect the public interest. Sexual relations with a non-consenting adult or a minor defy the public interest, as does any act of aggression. Incest, likewise, is typically forcible behavior, and even when it is not, it invariably does irreparable intrapsychic damage and subverts the generational integrity of the family. To people of religious commitment, these are sins, but to the State they are issues of defending personal and familial propriety.
Is homosexuality aberrant behavior? Let that determination, too, be the province of religion and religious pluralism. The State’s interest must focus not on the issue of sexual perversity but on protecting, even advancing, the civil institution of monogamy. Monogamy at its best ensures mutual responsibility, fidelity, interdependency, relational stability, lasting commitment. In short, monogamy is about virtues that build abiding, trusting relationships and the values that make for strong communities, nationhood and social order. Infidelity, domestic violence, promiscuousness, abandonment, tear those values asunder.
The State, thus, has every rightful investment in conferring its approval on faithfully monogamous relationships through the civil – not religious – institution of marriage. It likewise has every rightful investment is ending marriage through civil divorce when trust or fidelity is broken.
Religious values may or may not validate homosexual marriages. But, the interest of the State is advanced as much by a monogamously committed homosexual relationship as it is by a similarly committed heterosexual one. The State, hence, should not be in the business of simply tolerating homosexual monogamy. It should place its approval upon it by welcoming faithful homosexual couples to all the benefits – and responsibilities – that marriage confers.
The same, of course, cannot be said of polygamy. Few and far between are the instances that private cohabitation with multiple partners is treated as a criminal offense. Yet, it does not deserve the civic stature of marriage, because it thwarts the virtues that monogamy supports, which ought be the sole point of distinction between a discretionary relationship and a marital bond.
The legitimate forum for arguing the morality of homosexual marriage is the pulpit and seminary. The minister, priest, rabbi or imam must retain the final say over conferring the religious rite of marriage on a homosexual couple. The State, though, must be equally obliged to protect those relationships that promote the commonweal. When all is said and done, a faithfully committed, monogamous homosexual marriage has the capacity to ensure societal integrity on an even footing with a heterosexual one. Let the State define the public interest and stay assiduously away from defining private morality.
The moment that various judiciaries struck down anti-sodomy laws and sanctioned same-sex marriage, the talking heads started bombarding us with alarmist prattle about opening the door to legalized polygamy, incest, pedophilia and the rest of the litany of sexual horrors.
“What is the difference between one kind of aberrant behavior and another?” they ask. Before cooler heads can offer a cogent difference – as if it would matter – they launch into the absurd reductio ad absurdum argument that legitimizing one form of “aberrant” behavior would set a legal precedent for sanctioning all other sexual aberrations.
The State typically sinks into a conundrum whenever it tries to legislate private morality. Regulation of private morality has best been left the province of religion, and even then, it can leave messy paradoxes. Traditional Judaism, for example, does not allow marriage between a divorcee and a descendent of Aaron the High Priest. Yet, rabbis will routinely remove the obstacle by granting the equivalent of an annulment to the divorcee. Likewise, the Catholic Church frequently sanctions annulment in the case of remarriage, to the point that it is no longer the exception so much as it is the de facto rule. And, what of some Fundamentalist denominations that will not sanctify the marriage of a couple that has cohabited, but will grant “retroactive virginity” to people who pledge renewed chastity?
The State, however, does have every responsibility to regulate aberrant behavior to protect the public interest. Sexual relations with a non-consenting adult or a minor defy the public interest, as does any act of aggression. Incest, likewise, is typically forcible behavior, and even when it is not, it invariably does irreparable intrapsychic damage and subverts the generational integrity of the family. To people of religious commitment, these are sins, but to the State they are issues of defending personal and familial propriety.
Is homosexuality aberrant behavior? Let that determination, too, be the province of religion and religious pluralism. The State’s interest must focus not on the issue of sexual perversity but on protecting, even advancing, the civil institution of monogamy. Monogamy at its best ensures mutual responsibility, fidelity, interdependency, relational stability, lasting commitment. In short, monogamy is about virtues that build abiding, trusting relationships and the values that make for strong communities, nationhood and social order. Infidelity, domestic violence, promiscuousness, abandonment, tear those values asunder.
The State, thus, has every rightful investment in conferring its approval on faithfully monogamous relationships through the civil – not religious – institution of marriage. It likewise has every rightful investment is ending marriage through civil divorce when trust or fidelity is broken.
Religious values may or may not validate homosexual marriages. But, the interest of the State is advanced as much by a monogamously committed homosexual relationship as it is by a similarly committed heterosexual one. The State, hence, should not be in the business of simply tolerating homosexual monogamy. It should place its approval upon it by welcoming faithful homosexual couples to all the benefits – and responsibilities – that marriage confers.
The same, of course, cannot be said of polygamy. Few and far between are the instances that private cohabitation with multiple partners is treated as a criminal offense. Yet, it does not deserve the civic stature of marriage, because it thwarts the virtues that monogamy supports, which ought be the sole point of distinction between a discretionary relationship and a marital bond.
The legitimate forum for arguing the morality of homosexual marriage is the pulpit and seminary. The minister, priest, rabbi or imam must retain the final say over conferring the religious rite of marriage on a homosexual couple. The State, though, must be equally obliged to protect those relationships that promote the commonweal. When all is said and done, a faithfully committed, monogamous homosexual marriage has the capacity to ensure societal integrity on an even footing with a heterosexual one. Let the State define the public interest and stay assiduously away from defining private morality.
December 05, 2003
THESE ARE A FEW OF MY LEAST FAVORITE THINGS (10/31/02)
My forever-broadening girth stands in self-conscious testimony to my intemperate lust for cuisine. How I wish I could attribute it to a congenital glandular foul-up or even to some unresolved toilet-training trauma. The truth is that I am crazy about food, period. Cajun. Chinese. Japanese. Vietnamese. Viennese. Mediterranean. Teutonic. Slavonic. Thai. Korean. And do not forget the infamously Southern meat-and-three. Yes, yes, I have thus indulged (twice!) at Greenville’s celebrated Tommy’s Country Ham House . . . but I did not inhale.
Moreover, why should I deny that good, zaftig, Eastern European Jewish cuisine, redolent of mother-love, is closest to my heart? If you wish to invite me for dinner and make a faithful friend for life, just trot out the chopped liver, the golden soup, the shimmering brisket and well-marbled flanken, and the corps of K-rations: kishke, kugel, knishes, kasha, knobbelwurst and knaidlach. A shot of generic schnapps, a sip or two of syrupy Manischewitz, tea from a glass, Tagamet, a cushy chair with matching ottoman, and a moratorium on all meaningful conversation until the coma has had time to abate.
Yes, Virginia, in case you were wondering, there are, amid the passion and the glory, a few Jewish foods so nasty that even I will not touch them. Should you really care about me, you will absolutely eschew the following:
PITSCHA – If ever there were onomatopoeia, pitscha has richly earned its name. Garlic Jell-O. The ooey-gooey remains of boiled calf's foot, enhanced with shreds of meat and copious fresh garlic. Occasionally layered with winking eyes of sliced hardboiled egg. Brown. Granular. Quivery. Creepy. I have spent 14 years in anger management because my doting Aunt Leah would tie me to a kitchen chair and force-feed me pitscha at the tender age of two. You think I am making this up, huh? Serve me pitscha and you may as well be administering a spoonful of Ipecac. Pitscha is also known in our family as "fuss-noga," a German-Russian hybrid name that translates “foot-foot.” And no, a blob of untamed horseradish will not redeem it.
FISSELACH – AKA coq-au-pitscha. Fisselach are the viscous remains of chicken feet that have been boiled to a fare-thee-well to fortify the chicken soup. My earliest childhood recollections involve the sight of my mother and Aunt Minnie, may they rest in peace, hunched over the kitchen sink sucking the last morsels out of a batch of fisselach. Even then, you will note, they were beneath the status of table food. Now that we buy kosher chickens pre-processed and frozen, the Jewish homemaker no longer has ready access to fisselach. My mother lamented their departure the way those two old cronies in the balcony on The Muppets Show bemoaned the demise of the nickel cigar.
RETACH-MIT-SCHMALTZ – Who but the children of Israel would think of making an appetizer of grated black radish bound with rendered chicken fat? Sometimes a bit of sweet carrot is grated in, as if to atone for the noxious vapors of the radish. Spread that on lavash, OK? Retach-mit-schmaltz has no redeeming quality: taste, aroma, texture, concept, heartburn, ech. Once upon a time, I was served retach-mit-schmaltz at the Sabbath table of a Chassidic Rebbe. My faith shaken, I contemplated entering a monastery, only to be snatched from the jaws of celibacy by the Rebbetzin’s peasant-proud potato kugel.
LUNG-UND-LEBBER – My Uncle Joe, may he rest in peace, was the world's most lovable miscreant. Time and again he would stray from the family fold. And time and again he would resurface, his face aglow with a sheepishly irresistible grin. Then my bubbeh would for an evening reel him in with a steaming bowl of lung-und-lebber. It is, I regret to inform you, just what it sounds like – a stew of beef lung and liver. Uncle Joe would bathe in the tureen, but even as a toddler, I instinctively refused even to enter the dining room.
Five decades have passed, and my disposition has not changed. At my bubbeh’s urging, Joe would also devour plates full of another disreputable organ called “miltz.” Pancreas? Tripe? Thymus glands? It was spongy and disgusting, so let a pathologist make a positive identification. I can only imagine that in heaven above my bubbeh is still dishing up lung-und-lebber and miltz to her beloved Yossele. As for me, I would rather be stoking Ming the Merciless’s uranium inferno.
So there. I have now bared my Israelitish soul and palate to you – what turns me on and what turns me off. You did not ask, but just in case a dinner party were in the offing, you ought at least know the difference among the good, the bad and the ugly. And lest I be indicted for this being an exercise in Jewish self-hate, let me remind you that I also cringe at the thought of sea cucumber, squid-ink ravioli, tomato aspic, and sweetbreads. I have never been forced to a showdown between pitscha and livermush, but somehow I think I would still give my Aunt Leah the benefit of the doubt.
So, scuttle the reservations at the Four Seasons. Whisper sweet words of brisket and potato kugel in my ear, and I will show you a fully-clothed orgasm that approaches Vesuvius. C’monna my house and I will – as the Talmud gloats -- serve you a foretaste of the World-to-Come. Paris and Nikki, ya gotta trust me on this one.
My forever-broadening girth stands in self-conscious testimony to my intemperate lust for cuisine. How I wish I could attribute it to a congenital glandular foul-up or even to some unresolved toilet-training trauma. The truth is that I am crazy about food, period. Cajun. Chinese. Japanese. Vietnamese. Viennese. Mediterranean. Teutonic. Slavonic. Thai. Korean. And do not forget the infamously Southern meat-and-three. Yes, yes, I have thus indulged (twice!) at Greenville’s celebrated Tommy’s Country Ham House . . . but I did not inhale.
Moreover, why should I deny that good, zaftig, Eastern European Jewish cuisine, redolent of mother-love, is closest to my heart? If you wish to invite me for dinner and make a faithful friend for life, just trot out the chopped liver, the golden soup, the shimmering brisket and well-marbled flanken, and the corps of K-rations: kishke, kugel, knishes, kasha, knobbelwurst and knaidlach. A shot of generic schnapps, a sip or two of syrupy Manischewitz, tea from a glass, Tagamet, a cushy chair with matching ottoman, and a moratorium on all meaningful conversation until the coma has had time to abate.
Yes, Virginia, in case you were wondering, there are, amid the passion and the glory, a few Jewish foods so nasty that even I will not touch them. Should you really care about me, you will absolutely eschew the following:
PITSCHA – If ever there were onomatopoeia, pitscha has richly earned its name. Garlic Jell-O. The ooey-gooey remains of boiled calf's foot, enhanced with shreds of meat and copious fresh garlic. Occasionally layered with winking eyes of sliced hardboiled egg. Brown. Granular. Quivery. Creepy. I have spent 14 years in anger management because my doting Aunt Leah would tie me to a kitchen chair and force-feed me pitscha at the tender age of two. You think I am making this up, huh? Serve me pitscha and you may as well be administering a spoonful of Ipecac. Pitscha is also known in our family as "fuss-noga," a German-Russian hybrid name that translates “foot-foot.” And no, a blob of untamed horseradish will not redeem it.
FISSELACH – AKA coq-au-pitscha. Fisselach are the viscous remains of chicken feet that have been boiled to a fare-thee-well to fortify the chicken soup. My earliest childhood recollections involve the sight of my mother and Aunt Minnie, may they rest in peace, hunched over the kitchen sink sucking the last morsels out of a batch of fisselach. Even then, you will note, they were beneath the status of table food. Now that we buy kosher chickens pre-processed and frozen, the Jewish homemaker no longer has ready access to fisselach. My mother lamented their departure the way those two old cronies in the balcony on The Muppets Show bemoaned the demise of the nickel cigar.
RETACH-MIT-SCHMALTZ – Who but the children of Israel would think of making an appetizer of grated black radish bound with rendered chicken fat? Sometimes a bit of sweet carrot is grated in, as if to atone for the noxious vapors of the radish. Spread that on lavash, OK? Retach-mit-schmaltz has no redeeming quality: taste, aroma, texture, concept, heartburn, ech. Once upon a time, I was served retach-mit-schmaltz at the Sabbath table of a Chassidic Rebbe. My faith shaken, I contemplated entering a monastery, only to be snatched from the jaws of celibacy by the Rebbetzin’s peasant-proud potato kugel.
LUNG-UND-LEBBER – My Uncle Joe, may he rest in peace, was the world's most lovable miscreant. Time and again he would stray from the family fold. And time and again he would resurface, his face aglow with a sheepishly irresistible grin. Then my bubbeh would for an evening reel him in with a steaming bowl of lung-und-lebber. It is, I regret to inform you, just what it sounds like – a stew of beef lung and liver. Uncle Joe would bathe in the tureen, but even as a toddler, I instinctively refused even to enter the dining room.
Five decades have passed, and my disposition has not changed. At my bubbeh’s urging, Joe would also devour plates full of another disreputable organ called “miltz.” Pancreas? Tripe? Thymus glands? It was spongy and disgusting, so let a pathologist make a positive identification. I can only imagine that in heaven above my bubbeh is still dishing up lung-und-lebber and miltz to her beloved Yossele. As for me, I would rather be stoking Ming the Merciless’s uranium inferno.
So there. I have now bared my Israelitish soul and palate to you – what turns me on and what turns me off. You did not ask, but just in case a dinner party were in the offing, you ought at least know the difference among the good, the bad and the ugly. And lest I be indicted for this being an exercise in Jewish self-hate, let me remind you that I also cringe at the thought of sea cucumber, squid-ink ravioli, tomato aspic, and sweetbreads. I have never been forced to a showdown between pitscha and livermush, but somehow I think I would still give my Aunt Leah the benefit of the doubt.
So, scuttle the reservations at the Four Seasons. Whisper sweet words of brisket and potato kugel in my ear, and I will show you a fully-clothed orgasm that approaches Vesuvius. C’monna my house and I will – as the Talmud gloats -- serve you a foretaste of the World-to-Come. Paris and Nikki, ya gotta trust me on this one.
December 04, 2003
XENOFOODIA (11/23/03)
I'm telling you now: If one day they find me dead from an overdose of rare roast beef, have my mother posthumously arrested for contributory negligence.
Growing up in a kosher home is hardly a life of self-denial. Just check out my girth. Jews have always found ways to partake lavishly of the bounty that the Good Lord permitted them, and let the pork chops be damned. Yet, kosher has its rules and its stringencies, a resounding “No!” to the decadent life of the Whopper, the Surf' ‘n Turf, the Egg McMuffin.
Now try overlaying the demanding minutiae of kosher regulations with a second system of taboos. They are ordained neither by Talmud nor Torah but an otherwise rational mother who suffers the ravages of Xenofoodia, the phobic abhorrence of strange and untried gentile foodstuffs.
"Spoiled" was my mother's code word for the array of foods that induced Xenofoodia. Only later did I discover that "spoiled" was a euphemism for "goyish," a mild pejorative meaning "of the gentile persuasion." "Spoiled" was my mother's resolution of the dilemma of raising a child in an environment free from prejudice, yet inculcating him with a resistance to odd and alluring temptations.
Foods designated as spoiled included any meat not pot roasted to the consistency of wet hemp, any steak not immolated to the texture of vulcanized rubber, fried chicken, fried onion rings, fried anything, cream-filled anything, any gravy thickened with flour, cream-of-anything soup (except when used to bind the omnipresent tuna casserole), any foodstuff prefixed with the appellation "barbecued" or "Southern style." All spoiled.
White bread was spoiled. This was a particularly bitter pill for a tot under the daily influence of Howdy Doody, who was sponsored, as you might remember, by Wonder Bread. The taste of white bread did not cross my vestal lips until I was six, when the doctor recommended -- before the days of fiber and oat bran -- that it would be healthier for my grandmother. Obviously. My grandmother lived to a crotchety 93. Her well-intentioned doctor dropped dead of a heart attack at 48.
Near Terre Haute, Indiana, on a trip to Florida at the tender age of nine, my mother somberly introduced me to the Hash-Brown/Grits Line, prototype for the newly erected Berlin Wall. It is a North-South demarcation more taut and inviolate than Mason-Dixon, determined by the lump of regional starch placed gratuitously next to your eggs at Howard Johnson’s. I remember inquiring about the blob of white stuff that graced by breakfast plate. "Spoiled!" my mother pronounced the verdict, and a choir of angels intoned "Amen!"
At 17, I returned from a year of rare-steak debauchery at college in New York. Naive and arrogant, I propose to "treat" the family to a rib roast dinner I will prepare in honor of my first Sabbath home. Rib roast, naturally, is the quintessence of spoiled. My mother reluctantly indulged this caprice, on the premise that it is best that I be humbled and learn first hand the error in my ways.
My grandmother, though, will have no part of it. At the very moment that the roast should be attaining the zenith of its succulent perfection, she, with atypical impulsiveness, decided to pop a potato kugel (pudding) in the oven, irreparably sabotaging my masterpiece. To make the lesson stick, my mother unceremoniously served the roast still cold and quivery in the middle, at Sabbath dinner. It is greeted by a chorus of "Spoiled" and the ultimate Yiddish taunt of disapproval, "Feh!" My mother deftly sliced a salami-in-waiting that is served with the golden-brown potato kugel, met by accolades of "Ah, better!" By the next day, the roast has been mercifully festooned with vegetables and potted to a fare-thee-well . . . the way God intended it to be. Sic semper tyrannis.
The years quickly pass. My kids have been raised in a kosher home, but with remarkably worldly palates, largely liberated from the ravages of Xenofoodia. I, for my part, have gone on dabble in an odd and curious variety of cuisines: Szechwan, Korean, Cajun, Thai.
As generations came full circle, I occasionally found myself cooking up something exotic for the kids and me at my parents' home. I would always prepare my parents alternative foods, since the ones that the kids and I ate were spoiled. My father, may he rest in peace, would from time to time furtively pick a Southern fried drumstick over a roasted one, but approached it as gingerly as had it been booby-trapped.
My mother, however, remained resolute. Confined to a wheelchair, spirits undimmed, she would hermetically double-seal my teriyaki sauce, my sesame oil, my ginger root, my file powder, in baggies and twist-ties before they were quarantined on a special shelf in her cupboard, a safe distance from the foods we know to be ethnically and theologically pure.
They were, after all, spoiled. She was, after all, a Jewish mother. Ever the defender of the faith. May her memory be for a blessing.
I'm telling you now: If one day they find me dead from an overdose of rare roast beef, have my mother posthumously arrested for contributory negligence.
Growing up in a kosher home is hardly a life of self-denial. Just check out my girth. Jews have always found ways to partake lavishly of the bounty that the Good Lord permitted them, and let the pork chops be damned. Yet, kosher has its rules and its stringencies, a resounding “No!” to the decadent life of the Whopper, the Surf' ‘n Turf, the Egg McMuffin.
Now try overlaying the demanding minutiae of kosher regulations with a second system of taboos. They are ordained neither by Talmud nor Torah but an otherwise rational mother who suffers the ravages of Xenofoodia, the phobic abhorrence of strange and untried gentile foodstuffs.
"Spoiled" was my mother's code word for the array of foods that induced Xenofoodia. Only later did I discover that "spoiled" was a euphemism for "goyish," a mild pejorative meaning "of the gentile persuasion." "Spoiled" was my mother's resolution of the dilemma of raising a child in an environment free from prejudice, yet inculcating him with a resistance to odd and alluring temptations.
Foods designated as spoiled included any meat not pot roasted to the consistency of wet hemp, any steak not immolated to the texture of vulcanized rubber, fried chicken, fried onion rings, fried anything, cream-filled anything, any gravy thickened with flour, cream-of-anything soup (except when used to bind the omnipresent tuna casserole), any foodstuff prefixed with the appellation "barbecued" or "Southern style." All spoiled.
White bread was spoiled. This was a particularly bitter pill for a tot under the daily influence of Howdy Doody, who was sponsored, as you might remember, by Wonder Bread. The taste of white bread did not cross my vestal lips until I was six, when the doctor recommended -- before the days of fiber and oat bran -- that it would be healthier for my grandmother. Obviously. My grandmother lived to a crotchety 93. Her well-intentioned doctor dropped dead of a heart attack at 48.
Near Terre Haute, Indiana, on a trip to Florida at the tender age of nine, my mother somberly introduced me to the Hash-Brown/Grits Line, prototype for the newly erected Berlin Wall. It is a North-South demarcation more taut and inviolate than Mason-Dixon, determined by the lump of regional starch placed gratuitously next to your eggs at Howard Johnson’s. I remember inquiring about the blob of white stuff that graced by breakfast plate. "Spoiled!" my mother pronounced the verdict, and a choir of angels intoned "Amen!"
At 17, I returned from a year of rare-steak debauchery at college in New York. Naive and arrogant, I propose to "treat" the family to a rib roast dinner I will prepare in honor of my first Sabbath home. Rib roast, naturally, is the quintessence of spoiled. My mother reluctantly indulged this caprice, on the premise that it is best that I be humbled and learn first hand the error in my ways.
My grandmother, though, will have no part of it. At the very moment that the roast should be attaining the zenith of its succulent perfection, she, with atypical impulsiveness, decided to pop a potato kugel (pudding) in the oven, irreparably sabotaging my masterpiece. To make the lesson stick, my mother unceremoniously served the roast still cold and quivery in the middle, at Sabbath dinner. It is greeted by a chorus of "Spoiled" and the ultimate Yiddish taunt of disapproval, "Feh!" My mother deftly sliced a salami-in-waiting that is served with the golden-brown potato kugel, met by accolades of "Ah, better!" By the next day, the roast has been mercifully festooned with vegetables and potted to a fare-thee-well . . . the way God intended it to be. Sic semper tyrannis.
The years quickly pass. My kids have been raised in a kosher home, but with remarkably worldly palates, largely liberated from the ravages of Xenofoodia. I, for my part, have gone on dabble in an odd and curious variety of cuisines: Szechwan, Korean, Cajun, Thai.
As generations came full circle, I occasionally found myself cooking up something exotic for the kids and me at my parents' home. I would always prepare my parents alternative foods, since the ones that the kids and I ate were spoiled. My father, may he rest in peace, would from time to time furtively pick a Southern fried drumstick over a roasted one, but approached it as gingerly as had it been booby-trapped.
My mother, however, remained resolute. Confined to a wheelchair, spirits undimmed, she would hermetically double-seal my teriyaki sauce, my sesame oil, my ginger root, my file powder, in baggies and twist-ties before they were quarantined on a special shelf in her cupboard, a safe distance from the foods we know to be ethnically and theologically pure.
They were, after all, spoiled. She was, after all, a Jewish mother. Ever the defender of the faith. May her memory be for a blessing.
December 03, 2003
A TIME OF INNOCENCE, A TIME OF CONFIDENCES (11/11/97)
How can you remember nothing, and yet remember everything?
I was so small when we would celebrate Hanukkah at my Aunt Leah's that I ought not hold claim to memories whatsoever. An only child, an only grandchild, I was raised in a circle bereft of contemporaries, dependent for family ties on a network of great- aunts and uncles and their children, all of whom were at least old enough to be my babysitters.
I was precocious, and spoiled, too. Aunts and uncles would poke each other to pay attention to some new wisdom that would emit from my three-year-old mouth. They would repeat it over again for fear that its profundity might not be properly savored: "Did you hear what Maisheleh said?" It was precisely the way one would expect immigrants to marvel at the mystery of new life, still in disbelief of having found refuge in Columbus’s bounteous land, still shaken by the holocaust that had so utterly devastated their towns, their families, their memories.
Chicago was sufficiently large and our lives sufficiently upscale that by 1953, our families could head their separate ways in relative obliviousness to each other's comings and goings. Few were the occasions that the Levin family still broke bread at a common table as they had done faithfully on Sabbaths and Holy Days while the patriarch and matriarch, my great-grandparents Maishe Yitzchok and Rochel Levinski, were still alive.
So Hanukkah became the annual catalyst for the Levins to reunite around that common table, as much a roll call for them as a homecoming:
Ellis the Gentle Giant bouncing me to dizzying heights on his shoulders. Penny the Nearly Bohemian, whom my father tastefully dubbed “the educated idiot.” Shirley and Martin and David, the idealistic young communists, undaunted, uncompromised, by McCarthy witch hunts and the Rosenbergs' executions.
Uncle Harry, who made and lost ten fortunes as the Bootleg Horseradish Czar of the Old West Side. Tart-tongued Auntie Levin, who fed my unsuspecting greenhorn grandmother pork chops as a crash course in the American lifestyle. Uncle Izzy, the most endearing schlemiel, self-taught electronics wizard, whose unfailing mantra through more bad times than good was, "Everything'll be all right.” And Uncle Abe, the timid musician who spoke little but entertained me ad infinitum with origami birds that he would fold out of dollar bills with the flourish of Mandrake.
But Hanukkah belonged to Aunt Leah, my grandmother's youngest sister, Uncle Izzy's wife, mother of Mary and Dolly and Penny the Nearly Bohemian and Ellis the Giant. Aunt Leah was a plodding woman of innocent wit and demeanor, more loveable than pathetic, less an adult than an overgrown child. The reason for Aunt Leah's state of perpetual childlike whimsy came yet from the Old Country, never spoken above an ominous whisper, divulged to me as part of my rite of passage to adulthood:
Dina, the oldest Levin sister, was married to the crotchety Uncle Louie, the notorious family scrooge and sire to the only Levin offshoots who could afford to buy clothes at Saks. Uncle Louie once got into trouble with the local Polish authorities and was thrown in jail. The youngest of Dina's sisters, Leah – a child of ten, fair of complexion, pigtailed like a peasant girl – was impelled to go to the jail and sneak a ration of food to Louie.
The guards seized her immediately. They tied her blonde pigtails to a horse and dragged her around the jail courtyard. Traumatized and bewildered, she never fully recovered, part of her psyche forever stunted at the age of ten. She occupied her days cooking heaping platters of simple foods in the Old Country manner and sewing delicate wardrobes for her collection of dolls, with whom she would engage in hushed conversation.
I remember little of the 1953 Hanukkah menu at Aunt Leah's. But I do vividly remember her mile-long dining room table overloaded with unfathomable mounds of Old World delicacies, an immigrant paean to America's bounty. I do remember resisting most of those delicacies, as a child typically resists dishes of odd name and curious texture, which did not stop doting aunts from heaping them compellingly on my plate. I do remember stuffing my already rotund form with Aunt Leah's thick, spongy potato latkes, the quintessential Hanukkah treat. And I do remember, my eyes glazed from gluttony, not comprehending my grandmother's grousing on the ride home that her latkes were superior to Leah's, because they were thin and lacy like the ones Bubbeh Rochel made in Suvalk.
I do remember shining faces of great aunts and uncles and babysitter cousins basking in each other's radiance around that abundant table, progeny of Maishe Yitzchok and Rochel Levinski, transcending for one sacred moment the compulsions that summoned each one to his or her own separate destiny. I do remember, with deference to Paul Simon, that it was a time of innocence, a time of confidences, most truly a Festival of Lights. I do remember that I was enveloped by a nurturing embrace of security and all's-wellness, the stuff of which unrequited mid-life yearnings and tears are made.
For all that I do not remember of Hanukkah at the tender age of three, that which truly endures I do remember, and crave, only too longingly. Wistfully I ponder among the tears, "Preserve your memories . . . they're all that's left you," and I cry a good cry for all that has gone and for all that I know shall, must, somehow forever abide.
How can you remember nothing, and yet remember everything?
I was so small when we would celebrate Hanukkah at my Aunt Leah's that I ought not hold claim to memories whatsoever. An only child, an only grandchild, I was raised in a circle bereft of contemporaries, dependent for family ties on a network of great- aunts and uncles and their children, all of whom were at least old enough to be my babysitters.
I was precocious, and spoiled, too. Aunts and uncles would poke each other to pay attention to some new wisdom that would emit from my three-year-old mouth. They would repeat it over again for fear that its profundity might not be properly savored: "Did you hear what Maisheleh said?" It was precisely the way one would expect immigrants to marvel at the mystery of new life, still in disbelief of having found refuge in Columbus’s bounteous land, still shaken by the holocaust that had so utterly devastated their towns, their families, their memories.
Chicago was sufficiently large and our lives sufficiently upscale that by 1953, our families could head their separate ways in relative obliviousness to each other's comings and goings. Few were the occasions that the Levin family still broke bread at a common table as they had done faithfully on Sabbaths and Holy Days while the patriarch and matriarch, my great-grandparents Maishe Yitzchok and Rochel Levinski, were still alive.
So Hanukkah became the annual catalyst for the Levins to reunite around that common table, as much a roll call for them as a homecoming:
Ellis the Gentle Giant bouncing me to dizzying heights on his shoulders. Penny the Nearly Bohemian, whom my father tastefully dubbed “the educated idiot.” Shirley and Martin and David, the idealistic young communists, undaunted, uncompromised, by McCarthy witch hunts and the Rosenbergs' executions.
Uncle Harry, who made and lost ten fortunes as the Bootleg Horseradish Czar of the Old West Side. Tart-tongued Auntie Levin, who fed my unsuspecting greenhorn grandmother pork chops as a crash course in the American lifestyle. Uncle Izzy, the most endearing schlemiel, self-taught electronics wizard, whose unfailing mantra through more bad times than good was, "Everything'll be all right.” And Uncle Abe, the timid musician who spoke little but entertained me ad infinitum with origami birds that he would fold out of dollar bills with the flourish of Mandrake.
But Hanukkah belonged to Aunt Leah, my grandmother's youngest sister, Uncle Izzy's wife, mother of Mary and Dolly and Penny the Nearly Bohemian and Ellis the Giant. Aunt Leah was a plodding woman of innocent wit and demeanor, more loveable than pathetic, less an adult than an overgrown child. The reason for Aunt Leah's state of perpetual childlike whimsy came yet from the Old Country, never spoken above an ominous whisper, divulged to me as part of my rite of passage to adulthood:
Dina, the oldest Levin sister, was married to the crotchety Uncle Louie, the notorious family scrooge and sire to the only Levin offshoots who could afford to buy clothes at Saks. Uncle Louie once got into trouble with the local Polish authorities and was thrown in jail. The youngest of Dina's sisters, Leah – a child of ten, fair of complexion, pigtailed like a peasant girl – was impelled to go to the jail and sneak a ration of food to Louie.
The guards seized her immediately. They tied her blonde pigtails to a horse and dragged her around the jail courtyard. Traumatized and bewildered, she never fully recovered, part of her psyche forever stunted at the age of ten. She occupied her days cooking heaping platters of simple foods in the Old Country manner and sewing delicate wardrobes for her collection of dolls, with whom she would engage in hushed conversation.
I remember little of the 1953 Hanukkah menu at Aunt Leah's. But I do vividly remember her mile-long dining room table overloaded with unfathomable mounds of Old World delicacies, an immigrant paean to America's bounty. I do remember resisting most of those delicacies, as a child typically resists dishes of odd name and curious texture, which did not stop doting aunts from heaping them compellingly on my plate. I do remember stuffing my already rotund form with Aunt Leah's thick, spongy potato latkes, the quintessential Hanukkah treat. And I do remember, my eyes glazed from gluttony, not comprehending my grandmother's grousing on the ride home that her latkes were superior to Leah's, because they were thin and lacy like the ones Bubbeh Rochel made in Suvalk.
I do remember shining faces of great aunts and uncles and babysitter cousins basking in each other's radiance around that abundant table, progeny of Maishe Yitzchok and Rochel Levinski, transcending for one sacred moment the compulsions that summoned each one to his or her own separate destiny. I do remember, with deference to Paul Simon, that it was a time of innocence, a time of confidences, most truly a Festival of Lights. I do remember that I was enveloped by a nurturing embrace of security and all's-wellness, the stuff of which unrequited mid-life yearnings and tears are made.
For all that I do not remember of Hanukkah at the tender age of three, that which truly endures I do remember, and crave, only too longingly. Wistfully I ponder among the tears, "Preserve your memories . . . they're all that's left you," and I cry a good cry for all that has gone and for all that I know shall, must, somehow forever abide.
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