DON’T ASK, DON’T TELL

So much angst to being a Jew. Woe particularly unto those of us who have lived with it since tender youth. At the age of 16, I traveled from my parents’ home in idyllic San Francisco to attend Yeshiva University in foreboding New York City, 4,800 km away.

I had been warned about New York – thefts, muggings, gang attacks, dangerous neighborhoods, illegal weapons, pickpockets, even gratuitous murder. What a thrill for a yeshiva-bochur to live alone in New York!

I wasn’t really all alone. I had plenty of classmates and a campus surrounded by barbed wire and armed guards. We were quickly trained that if you cared for your life, you would not walk down Audubon Street.

But, the angst of life in New York was outweighed by it being paradise for fressers. We judged the quality of any town solely by its abundance of kosher restaurants and pizza parlors. They were everywhere.

A friend and I heard that the sine qua non of kosher restaurants was Gluckstern’s. In fact, we were told that it was so terrific that there were two Gluckstern’s, one Downtown and one Uptown. Just as our longing for matzo ball soup had peaked, though, we heard murmurings that “Gluckstern’s wasn’t really kosher.” Our hearts sank. What should a frummeh yeshiva-bochur do?

We decided to take the issue to one of the rabbinical authorities at the Yeshiva. “Gluckstern’s?” he intoned. “Which Gluckstern’s? Uptown or Downtown? You know that there are two of them.”

“We know, we know.”

“Well, some say that both of them are kosher, and some say that both of them are treife. Some eat only at the Uptown one. Others eat only at the Downtown one.”

“Who’s the mashgi’ach?” we ask.

“I can’t tell you that,” the rabbi said. “I don’t want to embarrass anybody.”

“So where do you eat?”

“It’s better that I don’t tell you,” he says dismissively. “I wouldn’t want to get you confused.”

Forty years have passed, and now Second Avenue, my favorite kosher deli, has re-opened under new management. I am salivating.

Kosher? How kosher? Who’s the mashgi’ach? Would you eat there?

Nu, what do you think? Do you think I’m going to ask?