DISCUSS: AN EGG CREAM CONTAINS NEITHER EGGS NOR CREAM

The birth of our granddaughter in New York was all the excuse we needed to head Downtown and conduct “scientific research” on the quality of the pastrami, etc., at the newly reopened Second Avenue Deli, the Olympus of kosher dining. We had another good excuse: to introduce the gay couple that lives next door to the wonders of deli cuisine. “The Boys,” as we call them, happened to be in New York for a weekend of theater.

They’d never eaten heimische Jewish cooking, save the occasional dinners I’d prepared for them. It was no wonder. The Boys had grown up in tiny Seneca, South Carolina, where it was dangerous enough to be gay, not to mention falling in love with Jewish cuisine, or even finding it.
They, we commanded, had to join us for lunch at Second Avenue. On being seated, I discovered an auspicious lagniappe waiting at the table – a bowl of gribenes. Before I could explain the wonders of rendered chicken skin, The Boys had attacked the bowl and pronounced the cracklings “even better than pork rinds,” a kind of gribenes derived from pig skin. A klog!

Not I, but my pencil-thin Lady Linda ordered lunch – everything “for the table,” sharing it all until the last diner dropped. They had never tried chopped liver, so we demanded that they try chopped liver. “Mix in some gribenes!” I admonished them. “Ahhhhhhh, even better.” Then the fricassee. They recognized what they called “gizzards,” but I wouldn’t let them continue until they learned that proper people called them “pupiks.” Kishke, yes. Did the intestines bother them? Not a chance! Corned beef. Pastrami. Salami. Knobbelwurst. Potato and lokshen kugel.

At our insistence, they washed it all down with an “egg cream,” a beverage of seltzer and chocolate syrup. “Where were the eggs and cream?” they wondered. “Goyische kep! Those would be too hard to digest!”

We paid. We feared that otherwise we would be indicted for murder. All The Boys could say was, “How can we become Jewish like you?”

I asked if they’d been circumcised. They looked at me sheepishly. “Boys,” I said, “if you’re not, keep your knives at your plate. Just enjoy your gefilte fish, and you’ll be as Jewish as most Jews I know.”