IT’S HARD TO BE A JEW . . . ON SUNDAY

Any time I have the opportunity to escape my highly-gentile hometown of Greenville to visit New York, it is as if I were on a pilgrimage to the Holy Wall in Jerusalem. New York’s plethora of outstanding, or at least passable, kosher restaurants is a special treat for gluttons like me who lives to eat.

But, this time, that wonderful experience of brisket, pastrami, and falafel was overshadowed by attempting to buy a Coke and and a snack on my way back to the airport that Sunday.

Ah, behold the telephone-booth sized joint across the Yeshiva campus. As I enter the place, I realize that it is simply a dump that observes kashrut. Strutting up to the counter, I behold a rack of pizzas festooned with green pepper. But oy, green pepper hurts my stomach.

I assume – wouldn’t you? – that a simple cheese pizza would also be available at a dive across from Yeshiva University, touting itself as Yahkel’s Pizza. No, they inform me, all the cheese pizzas were frozen before Shabbos and would take at least a half-hour to thaw.

Oy.

“OK, then let me have a salad.” The menu says that I have my choice of between “iceberg” lettuce and “mixed greens.” As a gourmand in training, I select the mixed greens. The server brings them to the counter, but then proceeds to chop three heads of iceberg lettuce and adds huge amounts of it into a huge bowl to accompany three or four puny leaves if raddichio and arugula. Without apology, he tells me that the other bags of greens had spoiled because they were “left over from before Shabbos.”

Oy.

“OK. the menu says I get a selection of toppings for my salad. I’ll have the ‘fresh albacore tuna’.” But I see that the tuna bears a dark brown crust, making it look like cat food. “Is that fresh albacore?” I ask. “It was,” he says, “but that was before Shabbos.”

Oy.

“Then give me the black olives.”

“You should know that we mix them with the green ones before Shabbos.”

Oy.

“Then what about the sweet red peppers?” But I already know the answer: You can’t light Shabbos candles until the you’ve mixed the red and green ones together.

Then I ask for falafel . . . but you already know the answer: The grinder broke, so we couldn’t grind the chickpeas, and you know that we couldn’t get it fixed on Shabbos.

Oy vey.

“How about a cup of coffee.”

“You want cream with that?” I nod in the affirmative. “Sorry, all we have is black because we haven’t had a delivery from the dairy since before Shabbos.”

Oy again.

“What about a can of “Coke?”

“I hope that you like regular, because we weren’t here on Shabbos to get a delivery of Diet.”

Noch a mohl oy.

A cup of coffee with real cream at Starbucks in the airport would have to suffice until I got back home. Now Greenville wasn’t looking so bad. I daydreamt about my flight back. Ah, Greenville, where black and green olives come from separate jars and you can get fresh milk seven days a week. On my return, I lustily ate mixed greens and white albacore tuna at a treifeh restaurant, and I washed it all down with a cup of creamery-rich half-and-half-enhanced cup of real coffee. The restaurant will remain unnamed.

Oy, a mechayeh!

The next time I returned to New York, it was for my kids’ wedding at the rococo catering hall, Razag, in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. For that joyous occasion I had the chutzpa to tell the machatonim that they might do whatever they please, even the garish smorgasbord. But this I begged them: not to have the wedding too soon after Shabbos, so that at least the pizza will be hot and the Diet Coke cold.