DINNER ON THE WHOLLY DAZE

After I left my congregation, I anticipated the Holy Days would be all that it had not been in three decades. Now there would be spirit-filled prayer, family together catching up on each other’s lives, unrushed Yom Tov dinners, walks in the park.

Then we received a call from nefarious Aunt Annette. She demanded, as was her style, that we join her family for Yom Tov in Washington. Furthermore, she was certain that “You would be delighted to prepare dinner, because you are such a wonderful chef.”

I gritted my teeth. But, there was no reason to argue. On Erev Yom Tov, we took that day’s only flight into Washington and arrived at 10:00 AM. Annette had already called the dinner for 20 at 6:00, just eight hours away.

I prepared most of the dinner at home and then had to figure how to schlep it to Annette’s . . . on an airplane. We loaded four insulated bags with food and worried whether security would consider the aluminum lining suspect. Ironically, they asked no questions, but they did examine my Tefillin, because the boxes seemed to contain “suspicious material.”

Arriving in Washington, we trudged with the bags to Annette’s. I had planned to adorn my Caesar salad with seared duck breast, until I discovered that the heat of Annette’s stove could barely boil an egg. “Annette, the stove doesn’t get hot!” “Oh, sweetheart, I almost never use it, because we go out to dinner so often.”

I worked along, a knife here, a peeler there, until Annette announced that the floor needed washing. So, I scrubbed it. In a delicious moment of schadenfreude, my mother-in-law slipped on the wet floor and skidded, only to be saved by her commodious derrière. Quite a sight.

Miraculously, dinner was ready at 5:45. The vultures were already circling the table, waiting. As I was showering, I heard voices behind me calling, “How much longer will you take?”

How was dinner? I don’t really know. The moment I sat down, I fell asleep in my bowl of kreplach soup. The only inkling I had was when Annette pronounced the dinner “Wonderful! It was so good, in fact,” she said, “that we must have Marc do it again next year!”

WHERE YA GONNA BREAKDUFAST?

Whatever American Jews are lacking in religiosity, they make up in their obsession with food:

Take my friend Jack, who ordered a sandwich in a treife restaurant during Pesach, but insisted that it be served on matzo, because “my momma made me swear that I would never eat bread on Pesach.”

Then there was my boss Lew, who served a huge ham at their “Holy Day Dinner,” never God forbid referring to it as “Rosh Hashanah.”

Not to be outdone, my girlfriend Ellen served crabmeat appetizer on Rosh Hashanah, because it was “an old family tradition.”

Then, how many hausfrauen in the American southeast would make their matzo balls with cornmeal grits and jalapeño peppers, special treats from that region?

And, what of Shabbos chicken breaded in Fruit Loops?

Strangest may be our preoccupation with "breakdufast” (pronounced as one long word, not “break-the-fast”), the repast served at the conclusion of Yom Kippur.

Gentiles may assume that we prepare for the holiest day of the year with confession, penitence, and doleful prayer, but we know that we are really planning our breakthefast menu: a bacchanalian of lox, bagels, herring, cheeses, blintzes, and the ubiquitous tuna salad.

There have been years that I have had to make rabbinical guest appearances at no less than four breakthefasts, like Eliyahu Ha-Navi, and told each hausfrau that her gefilte fish was “absolutely the best.”

Please, don’t get me wrong. Breakthefasts are wonderful opportunities for fellowship and relaxation. Ones hosted in schule are even better. But, they are also the perfect venue for ruthless critique the sermons, catty comments on the women’s couture, and summary gossip about anyone and anything.

Breakthefast was obviously conceived by Kafka: It’s the first opportunity of the New Year to start racking up next year’s “Al Chet’s” – covetousness, slander, gluttony, arrogance, and all the other reasons to clop one’s breast. No sense calling off next Yom Kippur.

Now go fill the mikveh with hot coffee, so I can breakthefast gossiping along with you about Mrs. Yifnef’s ridiculous hat. Then sing me a couple bars of Ashamnu, and I’ll know that the New Year has really begun.

TORTURE AT 40,000 FEET

We have all been conditioned to gripe about a benefit that has arbitrarily been taken away from us. But, what if the benefit turns out not to be a real benefit, like griping to the dentist to give you “another” root-canal, after he’s already given you three?

What of the decline, now demise, of airline food? Is it tragedy or triumph? I say, “Farewell to airline food, and grant peace to stomach, pants, and mind.” Do you remember the glory days, when the traveler was served a full-course dinner, a choice of entrees, even a glass of wine? And real silverware?

The food, though, was terrible. Fish masqueraded as chicken, chicken pretended to be veal. What difference did it make? They were all just piles of wet hemp. Primitive microwaves presented a dinner of frozen brisket and scalding sherbet. Woe unto the passenger at the window seat. Which spilled food was more agonizing to the groin – the frozen entree or scorching fruit salad?

We Yehudim were purported to have it better. Many times a gentile would comment about how much better my dinner looked than his. I told him to order “kosher” on his next flight, but still beware of demons lurking under the potato kugel. Pareve margarine is not the equivalent of butter. Sandy “coffee lightener” is not the same as cream. Take heed to any Passover meal produced in New York that bears the hechsher of the Chief Rabbi of Livorno. Ten years in yeshiva will never adequately explain how rolls moistened with apple juice do not require reciting Ha-Motzi.

So I say, grieve not, you kosher-observant Jew, for the decisions have largely been made for us by an international cabal. Now, the best we can do is an in-flight bagel stamped with a huge hechsher. Naturally, the sandwich is stuffed with half-a-pound of ham. I want to give the airline the benefit of the doubt. Ham is so much cheaper than lox-and-bagels. But, you and I know the real truth: It’s another clear-cut case of anti-Semitism. Damn the airlines, I say. From now on, I will ride the train.