THE DESCENT TO NOTHINGNESS
What transcendent lessons might we learn from Britany’s downward careen?
“Absolutely none,” you’ll wearily answer. A once-innocent child, coached by her handlers and her own narcissism, has decomposed into an annoying, but entertaining, puddle of schadenfreude.
The expected litany of cliches: Britney . . . “too much too soon,” “both a cause and result of the slack-jawed empty-headedness of today’s youth,” “a symptom of society’s pervasive decadence,” “a grotesque image of self-indulgence gone wild,” “a basically stupid, big-breasted girl co-opted by greedy phonies,” “simply self-destructive.”
Beyond all the clichés, the transcendent message is to let Britney choke on her own vomit. Stop with the pity. Stop with the excuse-making. Stop with the compassion. Stop the limousines dropping her off and then taking her back to 90210 after her field trips to rehab. Marginalize her as a loser, just another deflowered flower out on the street on a collision course with coked up ‘ho-dom.
Britney’s path has been sabotaged by greedy faux-friends. Nonetheless, her path has been paved with gold. She blew it herself. She had assistance, but she also was guilty of rejecting a better way, presumably inculcated by parents, school, church, and small-town values.
But now transcend Britney and consider people living in squalor on the streets. Most of us do not pity them, nor make excuses, nor show them understanding and the benefit of doubt, nor send limousines to pick them up and drop them off. At best, maybe they get is a corndog and a mat in a shelter, then to be booted back on the streets at 6:00 AM. They roil in their own vomit, some of them because they blew it via alcohol, drugs, or shiftlessness. But a majority of the homeless are out on the streets due to no fault of their own. They are there because of domestic violence, mental illness, lack of education and marketable job skills. Only a small minority of them will ever be in place to transition out of homelessness, because those resources are so pitifully scarce.
The homeless should not be relegated to the streets, but they are. Britney, in her lucrative self-inflicted destructiveness, should be. But she will likely never be relegated to a taste of the mean streets, but she should be.
This is the transcendent lesson of Britney’s self-debauchery: We who are warmly ensconced in the Upper Middle Class, just like me, have never tasted the bitterness of the streets, a descent from phony self-sufficiency to pathos to nothingness. Maybe an encounter with helplessness would so enlighten us to come away humbled, more cherishing of that which is sacred in our lives, understanding of the reality of the human condition, no longer so oblivious of love of neighbor and love of God.
A friend of mine, an orthodox rabbi in his 50’s, took the self-challenge to the extreme, at the advice of a Presbyterian colleague. My friend would take only the clothes on his back, a clean towel, and a knapsack. He would randomly pinpoint a town, fly there, and – devoid of any money or resources – find his way back home.
Upon his return, he spoke to me of the nights spent in shelters, sleeping on the streets, begging to sweep out a bar for $2 an hour, where the best place to hitchhike are (truck stops), learning how to beg, adapting to nothingness. My friend, a genius, scion of great rabbinical families, Johns Hopkins credentials, got a third of the way back home, from Buffalo to Atlanta, in a week.
He know that he would return to Upper Middle Class-dom. Regardless, the changes to him brought on not only stories, but encounters so core-shattering and life-shaking that they gave birth in him empathy, understanding, and self-doubts that he had never before experienced. The transformation of a life.
This is precisely what Britney, stripped of all pretension, needs. It’s likely what every one of usl need: an encounter with nothingness, a descent into relentless urban squalor.
Need we ourselves go on that same sobering journey? Is that what it would take to open our hearts and souls?
February 25, 2007
January 24, 2007
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.”
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 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.
December 18, 2006
TELLTALE CULINARY POLKA-DOTS
I feature myself a fashionable man. I own ten suits and two drawers full of sweaters. I have a huge collection of designer ties, all polka-dot.
No, none of them was intended to be that way. I am not obsessed with polka-dots. They simply tell the story of another of my obsessions: sloppy food eaten by a man who cannot eat it without slobbering it on his tie.
Red polka-dots, for example, are the remnant of blobs of ketchup from a juicy hamburger that I have just eaten. Suspicion falls on me when I am nowhere near a kosher eatery. The discerning critic might assume that I have indulged in a treife hamburger at McDonald’s, to which I can only roll my eyes heavenward and swear to klop an additional “Al Chet” next Yom Kippur.
Then there is the yellow polka-dot, a sure sign that I have recently returned from New York. There I have certainly indulged in a hot, thick corned beef sandwich slathered in bright yellow mustard. Thank God, it is not the chazzerei that pretends to be a corned beef sandwich in my rural South – a single slice of smoked beef on white bread slathered with mayonnaise and served beside a glass of chocolate milk.
What about my fashionable pink polka-dots? Ah, that was when a snooty congregant insisted that I try her specialty: gefilte fish congealed in raspberry Jello. A huge polka-dot of it plopped onto my tie as I tried surreptitiously to feed it to the dog.
Finally, there is the telltale green polka-dot, whenever I swear to Linda that I’ve had a healthy salad for lunch. She knows that the green is simply a cover up for the fat, juicy, carcinogenic steak that I had really eaten.
My brothers: If you enjoy the same eclectic cuisine that I do, make sure to purchase a multicolored polka-dot tie that confuses your messy eating with haute couture. Better yet, take a job that allows you to leave your tie at home. Become an artist and spatter your smock with today’s lunch. Only you will know the truth while everyone around you will think that you have become the next Rembrandt.
I feature myself a fashionable man. I own ten suits and two drawers full of sweaters. I have a huge collection of designer ties, all polka-dot.
No, none of them was intended to be that way. I am not obsessed with polka-dots. They simply tell the story of another of my obsessions: sloppy food eaten by a man who cannot eat it without slobbering it on his tie.
Red polka-dots, for example, are the remnant of blobs of ketchup from a juicy hamburger that I have just eaten. Suspicion falls on me when I am nowhere near a kosher eatery. The discerning critic might assume that I have indulged in a treife hamburger at McDonald’s, to which I can only roll my eyes heavenward and swear to klop an additional “Al Chet” next Yom Kippur.
Then there is the yellow polka-dot, a sure sign that I have recently returned from New York. There I have certainly indulged in a hot, thick corned beef sandwich slathered in bright yellow mustard. Thank God, it is not the chazzerei that pretends to be a corned beef sandwich in my rural South – a single slice of smoked beef on white bread slathered with mayonnaise and served beside a glass of chocolate milk.
What about my fashionable pink polka-dots? Ah, that was when a snooty congregant insisted that I try her specialty: gefilte fish congealed in raspberry Jello. A huge polka-dot of it plopped onto my tie as I tried surreptitiously to feed it to the dog.
Finally, there is the telltale green polka-dot, whenever I swear to Linda that I’ve had a healthy salad for lunch. She knows that the green is simply a cover up for the fat, juicy, carcinogenic steak that I had really eaten.
My brothers: If you enjoy the same eclectic cuisine that I do, make sure to purchase a multicolored polka-dot tie that confuses your messy eating with haute couture. Better yet, take a job that allows you to leave your tie at home. Become an artist and spatter your smock with today’s lunch. Only you will know the truth while everyone around you will think that you have become the next Rembrandt.
December 03, 2006
LUTHERAN NEW YEARS
Last year, Linda made the mistake of telling my colleague Steve that we had “no plans” for New Years Eve. “Wonderful!” Steve said, “Then you must spend the evening with us.”
Steve is a Lutheran pastor whose social life is less exciting than watching paint dry. His anemic wife, nebbish, suffers from chronic depression. Steve goes on to say that since I was a “Jewish scholar,” we might spend the evening viewing Rosenstrasse, and discussing its implications for a “true understanding” the Holocaust.
Rosenstrasse is at least as depressing as his wife. It sugar-coats the Holocaust to a distasteful romp. The ghetto is a strict summer camp, the Nazis are its crabby counselors. Ah, this is precisely the movie that gives Steve a “true understanding” of the Holocaust.
But, enough of the film and on with the food:
First, a perspective on what the typical American Jew eats on New Years Eve: a corned beef sandwich on rye, potato chips, a sour pickle, a bottle of beer, a Tagamet, and then off to bed.
But, what did we eat at the buffet that they prepared? Wisely, he told us that they would serve no meat because of “your dietary restrictions.” Instead, we dined on what a Lutheran pastor must think is a feast: Eight cubes of cheese, eight slices of pickled herring, eight gherkins, eight slivers of Stollen . . .all stabbed with toothpicks.
When the Bavarian cuckoo-clock struck midnight, Linda and I embraced. Pastor Steve and his wife sat on opposite sides of the room and nodded at each other.
As I picked up a pizza to eat at home, Linda asked why the wife was so depressed.
“Are they getting divorced?”
“No, silly!” I answer. “If that was a feast, what do you think they eat every other night, stuck with toothpicks? Prozac won’t help. We need to fatten her up on brisket and kugel.
“Well," Linda responds, “let’s have them over next New Years Eve, watch cartoons, and show them what a festive dinner really is.”
“I don’t think so,” I tell her. “But for God’s sake, from now on let me be the one who answers the phone.”
Last year, Linda made the mistake of telling my colleague Steve that we had “no plans” for New Years Eve. “Wonderful!” Steve said, “Then you must spend the evening with us.”
Steve is a Lutheran pastor whose social life is less exciting than watching paint dry. His anemic wife, nebbish, suffers from chronic depression. Steve goes on to say that since I was a “Jewish scholar,” we might spend the evening viewing Rosenstrasse, and discussing its implications for a “true understanding” the Holocaust.
Rosenstrasse is at least as depressing as his wife. It sugar-coats the Holocaust to a distasteful romp. The ghetto is a strict summer camp, the Nazis are its crabby counselors. Ah, this is precisely the movie that gives Steve a “true understanding” of the Holocaust.
But, enough of the film and on with the food:
First, a perspective on what the typical American Jew eats on New Years Eve: a corned beef sandwich on rye, potato chips, a sour pickle, a bottle of beer, a Tagamet, and then off to bed.
But, what did we eat at the buffet that they prepared? Wisely, he told us that they would serve no meat because of “your dietary restrictions.” Instead, we dined on what a Lutheran pastor must think is a feast: Eight cubes of cheese, eight slices of pickled herring, eight gherkins, eight slivers of Stollen . . .all stabbed with toothpicks.
When the Bavarian cuckoo-clock struck midnight, Linda and I embraced. Pastor Steve and his wife sat on opposite sides of the room and nodded at each other.
As I picked up a pizza to eat at home, Linda asked why the wife was so depressed.
“Are they getting divorced?”
“No, silly!” I answer. “If that was a feast, what do you think they eat every other night, stuck with toothpicks? Prozac won’t help. We need to fatten her up on brisket and kugel.
“Well," Linda responds, “let’s have them over next New Years Eve, watch cartoons, and show them what a festive dinner really is.”
“I don’t think so,” I tell her. “But for God’s sake, from now on let me be the one who answers the phone.”
November 24, 2006
TINY’S "BAR MITZVAH EXPRESS“
Some things about Judaism have gotten better and others worse. Then there are those that have stayed the same in the half-century since my childhood.
Take the Bar/Bat Mitzvah celebration. My father was a postal clerk, so we were poor compared to the Jews who lived nearby. In 1963, my Bar Mitzvah consisted of a Kiddush after schule to which my parents invited 40 relatives.
But friends who lived in greater affluence did not simply have Bar Mitzvah parties, but extravaganzas – A hotel ballroom. An orchestra, chanteuse, and master of ceremonies. A bacchanalia of hors d’ouvres, martinis, and dinner. A candle-lighting ceremony to honor special guests. A machine popping popcorn. Personalized tee-shirts reading, “I Overate at Scottie’s Bar Mitzvah.
An occasional Bar Mitzvah celebrant would later rebel against his parents’ values by becoming a political radical or a Lubavitcher. The vast majority embraced their parents’ ways and are now, in 2006, honoring their progeny with the same decadence.
Having spent 35 years in the rabbinate, it still never ceases to amaze me. Should a rabbi attend? I confess that I frequently am present, in part out of morbid curiosity, and in part because I get to drink good Scotch.
Just recently, I conducted the Bar Mitzvah of a boy fondly known as “Tiny,” because of his 140-kilo girth. Tiny’s performance from the bima was rotten. But who cares? In front of the schule was parked a bus to take the kids to the party, emblazoned with, “Tiny’s Bar Mitzvah Express,”
The Shabbos-afternoon decadence began: shrimp on ice, cheese rolled in salami, bacon-wrapped filet mignon. The band played, the chanteuse sang, the master of ceremonies cracked offensive jokes.
Finally, silence fell upon the crowd. It was time for the candle-lighting ceremony. Instead, the master of ceremonies dolefully intoned, “With regrets, we will refrain from the candle-lighting ritual, in order to properly honor the holy Sabbath.”
Whether the traumatized Tiny will ever become a Lubavitcher who observes “the holy Sabbath” is anyone’s guess. But this I do know: At the very moment of the aborted candle-lighting, God was sitting on a rock, eating a cheeseburger, and declaring, “They just don’t get it, do they?”
Some things about Judaism have gotten better and others worse. Then there are those that have stayed the same in the half-century since my childhood.
Take the Bar/Bat Mitzvah celebration. My father was a postal clerk, so we were poor compared to the Jews who lived nearby. In 1963, my Bar Mitzvah consisted of a Kiddush after schule to which my parents invited 40 relatives.
But friends who lived in greater affluence did not simply have Bar Mitzvah parties, but extravaganzas – A hotel ballroom. An orchestra, chanteuse, and master of ceremonies. A bacchanalia of hors d’ouvres, martinis, and dinner. A candle-lighting ceremony to honor special guests. A machine popping popcorn. Personalized tee-shirts reading, “I Overate at Scottie’s Bar Mitzvah.
An occasional Bar Mitzvah celebrant would later rebel against his parents’ values by becoming a political radical or a Lubavitcher. The vast majority embraced their parents’ ways and are now, in 2006, honoring their progeny with the same decadence.
Having spent 35 years in the rabbinate, it still never ceases to amaze me. Should a rabbi attend? I confess that I frequently am present, in part out of morbid curiosity, and in part because I get to drink good Scotch.
Just recently, I conducted the Bar Mitzvah of a boy fondly known as “Tiny,” because of his 140-kilo girth. Tiny’s performance from the bima was rotten. But who cares? In front of the schule was parked a bus to take the kids to the party, emblazoned with, “Tiny’s Bar Mitzvah Express,”
The Shabbos-afternoon decadence began: shrimp on ice, cheese rolled in salami, bacon-wrapped filet mignon. The band played, the chanteuse sang, the master of ceremonies cracked offensive jokes.
Finally, silence fell upon the crowd. It was time for the candle-lighting ceremony. Instead, the master of ceremonies dolefully intoned, “With regrets, we will refrain from the candle-lighting ritual, in order to properly honor the holy Sabbath.”
Whether the traumatized Tiny will ever become a Lubavitcher who observes “the holy Sabbath” is anyone’s guess. But this I do know: At the very moment of the aborted candle-lighting, God was sitting on a rock, eating a cheeseburger, and declaring, “They just don’t get it, do they?”
November 21, 2006
IT’S HARD TO BE A JEW . . . ON SUNDAY
Any time I have the opportunity to escape my highly-gentile hometown of Greenville to visit New York, it is as if I were on a pilgrimage to the Holy Wall in Jerusalem. New York’s plethora of outstanding, or at least passable, kosher restaurants is a special treat for gluttons like me who lives to eat.
But, this time, that wonderful experience of brisket, pastrami, and falafel was overshadowed by attempting to buy a Coke and and a snack on my way back to the airport that Sunday.
Ah, behold the telephone-booth sized joint across the Yeshiva campus. As I enter the place, I realize that it is simply a dump that observes kashrut. Strutting up to the counter, I behold a rack of pizzas festooned with green pepper. But oy, green pepper hurts my stomach.
I assume – wouldn’t you? – that a simple cheese pizza would also be available at a dive across from Yeshiva University, touting itself as Yahkel’s Pizza. No, they inform me, all the cheese pizzas were frozen before Shabbos and would take at least a half-hour to thaw.
Oy.
“OK, then let me have a salad.” The menu says that I have my choice of between “iceberg” lettuce and “mixed greens.” As a gourmand in training, I select the mixed greens. The server brings them to the counter, but then proceeds to chop three heads of iceberg lettuce and adds huge amounts of it into a huge bowl to accompany three or four puny leaves if raddichio and arugula. Without apology, he tells me that the other bags of greens had spoiled because they were “left over from before Shabbos.”
Oy.
“OK. the menu says I get a selection of toppings for my salad. I’ll have the ‘fresh albacore tuna’.” But I see that the tuna bears a dark brown crust, making it look like cat food. “Is that fresh albacore?” I ask. “It was,” he says, “but that was before Shabbos.”
Oy.
“Then give me the black olives.”
“You should know that we mix them with the green ones before Shabbos.”
Oy.
“Then what about the sweet red peppers?” But I already know the answer: You can’t light Shabbos candles until the you’ve mixed the red and green ones together.
Then I ask for falafel . . . but you already know the answer: The grinder broke, so we couldn’t grind the chickpeas, and you know that we couldn’t get it fixed on Shabbos.
Oy vey.
“How about a cup of coffee.”
“You want cream with that?” I nod in the affirmative. “Sorry, all we have is black because we haven’t had a delivery from the dairy since before Shabbos.”
Oy again.
“What about a can of “Coke?”
“I hope that you like regular, because we weren’t here on Shabbos to get a delivery of Diet.”
Noch a mohl oy.
A cup of coffee with real cream at Starbucks in the airport would have to suffice until I got back home. Now Greenville wasn’t looking so bad. I daydreamt about my flight back. Ah, Greenville, where black and green olives come from separate jars and you can get fresh milk seven days a week. On my return, I lustily ate mixed greens and white albacore tuna at a treifeh restaurant, and I washed it all down with a cup of creamery-rich half-and-half-enhanced cup of real coffee. The restaurant will remain unnamed.
Oy, a mechayeh!
The next time I returned to New York, it was for my kids’ wedding at the rococo catering hall, Razag, in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. For that joyous occasion I had the chutzpa to tell the machatonim that they might do whatever they please, even the garish smorgasbord. But this I begged them: not to have the wedding too soon after Shabbos, so that at least the pizza will be hot and the Diet Coke cold.
Any time I have the opportunity to escape my highly-gentile hometown of Greenville to visit New York, it is as if I were on a pilgrimage to the Holy Wall in Jerusalem. New York’s plethora of outstanding, or at least passable, kosher restaurants is a special treat for gluttons like me who lives to eat.
But, this time, that wonderful experience of brisket, pastrami, and falafel was overshadowed by attempting to buy a Coke and and a snack on my way back to the airport that Sunday.
Ah, behold the telephone-booth sized joint across the Yeshiva campus. As I enter the place, I realize that it is simply a dump that observes kashrut. Strutting up to the counter, I behold a rack of pizzas festooned with green pepper. But oy, green pepper hurts my stomach.
I assume – wouldn’t you? – that a simple cheese pizza would also be available at a dive across from Yeshiva University, touting itself as Yahkel’s Pizza. No, they inform me, all the cheese pizzas were frozen before Shabbos and would take at least a half-hour to thaw.
Oy.
“OK, then let me have a salad.” The menu says that I have my choice of between “iceberg” lettuce and “mixed greens.” As a gourmand in training, I select the mixed greens. The server brings them to the counter, but then proceeds to chop three heads of iceberg lettuce and adds huge amounts of it into a huge bowl to accompany three or four puny leaves if raddichio and arugula. Without apology, he tells me that the other bags of greens had spoiled because they were “left over from before Shabbos.”
Oy.
“OK. the menu says I get a selection of toppings for my salad. I’ll have the ‘fresh albacore tuna’.” But I see that the tuna bears a dark brown crust, making it look like cat food. “Is that fresh albacore?” I ask. “It was,” he says, “but that was before Shabbos.”
Oy.
“Then give me the black olives.”
“You should know that we mix them with the green ones before Shabbos.”
Oy.
“Then what about the sweet red peppers?” But I already know the answer: You can’t light Shabbos candles until the you’ve mixed the red and green ones together.
Then I ask for falafel . . . but you already know the answer: The grinder broke, so we couldn’t grind the chickpeas, and you know that we couldn’t get it fixed on Shabbos.
Oy vey.
“How about a cup of coffee.”
“You want cream with that?” I nod in the affirmative. “Sorry, all we have is black because we haven’t had a delivery from the dairy since before Shabbos.”
Oy again.
“What about a can of “Coke?”
“I hope that you like regular, because we weren’t here on Shabbos to get a delivery of Diet.”
Noch a mohl oy.
A cup of coffee with real cream at Starbucks in the airport would have to suffice until I got back home. Now Greenville wasn’t looking so bad. I daydreamt about my flight back. Ah, Greenville, where black and green olives come from separate jars and you can get fresh milk seven days a week. On my return, I lustily ate mixed greens and white albacore tuna at a treifeh restaurant, and I washed it all down with a cup of creamery-rich half-and-half-enhanced cup of real coffee. The restaurant will remain unnamed.
Oy, a mechayeh!
The next time I returned to New York, it was for my kids’ wedding at the rococo catering hall, Razag, in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. For that joyous occasion I had the chutzpa to tell the machatonim that they might do whatever they please, even the garish smorgasbord. But this I begged them: not to have the wedding too soon after Shabbos, so that at least the pizza will be hot and the Diet Coke cold.
November 18, 2006
BLAND AND THE BOYS
Linda is the perfect Rebbetzin. Had I been a chef, we would have visited divorce court. I call Linda a “selective anorexic,” who will not eat the foods that I adore. Her bland tastes have fallen into the hell created by a husband who lives by chili pepper and Geschmorte Rindszunge.
Sushi is slimy fish, so we don’t eat Japanese together. Mexican food reeks of cilantro, so we do not venture south of the border. Indian? The odor of cumin is too strong. Thai? Too spicy. German? Ach du lieber! Too rich!
What should I do if my wife refuses ceviche and considers meat loaf haute cuisine? Without her cooperation, who might enjoy sampling my offerings in Greenville, a town so backward that a fancy dinner means pizza?
But, there is a tidbit of good fortune for us. In this ultra-conservative town, we have the mazal of living next door to one of the few gay couples in the county. We simply call them “the boys,” and they will eat anything that I serve and take home the rest. They call me “the food pimp.”
They have their own rating system: how much my creations resemble their goische counterparts: “Ah, the chopped liver might as well be pate de foie. The cholent is better than cassoulet. The apfel schalent surpasses any American apple pie.”
There are, of course, foods so noxious that even the boys refuse them. They will never try pitscha just by looking at it: Viscous, grainy, and that disgusting cow’s foot. Spinach borscht looks like . . . well, you know what it looks like. A gelatinous pickled fish head is just creepy.
I have taught the boys many Jewish words in the process: milchig, pareve, kugel, gefilte fish, matzo balls. They love trying to say words when I invite to dinner: “This kishke is wonderful! The kugel is simply divine!”
One Shabbos I decided to bake a special challah for them. They looked at it, sniffed and announced, “Berches? We thought that only Yekkes ate that! Aren’t you an Ostjude? Next you’ll be feeding us Bohnen-Suppe! What’s wrong with you?”
Linda is the perfect Rebbetzin. Had I been a chef, we would have visited divorce court. I call Linda a “selective anorexic,” who will not eat the foods that I adore. Her bland tastes have fallen into the hell created by a husband who lives by chili pepper and Geschmorte Rindszunge.
Sushi is slimy fish, so we don’t eat Japanese together. Mexican food reeks of cilantro, so we do not venture south of the border. Indian? The odor of cumin is too strong. Thai? Too spicy. German? Ach du lieber! Too rich!
What should I do if my wife refuses ceviche and considers meat loaf haute cuisine? Without her cooperation, who might enjoy sampling my offerings in Greenville, a town so backward that a fancy dinner means pizza?
But, there is a tidbit of good fortune for us. In this ultra-conservative town, we have the mazal of living next door to one of the few gay couples in the county. We simply call them “the boys,” and they will eat anything that I serve and take home the rest. They call me “the food pimp.”
They have their own rating system: how much my creations resemble their goische counterparts: “Ah, the chopped liver might as well be pate de foie. The cholent is better than cassoulet. The apfel schalent surpasses any American apple pie.”
There are, of course, foods so noxious that even the boys refuse them. They will never try pitscha just by looking at it: Viscous, grainy, and that disgusting cow’s foot. Spinach borscht looks like . . . well, you know what it looks like. A gelatinous pickled fish head is just creepy.
I have taught the boys many Jewish words in the process: milchig, pareve, kugel, gefilte fish, matzo balls. They love trying to say words when I invite to dinner: “This kishke is wonderful! The kugel is simply divine!”
One Shabbos I decided to bake a special challah for them. They looked at it, sniffed and announced, “Berches? We thought that only Yekkes ate that! Aren’t you an Ostjude? Next you’ll be feeding us Bohnen-Suppe! What’s wrong with you?”
November 12, 2006
THE GANGSTA BOCHUR EXTREME MAKEOVER
Have you ever noticed how many no-brainers need an Einstein to figure them out? Let’s not talk about mega-no-brainers like the debacle in Iraq. Instead, let’s talk about a really dumb no-brainer (you’ll pardon the redundancy) on the near-and-dear Jewish home-front:
People have forgotten how to dress their kids – and themselves – when they come to schule.
My peeve transitions to full-blown rant when I go to schule on Shabbos and hear Shmerel squeaking out Ashrai to rehearse for his Bar Mitzvah. Mom and dad sit in their places as Shmerele reluctantly shuffles up to the bimah in grubby tee-shirt, faded jeans below his pupik, and oversized Nikes.
At first, I thought it was just Shmerel’s slack-jawed “why-are-you-bothering-me-this-is-a-waste-of-time” indifference that galled me. Regarding that, the rabbi and his parents should give him a swift dose of attitude adjustment and tell him to straighten up and fly right.
Then I realized that Shmerel’s his hip-hop uniform was as annoying as his attitude. Each Shabbos, Linda has to restrain me from asking his parents why they let the kid out of the house looking like a rapper. That would be too embarrassing and just not nice.
As a guy who always wears a suit to schule and has seen that his kids do the same, I would say, “If he visited church with a friend, you and I know that you would make sure that he dressed appropriately. And I daresay that his church-going friends would already know what to wear to synagogue.”
What else would I say?
I’d say, “My parents insisted that I wear Shabbosdik clothes to schule as a rite of passage when I started first grade of Sunday school. To this day, my regard for the honor of schule and Shabbos derives in large measure from that guidance. I went on to become a rabbi, and when I left the rabbinate, at least it was not due to my attire.”
Wait a minute. I apologize for boasting about my lifelong commitment to the appropriate rabbinical dress-code. Noop. I did go through a period as most rabbis do, of believing that I would bridge the gap between me and my younger congregants by becoming “Rabbi Skippy,” just one of the boys, jeans and work-shirt, even to the office. Wrong. As much as a rabbi’s credibility rises and falls on his menschlichkeit and scholarship, we also weigh it by the dignity with which he presents himself. Thus the words of one of my mentors: “You need not become like them in order to influence them.” Had I only listened to his sage advice sooner.
I recently attended a meeting at which a friend peevedly told me that his rabbi attended a bris in a work-shirt and khakis. Known for his candor, I asked my friend how he responded. “I told him,” he said, “that a rabbi should dress like a rabbi!”
I know. You will say that this rant is just the crankiness of a crabby man on his way to old age. Possibly. But, think about it this way: We buy our kids the most extravagant tallesim and the most ornate zeckelach. Their yarmulkes are works of art and they will receive sterling Kiddush cups that you will proudly display. And guess what? There’s nothing wrong with any of that.
Perhaps we do it as a sign of our conspicuous consumption. But perhaps we also buy, wear, and display religious finery for our kids because we know deep down that they those objects belong to ages; they endure eternally.
In some mystical way, maybe we should start thinking about ourselves as the tallesim that wrap themselves around eternity. How do we embrace eternity when we dress ourselves down in vintage Pig Pen?
We know what to wear when we embrace a Bloody Mary at a cocktail party. Why should it be any worse when we ready ourselves and Shmerel to embrace the Eternal One?
Have you ever noticed how many no-brainers need an Einstein to figure them out? Let’s not talk about mega-no-brainers like the debacle in Iraq. Instead, let’s talk about a really dumb no-brainer (you’ll pardon the redundancy) on the near-and-dear Jewish home-front:
People have forgotten how to dress their kids – and themselves – when they come to schule.
My peeve transitions to full-blown rant when I go to schule on Shabbos and hear Shmerel squeaking out Ashrai to rehearse for his Bar Mitzvah. Mom and dad sit in their places as Shmerele reluctantly shuffles up to the bimah in grubby tee-shirt, faded jeans below his pupik, and oversized Nikes.
At first, I thought it was just Shmerel’s slack-jawed “why-are-you-bothering-me-this-is-a-waste-of-time” indifference that galled me. Regarding that, the rabbi and his parents should give him a swift dose of attitude adjustment and tell him to straighten up and fly right.
Then I realized that Shmerel’s his hip-hop uniform was as annoying as his attitude. Each Shabbos, Linda has to restrain me from asking his parents why they let the kid out of the house looking like a rapper. That would be too embarrassing and just not nice.
As a guy who always wears a suit to schule and has seen that his kids do the same, I would say, “If he visited church with a friend, you and I know that you would make sure that he dressed appropriately. And I daresay that his church-going friends would already know what to wear to synagogue.”
What else would I say?
I’d say, “My parents insisted that I wear Shabbosdik clothes to schule as a rite of passage when I started first grade of Sunday school. To this day, my regard for the honor of schule and Shabbos derives in large measure from that guidance. I went on to become a rabbi, and when I left the rabbinate, at least it was not due to my attire.”
Wait a minute. I apologize for boasting about my lifelong commitment to the appropriate rabbinical dress-code. Noop. I did go through a period as most rabbis do, of believing that I would bridge the gap between me and my younger congregants by becoming “Rabbi Skippy,” just one of the boys, jeans and work-shirt, even to the office. Wrong. As much as a rabbi’s credibility rises and falls on his menschlichkeit and scholarship, we also weigh it by the dignity with which he presents himself. Thus the words of one of my mentors: “You need not become like them in order to influence them.” Had I only listened to his sage advice sooner.
I recently attended a meeting at which a friend peevedly told me that his rabbi attended a bris in a work-shirt and khakis. Known for his candor, I asked my friend how he responded. “I told him,” he said, “that a rabbi should dress like a rabbi!”
I know. You will say that this rant is just the crankiness of a crabby man on his way to old age. Possibly. But, think about it this way: We buy our kids the most extravagant tallesim and the most ornate zeckelach. Their yarmulkes are works of art and they will receive sterling Kiddush cups that you will proudly display. And guess what? There’s nothing wrong with any of that.
Perhaps we do it as a sign of our conspicuous consumption. But perhaps we also buy, wear, and display religious finery for our kids because we know deep down that they those objects belong to ages; they endure eternally.
In some mystical way, maybe we should start thinking about ourselves as the tallesim that wrap themselves around eternity. How do we embrace eternity when we dress ourselves down in vintage Pig Pen?
We know what to wear when we embrace a Bloody Mary at a cocktail party. Why should it be any worse when we ready ourselves and Shmerel to embrace the Eternal One?
November 04, 2006
SUNDAY MORNING IN SOLITUDE WITH MY NY TIMES
My hometown in Greenville, South Carolina, still has a few redeeming qualities. Premier among them is a tiny Jewish-style delicatessen, Greenfield’s. I say “Jewish style,” because it serves outstanding bagels imported from New York, but slices ham on the same slicer as the kosher corned beef.
Yet, I enjoy an occasional lox-and-bagel at Greenfield’s on Sunday morning. My only problem: Half of the Jewish community does precisely the same. Had I been a plumber, this would not pose a problem. But I am, after all, Herr Rabbiner, the know-it-all of everything Jewish.
As I try to spend a moment reading my beloved New York Times, I am relentlessly interrupted by the local Yehudim. Uninvited, they pull up a chair and ask penetrating questions that I would have happily answered them on Shabbos – had they only been in schule:
“Rabbi, I’ve always (this in itself is a sign of danger) wanted to know,” one gushy congregant asks, “whether I should put up a tombstone for my baby . . . Fifi my poodle?”
“I’ve only got a moment, Rabbi, but a gentile friend wants me tell him why Jews don’t believe in Jesus instead of going to hell.”
“Is it true that some people think Jews have horns because some fanatics still wear those little black boxes on their heads?”
“Rabbi, if I wear my toupee to schule, do I still have to wear a yarmulke?”
“If they really cared, why can’t the Rabbis change all of the holidays to weekends?”
Alas, no one has yet to ask me “How many rungs were in Jacob’s ladder?” or “How many commandments are in the Ten Commandments?”
Then one Sunday morning I was approached by a youngish woman who whispered in my ear, “Rabbi, Jack and I are getting divorced.”
“How sad,” I tell her.
“Sad?” she smiles seductively. “Not me. Now I have a chance to have an affair with you!”
Without responding yes or no, I finally closed my New York Times and drove down the street to MacDonald’s to have a biscuit and a Coke . . . ah, a mechayeh, uninterrupted.
My hometown in Greenville, South Carolina, still has a few redeeming qualities. Premier among them is a tiny Jewish-style delicatessen, Greenfield’s. I say “Jewish style,” because it serves outstanding bagels imported from New York, but slices ham on the same slicer as the kosher corned beef.
Yet, I enjoy an occasional lox-and-bagel at Greenfield’s on Sunday morning. My only problem: Half of the Jewish community does precisely the same. Had I been a plumber, this would not pose a problem. But I am, after all, Herr Rabbiner, the know-it-all of everything Jewish.
As I try to spend a moment reading my beloved New York Times, I am relentlessly interrupted by the local Yehudim. Uninvited, they pull up a chair and ask penetrating questions that I would have happily answered them on Shabbos – had they only been in schule:
“Rabbi, I’ve always (this in itself is a sign of danger) wanted to know,” one gushy congregant asks, “whether I should put up a tombstone for my baby . . . Fifi my poodle?”
“I’ve only got a moment, Rabbi, but a gentile friend wants me tell him why Jews don’t believe in Jesus instead of going to hell.”
“Is it true that some people think Jews have horns because some fanatics still wear those little black boxes on their heads?”
“Rabbi, if I wear my toupee to schule, do I still have to wear a yarmulke?”
“If they really cared, why can’t the Rabbis change all of the holidays to weekends?”
Alas, no one has yet to ask me “How many rungs were in Jacob’s ladder?” or “How many commandments are in the Ten Commandments?”
Then one Sunday morning I was approached by a youngish woman who whispered in my ear, “Rabbi, Jack and I are getting divorced.”
“How sad,” I tell her.
“Sad?” she smiles seductively. “Not me. Now I have a chance to have an affair with you!”
Without responding yes or no, I finally closed my New York Times and drove down the street to MacDonald’s to have a biscuit and a Coke . . . ah, a mechayeh, uninterrupted.
October 26, 2006
THE BLOOD-SUGAR CONSPIRACY
Do you have diabetes? If not, are you sure that you’re Jewish? Remember a generation ago? The misery of sterilizing the equipment, watching Mama stab herself with a dull, thick needle, trying to calculate the right injection of insulin, and maintaining a stringent diet.
My mother was meticulous. Not like crabby Mr. Finkelstein who lived next door, the one who hated children and chased them off his property with an outstretched cane. He browbeat his mousy wife into buying him chazerai. He inhaled it with a grunt, as his helpless children watched his blood sugar rise and plummet.
Finally, his son Irving moved in with Papa and Mama to police him. He straightened out his diet, got his medications in order, watched him like a spy, and suffered great abuse.
But, Mr. Finkelstein’s blood sugar remained perilously high. The doctor hadn’t a clue. The children said that everything was under control, each meal measured, and insulin dispensed.
Mr. Finkelstein tolerated only one child. Me. It was probably because we walked to schule together on dark, frigid Chicago mornings, as he would rasp bitterly about his children, his idiot-son Irving, and of course, how “none of my rotten kids go to schule.”
The schule was a cabal of crabby old men griping about their children. Each one had an assignment. Every morning, Mr. Finkelstein’s mission was to put out breakfast for his conspirators. The aroma of brewing coffee was so enticing that we could barely finish Alenu. Always the same menu: sweet-sour herring, kichel rolled in coarse sugar, coffee, and always a l’chayim over a shot of schnapps, hidden under the bimah. Every once in a while, Mr. Finkelstein would surreptitiously pour me a schnapps, so I “wouldn’t be too cold waiting for the bus.”
Aha! A robust breakfast, just like in the Old Country, was the secret to the old man’s rocketing blood sugar: sugar in the herring, the kichel, the coffee, and of course, the daily l’chayim.
I kept our clandestine breakfasts to myself, now being one of the cronies. Off I would trudge to school. But, one day at 9:00 AM a teacher smelled alcohol on my breath. I was hauled off to the principal’s office and my mother summoned.
“What did you do? Is this the son we raised?” my mother barked. I knew that I would be black-and-blue by lunchtime and slashed by her well-honed tongue. An explanation wad demanded. Finally, they tortured the truth out of me about schule, the old men, their secret breakfast, and starting the day with a schnapps.
“And Mr. Finkelstein has this breakfast with you?” My mother smelled the rat.
I got my swift, exacting punishment. But, before we walked in our door, Mama appeared before Irving and ended his quest for the ultimate answer.
The Finkelstein’s held a family meeting. They decided that the old man should no longer go to schule. He was ferocious. Irving would stand guard at the door every morning, and from next door I would hear: “Anti-Semite! I’m going to schule! You are not going to schule! All right, so I won’t eat breakfast! Why should I trust you? Because I’m your father! You’re not my father when you act like a baby!”
Ah, so what became of Irving? Truth be told, his kidneys failed and he went on dialysis at the age of 48. Mr. Finkelstein, though, lived to a crabby 93, a refugee from too much schnapps and too little insulin.
I am certain that when Morris Finkelstein arrived at Heaven’s gate, God was right there waiting for him. Then He hoisted a shot-glass twinkling with schnapps, offered Morris a l’chayim, and welcoming him home.
Do you have diabetes? If not, are you sure that you’re Jewish? Remember a generation ago? The misery of sterilizing the equipment, watching Mama stab herself with a dull, thick needle, trying to calculate the right injection of insulin, and maintaining a stringent diet.
My mother was meticulous. Not like crabby Mr. Finkelstein who lived next door, the one who hated children and chased them off his property with an outstretched cane. He browbeat his mousy wife into buying him chazerai. He inhaled it with a grunt, as his helpless children watched his blood sugar rise and plummet.
Finally, his son Irving moved in with Papa and Mama to police him. He straightened out his diet, got his medications in order, watched him like a spy, and suffered great abuse.
But, Mr. Finkelstein’s blood sugar remained perilously high. The doctor hadn’t a clue. The children said that everything was under control, each meal measured, and insulin dispensed.
Mr. Finkelstein tolerated only one child. Me. It was probably because we walked to schule together on dark, frigid Chicago mornings, as he would rasp bitterly about his children, his idiot-son Irving, and of course, how “none of my rotten kids go to schule.”
The schule was a cabal of crabby old men griping about their children. Each one had an assignment. Every morning, Mr. Finkelstein’s mission was to put out breakfast for his conspirators. The aroma of brewing coffee was so enticing that we could barely finish Alenu. Always the same menu: sweet-sour herring, kichel rolled in coarse sugar, coffee, and always a l’chayim over a shot of schnapps, hidden under the bimah. Every once in a while, Mr. Finkelstein would surreptitiously pour me a schnapps, so I “wouldn’t be too cold waiting for the bus.”
Aha! A robust breakfast, just like in the Old Country, was the secret to the old man’s rocketing blood sugar: sugar in the herring, the kichel, the coffee, and of course, the daily l’chayim.
I kept our clandestine breakfasts to myself, now being one of the cronies. Off I would trudge to school. But, one day at 9:00 AM a teacher smelled alcohol on my breath. I was hauled off to the principal’s office and my mother summoned.
“What did you do? Is this the son we raised?” my mother barked. I knew that I would be black-and-blue by lunchtime and slashed by her well-honed tongue. An explanation wad demanded. Finally, they tortured the truth out of me about schule, the old men, their secret breakfast, and starting the day with a schnapps.
“And Mr. Finkelstein has this breakfast with you?” My mother smelled the rat.
I got my swift, exacting punishment. But, before we walked in our door, Mama appeared before Irving and ended his quest for the ultimate answer.
The Finkelstein’s held a family meeting. They decided that the old man should no longer go to schule. He was ferocious. Irving would stand guard at the door every morning, and from next door I would hear: “Anti-Semite! I’m going to schule! You are not going to schule! All right, so I won’t eat breakfast! Why should I trust you? Because I’m your father! You’re not my father when you act like a baby!”
Ah, so what became of Irving? Truth be told, his kidneys failed and he went on dialysis at the age of 48. Mr. Finkelstein, though, lived to a crabby 93, a refugee from too much schnapps and too little insulin.
I am certain that when Morris Finkelstein arrived at Heaven’s gate, God was right there waiting for him. Then He hoisted a shot-glass twinkling with schnapps, offered Morris a l’chayim, and welcoming him home.
October 15, 2006
WHO ATE THE MEATBALLS?
No one will ever be able to convince me otherwise. The manna that rained down from heaven was ground beef. It is the most versatile of all foods:
Hamburgers. Meatloaf. Sausage. Ragout. Meatballs. Spaghetti sauce. Meatballs and beans. Meatballs in cholent. Creamed ground beef on toast.
In our family, ground beef has attained legendary proportions. The story is told of how my Aunt Leah made a pot of meatballs to be served the next evening.
Aunt Leah was a huge woman who, as I remember, snored loudly, suffered from sleep apnea, and slept the sleep of the dead. Her husband, Uncle Izzy, was puny and hyperactive. Most nights he wandered the house, turning the radio on and off, ruffling the newspaper, starting but never finishing the crossword puzzle.
Knowing that Aunt Leah slept deeply, Izzy would occasionally raid the refrigerator. That night, he ate half the pot of meatballs. It wasn’t until Leah came to warm them that she discovered the great escape. She instantly lined up Izzy and the four kids, ready to prosecute with a leather sharpening strop, her favorite weapon of inquisition.
“Who ate the meatballs?!” she demanded.
Silence. Then, one by one, she seethed at the children: “Did YOU eat the meatballs?!” For the first time in their lives, the kids told the truth, “Ma, honest, we didn’t eat the meatballs!”
“And Izzy, what about you?”
”Sweetie, how could I have eaten the meatballs? I’m always sleeping in bed right next to you”
Oh no, that was not the end of the story. Aunt Leah, you see, was a plodding woman. At an occasional Purim party or Pesach Seder, she would announce, “I still can’t figure out who ate the meatballs.”
Years went by. Uncle Izzy lay on his death bed. As the end neared, he beckoned Aunt Leah to draw near. Then he gasped and whispered, “I ate the meatballs.” That was his final breath.
The children cried and hugged, but Aunt Leah smugly announced, “Aha, I knew it all along! The red on the towel wasn’t because he cut himself! It was tomato sauce!”
No one will ever be able to convince me otherwise. The manna that rained down from heaven was ground beef. It is the most versatile of all foods:
Hamburgers. Meatloaf. Sausage. Ragout. Meatballs. Spaghetti sauce. Meatballs and beans. Meatballs in cholent. Creamed ground beef on toast.
In our family, ground beef has attained legendary proportions. The story is told of how my Aunt Leah made a pot of meatballs to be served the next evening.
Aunt Leah was a huge woman who, as I remember, snored loudly, suffered from sleep apnea, and slept the sleep of the dead. Her husband, Uncle Izzy, was puny and hyperactive. Most nights he wandered the house, turning the radio on and off, ruffling the newspaper, starting but never finishing the crossword puzzle.
Knowing that Aunt Leah slept deeply, Izzy would occasionally raid the refrigerator. That night, he ate half the pot of meatballs. It wasn’t until Leah came to warm them that she discovered the great escape. She instantly lined up Izzy and the four kids, ready to prosecute with a leather sharpening strop, her favorite weapon of inquisition.
“Who ate the meatballs?!” she demanded.
Silence. Then, one by one, she seethed at the children: “Did YOU eat the meatballs?!” For the first time in their lives, the kids told the truth, “Ma, honest, we didn’t eat the meatballs!”
“And Izzy, what about you?”
”Sweetie, how could I have eaten the meatballs? I’m always sleeping in bed right next to you”
Oh no, that was not the end of the story. Aunt Leah, you see, was a plodding woman. At an occasional Purim party or Pesach Seder, she would announce, “I still can’t figure out who ate the meatballs.”
Years went by. Uncle Izzy lay on his death bed. As the end neared, he beckoned Aunt Leah to draw near. Then he gasped and whispered, “I ate the meatballs.” That was his final breath.
The children cried and hugged, but Aunt Leah smugly announced, “Aha, I knew it all along! The red on the towel wasn’t because he cut himself! It was tomato sauce!”
October 03, 2006
HEAVEN – A NICE PLACE TO SPEND SOME TIME
A few days ago, I spent five minutes in hell. As I left the doctor’s office, I was accompanied by a pathetic woman struggling to negotiate the few steps outside the building.
Dressed from Salvation Army counters. A two-year-old on one hip. A baby-bag slung over her shoulder. Hugely pregnant. And wincing with such horrific pain each time she stepped forward on her tiptoe that her hair was matted with greasy sweat. I swear that I saw white-hot sparks crackle from the blacktop.
I offered her my arm and asked if I could carry the baby. I brought her to her battered car and asked how I could help. No, there was nothing more I could do.
Please don’t see this as a plea for adulation. I was simply doing what Momma taught me. And I knew that if I didn’t, she would instantly have reached down from heaven and administered an omnipotent frosk, “Let that be a lesson to you!”
Besides, I did not create heaven. I spent five minutes in hell.
Ironic thing about heaven. When we talk about heaven, the conversation is usually so contention and shrill. “Our side will get there. You won’t get there. It’s in this book. No, it’s in that book. Follow him. Follow me. Blah, blah, blah.” In my own times, I have added my own voice to the shrillness, and I dread to say that in moments of weakness, I might do it again.
But, an inner whisper that has lately brought me to unrelentingly bitter tears has given birth to a more calm and measured vision of heaven. It did not come to me as a theological epiphany, so I confess in advance to its doctrinal impurity.
Life batters me, and it batters you. Life can be so damned mean, and for every time we deserve it, ten times the meanness comes by way of people who are greedy, ruthless, and just plain heartless. Sometimes it is so unbearable that it can no longer be numbed by a martini or hope in a heaven that is a contentious and smug place where I get in and you keep out.
To the broken of heart and those who withstand the worst of unbearable meanness, this is the peace and healing that I believe heaven will bring:
Heaven is a place where everyone is nice.
No stiff, fancy doctrine or hoo-hah to obfuscate the basic promise.
“I see you need a job. I’ll take a chance on you. I’ll train you. When can you start?” Nice.
“I see that you’re crying. Would you like a tissue? Would you like to talk? Maybe I can help.” Nice.
“I see that your family has no place to eat. Come, eat and stay with us. Tomorrow we’ll go find someone who can help you get on the right track.” Nice.
“Let me carry that bag. Help you cross the street. Hold open the door. Give you my seat on the bus.” Nice.
“Let me prop you up and help with your baby, walk you to your car. Let me give you at least a moment of heaven before you must descend back to your hell.” Nice.
Heaven is a place where everyone is nice.
Ah, sounds like a heaven we could replicate on earth. Right. Right, were their no insurmountable walls barring a world full of niceness. Not merely the Saddam’s and Hitler’s, but a receptionist who doesn’t offer a wheelchair to someone wincing in pain or a boss who won’t give a kid a chance.
This is precisely why the broken of heart and the spat-upon need keep faith in a heaven boding peaceful, calming niceness. Meanwhile, we who are blessed with the ability would do well to share some of the appetizers of heaven to folks here on earth. Perhaps that will tide them over by the reassurance that there is a good measure of niceness yet to be found among us.
A few days ago, I spent five minutes in hell. As I left the doctor’s office, I was accompanied by a pathetic woman struggling to negotiate the few steps outside the building.
Dressed from Salvation Army counters. A two-year-old on one hip. A baby-bag slung over her shoulder. Hugely pregnant. And wincing with such horrific pain each time she stepped forward on her tiptoe that her hair was matted with greasy sweat. I swear that I saw white-hot sparks crackle from the blacktop.
I offered her my arm and asked if I could carry the baby. I brought her to her battered car and asked how I could help. No, there was nothing more I could do.
Please don’t see this as a plea for adulation. I was simply doing what Momma taught me. And I knew that if I didn’t, she would instantly have reached down from heaven and administered an omnipotent frosk, “Let that be a lesson to you!”
Besides, I did not create heaven. I spent five minutes in hell.
Ironic thing about heaven. When we talk about heaven, the conversation is usually so contention and shrill. “Our side will get there. You won’t get there. It’s in this book. No, it’s in that book. Follow him. Follow me. Blah, blah, blah.” In my own times, I have added my own voice to the shrillness, and I dread to say that in moments of weakness, I might do it again.
But, an inner whisper that has lately brought me to unrelentingly bitter tears has given birth to a more calm and measured vision of heaven. It did not come to me as a theological epiphany, so I confess in advance to its doctrinal impurity.
Life batters me, and it batters you. Life can be so damned mean, and for every time we deserve it, ten times the meanness comes by way of people who are greedy, ruthless, and just plain heartless. Sometimes it is so unbearable that it can no longer be numbed by a martini or hope in a heaven that is a contentious and smug place where I get in and you keep out.
To the broken of heart and those who withstand the worst of unbearable meanness, this is the peace and healing that I believe heaven will bring:
Heaven is a place where everyone is nice.
No stiff, fancy doctrine or hoo-hah to obfuscate the basic promise.
“I see you need a job. I’ll take a chance on you. I’ll train you. When can you start?” Nice.
“I see that you’re crying. Would you like a tissue? Would you like to talk? Maybe I can help.” Nice.
“I see that your family has no place to eat. Come, eat and stay with us. Tomorrow we’ll go find someone who can help you get on the right track.” Nice.
“Let me carry that bag. Help you cross the street. Hold open the door. Give you my seat on the bus.” Nice.
“Let me prop you up and help with your baby, walk you to your car. Let me give you at least a moment of heaven before you must descend back to your hell.” Nice.
Heaven is a place where everyone is nice.
Ah, sounds like a heaven we could replicate on earth. Right. Right, were their no insurmountable walls barring a world full of niceness. Not merely the Saddam’s and Hitler’s, but a receptionist who doesn’t offer a wheelchair to someone wincing in pain or a boss who won’t give a kid a chance.
This is precisely why the broken of heart and the spat-upon need keep faith in a heaven boding peaceful, calming niceness. Meanwhile, we who are blessed with the ability would do well to share some of the appetizers of heaven to folks here on earth. Perhaps that will tide them over by the reassurance that there is a good measure of niceness yet to be found among us.
September 14, 2006
HIGH HOLIDAYS TORTURE TABLES
“Good things come to those who wait.”
So, I waited and waited for 35 years to abdicate the rabbinate. For the first time, I will spend the Yom Tovim with my family, not having to worry about my sermons or whether the chazzan would take too long singing Kol Nidre.
After all those years, I will finally have the time and energy to prepare my own gourmet holiday feasts. Whether they are delicious or not, my family and friends will have to feed my fragile ego by telling me that they were “marvelous,” and once again, I will have to klop an Al Chet for the sin of arrogance.
But how many years did I spend in other people’s dining rooms futilely trying to ingest Yom Tov meals that we would universally declare torturous?
Have any of you had gritty gefilte fish? No, not gritty from too much matzo meal, but gritty because they were riddled with shrapnel of fish bones that the balaboste was either too lazy or too cruel to remove.
While we are on the subject of appetizers, how could I not forget walking with a congregant to his house for lunch on Rosh Hashanah. He prated on and on about his wife’s cooking, every superlative synonym, as if he’d swallowed Roget’s for breakfast.
Nu? You have already figured out the rest of the story, but not the magnitude of its horror. Each place was set with a reddish-brown lump atop the customary leaf of lettuce. After Kiddush and Motzi, the balabos insisted, “Go ahead, try it.”
I tried. And the liver oozed blood. Rare chopped liver. The prospects of chug-a-lugging liver blood and contracting e-coli ran neck-and-neck in my imagination. Then, an atypical stroke of genius: I reached under the table with my fork and stabbed my hands and arms with the tines. Reaching up, I asked the balaboste what kind of oil she used.
“Canola.”
“Canola?” I shrieked. “You can’t imagine how allergic I am to canola,” and displayed the horrible “rash” on my arm. Beware of rare chopped, and keep your fork nearby.
What do you eat before Yom Kippur? Scientists have debated the issue, but none of them has found anything yet to prevent my backache. Beside, isn’t rotten the way we’re supposed to feel on Yom Kippur?
One Erev One Yom Kippur dinner was particularly memorable. To set the backdrop, the hosts had a huge parrot that kept screaming, “Elliot!” throughout the meal. The lady of the house preceded the main course with a chicken soup that shimmered with layer of fat so thick and shiny that women were furtively checking their hairdos in it. Not to be outdone, the turkey was so hairy that it begged fitting as a toupee.
Then there was another Erev Yom Kippur trying to go into the fast on a dinner of Froot Loops Chicken. Someone must have thought that it was the culinary equivalent of A+B=C. Sweet chicken tastes good. Breaded chicken tastes good. Therefore, Froot Loops Chicken must taste good. Maybe in your world. In my world, it’s one of those “funny recipes from kids” on Leno. How about chocolate-dipped herring?
A girlfriend once took me home on Rosh Hashanah to meet the family. The aroma of holiday dinner wafted from her aunt’s kitchen. A beautiful table was set with honey, apples and round challah.
I recited the Kiddush. They were impressed. They presented the appetizer. Hmm. It was too smooth to be gefilte fish. And besides, it was pink. I tentatively tasted it.
“This is delicious,” I said to the host. “What is it?”
“It’s crabmeat salad. It’s our tradition to eat it on the first night of Rosh Hashanah.”
Fortunately, the dog ate it ravenously. Afterward, I asked my girlfriend if there were any other family secrets that I should know about. I made it plain that crabmeat salad even once a year was a deal breaker. Then I told her that if we were to go any further, I would happily dye the gefilte fish pink.
“Good things come to those who wait.”
So, I waited and waited for 35 years to abdicate the rabbinate. For the first time, I will spend the Yom Tovim with my family, not having to worry about my sermons or whether the chazzan would take too long singing Kol Nidre.
After all those years, I will finally have the time and energy to prepare my own gourmet holiday feasts. Whether they are delicious or not, my family and friends will have to feed my fragile ego by telling me that they were “marvelous,” and once again, I will have to klop an Al Chet for the sin of arrogance.
But how many years did I spend in other people’s dining rooms futilely trying to ingest Yom Tov meals that we would universally declare torturous?
Have any of you had gritty gefilte fish? No, not gritty from too much matzo meal, but gritty because they were riddled with shrapnel of fish bones that the balaboste was either too lazy or too cruel to remove.
While we are on the subject of appetizers, how could I not forget walking with a congregant to his house for lunch on Rosh Hashanah. He prated on and on about his wife’s cooking, every superlative synonym, as if he’d swallowed Roget’s for breakfast.
Nu? You have already figured out the rest of the story, but not the magnitude of its horror. Each place was set with a reddish-brown lump atop the customary leaf of lettuce. After Kiddush and Motzi, the balabos insisted, “Go ahead, try it.”
I tried. And the liver oozed blood. Rare chopped liver. The prospects of chug-a-lugging liver blood and contracting e-coli ran neck-and-neck in my imagination. Then, an atypical stroke of genius: I reached under the table with my fork and stabbed my hands and arms with the tines. Reaching up, I asked the balaboste what kind of oil she used.
“Canola.”
“Canola?” I shrieked. “You can’t imagine how allergic I am to canola,” and displayed the horrible “rash” on my arm. Beware of rare chopped, and keep your fork nearby.
What do you eat before Yom Kippur? Scientists have debated the issue, but none of them has found anything yet to prevent my backache. Beside, isn’t rotten the way we’re supposed to feel on Yom Kippur?
One Erev One Yom Kippur dinner was particularly memorable. To set the backdrop, the hosts had a huge parrot that kept screaming, “Elliot!” throughout the meal. The lady of the house preceded the main course with a chicken soup that shimmered with layer of fat so thick and shiny that women were furtively checking their hairdos in it. Not to be outdone, the turkey was so hairy that it begged fitting as a toupee.
Then there was another Erev Yom Kippur trying to go into the fast on a dinner of Froot Loops Chicken. Someone must have thought that it was the culinary equivalent of A+B=C. Sweet chicken tastes good. Breaded chicken tastes good. Therefore, Froot Loops Chicken must taste good. Maybe in your world. In my world, it’s one of those “funny recipes from kids” on Leno. How about chocolate-dipped herring?
A girlfriend once took me home on Rosh Hashanah to meet the family. The aroma of holiday dinner wafted from her aunt’s kitchen. A beautiful table was set with honey, apples and round challah.
I recited the Kiddush. They were impressed. They presented the appetizer. Hmm. It was too smooth to be gefilte fish. And besides, it was pink. I tentatively tasted it.
“This is delicious,” I said to the host. “What is it?”
“It’s crabmeat salad. It’s our tradition to eat it on the first night of Rosh Hashanah.”
Fortunately, the dog ate it ravenously. Afterward, I asked my girlfriend if there were any other family secrets that I should know about. I made it plain that crabmeat salad even once a year was a deal breaker. Then I told her that if we were to go any further, I would happily dye the gefilte fish pink.
August 26, 2006
THE SCHOOLYARD LOSER
Anyone who has lost a schoolyard fight will tell you that you don’t need to wait until adulthood to know whether you’re a “winner” or a “loser.”
Despite superior grades and victories in science fairs and essay contests, I was a loser, with Coca-Cola-bottom glasses and pudgy-face crewcut. Kids picked on me. The desperate need to assert my machismo momentarily overruled my basic nature as a crybaby. So I took the bait and always lost.
Georgie was wiry and half my size. He was adept at teasing, and I was an easy mark. One Friday on the way home from school, resplendent in my Cub Scout uniform (which made fighting a cardinal sin), Georgie picked a fight, and I obliged. In a second, he had me pinned to the ground and pummeled me, encircle by a mob of third-graders jeering, “Fight! Fight! N**ger (albeit that Georgie was Caucasian) and a white! C’mon, Georgie! Beat that white!” I cried and ran home to momma. Loser.
By fifth grade, I owned two sources of pride: an Esterbrook fountain pen, just like my dad’s, and a bright red parka. The parka made me even pudgier, but my parents reassured me that it also made me look “just like a Royal Canadian Mountie.”
On the way out to recess, Mickey grabbed the Esterbrook from me. I clumsily chased after him. But Mickey, who still dances in a Broadway chorus line, was fast and wily. He dodged and weaved as I lumbered and stumbled. Then, in a final mockery, he opened the Esterbrook’s bladder and shot black ink over my Mountie coat.
A teacher put Mickey in detention for a week and made him pay for the cleaning. His parents were smug and treated it as a rite of passage. My parents, as usual, made no waves toward them and turned their wrath toward me. My mother saw the ruined coat as the squandering of hard-earned cash and understood nothing of the shame of being the schoolyard lummox. My father, the WWII hero, lectured me on how “the best defense is to just walk away.” I was grounded for a month. Loser.
A few years went by. Another creep discovered my vulnerability and goaded me. But, this was nerdy Talmud camp, so we were all a bunch of losers. I assessed my chances with Moishe and beat him until he started gasping. Not knowing what brutality I had inflicted, I ran to the dining hall to summon the doctor, who made short shrift of the incident. “You just knocked the wind out of him,” he dismissed me. “That’s what happens when you win the fight.”
“Win the fight.” After lo the many years, the victory still feels almost Pyrrhic: You beat Moishe to a pulp, then call the doctor while Moishe gasps for breath. And now he’s a professor at NYU. Loser.
Now no longer 7 or 17, but 57, what I wouldn’t do to have my column syndicated. For years, I’ve sent off packets to various syndicates, predictably receiving no response or a generic rejection note. Once, I did receive a response: The editor told me that my style and language usage were wonderful. “But,” he wrote, “Your writing has one fatal flaw that you’ll never overcome. It is insipid to the core.”
“Insipid to the core.” “Fatal flaw.” Loser.
From that day on, I haven’t spent much time mailing off packets. I fear that the response I receive would just make me want to run home crying to momma. A column of mine might appear here and there, and that makes me happy. And when it doesn’t, I put on my white jacket and pretend that I’m a chef. I make pate de foie, Peruvian ceviche and duck prosciutto. You may not like them. But this I promise: They’ll never be insipid to the core.
So much for the schoolyard loser.
Anyone who has lost a schoolyard fight will tell you that you don’t need to wait until adulthood to know whether you’re a “winner” or a “loser.”
Despite superior grades and victories in science fairs and essay contests, I was a loser, with Coca-Cola-bottom glasses and pudgy-face crewcut. Kids picked on me. The desperate need to assert my machismo momentarily overruled my basic nature as a crybaby. So I took the bait and always lost.
Georgie was wiry and half my size. He was adept at teasing, and I was an easy mark. One Friday on the way home from school, resplendent in my Cub Scout uniform (which made fighting a cardinal sin), Georgie picked a fight, and I obliged. In a second, he had me pinned to the ground and pummeled me, encircle by a mob of third-graders jeering, “Fight! Fight! N**ger (albeit that Georgie was Caucasian) and a white! C’mon, Georgie! Beat that white!” I cried and ran home to momma. Loser.
By fifth grade, I owned two sources of pride: an Esterbrook fountain pen, just like my dad’s, and a bright red parka. The parka made me even pudgier, but my parents reassured me that it also made me look “just like a Royal Canadian Mountie.”
On the way out to recess, Mickey grabbed the Esterbrook from me. I clumsily chased after him. But Mickey, who still dances in a Broadway chorus line, was fast and wily. He dodged and weaved as I lumbered and stumbled. Then, in a final mockery, he opened the Esterbrook’s bladder and shot black ink over my Mountie coat.
A teacher put Mickey in detention for a week and made him pay for the cleaning. His parents were smug and treated it as a rite of passage. My parents, as usual, made no waves toward them and turned their wrath toward me. My mother saw the ruined coat as the squandering of hard-earned cash and understood nothing of the shame of being the schoolyard lummox. My father, the WWII hero, lectured me on how “the best defense is to just walk away.” I was grounded for a month. Loser.
A few years went by. Another creep discovered my vulnerability and goaded me. But, this was nerdy Talmud camp, so we were all a bunch of losers. I assessed my chances with Moishe and beat him until he started gasping. Not knowing what brutality I had inflicted, I ran to the dining hall to summon the doctor, who made short shrift of the incident. “You just knocked the wind out of him,” he dismissed me. “That’s what happens when you win the fight.”
“Win the fight.” After lo the many years, the victory still feels almost Pyrrhic: You beat Moishe to a pulp, then call the doctor while Moishe gasps for breath. And now he’s a professor at NYU. Loser.
Now no longer 7 or 17, but 57, what I wouldn’t do to have my column syndicated. For years, I’ve sent off packets to various syndicates, predictably receiving no response or a generic rejection note. Once, I did receive a response: The editor told me that my style and language usage were wonderful. “But,” he wrote, “Your writing has one fatal flaw that you’ll never overcome. It is insipid to the core.”
“Insipid to the core.” “Fatal flaw.” Loser.
From that day on, I haven’t spent much time mailing off packets. I fear that the response I receive would just make me want to run home crying to momma. A column of mine might appear here and there, and that makes me happy. And when it doesn’t, I put on my white jacket and pretend that I’m a chef. I make pate de foie, Peruvian ceviche and duck prosciutto. You may not like them. But this I promise: They’ll never be insipid to the core.
So much for the schoolyard loser.
August 17, 2006
ALL THINGS CONSIDERED
Let me talk one more time about Ben and Joy’s wedding, and I promise it will be the last . . . unless you insist on seeing the pictures in my wallet.
It was a full-tilt Chasidische affair and resoundingly freilach. The only discordant note was the unanticipated Kabbalah-based distress that Meta and I faced as a divorced couple, despite decades that have transpired and our now amicable relationship. Fortunately, the issue was resolved, wounds have healed, perspectives have changed and most importantly, Ben and Joy are settling into a marriage that, please God, will last 120 years in health and happiness.
This is not a clarion call to anti-orthodox sentiment. Rather, it is about our attitude to the panorama of the Jewish experience. It is about the mandate to invoke freely the healing, conciliatory words “all things considered.”
The disposition of Lubavitch to our divorced status is patently indefensible. No Kabbalistic gymnastics or holy books could convince me otherwise. My gut reaction was of complete fire-breathing rejection. So it was, too, to the craziest outer fringe of those who believe in the Rebbe’s messianism (by the way, not including the vast majority of Lubavitchers who nonetheless believe that the Rebbe is the messiah).
But, all things considered, and these are operative words, they do magnificent work throughout the world, and not all of it is about marketing Judaism. Likewise, they and the Rebbe were there for me unconditionally in times of deep personal crisis, while colleagues that are more liberal turned their backs. And I am close enough to them to know that I have not been bamboozled.
All things considered.
I can’t see the orthodoxy of tearing toilet paper on Erev Shabbos or not shaking a woman’s hand. But I can certainly see the orthodoxy of Yeshiva University creating Einstein School of Medicine and Cordoza School of Law along with a superior rabbinical seminary.
All things considered.
Conservative Judaism? A cogent and sensible theology: God calls for each generation to engage in a tug-of-war to determine its point of equilibrium between tradition and change. Attentiveness to Halacha. Vibrancy of its services. But, then again, confusion between Halachic change to accommodate the whims of its constituencies versus responsiveness to the demands of justice and social realities. I cringe at some of its capricious changes, yet celebrate its perceptiveness of the future, not merely veneration of the past.
All things considered.
And the Reform? Feh? No. Incredible scholarship. Creative educational programming. Indignant calls for social justice. Some pundits would say that they are as “orthodox” in the Torah’s cry for social justice as the self-proclaimed “orthodox” are in their meticulous observance of ritual law. But still, they seem too easily confused between Judaism and ethical monotheism. Their Shabbat services often seem more like a hootenanny than a davenen. “Did you like my Selichot service?” a Reform colleague asked me. “It was terrific,” I answered, “but it didn’t have any Selichot prayers in it.”
All things considered.
The problem must have already vexed our European ancestors, because they had coined the Yiddishism, “yeder ainer macht Shabbos farzich alien – everyone makes his own Shabbos.”
Call me a Pollyanna. Any Jewish community should be able to lop off at least a few rough edges, not to do everything as one, but to do more things as one. Otherwise, just listen to what we are inferring about ourselves. We all have “special needs,” right? In our everyday vocabulary, to whom do we refer as having “special needs”? Children. Disabled children. And what is our highest aspiration for them? To draw them into the “mainstream.”
All things considered.
Let me talk one more time about Ben and Joy’s wedding, and I promise it will be the last . . . unless you insist on seeing the pictures in my wallet.
It was a full-tilt Chasidische affair and resoundingly freilach. The only discordant note was the unanticipated Kabbalah-based distress that Meta and I faced as a divorced couple, despite decades that have transpired and our now amicable relationship. Fortunately, the issue was resolved, wounds have healed, perspectives have changed and most importantly, Ben and Joy are settling into a marriage that, please God, will last 120 years in health and happiness.
This is not a clarion call to anti-orthodox sentiment. Rather, it is about our attitude to the panorama of the Jewish experience. It is about the mandate to invoke freely the healing, conciliatory words “all things considered.”
The disposition of Lubavitch to our divorced status is patently indefensible. No Kabbalistic gymnastics or holy books could convince me otherwise. My gut reaction was of complete fire-breathing rejection. So it was, too, to the craziest outer fringe of those who believe in the Rebbe’s messianism (by the way, not including the vast majority of Lubavitchers who nonetheless believe that the Rebbe is the messiah).
But, all things considered, and these are operative words, they do magnificent work throughout the world, and not all of it is about marketing Judaism. Likewise, they and the Rebbe were there for me unconditionally in times of deep personal crisis, while colleagues that are more liberal turned their backs. And I am close enough to them to know that I have not been bamboozled.
All things considered.
I can’t see the orthodoxy of tearing toilet paper on Erev Shabbos or not shaking a woman’s hand. But I can certainly see the orthodoxy of Yeshiva University creating Einstein School of Medicine and Cordoza School of Law along with a superior rabbinical seminary.
All things considered.
Conservative Judaism? A cogent and sensible theology: God calls for each generation to engage in a tug-of-war to determine its point of equilibrium between tradition and change. Attentiveness to Halacha. Vibrancy of its services. But, then again, confusion between Halachic change to accommodate the whims of its constituencies versus responsiveness to the demands of justice and social realities. I cringe at some of its capricious changes, yet celebrate its perceptiveness of the future, not merely veneration of the past.
All things considered.
And the Reform? Feh? No. Incredible scholarship. Creative educational programming. Indignant calls for social justice. Some pundits would say that they are as “orthodox” in the Torah’s cry for social justice as the self-proclaimed “orthodox” are in their meticulous observance of ritual law. But still, they seem too easily confused between Judaism and ethical monotheism. Their Shabbat services often seem more like a hootenanny than a davenen. “Did you like my Selichot service?” a Reform colleague asked me. “It was terrific,” I answered, “but it didn’t have any Selichot prayers in it.”
All things considered.
The problem must have already vexed our European ancestors, because they had coined the Yiddishism, “yeder ainer macht Shabbos farzich alien – everyone makes his own Shabbos.”
Call me a Pollyanna. Any Jewish community should be able to lop off at least a few rough edges, not to do everything as one, but to do more things as one. Otherwise, just listen to what we are inferring about ourselves. We all have “special needs,” right? In our everyday vocabulary, to whom do we refer as having “special needs”? Children. Disabled children. And what is our highest aspiration for them? To draw them into the “mainstream.”
All things considered.
August 16, 2006
HARRY IS STILL MEETING SALLY
During our recent visit to New York, Linda and I took the opportunity to walk around the Lower East Side. It is now a trendy area, full of bars, bistros and expensive apartments, but once it was a neighborhood full of decrepit tenements through which thousands of Jewish immigrants passed on their way to a better life in America.
Some remnants are still intact. Shmatta clothing hangs from racks in the streets. One tenement has been converted into a museum to remind us of the squalor in which our ancestors lived.
And one grimy “kosher style” delicatessen, Katz’s, remains in its original environs. One notices on entry that Katz’s origins go back at least to World War II, as a fly-specked sign declares “Send a Salami to Your Boy in the Army!” which actually rhymes in some American dialects.
Katz’s forever gained international fame about 15 years ago in a memorable film, “When Harry Met Sally.” It was the setting for Sally to prove to the doubting Harry over a pastrami sandwich that a woman can deceive a man into believing that she is having an orgasm. At the conclusion of her tawdry, and I assume, realistic display, an older woman sitting at the next table announces to a waiter, “I want whatever she’s having!”
One cannot imagine how infamous that scene has become. But, do you know what has become even more infamous? The table at which Sally performed her feat. Everyone knows precisely where it is. Do people fight over sitting there? What do you think? Do they order the pre-coital pastrami sandwich? What do you think? Do the women attempt to perform Sally’s infamous deed? I’ll let you use your imagination.
As I am nearing 60, I made the proprietor a suggestion for one more kosher-style item on his menu, small and blue. The only drawback is that it would require the presence of a doctor and pharmacist. Viagra. Now those of us sitting at the next table will again be able to proclaim to the waiter with renewed self-assurance, “I want whatever he’s having!”
During our recent visit to New York, Linda and I took the opportunity to walk around the Lower East Side. It is now a trendy area, full of bars, bistros and expensive apartments, but once it was a neighborhood full of decrepit tenements through which thousands of Jewish immigrants passed on their way to a better life in America.
Some remnants are still intact. Shmatta clothing hangs from racks in the streets. One tenement has been converted into a museum to remind us of the squalor in which our ancestors lived.
And one grimy “kosher style” delicatessen, Katz’s, remains in its original environs. One notices on entry that Katz’s origins go back at least to World War II, as a fly-specked sign declares “Send a Salami to Your Boy in the Army!” which actually rhymes in some American dialects.
Katz’s forever gained international fame about 15 years ago in a memorable film, “When Harry Met Sally.” It was the setting for Sally to prove to the doubting Harry over a pastrami sandwich that a woman can deceive a man into believing that she is having an orgasm. At the conclusion of her tawdry, and I assume, realistic display, an older woman sitting at the next table announces to a waiter, “I want whatever she’s having!”
One cannot imagine how infamous that scene has become. But, do you know what has become even more infamous? The table at which Sally performed her feat. Everyone knows precisely where it is. Do people fight over sitting there? What do you think? Do they order the pre-coital pastrami sandwich? What do you think? Do the women attempt to perform Sally’s infamous deed? I’ll let you use your imagination.
As I am nearing 60, I made the proprietor a suggestion for one more kosher-style item on his menu, small and blue. The only drawback is that it would require the presence of a doctor and pharmacist. Viagra. Now those of us sitting at the next table will again be able to proclaim to the waiter with renewed self-assurance, “I want whatever he’s having!”
August 12, 2006
THE CELLPHONE – CHASIDISM’S TRUE MORAL ENEMY
My son, albeit a modern orthodox young man, is not what you would call a Lubavitcher Chasid. Yet, he recently married a most sweet and exotically beautiful Syrian bride on the steps of 770 Eastern Parkway, the world headquarters of the Lubavitcher/Chabad Chasidim. He was regaled in full Chasidic garb, she wore a classically modest gown and thick “deck-tichel” (veil), and I even got to wear my fedora.
You must know that Benjy getting married in a Lubavitcher ceremony made me tremendously proud. I kvell. I say this neither gratuitously nor with apology. Since 16, I have been close to Chabad, and they have been a consistently positive influence in my life. The Rebbe’s divinely enlightened wisdom and guidance literally saved my life. Is the Rebbe still alive? Certainly. He lives in my soul.
Simply put, Lubavitchers are my people. Thus, my reverence does not preclude me from lighthearted laughing at some of the Chasidic communities’ idiosyncrasies. Knowing as I do the typically robust Lubavitcher sense of humor, I assume that (maybe) they would be laughing along with us.
One of the mandates of a Chasidic wedding, as you likely know, is that men and women are separated from beginning to end. This I can understand for the ceremony, as it is a sacred time of worship. I might even understand it during the smorgasbord – universally called “the sh’morg” – extravaganza, when vodka and other libations flow freely and might loosen the tongue to speak licentiously to the opposite sex.
(Let me digress for a moment and talk about this binge called “the sh’morg.” The sh’morg, not the pious words spoken to the bride and groom by the Rabbi, is the true yardstick of a bounteous wedding. The lamb-chop station. The pasta station. The stir-fry station. The sushi station. What is it about Chasidim and sushi? Once I heard a landsman in beard and payes announce that the faux crabmeat “tasted just like the real thing.” A-ha.)
End of the sh’morg. Back to the festivities.
I can even see how during the dancing the separation is justified, as skirts and tzitzis go swirling in the frenzy.
But, I will never understand why men’s and women’s dinner tables must also be separated by a nine-foot mechitza. I mean, what immorality could possibly be perpetrated by pious men and women sitting next to each other while fressing on a nine-course glatt-kosher bacchanalia? After an orgy of more faux-crabmeat, prime rib and Viennese pastry, I certainly do want to go to bed, but not with someone else’s wife, or probably even my own. And take a Tagamet first.
Let me tell you what really ought to be banned from Chasidic weddings: Cellphones. Separated as they are, cellphones are the only way that men and women are able to communicate with each other during the evening. How many times have I seen husbands and wives innocently use their cell-phones to determine when to leave the reception? Or, “Did you call the babysitter? “No, I thought that you called that babysitter.”
Cellphones for innocent purposes, you say? How do you know that Yankel or Reizel is not clandestinely calling a paramour for a tryst the next afternoon at the Pierre, and doing it under cover of the din and the raucous Chasidic music? Or that Sh’muel isn’t calling in an inside trade on a new offering of an Oriental hi-tech, Kin Ah Hora.
Please, please tell my Chasidic friends that I am just having a good time at their expense and that I need to dunk my mind in the mikvah. But, also remind them that I, like they, can always tell the difference in the look in a man’s eyes when he’s hungry for strudel or for something more toothsome.
My son, albeit a modern orthodox young man, is not what you would call a Lubavitcher Chasid. Yet, he recently married a most sweet and exotically beautiful Syrian bride on the steps of 770 Eastern Parkway, the world headquarters of the Lubavitcher/Chabad Chasidim. He was regaled in full Chasidic garb, she wore a classically modest gown and thick “deck-tichel” (veil), and I even got to wear my fedora.
You must know that Benjy getting married in a Lubavitcher ceremony made me tremendously proud. I kvell. I say this neither gratuitously nor with apology. Since 16, I have been close to Chabad, and they have been a consistently positive influence in my life. The Rebbe’s divinely enlightened wisdom and guidance literally saved my life. Is the Rebbe still alive? Certainly. He lives in my soul.
Simply put, Lubavitchers are my people. Thus, my reverence does not preclude me from lighthearted laughing at some of the Chasidic communities’ idiosyncrasies. Knowing as I do the typically robust Lubavitcher sense of humor, I assume that (maybe) they would be laughing along with us.
One of the mandates of a Chasidic wedding, as you likely know, is that men and women are separated from beginning to end. This I can understand for the ceremony, as it is a sacred time of worship. I might even understand it during the smorgasbord – universally called “the sh’morg” – extravaganza, when vodka and other libations flow freely and might loosen the tongue to speak licentiously to the opposite sex.
(Let me digress for a moment and talk about this binge called “the sh’morg.” The sh’morg, not the pious words spoken to the bride and groom by the Rabbi, is the true yardstick of a bounteous wedding. The lamb-chop station. The pasta station. The stir-fry station. The sushi station. What is it about Chasidim and sushi? Once I heard a landsman in beard and payes announce that the faux crabmeat “tasted just like the real thing.” A-ha.)
End of the sh’morg. Back to the festivities.
I can even see how during the dancing the separation is justified, as skirts and tzitzis go swirling in the frenzy.
But, I will never understand why men’s and women’s dinner tables must also be separated by a nine-foot mechitza. I mean, what immorality could possibly be perpetrated by pious men and women sitting next to each other while fressing on a nine-course glatt-kosher bacchanalia? After an orgy of more faux-crabmeat, prime rib and Viennese pastry, I certainly do want to go to bed, but not with someone else’s wife, or probably even my own. And take a Tagamet first.
Let me tell you what really ought to be banned from Chasidic weddings: Cellphones. Separated as they are, cellphones are the only way that men and women are able to communicate with each other during the evening. How many times have I seen husbands and wives innocently use their cell-phones to determine when to leave the reception? Or, “Did you call the babysitter? “No, I thought that you called that babysitter.”
Cellphones for innocent purposes, you say? How do you know that Yankel or Reizel is not clandestinely calling a paramour for a tryst the next afternoon at the Pierre, and doing it under cover of the din and the raucous Chasidic music? Or that Sh’muel isn’t calling in an inside trade on a new offering of an Oriental hi-tech, Kin Ah Hora.
Please, please tell my Chasidic friends that I am just having a good time at their expense and that I need to dunk my mind in the mikvah. But, also remind them that I, like they, can always tell the difference in the look in a man’s eyes when he’s hungry for strudel or for something more toothsome.
August 07, 2006
HOW DO YOU KNOW THAT CRABMEAT'S FAUX?
The operative word for the kashrut-observant Jew of the 21st century is “faux.” That is, we prefer to eat kosher imitations of goyische food than food that our ancestors considered “traditional.”
Where did it all start, you ask? Its origin is in the Jews’ discovery of mayonnaise. The consistency of mayonnaise is so much like faux cream that it is the only foodstuff whose hechsher specifically identifies it as “pareve,” so close is the resemblance.
My recollection of nearly 50 years ago is that pareve faux coffee-cream and butter were still miraculous to the kosher palate. Thus, on public occasions, a card was placed at each table assuring the bamboozled diners that they need not fear; the cream and butter were certified non-dairy.
We zap the clock forward to the 21st century. The kashrut-observant world is obsessed with all means of kosher faux treferai. Trust me, my travels even in the Chasidic world have taught me that Chasidim are even more zealous about faux kosher than their clean-shaven brethren.
Certain fish with fins and scales, pollock I think, is indistinguishable from crabmeat and lobster. If the factory molds it in a different shape, it becomes faux shrimp.
A fatty, tough cut of beef ironically called “plate,” when properly cured and smoked, makes for equally carcinogenic faux bacon. Through my own dabbling with veal breast, I have come to make an indistinguishable faux ham.
Attend any Chasidic wedding, and indulge yourself in a bacchanalian “sh’morg.” Kishe and knishes? I think not. Faux sushi napped in wasabi. And we all love the faux Alfredo sauce dripping down our beards as we discuss an intricate comment of Rashi on last week’s Torah portion. Then, not to be undone, we delight in our faux filet mignon oozing a pat of faux garlic butter.
This leaves me with only one dilemma: How does any pious Chasid know the taste of authentic crabmeat to be able to announce, “Ah, now that faux crabmeat tastes like the real thing!”? How does that guy in beard and payes know good faux from bad?
Please,please, help me resolve that conundrum, I’ll reward you with a pot of steaming oyster stew if you do. Faux? Only you and I will know.
The operative word for the kashrut-observant Jew of the 21st century is “faux.” That is, we prefer to eat kosher imitations of goyische food than food that our ancestors considered “traditional.”
Where did it all start, you ask? Its origin is in the Jews’ discovery of mayonnaise. The consistency of mayonnaise is so much like faux cream that it is the only foodstuff whose hechsher specifically identifies it as “pareve,” so close is the resemblance.
My recollection of nearly 50 years ago is that pareve faux coffee-cream and butter were still miraculous to the kosher palate. Thus, on public occasions, a card was placed at each table assuring the bamboozled diners that they need not fear; the cream and butter were certified non-dairy.
We zap the clock forward to the 21st century. The kashrut-observant world is obsessed with all means of kosher faux treferai. Trust me, my travels even in the Chasidic world have taught me that Chasidim are even more zealous about faux kosher than their clean-shaven brethren.
Certain fish with fins and scales, pollock I think, is indistinguishable from crabmeat and lobster. If the factory molds it in a different shape, it becomes faux shrimp.
A fatty, tough cut of beef ironically called “plate,” when properly cured and smoked, makes for equally carcinogenic faux bacon. Through my own dabbling with veal breast, I have come to make an indistinguishable faux ham.
Attend any Chasidic wedding, and indulge yourself in a bacchanalian “sh’morg.” Kishe and knishes? I think not. Faux sushi napped in wasabi. And we all love the faux Alfredo sauce dripping down our beards as we discuss an intricate comment of Rashi on last week’s Torah portion. Then, not to be undone, we delight in our faux filet mignon oozing a pat of faux garlic butter.
This leaves me with only one dilemma: How does any pious Chasid know the taste of authentic crabmeat to be able to announce, “Ah, now that faux crabmeat tastes like the real thing!”? How does that guy in beard and payes know good faux from bad?
Please,please, help me resolve that conundrum, I’ll reward you with a pot of steaming oyster stew if you do. Faux? Only you and I will know.
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