A FEW OF MY LEAST FAVORITE THINGS

I hear tell that a local church's food bank received an unsolicited carload of packaged kosher items – gefilte fish, matzo meal, chicken soup mix, and the like. The only problem is that the poor folks who habituate the bank will not eat the stuff.

So, the cry went out to the local Jewish community to take it off their hands, the assumption being that the mostly upper-middle-class Jews of Greenville will know how to get rid of the stuff. Anyone want four cases of Manischewitz’s Sweet Old Vienna Style gefilte fish?

Is it that the poor among us have more discerning tastes than we do? Is it that the oddity of the kosher foods makes it suspect of being weird?

I can speak only for myself . . .

My forever-broadening girth stands in testimony to my lust for cuisine. I am crazy about food, period. Cajun. Chinese. Japanese. Vietnamese. Mediterranean. Teutonic. Slavonic. Thai. Korean. And do not forget the wondrous meat-and-three. Yes, yes, I have thus indulged at Greenville’s celebrated Tommy’s Country Ham House . . . but I did not inhale.

Moreover, why should I deny that Eastern European Jewish cuisine is closest to my heart? If you wish to invite me for dinner and make a faithful friend for life, just trot out the chopped liver, the golden soup, the potato kugel, the shimmering brisket and well-marbled flanken. A sip of syrupy Mogen David, Tagamet, a cushy chair, and a moratorium on meaningful conversation until the coma has had time to abate.

But, in deference to the patrons of the food bank in question, there are, a few Jewish foods so nasty that even I will not touch them. Should you really care about me, you will absolutely eschew the following:

Pitscha – Garlic Jell-O. Pitscha is the ooey-gooey remains of boiled calf's foot, enhanced with shreds of meat and copious fresh garlic. Occasionally layered with winking eyes of sliced hardboiled egg. Brown. Granular. Quivery. I have spent 14 years in analysis because my doting Aunt Leah would tie me to a chair and force-feed me pitscha at the tender age of two. Pitscha is also known in our family as "fuss-noga," a German-Russian hybrid name that translates “foot-foot.” And no, a blob of untamed horseradish will not redeem it.

Fisselach – Fisselach are the viscous remains of chicken feet that have been boiled to a fare-thee-well to fortify the chicken soup. My earliest childhood recollections involve the sight of my mother and Aunt Minnie hunched over the kitchen sink sucking the last morsels out of a batch of fisselach. Now that we buy kosher chickens pre-processed and frozen, the homemaker no longer has ready access to fisselach. My mother lamented their departure the way those two old cronies bemoan the demise of the nickel cigar.

Lung-und-Lebber – My Uncle Joe was the world's most lovable miscreant. Time and again he would stray from the family fold. And time and again he would resurface, his face aglow with a sheepishly irresistible grin. Then my grandmother would reel him in with a steaming bowl of lung-und-lebber. It is just what it sounds like – a stew of beef lung and liver. Uncle Joe would bathe in the tureen, but even as a toddler, I instinctively refused even to enter the dining room. I can only imagine that in heaven above my bubbeh is still dishing up lung-und-lebber and miltz to her beloved Yossele. As for me, I would rather be stoking Ming the Merciless’s uranium inferno.

So there. I have now bared my soul and palate to you – what turns me on and what turns me off. And lest I be indicted for this being an exercise in Jewish self-hate, let me remind you that I also cringe at the thought of sea cucumber, squid-ink ravioli, and kidney pie. I have never been forced to a showdown between pitscha and livermush, but somehow I think I would still give my Aunt Leah the benefit of the doubt.

So, whisper sweet words of brisket and potato kugel in my ear, and I will show you a sensory explosion that approaches Vesuvius. C’monna my house and I will – as the Talmud gloats – serve you a foretaste of the World-to-Come. But, for the sake of civility, even I will spare you the Old Vienna from the can.