AN AMERICAN IN (VICHY) PARIS
What is left to tell you about my home town, Greenville? Twenty years ago, its downtown was a foreboding moonscape. Ten years ago, Mayor Heller, a Viennese Holocaust survivor, resurrected it.
Nightlife on Main Street has become the signature of downtown’s vitality. Successful new restaurants have sprung up. On weekends, sidewalk cafes jam the traffic.
Linda and I love to stroll the downtown streets, and enjoy cuisine that ranges from pizza to Thai. After all, how else would someone weighing 220 kg judge the quality of downtown?
Ah, but where were the French? Only one French restaurant in the entire city.
I am inclined to say, “Who cares?” My disdain for the snooty French is equal to that of any self-respecting Jew. Yet, consider my foray into Greenville’s only French restaurant an exercise in morbid curiosity.
My first clue was that it was the only restaurant up-and-down Main Street that wasn’t full of patrons, despite its welcoming name, “An American in Paris.” Perhaps, we thought, the potential diners who walked by the place knew something we didn’t. Of course.
The cuisine – consciously or not – was a clear-cut case of anti-Semitism:
The tea was an anemic, tepid green. It was nothing like the robust, boiling, honey-brown Swee-Touch-Nee that honorable Jews use to wash down a heavy Shabbos lunch.
Linda ordered a salmon sandwich and made sure that it contained no pork. Out it came garnished with slices of bacon. Upon questioning the server, she protested, “bacon is not pork.”
Meanwhile, I opted for salade au saumon fume, which arrived as salade au babeurre of lettuce piled six inches high and two shards of lox, decorated with crabmeat. Again, we were told, “crabmeat is just like fish.”
The accompanying roll looked like barches, until the first bite hit my palate like mush. Finally, we ordered a Sacher torte, filled not with delectable Viennese chocolate, but with gooey pudding.
Yes, the menu was a clear exercise in anti-Semitism. No wonder no one was there, for the restaurant’s name in tiny letters read “An American in (Vichy) Paris.”
Shame on them for the deception. But we should have known better, on the night we went to see “I Am My Own Wife.”
January 24, 2007
January 06, 2007
SETTING A TERM TO DISGRACE
Somewhere in a basement box rests a editorial cartoon, circa 1973, of Watergate snitch John Dean wearing a button declaring, “Nixon’s the One!” By the next year, Nixon had resigned. A month later, Ford pardoned Nixon. For years to come, Ford was hung out to dry.
Now in his death, we adulate Ford’s decision as self-sacrificial and courageously conciliatory. Time has vindicated him, and well it should. He intrepidly led us to the beginning of reconciliation.
Regardless, America is still not kind to the spat-upon. We have lived through the scandalizing of Nixon, philandering Clinton, Foley, Haggard, e t al. Deservedly or nor, their foibles have fed America’s insatiable appetite for schadenfreude, the delight in someone else’s troubles.
If you are wise, you ignore it. If you are gutsy, you denounce it. But chances are that you publicly eschew it, but privately relish each tawdry detail. If you are its object, you die a thousand deaths only to be resurrected to someone else’s salacious jokes. A society that luxuriates in scandal must always have a bogeyman to slake its blood lust and to reassure itself that real evil lurks menacingly "out there" not "in here." It is the stuff of beasts victoriously circling their prey before moving in for the kill.
Let us not trivialize the consequences of wrongdoing and moral corruption. Avarice, unbridled ambition, and lust are acts of betrayal that deserve accountability and recompense. But, the punishment that the subjects of our derision withstand also should not be trivialized. We have contrived an elaborate ritual of humiliation to destroy any last pretenses of dignity to which a public wrongdoer might cling:
The social analysis of wrongdoer and wrongdoing become sanctimonious debate on Nightline and Face the Nation. Then the salacious expose on O’Reilly to his self-righteous mob. The ritual is complete, as one becomes the butt of jokes in a Letterman Top Ten and joining a list of pop-culture nouns and adjectives: Anyone over 18 (12?) knows the sexual implications of “a Lewinsky.”
The only chance we have of distinguishing ourselves from beasts is to create a countervailing "rite of reconciliation," a national temperament that is just as zealous in welcoming the penitent as it is to humiliate the sinner. We know too well, what one must do to fall from grace. We have little sense of what one must do to regain honor.
What penance must Foley and Haggard perform to regain public honor? How much time must a shamed Nixon spend being subjected to derision?
Should we not at least ponder the time that should elapse, the quantum of worthy deeds one should perform, the changes in demeanor and attitude one should evince, before he may re-ingratiate himself as a respected member of the community?
This rite of reconciliation, however, is not a media-hyped jailhouse conversion followed by a tell-all book ballyhooed on Oprah that paves the road from sinner to saint. That is just another snack to feed society's insatiable appetite for public spectacle.
No, the real rite of reconciliation demands more from the smirk-faced good-guys in the pews than it does from the sinner. It calls us to account for all the righteous Judeo-Christian virtues we piously affirm each Sabbath, only to betray them each weekday – virtues like forgiveness, tolerance, abhorrence of sin but not sinner, the granting of second chances. Creating a rite of reconciliation means to forge a communal mind-set that demands no more penance from those we have condemned than we would want for ourselves, were we someday to be held accountable for all the lofty values we have preached with our lips but then denied by our deeds.
People who have now fallen from grace, the ones we were too eager to strip of their humanity, deserve a chance, maybe even two, to regain our trust and our respect. Ford pardoned the errant Nixon only to suffer his own derision. Will we ever welcome the once bogeymen so much with our hearts as we do with our tar and feathers?
Somewhere in a basement box rests a editorial cartoon, circa 1973, of Watergate snitch John Dean wearing a button declaring, “Nixon’s the One!” By the next year, Nixon had resigned. A month later, Ford pardoned Nixon. For years to come, Ford was hung out to dry.
Now in his death, we adulate Ford’s decision as self-sacrificial and courageously conciliatory. Time has vindicated him, and well it should. He intrepidly led us to the beginning of reconciliation.
Regardless, America is still not kind to the spat-upon. We have lived through the scandalizing of Nixon, philandering Clinton, Foley, Haggard, e t al. Deservedly or nor, their foibles have fed America’s insatiable appetite for schadenfreude, the delight in someone else’s troubles.
If you are wise, you ignore it. If you are gutsy, you denounce it. But chances are that you publicly eschew it, but privately relish each tawdry detail. If you are its object, you die a thousand deaths only to be resurrected to someone else’s salacious jokes. A society that luxuriates in scandal must always have a bogeyman to slake its blood lust and to reassure itself that real evil lurks menacingly "out there" not "in here." It is the stuff of beasts victoriously circling their prey before moving in for the kill.
Let us not trivialize the consequences of wrongdoing and moral corruption. Avarice, unbridled ambition, and lust are acts of betrayal that deserve accountability and recompense. But, the punishment that the subjects of our derision withstand also should not be trivialized. We have contrived an elaborate ritual of humiliation to destroy any last pretenses of dignity to which a public wrongdoer might cling:
The social analysis of wrongdoer and wrongdoing become sanctimonious debate on Nightline and Face the Nation. Then the salacious expose on O’Reilly to his self-righteous mob. The ritual is complete, as one becomes the butt of jokes in a Letterman Top Ten and joining a list of pop-culture nouns and adjectives: Anyone over 18 (12?) knows the sexual implications of “a Lewinsky.”
The only chance we have of distinguishing ourselves from beasts is to create a countervailing "rite of reconciliation," a national temperament that is just as zealous in welcoming the penitent as it is to humiliate the sinner. We know too well, what one must do to fall from grace. We have little sense of what one must do to regain honor.
What penance must Foley and Haggard perform to regain public honor? How much time must a shamed Nixon spend being subjected to derision?
Should we not at least ponder the time that should elapse, the quantum of worthy deeds one should perform, the changes in demeanor and attitude one should evince, before he may re-ingratiate himself as a respected member of the community?
This rite of reconciliation, however, is not a media-hyped jailhouse conversion followed by a tell-all book ballyhooed on Oprah that paves the road from sinner to saint. That is just another snack to feed society's insatiable appetite for public spectacle.
No, the real rite of reconciliation demands more from the smirk-faced good-guys in the pews than it does from the sinner. It calls us to account for all the righteous Judeo-Christian virtues we piously affirm each Sabbath, only to betray them each weekday – virtues like forgiveness, tolerance, abhorrence of sin but not sinner, the granting of second chances. Creating a rite of reconciliation means to forge a communal mind-set that demands no more penance from those we have condemned than we would want for ourselves, were we someday to be held accountable for all the lofty values we have preached with our lips but then denied by our deeds.
People who have now fallen from grace, the ones we were too eager to strip of their humanity, deserve a chance, maybe even two, to regain our trust and our respect. Ford pardoned the errant Nixon only to suffer his own derision. Will we ever welcome the once bogeymen so much with our hearts as we do with our tar and feathers?
FLASH! IMMOLATED CHEF ANOINTED AS HIGH PRIEST
I seriously wonder whether Aaron the High Priest constantly had second-degree burns over his hands from frying up his sacrifices with olive oil. Better yet, do I become a Kohen Gadol because of all the times that I scald myself while I am attempting to cook with scorching olive oil? If so, then last week I was anointed with holy unguent and declared Kohen Gadol by a congregation of ten . . . er, uh . . . goyim.
The scenario: One of my Bar Mitzvah students is a little more eccentric than most 13-year-olds. He chants his Sidra only after he has spent time with me in the kitchen. On that one fateful day, we had planned to make a beef-barley soup. We were about to sauté some onions in EVOO (“extra virgin olive oil,” for you who don’t watch that chirping parakeet, Rachel Ray. Jealous? Me? Nah.)
Just then, flames leapt out of pot. While shoving my Bar-Mitzvah bochur to safety, I stuck my hand in the fire and burned it to what I assumed was glowing charcoal. Thanks be to God that miraculously I escaped with only two half-inch burns. Pin a medal on me. Hoo hah, such a hero.
Being of the upper middle class, our house, of course, is equipped with the biggest and best alarm, which instantly alerts the fire department every time I fry an egg.
I had already well doused the fire and sufficiently attended to my burns, when a police captain banged on the front door. He apparently handled these matters because he was so scrawny that he couldn’t save my dog from a titmouse. I calmly told him that no other emergency services were required.
By then, though, the fire department had already snaked its way down our narrow lane with a hook-and-ladder truck. Out of the truck leapt six firefighters, each dressed in full regalia and looking like a sumo, insisting on inspecting the house. They spied the minor burns on my hand and announced that they were obliged to have EMS come to check me out.
Shortly thereafter, three EMT’s arrived in their truck. They were required, they said, to examine me. Before I knew it, they were taking my blood pressure. Oh boy, they discovered that I had a pacemaker. So they demanded that I lie down and let them take an EKG – all for two half-inch burns.
By then, our kitchen was overrun by a minyan of emergency crews. Now they demanded that I be taken to the hospital. Upon arrival I was again checked out and waited an hour to have some salve schemed on my grievous wounds. The EMTs, firefighters, and cops stood by attentively.
My Bar Mitzvah student of course was aghast. By then, his mother had arrived to pick him up. As I was being wheeled out on the stretcher, they followed behind, assuring that they would pray for me. An audience of curious neighbors, God bless them, gathered outside. By the time that the petrified Linda picked me up, our doorstep was laden with aluminum pans full of meatloaf, fried chicken, the ubiquitous tuna salad, and brownies. As I say, God bless them.
Do you comprehend the significance of that momentous occasion? I had been anointed as the Kohen Gadol by olive oil, then by life-saving unction in the hospital in the presence of my motley congregation of ten weary caregivers.
Will I burn myself again? Of course. Just that this time, I will have disconnected my fire alarm. Will my intrepid Bar Mitzvah bochur return? Of course. But only after I promise that we continue our culinary ventures only if we make something innocent, like fruit salad.
No! No! Be careful with that knife!
P.S. God bless those lifesavers who were ready to save my life.
I seriously wonder whether Aaron the High Priest constantly had second-degree burns over his hands from frying up his sacrifices with olive oil. Better yet, do I become a Kohen Gadol because of all the times that I scald myself while I am attempting to cook with scorching olive oil? If so, then last week I was anointed with holy unguent and declared Kohen Gadol by a congregation of ten . . . er, uh . . . goyim.
The scenario: One of my Bar Mitzvah students is a little more eccentric than most 13-year-olds. He chants his Sidra only after he has spent time with me in the kitchen. On that one fateful day, we had planned to make a beef-barley soup. We were about to sauté some onions in EVOO (“extra virgin olive oil,” for you who don’t watch that chirping parakeet, Rachel Ray. Jealous? Me? Nah.)
Just then, flames leapt out of pot. While shoving my Bar-Mitzvah bochur to safety, I stuck my hand in the fire and burned it to what I assumed was glowing charcoal. Thanks be to God that miraculously I escaped with only two half-inch burns. Pin a medal on me. Hoo hah, such a hero.
Being of the upper middle class, our house, of course, is equipped with the biggest and best alarm, which instantly alerts the fire department every time I fry an egg.
I had already well doused the fire and sufficiently attended to my burns, when a police captain banged on the front door. He apparently handled these matters because he was so scrawny that he couldn’t save my dog from a titmouse. I calmly told him that no other emergency services were required.
By then, though, the fire department had already snaked its way down our narrow lane with a hook-and-ladder truck. Out of the truck leapt six firefighters, each dressed in full regalia and looking like a sumo, insisting on inspecting the house. They spied the minor burns on my hand and announced that they were obliged to have EMS come to check me out.
Shortly thereafter, three EMT’s arrived in their truck. They were required, they said, to examine me. Before I knew it, they were taking my blood pressure. Oh boy, they discovered that I had a pacemaker. So they demanded that I lie down and let them take an EKG – all for two half-inch burns.
By then, our kitchen was overrun by a minyan of emergency crews. Now they demanded that I be taken to the hospital. Upon arrival I was again checked out and waited an hour to have some salve schemed on my grievous wounds. The EMTs, firefighters, and cops stood by attentively.
My Bar Mitzvah student of course was aghast. By then, his mother had arrived to pick him up. As I was being wheeled out on the stretcher, they followed behind, assuring that they would pray for me. An audience of curious neighbors, God bless them, gathered outside. By the time that the petrified Linda picked me up, our doorstep was laden with aluminum pans full of meatloaf, fried chicken, the ubiquitous tuna salad, and brownies. As I say, God bless them.
Do you comprehend the significance of that momentous occasion? I had been anointed as the Kohen Gadol by olive oil, then by life-saving unction in the hospital in the presence of my motley congregation of ten weary caregivers.
Will I burn myself again? Of course. Just that this time, I will have disconnected my fire alarm. Will my intrepid Bar Mitzvah bochur return? Of course. But only after I promise that we continue our culinary ventures only if we make something innocent, like fruit salad.
No! No! Be careful with that knife!
P.S. God bless those lifesavers who were ready to save my life.
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