MY HUMBLE ORIGIN: NOM DE DOODLE, CIRCA 1968 (2/27/04)

Just like my doppelganger Bart Simpson, I write it on the chalkboard a hundred times each day: “I must get into therapy and deal with my narcissism.” Not yet, I guess. Why should I think that the origin of “Rabbi Ribeye” would matter to anyone? Nonetheless, here goes:

The genesis of “Rabbi Ribeye” is not in its alliterative quality. Nor was it intended to be a nom de plume. It is the product of 36-year-old doodling during another sonorous, narcolepsy-inducing Talmud class during my yeshiva years. The late Rabbi Aaron Soloveichik would lecture us for two to three hours every other day on some arcane point of Jewish law. He was an absolute genius, certainly the magnitude of an Einstein; of this I have no doubt. Like most luminaries, though, his mind worked immeasurably faster than his gift of speech. Consequently, the geniuses in the class gained profound enlightenment, while the rest of us doodled. Had it not been for the exhaustive notes of Shael Siegel, I would today probably be an employable cable guy rather than an unemployed rabbi who fritters away his time cooking and trying to write the great American essay.

As I look back over yellowing notebooks that I have purposelessly archived, I remind myself that some of my doodling is actually a collection of anti-war shibboleths (“Dump the Hump!” – a reference to pro-war candidate Hubert Humphrey) and vain stabs at profundity. I again see that I had boldly inscribed across the top of one page, “God Is the Ultimate Ba’al Shtick (Prankster)!” In later years, I more fully developed this aphorism into a theology that I call “The God of Booga-Booga.” This is the notion that God occasionally manifests Him/Herself as neither merciful nor just, but as a practical joker who pulls some kind of shtick on us when we forget that S/He’s watching, and then winks down from heaven and thunders, “Booga-Booga!”

Examples? Take this classic about the rabbi who travels a hundred miles from the closest Jewish community to quell his lust for suckling pig. He is seated at the restaurant, knife and fork at their ready. With great aplomb, the waiter presents the golden-brown corpus delicti on a silver platter. Just then, a congregant walks through the door, and exclaims, “Rabbi, what are you doing here?” The rabbi, with atypical presence of mind, sputters his response: “What a novel way to serve an apple!”

Booga-Booga!

Or, what about the rabbi, with paramour in tow, who approaches the desk of an out-of-the-way motel for some afternoon delight, only to find that one of his bar mitzvah boys of five years earlier is manning the check-in counter?

Oh, that wacky God, He’s such a Ba’al Shtick! Booga-Booga!

So much for my stab at funky theology. If we have a chance some time, though, let me tell you about another attempt at homespun mysticism that I call “God Is Not an Asshole.”

But, what about “Rabbi Ribeye”? Be patient, I’m getting there.

Call it prescience, but even in my most formative years, my doodling had already led me to subjects gastronomical. It started out innocently enough – puns of culinary personification, people who in my imagination took on the names of favorite foods: Terry Aqui. V.L. Piccata. Cheri Coque. Biff Steaque. Coco Vann. Chuck N. Soope. G. Phil Tofische. Matt Sobel. Paw Tate O’Kugelle. Chuck and Ella King. Tom A. Topaste. Sam N. Salade. Cary Waysead.

Every class a new pun, a new name or two, a new challenge, a new doodle, a new diversion. But, across from me sat Jay Hirshman. Jay was a diligent student with a terrific work ethic, which struck me as particularly admirable since he was one of only a few classmates who came from real wealth. When my folks moved to the Coast, I spent many weekend as a guest of Jay and his family.

Jay’s mother had died a couple of years earlier, and their home was ruled by a wonderful live-in housekeeper of the old school. She always had a whiskey sour waiting for Jay’s dad just as he walked through the door. I saw this as the quintessence of inestimable luxury. And predictably, Friday evening dinner revolved around rare, succulent . . . ribeye. This, too, was quintessential luxury, at least relative to the meatloaf or “roasted out” (that’s what my mother called it) chicken that graced the Wilson’s Sabbath table.

As I watched Jay that particular day hunched over his Talmudic tome, my idling memory flashed up “ribeye.” A nanosecond later, my mind refocused on those rare occasions that my mother served steak, and how my erudite dad always requested liver. Thinking of the long anticipated encounter of Stanley and Livingstone, I mindlessly doodled in my notebook, “Rabbi Ribeye, meat Dr. Liver!”

So now you know the origin of my 36-year-old culinary nom de plume. I had actually suggested to the editors the pseudonym, “Cardiac A’fressed,” but they demurred on the grounds that nothing on eGullet should infer that food could be unhealthy.

It’s just as well, though. You see, in 1972, the same Jay who introduced me to luxurious ribeye went off to Israel to join the army. A training injury forced him to watch helplessly as most of his platoon was wiped out in the Yom Kippur War. He was never the same. A few years later, he was murdered in a holdup.

Truth be told, Jay always seemed singularly unimpressed by silliness. Be that as it may, I believe that every time “Rabbi Ribeye” brings a smile to someone’s face, it becomes an ounce of recompense for all the smiles that Jay could yet have smiled, had he only been given the chance. And as for me, despite the good humor with which the name is spoken, the edges of sweetness will forever be furrowed by an unavoidable twinge of melancholy over 36-year-old reminiscences of what was and what might have been.