IT MUST HAVE BEEN THE BROCCOLI CASSEROLE
Small towns like Greenville are rife with Christian fundamentalists. They assume that we know about the Torah, holidays, ceremonies, philosophy, and history. Uh-huh.
Some of them are so serious about Judaism that they practice it as it was at Jesus’ time, “searching for the Hebraic roots of their faith.” So, five or six families will get together on Friday evenings for candles, Kiddush, Motzi, Shabbat, Benschen, and Torah study.
That’s where I fit in. A local Donna Gracia regularly had her nails done by one such Judeophile, who was always full of questions. “Why do the Jews do this? What does the Bible say about that?” How many answers do you think the dowager could give her?
She referred her to her rabbi. Our invitation included traditional Shabbat dinner, tastefully kosher – salmon, salad, rice, and a miserable broccoli casserole. Then we engaged in four hours of Torah study – stimulating, reverent . . . And, no, they were quick to say, they were not damning me behind my back. That was not part of “their” doctrine.
In the course of discussion, I mentioned that I was going in to zap a kidney stone. I’d been peeing blood for weeks, and I was constantly doubled over in pain.
“Do you mind if we pray for you?” one said. “No, of course not.” “Jesus won’t offend you?” “No, of course not.”
At once, they beehive-buzzed around me. Above the din I heard one pray, “May Marc be healed, but not by the hands of man!”
Well, think what you want. By the next morning, I stopped peeing blood, and by mid-afternoon, the pain had stopped. Like I said, think what you want. It made me no surer of Jesus, but of the power of sincere faith and spirit all imploded into the one needing it most.
The next day, I went to the hospital just to make sure. Already on my gurney, the doctor announced that the procedure was unnecessary, pulled the IV from my arm, and instructed me to go home.
As I got in the car, I pronounced to Linda, “It’s a miracle!” Ever the skeptic, she declared, “No, honey, I think it was just the broccoli casserole.”
February 14, 2009
February 10, 2009
THE KEY TO INFLUENCE: FEED THE REPORTERS FRESH SALMON
Ninety-five percent of the nation looked aghast on the contemptuousness of that shnook Blagojevich. We Chicagoans knew better. We snicker at you rubes who think that duplicity like his happens only on bad TV.
Sociology-types would trace Blagojevich’s blatant double-dealing to the fast-and-loose atmosphere set by Hizonner da Mare Richard J. Daley. They do beg comparison. No matter how much Blagojevich would have prospered financially, he would always have been a second-stringer.
Mayor Daley appeared unimpressed with money. He and his beloved Sis continued to live in the modest home Back of the (Stock) Yards, along with descendants of the other Irish immigrants. Aside from tailored suits to flatter his matzo-ball girth, he played himself as one of the people.
Sheer power was Mayor Daley’s rate of exchange, elevating the faithful everyman and humbling the disloyal bigshot. Mayor Daley was the one, after all who “found” the extra box of ballots that put JFK over the top, ensuring the presidency for a Democrat coreligionist.
Blagojevich collected his bounty in payoffs. Mayor Daley collected a court of loyalists who paid homage to his agenda, and thus themselves became rich – a judge here, an alderman there, graft, porkpie, and the cumulatively effect of minor acts of corruption.
Loyalty had its benefits for the commoner, as well. Before each election, Harry Speck appeared at our doorstep. As a kid, I thought he was some kind of important public official. Actually, he was one of Hizzoner’s precinct captains, attempting to buy voter loyalty by offering to fix any of my dad’s outstanding traffic tickets. As a law enforcement officer, my dad made quick dispatch of him.
This did not stop my dad from wrapping a $5 bill around his driver’s license, as all Chicagoans did, so when stopped by a cop, the cop smiled and told him to “be more careful the next time.”
When I got a little older, I too learned the ropes of Pax Daleyum. Once I was in a fender-bender and cited for negligence. I called my insurance man. He told me to bring $40 to traffic court and give it to his lawyer, Newberger. That’s all it would take. “What if we lose?” I sputtered like a dope.
“You won’t lose.”
Sure enough, at the appointed hour, I presented Newberger $40 in cash. When my case was called, he approached the docket. Apparently, the arresting cop had not shown up. The case was dismissed for failure to produce prosecution. $20 to Newberger, $20 to the cop. But, we didn’t lose.
Heaven forbid, though, if you were a resident of the 46th Ward, where all the anti-corruption, intellectual liberals lived. Hizzoner was the bane of their existence. He and the machine were well aware of this, hence the deepest potholes in the streets, the never-to-be-fixed broken curbs, the monthly accumulation of street-side garbage. Go ahead. Be idealistic. Just be prepared to break an axle. We, the faithful, had our potholes repaved at the first sign of spring.
The real story of Daley’s Chicago was not about retribution. Often it was the warning implicit in the humor of the mighty, like the good-natured fun he poked at the press. Once he suggested that the Department of Sanitation (!) stock the Chicago River with salmon, as it meandered between the Tribune Tower and the hideous Sun-Times building. At noontime, he said, let the City give the reporters fishing rods, provide them with open grills and plenty of cold beer. “You’d be surprised,” Hizzoner opined, “how much better your attitude would be before we held one of those 1:00 press conferences.”
This, friends, is not a Blagojevich move.
This is why, by Illinois standards, he would always be a second-stringer. He demanded money, not the power and influence that comes from people paying homage to a fearsome, yet imminently loveable, humpty-dumpty Irishman. Greedy Blagojevich would wind up in jail because he practiced slimy greed, not graciously dyeing the river green for St. Patrick’s Day.
Once-Governor Blagojevich will forever be remembered as a greasy punk. Not Hizzoner da Mare. He fixed the curbs, filled the potholes, collected the garbage, ran the CTA buses in blizzards, made a president, fed the reporters fresh salmon. Blagojevich thought it took $500,000 to become a heavy hitter. Mayor Daley had already figured out that all it took was a sawbuck wrapped around a driver’s license to buy you all the influence you needed and then some.
Ninety-five percent of the nation looked aghast on the contemptuousness of that shnook Blagojevich. We Chicagoans knew better. We snicker at you rubes who think that duplicity like his happens only on bad TV.
Sociology-types would trace Blagojevich’s blatant double-dealing to the fast-and-loose atmosphere set by Hizonner da Mare Richard J. Daley. They do beg comparison. No matter how much Blagojevich would have prospered financially, he would always have been a second-stringer.
Mayor Daley appeared unimpressed with money. He and his beloved Sis continued to live in the modest home Back of the (Stock) Yards, along with descendants of the other Irish immigrants. Aside from tailored suits to flatter his matzo-ball girth, he played himself as one of the people.
Sheer power was Mayor Daley’s rate of exchange, elevating the faithful everyman and humbling the disloyal bigshot. Mayor Daley was the one, after all who “found” the extra box of ballots that put JFK over the top, ensuring the presidency for a Democrat coreligionist.
Blagojevich collected his bounty in payoffs. Mayor Daley collected a court of loyalists who paid homage to his agenda, and thus themselves became rich – a judge here, an alderman there, graft, porkpie, and the cumulatively effect of minor acts of corruption.
Loyalty had its benefits for the commoner, as well. Before each election, Harry Speck appeared at our doorstep. As a kid, I thought he was some kind of important public official. Actually, he was one of Hizzoner’s precinct captains, attempting to buy voter loyalty by offering to fix any of my dad’s outstanding traffic tickets. As a law enforcement officer, my dad made quick dispatch of him.
This did not stop my dad from wrapping a $5 bill around his driver’s license, as all Chicagoans did, so when stopped by a cop, the cop smiled and told him to “be more careful the next time.”
When I got a little older, I too learned the ropes of Pax Daleyum. Once I was in a fender-bender and cited for negligence. I called my insurance man. He told me to bring $40 to traffic court and give it to his lawyer, Newberger. That’s all it would take. “What if we lose?” I sputtered like a dope.
“You won’t lose.”
Sure enough, at the appointed hour, I presented Newberger $40 in cash. When my case was called, he approached the docket. Apparently, the arresting cop had not shown up. The case was dismissed for failure to produce prosecution. $20 to Newberger, $20 to the cop. But, we didn’t lose.
Heaven forbid, though, if you were a resident of the 46th Ward, where all the anti-corruption, intellectual liberals lived. Hizzoner was the bane of their existence. He and the machine were well aware of this, hence the deepest potholes in the streets, the never-to-be-fixed broken curbs, the monthly accumulation of street-side garbage. Go ahead. Be idealistic. Just be prepared to break an axle. We, the faithful, had our potholes repaved at the first sign of spring.
The real story of Daley’s Chicago was not about retribution. Often it was the warning implicit in the humor of the mighty, like the good-natured fun he poked at the press. Once he suggested that the Department of Sanitation (!) stock the Chicago River with salmon, as it meandered between the Tribune Tower and the hideous Sun-Times building. At noontime, he said, let the City give the reporters fishing rods, provide them with open grills and plenty of cold beer. “You’d be surprised,” Hizzoner opined, “how much better your attitude would be before we held one of those 1:00 press conferences.”
This, friends, is not a Blagojevich move.
This is why, by Illinois standards, he would always be a second-stringer. He demanded money, not the power and influence that comes from people paying homage to a fearsome, yet imminently loveable, humpty-dumpty Irishman. Greedy Blagojevich would wind up in jail because he practiced slimy greed, not graciously dyeing the river green for St. Patrick’s Day.
Once-Governor Blagojevich will forever be remembered as a greasy punk. Not Hizzoner da Mare. He fixed the curbs, filled the potholes, collected the garbage, ran the CTA buses in blizzards, made a president, fed the reporters fresh salmon. Blagojevich thought it took $500,000 to become a heavy hitter. Mayor Daley had already figured out that all it took was a sawbuck wrapped around a driver’s license to buy you all the influence you needed and then some.
February 02, 2009
SHONDEH IS THE JEWISH CRITERION
What Bernard Madoff did, to the gentile world, was an enormous crime. To the Jew it was a “shondeh,” the harshest Yiddish word for “disgrace.” I honestly don’t know how many gentiles are saying among themselves, “There goes another money-grubbing Jew.” It doesn’t really matter. I am ashamed by Madoff not because his story might generate anti-Semitism. For a Jew to betray the heritage to which we claim to be born is a shondeh.
This I tell you: We take no glory in Bernard Madoff even when you are not around. I’ve heard no one say in the covert Greenfield’s bagel place, “Boy, he really knew how to screw those dumb goyim.” Aside from swiping millions from Jewish institutions, he grabbed money from smart Jews, and plenty of smart goyim, who trusted him. The word I hear most when you are not around is, you guessed it, shondeh.
When I moved south in 1975, I was a snotty/snooty urban damnyankee pacifist. My assumptions were built on burning crosses, fire hoses, Bull Connor, George Wallace, and slurs against Jews almost as vituperative as they were toward African Americans. (“If them G.D. Jews hadn’t gotten them ni**as so stirred up, we wouldn’t be having the problems we do today!”). I assumed that little towns were places where Jews chose to live only at their own peril, and not only because you couldn’t get a hot pastrami sandwich there.
Then I received my delicious dose of reality: I found that for every Christian who wanted to convert me, a thousand venerated me because I was a leader of the Chosen People, and another thousand were simply curious.
Listen up now, Mr. Madoff, Mr. Shondeh: The decency and respect of the Jewish storekeeper in rural Upstate is legendary: Sarlins of Liberty, Fedders of Easley, Vigodskys of Westminster, Poliakoffs of Walhalla, Karelitzs of Fountain Inn, Burgens of Seneca . . . all of them venerated as saints – extending credit at no interest, building the community, stimulating education, leading in patriotism and civic organizations, charity without question from the cash register, often the only ones who were helpful to minorities.
Ask our anchorman Michael Cogdill. He will tell you that he was set on his direction of prominence by the Jewish storekeeper in his little town in North Carolina, who brought him into his home as if he were his own child.
No, they could not all have been saints 24-7. But, this I will tell you: They were not shondeh Jews, either. When I meet someone from Liberty and ask him if he knew the Sarlins, he always regales me of some act of kindness that they bestowed. I chalk another one up for not being a shondeh, but for being an exemplary member of the Chosen People. And Jerry Fedder? Not a “shyster Jew-lawyer,” but an honest man who never played fast and loose with the truth. And I chalk another one up for being one of the Chosen People, not a double-talking shondeh.
Ralph, Jerry, et al, did not do it to impress. Of this, I am sure. They had good mommas and poppas, who in turn had good mommas and poppas. They were quite sure of their chosen-ness without a scintilla of false pride.
Yes, there is a downside to being a member of a Chosen People. When you tarnish your chosen-ness, you are not just a crook or a thief. You are a shondeh. I am consistently surrounded by people who rightfully wear their chosen-ness with distinction. Jerry and Ralph, may he rest in peace, and the others, have set a backdrop of stiff comparison. When I do something wrong, I know full-well that it is a shondeh, not merely an oops or oversight. Where was Bernard Madoff’s armor to ward off shondeh? Where were the “Jerry and Ralph” in his life? Where did he lose it?
This is the sobering truth whether you and I accept it or not: When a Jew steals, it is not the same as when a gentile steals. He’s not a bad boy with his hand stuck in the cookie jar. He is a shondeh, a shondeh.
What Bernard Madoff did, to the gentile world, was an enormous crime. To the Jew it was a “shondeh,” the harshest Yiddish word for “disgrace.” I honestly don’t know how many gentiles are saying among themselves, “There goes another money-grubbing Jew.” It doesn’t really matter. I am ashamed by Madoff not because his story might generate anti-Semitism. For a Jew to betray the heritage to which we claim to be born is a shondeh.
This I tell you: We take no glory in Bernard Madoff even when you are not around. I’ve heard no one say in the covert Greenfield’s bagel place, “Boy, he really knew how to screw those dumb goyim.” Aside from swiping millions from Jewish institutions, he grabbed money from smart Jews, and plenty of smart goyim, who trusted him. The word I hear most when you are not around is, you guessed it, shondeh.
When I moved south in 1975, I was a snotty/snooty urban damnyankee pacifist. My assumptions were built on burning crosses, fire hoses, Bull Connor, George Wallace, and slurs against Jews almost as vituperative as they were toward African Americans. (“If them G.D. Jews hadn’t gotten them ni**as so stirred up, we wouldn’t be having the problems we do today!”). I assumed that little towns were places where Jews chose to live only at their own peril, and not only because you couldn’t get a hot pastrami sandwich there.
Then I received my delicious dose of reality: I found that for every Christian who wanted to convert me, a thousand venerated me because I was a leader of the Chosen People, and another thousand were simply curious.
Listen up now, Mr. Madoff, Mr. Shondeh: The decency and respect of the Jewish storekeeper in rural Upstate is legendary: Sarlins of Liberty, Fedders of Easley, Vigodskys of Westminster, Poliakoffs of Walhalla, Karelitzs of Fountain Inn, Burgens of Seneca . . . all of them venerated as saints – extending credit at no interest, building the community, stimulating education, leading in patriotism and civic organizations, charity without question from the cash register, often the only ones who were helpful to minorities.
Ask our anchorman Michael Cogdill. He will tell you that he was set on his direction of prominence by the Jewish storekeeper in his little town in North Carolina, who brought him into his home as if he were his own child.
No, they could not all have been saints 24-7. But, this I will tell you: They were not shondeh Jews, either. When I meet someone from Liberty and ask him if he knew the Sarlins, he always regales me of some act of kindness that they bestowed. I chalk another one up for not being a shondeh, but for being an exemplary member of the Chosen People. And Jerry Fedder? Not a “shyster Jew-lawyer,” but an honest man who never played fast and loose with the truth. And I chalk another one up for being one of the Chosen People, not a double-talking shondeh.
Ralph, Jerry, et al, did not do it to impress. Of this, I am sure. They had good mommas and poppas, who in turn had good mommas and poppas. They were quite sure of their chosen-ness without a scintilla of false pride.
Yes, there is a downside to being a member of a Chosen People. When you tarnish your chosen-ness, you are not just a crook or a thief. You are a shondeh. I am consistently surrounded by people who rightfully wear their chosen-ness with distinction. Jerry and Ralph, may he rest in peace, and the others, have set a backdrop of stiff comparison. When I do something wrong, I know full-well that it is a shondeh, not merely an oops or oversight. Where was Bernard Madoff’s armor to ward off shondeh? Where were the “Jerry and Ralph” in his life? Where did he lose it?
This is the sobering truth whether you and I accept it or not: When a Jew steals, it is not the same as when a gentile steals. He’s not a bad boy with his hand stuck in the cookie jar. He is a shondeh, a shondeh.
January 29, 2009
CHOLOV STARBUCKS
I’ve gone to Starbucks from Montreal to Port au Prince, but I never drink coffee there. Coffee gives me a tummy ache. But they do have a wonderful lemonade slush in which I could bathe when it is -30º outside. Their apple fritter is also nonpareil. The only reason that astronomers are interested in life on other planets is to see if it’s feasible to set up a Starbucks there, one per block, one per supermarket, one within each Starbucks.
In all my years of being a Starbucks devotee, the only item they’ve lacked is one accommodation for the (very) religious Jew. By a treaty signed in Liadi, Lubavitchers will drink a cup of black coffee in a Starbucks. Black, because they will whiten their coffee exclusively with Cholov Yisroel, milk/cream prepared from exclusively Jewish sources, under rabbinical supervision.
This has not fazed Starbucks from having planted themselves in orthodox communities. Ben, my Lubavitcher son, lives right across from one. One recent Sunday morning we repaired to the Starbucks to avoid a crying baby and shrill mother-in-law as we worked on his resume. I ordered my customary lemonade slushy, and Ben a Venti black coffee.
“Ben drinks black coffee?” I contemplated. This is a guy who doesn’t drink Coke without two extra tablespoons of sugar. Meanwhile, we found a table. He opened his laptop. He reached into his backpack. He removed a Zip-Loc bag that contained a white liquid. He whitened his coffee with it.
“I guess that’s Cholov Yisroel that you brought from home,” I wondered aloud. “What a novel way to park your cow at Starbucks!”
For a moment I thought, “What a mishugas.” The next moment I thought, “Well, maybe this is a way to protect the integrity of Judaism.” Finally, I came to a compromise. Neither mishugas nor mitzvah, but a fascinating social commentary: a perfect, if slightly goofy, amalgam of the very symbol of the contemporary American lifestyle, Starbucks, with a custom so esoteric and medieval that 99 percent of American Jews have never heard of it.
Not too shabby. This is America, Columbus’s Medinah, the Land of Opportunity, yes, even the opportunity to have your milk and Starbucks, too.
Leiben zol Columbus!
I’ve gone to Starbucks from Montreal to Port au Prince, but I never drink coffee there. Coffee gives me a tummy ache. But they do have a wonderful lemonade slush in which I could bathe when it is -30º outside. Their apple fritter is also nonpareil. The only reason that astronomers are interested in life on other planets is to see if it’s feasible to set up a Starbucks there, one per block, one per supermarket, one within each Starbucks.
In all my years of being a Starbucks devotee, the only item they’ve lacked is one accommodation for the (very) religious Jew. By a treaty signed in Liadi, Lubavitchers will drink a cup of black coffee in a Starbucks. Black, because they will whiten their coffee exclusively with Cholov Yisroel, milk/cream prepared from exclusively Jewish sources, under rabbinical supervision.
This has not fazed Starbucks from having planted themselves in orthodox communities. Ben, my Lubavitcher son, lives right across from one. One recent Sunday morning we repaired to the Starbucks to avoid a crying baby and shrill mother-in-law as we worked on his resume. I ordered my customary lemonade slushy, and Ben a Venti black coffee.
“Ben drinks black coffee?” I contemplated. This is a guy who doesn’t drink Coke without two extra tablespoons of sugar. Meanwhile, we found a table. He opened his laptop. He reached into his backpack. He removed a Zip-Loc bag that contained a white liquid. He whitened his coffee with it.
“I guess that’s Cholov Yisroel that you brought from home,” I wondered aloud. “What a novel way to park your cow at Starbucks!”
For a moment I thought, “What a mishugas.” The next moment I thought, “Well, maybe this is a way to protect the integrity of Judaism.” Finally, I came to a compromise. Neither mishugas nor mitzvah, but a fascinating social commentary: a perfect, if slightly goofy, amalgam of the very symbol of the contemporary American lifestyle, Starbucks, with a custom so esoteric and medieval that 99 percent of American Jews have never heard of it.
Not too shabby. This is America, Columbus’s Medinah, the Land of Opportunity, yes, even the opportunity to have your milk and Starbucks, too.
Leiben zol Columbus!
January 26, 2009
KASHRUT IN THE GRASS
I’ve always assumed that Jewish people did not choose hunting as a sport. Inflicting pain for recreation is forbidden. And besides, when you punch a hole in an animal and it dies, no question that it’s treife.
All of my assumption went sour when I paid a visit to the Ginsburg’s. Racks upon racks of spiffy-polished shotguns on display in the den, set upon set of antlers tastefully mounted on the living-room walls, booty from family hunting expeditions.
“So, I guess you do a lot of hunting,” I observed like a dumbbell.
“We go out early Saturday mornings so I can teach the boy the finer points of dropping a deer, you know, setting up the platform, making the right kinds of calls, where to spray the urine to attract the young’uns.” No, I didn’t know. “Rabbi Schwartz (the local Lubavitcher) told us that it was OK to hunt on Shabbos so long as we ‘field-kashered’ whatever we shot.”
I admit that I had never, even in Yeshiva, heard the phrase “field-kashered.” “Tell me how you field-kasher a deer?” I didn’t have to feign ignorance.
“Rabbi Schwartz said that so long as we slit the deer with a specially sharpened knife to let the blood drain, it was kosher.”
“I don’t think so,” I mumbled. I didn’t take the issue any further, so as not to impugn the credibility of my Lubavitcher friend.
Naturally, I promptly called Rabbi Schwartz to inform him that he had been cited as the authority that permitted hunting on Shabbos, so long as the prey had been field-kashered. “You’re kidding,” he said. “He may be an incredible sportsman, but an even better pathological liar.”
“How could we take care of this?” we looked at each other. We agreed that first we had to get him back into schule. “Ah,” Schwartz had an epiphany. “Get a spray-bottle, fill it with you-know-what, and give a couple of schpritzes around the doorway; it’s irresistible.”
“But once he gets inside, what do we do to make an impression on him?”
“Don’t worry,” the Lubavitcher averred. “He won’t get too far. Once he gets inside, we’ll just have to field-kasher him. After all, it is Shabbos.”
I’ve always assumed that Jewish people did not choose hunting as a sport. Inflicting pain for recreation is forbidden. And besides, when you punch a hole in an animal and it dies, no question that it’s treife.
All of my assumption went sour when I paid a visit to the Ginsburg’s. Racks upon racks of spiffy-polished shotguns on display in the den, set upon set of antlers tastefully mounted on the living-room walls, booty from family hunting expeditions.
“So, I guess you do a lot of hunting,” I observed like a dumbbell.
“We go out early Saturday mornings so I can teach the boy the finer points of dropping a deer, you know, setting up the platform, making the right kinds of calls, where to spray the urine to attract the young’uns.” No, I didn’t know. “Rabbi Schwartz (the local Lubavitcher) told us that it was OK to hunt on Shabbos so long as we ‘field-kashered’ whatever we shot.”
I admit that I had never, even in Yeshiva, heard the phrase “field-kashered.” “Tell me how you field-kasher a deer?” I didn’t have to feign ignorance.
“Rabbi Schwartz said that so long as we slit the deer with a specially sharpened knife to let the blood drain, it was kosher.”
“I don’t think so,” I mumbled. I didn’t take the issue any further, so as not to impugn the credibility of my Lubavitcher friend.
Naturally, I promptly called Rabbi Schwartz to inform him that he had been cited as the authority that permitted hunting on Shabbos, so long as the prey had been field-kashered. “You’re kidding,” he said. “He may be an incredible sportsman, but an even better pathological liar.”
“How could we take care of this?” we looked at each other. We agreed that first we had to get him back into schule. “Ah,” Schwartz had an epiphany. “Get a spray-bottle, fill it with you-know-what, and give a couple of schpritzes around the doorway; it’s irresistible.”
“But once he gets inside, what do we do to make an impression on him?”
“Don’t worry,” the Lubavitcher averred. “He won’t get too far. Once he gets inside, we’ll just have to field-kasher him. After all, it is Shabbos.”
January 05, 2009
A LITTLE COLOR ON THE PLATE
Once upon a time, my secretary and I would lunch at a mediocre Chinese buffet. When we’d come to the end of the line, she’d examine my plate and glower. This was my cue to return to the buffet and retrieve a spear of broccoli.
This was more a culinary issue than a health concern. You eat with your eyes before your palate. A plate has to have a little green on it. Rice, chicken, potato kugel, brisket, naked on a plate, bode of dreariness. A touch of color around the edge? Vivid. A hint of springtime. A stroll in the park. An intimation of youth. Just ask Dr. Phil or my secretary.
Even the best colorful intentions go awry when they turn obsessive. Example: At dinner on the weekend of an interview, I was presented a plate of the balaboste’s specialty, gefilte fish napped in aspic of raspberry Jell-O flecked with horseradish. “Doesn’t the color add a pretty touch?” she gloated.
Then there was my ditzy former sister-in-law. She thought that her chicken soup looked a little listless. So, she added in half a bottle of yellow food coloring. You’ve probably figured out that a perfectly tasty broth turned into a radiant pot of “pea” soup.
My winner of the color wars is not among Yehudim, but yokels. Traveling the rural South, I stopped at a country store for a Coke. If you’ve ever been in one, you’ll always see a five-gallon jar of pickles on the counter. Strange, I thought. I’ve never seen pickles that were dirty mauve.
“What kind of pickles are those?” I pointed.
“Why don’t you try one?” answered the balabos. “It’s on me.”
I reluctantly agreed to taste a nub.
I gagged. “Now will you tell me what they are?”
“Around here we eat our pickles purple,” he proudly announced. “After they’re just right, we soak ‘em in Kool-Aid for about two weeks.”
“They taste even better when you eat them with one of those pickled eggs,” pointing to the pink-stained ovals on the other counter.
I offered him a blessing and paid for my Twinkie, hopping into my Volvo, and praising God that the worst I’d had to eat until then was my Aunt Leah’s pitcha.
Once upon a time, my secretary and I would lunch at a mediocre Chinese buffet. When we’d come to the end of the line, she’d examine my plate and glower. This was my cue to return to the buffet and retrieve a spear of broccoli.
This was more a culinary issue than a health concern. You eat with your eyes before your palate. A plate has to have a little green on it. Rice, chicken, potato kugel, brisket, naked on a plate, bode of dreariness. A touch of color around the edge? Vivid. A hint of springtime. A stroll in the park. An intimation of youth. Just ask Dr. Phil or my secretary.
Even the best colorful intentions go awry when they turn obsessive. Example: At dinner on the weekend of an interview, I was presented a plate of the balaboste’s specialty, gefilte fish napped in aspic of raspberry Jell-O flecked with horseradish. “Doesn’t the color add a pretty touch?” she gloated.
Then there was my ditzy former sister-in-law. She thought that her chicken soup looked a little listless. So, she added in half a bottle of yellow food coloring. You’ve probably figured out that a perfectly tasty broth turned into a radiant pot of “pea” soup.
My winner of the color wars is not among Yehudim, but yokels. Traveling the rural South, I stopped at a country store for a Coke. If you’ve ever been in one, you’ll always see a five-gallon jar of pickles on the counter. Strange, I thought. I’ve never seen pickles that were dirty mauve.
“What kind of pickles are those?” I pointed.
“Why don’t you try one?” answered the balabos. “It’s on me.”
I reluctantly agreed to taste a nub.
I gagged. “Now will you tell me what they are?”
“Around here we eat our pickles purple,” he proudly announced. “After they’re just right, we soak ‘em in Kool-Aid for about two weeks.”
“They taste even better when you eat them with one of those pickled eggs,” pointing to the pink-stained ovals on the other counter.
I offered him a blessing and paid for my Twinkie, hopping into my Volvo, and praising God that the worst I’d had to eat until then was my Aunt Leah’s pitcha.
December 24, 2008
THE PRICE ON FOODISH FAME
From the outset, where to tape my new TV show has posed a problem. The first issue is finding a kitchen that is well equipped and accommodating to the cameras and audience.
But, the overarching concern is the ambiance we want to create. What is the concept behind the show? What persona do they want me to project? Not too intellectual, they tell me. They want the Sarah Palin crowd, not the Dalai Lama.
Most of all, what kind of food should I cook and yak about?
It should be a no-brainer. A rabbi should have a kitchen that looks like a tenement. And the food? Duh. Chicken soup. Brisket. Kugel. “Not so easy,” the producer says. “We’re in the South. We still need Jewish, but with a Southern spin.”
So, the program then puts me in jeans, tee-shirt, and Braves cap, cooking matzo-meal fried chicken, kneidlach-cum-hush-puppies, tzimmes-cum-sweet-potato-pie, cholent-cum-Brunswick stews. We’ll tape the show in an old barn cooking on a wood-burning stove.
“OK,” I thought. “This is the price I pay for stardom. Maybe the producers know best.”
Iterations of the show come and go. One day the producer announces that he has the perfect venue – a fitness club. This is so weird. No denying that the facility is superb. But, what does an obese rabbi-cook of the old school have to do with a fitness club?
“Not to worry,” the producer says. “A new concept. Shorts and a hoody. Fifteen minutes exercising with a personal trainer. A challenge to lose 20 pounds. Then, you’ll spend the rest of the show cooking healthy food – like vegetarian chopped liver.”
“I make REAL kosher food,” I belch. “REAL liver. REAL schmaltz. I thought this was supposed to be about REAL kosher food.”
“No worry,” the producer calms me. “We’ll have a dietician evaluate each dish on camera. What if you were to make a bowl of chopped liver, and she says that it will clog your arteries? What would you answer?”
“I’d rip open my shirt and point to the scar from my pacemaker.” I’d shout, “There’s nothing about chopped liver that I don’t already know!”
“Perfect!” the producer shouts. “Now, let’s get ready to shoot!”
Emes, I have not made up a word of this story.
OK, so I’ll live only to 118. The Food Network calls and, dammit, I’m going to answer.
From the outset, where to tape my new TV show has posed a problem. The first issue is finding a kitchen that is well equipped and accommodating to the cameras and audience.
But, the overarching concern is the ambiance we want to create. What is the concept behind the show? What persona do they want me to project? Not too intellectual, they tell me. They want the Sarah Palin crowd, not the Dalai Lama.
Most of all, what kind of food should I cook and yak about?
It should be a no-brainer. A rabbi should have a kitchen that looks like a tenement. And the food? Duh. Chicken soup. Brisket. Kugel. “Not so easy,” the producer says. “We’re in the South. We still need Jewish, but with a Southern spin.”
So, the program then puts me in jeans, tee-shirt, and Braves cap, cooking matzo-meal fried chicken, kneidlach-cum-hush-puppies, tzimmes-cum-sweet-potato-pie, cholent-cum-Brunswick stews. We’ll tape the show in an old barn cooking on a wood-burning stove.
“OK,” I thought. “This is the price I pay for stardom. Maybe the producers know best.”
Iterations of the show come and go. One day the producer announces that he has the perfect venue – a fitness club. This is so weird. No denying that the facility is superb. But, what does an obese rabbi-cook of the old school have to do with a fitness club?
“Not to worry,” the producer says. “A new concept. Shorts and a hoody. Fifteen minutes exercising with a personal trainer. A challenge to lose 20 pounds. Then, you’ll spend the rest of the show cooking healthy food – like vegetarian chopped liver.”
“I make REAL kosher food,” I belch. “REAL liver. REAL schmaltz. I thought this was supposed to be about REAL kosher food.”
“No worry,” the producer calms me. “We’ll have a dietician evaluate each dish on camera. What if you were to make a bowl of chopped liver, and she says that it will clog your arteries? What would you answer?”
“I’d rip open my shirt and point to the scar from my pacemaker.” I’d shout, “There’s nothing about chopped liver that I don’t already know!”
“Perfect!” the producer shouts. “Now, let’s get ready to shoot!”
Emes, I have not made up a word of this story.
OK, so I’ll live only to 118. The Food Network calls and, dammit, I’m going to answer.
December 09, 2008
THINGS GO BETTER WITH COKE . . . OR ELSE
Which character do we most closely associate with Coca-Cola? Santa Claus. This was a sharp marketer’s idea to keep kids drinking ice-cold Coke even in the depths of winter. Nowhere will you see a billboard, magazine, or commercial without Santa chugging down a Coke.
But, Coke can also be magnanimous at Christmas time. They pay to dispatch Santa Claus’s to bring cheer to disadvantaged children. Despite my religious inclinations, I play Santa six times each holiday season.
Deprived children tug at me and will not let me go. They kiss and hug me. I give them candy and presents. “Santa, Santa!” they cry. If they ask whether I am the “real Santa,” I let them pull my white beard, and they know that I am the one and only.
But then there was one time . . . Twenty or so kids abandoned by their parents. Most of them were three or four years old, still full of wonderment. They, too, would tug at my beard, and knew that I was real.
But one seven-year-old already knew better. He looked at me cynically from across the room. He finally sidled up to me and gave me such a swift kick in the shins that I cursed at him before I could regain my composure. Now he had all the evidence that he needed and shouted over and again, “That’s not really Santa! He’s a fake! He cursed at me! He’s a fake!”
What should I do? Quick as I could, I grabbed him by the collar and pulled him into a corner. “Look, kid,” I growled at him. “If you don’t tell them you were joking, I’m going to make sure you never have another Coca-Cola for the rest of your life!”
His eyes widened. “You could really do that?” “Just try me,” I growled back. In a moment, a shout emerged. “I was just kidding! That is the real Santa!”
Even a Jewish Santa, I guess, is worth the benefit of the doubt when a life without Coke is as stake. After all, even the surliest kid isn’t willing to drink seltzer for the rest of his life on a bet with Santa Claus.
Which character do we most closely associate with Coca-Cola? Santa Claus. This was a sharp marketer’s idea to keep kids drinking ice-cold Coke even in the depths of winter. Nowhere will you see a billboard, magazine, or commercial without Santa chugging down a Coke.
But, Coke can also be magnanimous at Christmas time. They pay to dispatch Santa Claus’s to bring cheer to disadvantaged children. Despite my religious inclinations, I play Santa six times each holiday season.
Deprived children tug at me and will not let me go. They kiss and hug me. I give them candy and presents. “Santa, Santa!” they cry. If they ask whether I am the “real Santa,” I let them pull my white beard, and they know that I am the one and only.
But then there was one time . . . Twenty or so kids abandoned by their parents. Most of them were three or four years old, still full of wonderment. They, too, would tug at my beard, and knew that I was real.
But one seven-year-old already knew better. He looked at me cynically from across the room. He finally sidled up to me and gave me such a swift kick in the shins that I cursed at him before I could regain my composure. Now he had all the evidence that he needed and shouted over and again, “That’s not really Santa! He’s a fake! He cursed at me! He’s a fake!”
What should I do? Quick as I could, I grabbed him by the collar and pulled him into a corner. “Look, kid,” I growled at him. “If you don’t tell them you were joking, I’m going to make sure you never have another Coca-Cola for the rest of your life!”
His eyes widened. “You could really do that?” “Just try me,” I growled back. In a moment, a shout emerged. “I was just kidding! That is the real Santa!”
Even a Jewish Santa, I guess, is worth the benefit of the doubt when a life without Coke is as stake. After all, even the surliest kid isn’t willing to drink seltzer for the rest of his life on a bet with Santa Claus.
November 20, 2008
COOKIES FOR KRISTALLNACHT
Can one find humor in Kristallnacht?
Some of us in Greenville had good intentions. We planned an event to commemorate Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass. We anticipated an attendance of 350, but 700 people showed up.
Then, someone got the idea to serve cookies and coffee after the program. Only American Jews would come up with the idea of serving Kiddush to honor Kristallnacht. Some of us objected. No, we were reassured, the collation would not be garish. The cookies would be simple and keeping in the spirit of the occasion, nothing more. Mrs. Goldberg, the sisterhood president, asked if flowers were appropriate. Before I could have my say, someone answered, “so long as they are not ostentation.”
Mrs. Goldberg went on to clarify: The sisterhood would bake the cookies, but not lay them out on platters, nor bring the platters. Who would? It would have to be someone else. Who would lay them out? Someone else. “And, we can’t be responsible for the napkins and tablecloths, just the cookies.” I dared not ask Mrs. Goldberg about the coffee. The only alternative would be to schlep three KM to Starbucks and buy jugs of coffee there.
Just then, Mrs. Schwartz, God bless her, stepped forward. She would take care of all of the arrangements herself. Everyone seemed relieved, even grateful. All but Mrs. Goldberg. Seems that she and Mrs. Schwartz had a long-standing feud over some long-forgotten issue.
No, announced Mrs. Goldberg, that would be unacceptable. Moreover, she publicly divested Mrs. Schwartz of her position as Social Action Chairwoman.
Mrs. Dunning, the only gentile member of the sisterhood, demanded that Mrs. Goldberg send Mrs. Schwartz an apology. You can only imagine the response.
Getting wind of this, we who planned the Kristallnacht commemoration pasken’d a shayleh: “Keep your cookies, your no-trays, your no-napkins, your no-tablecloths, and your no-coffee. We’ll just have to suffer the deprivation.”
So, Kristallnacht in Greenville went on, inspired and meaningful, but cookie-less. Some of us thought it was a dumb idea to begin with. Now, none of us can figure out whether it was slapstick comedy or profound tragedy.
You be the jury.
Can one find humor in Kristallnacht?
Some of us in Greenville had good intentions. We planned an event to commemorate Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass. We anticipated an attendance of 350, but 700 people showed up.
Then, someone got the idea to serve cookies and coffee after the program. Only American Jews would come up with the idea of serving Kiddush to honor Kristallnacht. Some of us objected. No, we were reassured, the collation would not be garish. The cookies would be simple and keeping in the spirit of the occasion, nothing more. Mrs. Goldberg, the sisterhood president, asked if flowers were appropriate. Before I could have my say, someone answered, “so long as they are not ostentation.”
Mrs. Goldberg went on to clarify: The sisterhood would bake the cookies, but not lay them out on platters, nor bring the platters. Who would? It would have to be someone else. Who would lay them out? Someone else. “And, we can’t be responsible for the napkins and tablecloths, just the cookies.” I dared not ask Mrs. Goldberg about the coffee. The only alternative would be to schlep three KM to Starbucks and buy jugs of coffee there.
Just then, Mrs. Schwartz, God bless her, stepped forward. She would take care of all of the arrangements herself. Everyone seemed relieved, even grateful. All but Mrs. Goldberg. Seems that she and Mrs. Schwartz had a long-standing feud over some long-forgotten issue.
No, announced Mrs. Goldberg, that would be unacceptable. Moreover, she publicly divested Mrs. Schwartz of her position as Social Action Chairwoman.
Mrs. Dunning, the only gentile member of the sisterhood, demanded that Mrs. Goldberg send Mrs. Schwartz an apology. You can only imagine the response.
Getting wind of this, we who planned the Kristallnacht commemoration pasken’d a shayleh: “Keep your cookies, your no-trays, your no-napkins, your no-tablecloths, and your no-coffee. We’ll just have to suffer the deprivation.”
So, Kristallnacht in Greenville went on, inspired and meaningful, but cookie-less. Some of us thought it was a dumb idea to begin with. Now, none of us can figure out whether it was slapstick comedy or profound tragedy.
You be the jury.
November 12, 2008
WHENCE THE CHIPS?
Mendel would say that I inherited double-dominant chocolate-craving genes from my parents. My father would need his jacket cleaned weekly because of a Hershey bar left in his pocket. My mother the diabetic would adjust her insulin in anticipation of a chocolate sundae.
My rebbetzin prudently keeps our chocolate to a minimum. She knows she should by all the candy wrappers she finds in my car. The only stuff that’s usually in the cabinet is a couple bags of chocolate chips that she uses for baking.
Naturally, when the craving overwhelms me, I grab a handful of the chips and down them before she can catch me. My secret does not last long. “Maaaaaarc!” she shrieks across the house. “I hope you enjoyed your chips! How am I going to bake the cookies?”
“All right, all right, I’ll go buy more,” I offer in self-defense.
“I don’t think so. Where are you going to find pareve chocolate chips in Greenville?”
She’s right. The once-pareve Nestlé’s, Hershey’s, Baker’s, are no longer pareve. No, they are now milchig. Another clear-cut case of anti-Semitism. No pareve chocolate chips in tiny Greenville.
So she commands, “The next time you’re in [huge] Atlanta to see the kids, you’ll buy up all the pareve chocolate chips you can find! How soon are you going to see the kids?”
I know the answer she expects. I postpone my appointments and whiz 200 KM to clear the grocery shelves of chips on the pretext of visiting the grandchildren. Oh yes, we have one more granddaughter in Brooklyn. There one may procure chocolate chips at every corner drugstore. I pay $578 for my ticket, carry an extra suitcase, and buy every bag of chips in Borough Park.
Upon my return, we resume our peaceful marriage. Then she announces that her parents are coming and that she’s going to bake a chocolate chip cake. I cower in fear. “Maaaaaarc!” she rants. “Again with the chips?”
By now, you know the exercise: I clear the papers from my desk, fill up my gas tank, and call my kids to prepare the bedroom, because Zayde is coming to visit. The grandbabies are delighted. I break out in acne.
Mendel would say that I inherited double-dominant chocolate-craving genes from my parents. My father would need his jacket cleaned weekly because of a Hershey bar left in his pocket. My mother the diabetic would adjust her insulin in anticipation of a chocolate sundae.
My rebbetzin prudently keeps our chocolate to a minimum. She knows she should by all the candy wrappers she finds in my car. The only stuff that’s usually in the cabinet is a couple bags of chocolate chips that she uses for baking.
Naturally, when the craving overwhelms me, I grab a handful of the chips and down them before she can catch me. My secret does not last long. “Maaaaaarc!” she shrieks across the house. “I hope you enjoyed your chips! How am I going to bake the cookies?”
“All right, all right, I’ll go buy more,” I offer in self-defense.
“I don’t think so. Where are you going to find pareve chocolate chips in Greenville?”
She’s right. The once-pareve Nestlé’s, Hershey’s, Baker’s, are no longer pareve. No, they are now milchig. Another clear-cut case of anti-Semitism. No pareve chocolate chips in tiny Greenville.
So she commands, “The next time you’re in [huge] Atlanta to see the kids, you’ll buy up all the pareve chocolate chips you can find! How soon are you going to see the kids?”
I know the answer she expects. I postpone my appointments and whiz 200 KM to clear the grocery shelves of chips on the pretext of visiting the grandchildren. Oh yes, we have one more granddaughter in Brooklyn. There one may procure chocolate chips at every corner drugstore. I pay $578 for my ticket, carry an extra suitcase, and buy every bag of chips in Borough Park.
Upon my return, we resume our peaceful marriage. Then she announces that her parents are coming and that she’s going to bake a chocolate chip cake. I cower in fear. “Maaaaaarc!” she rants. “Again with the chips?”
By now, you know the exercise: I clear the papers from my desk, fill up my gas tank, and call my kids to prepare the bedroom, because Zayde is coming to visit. The grandbabies are delighted. I break out in acne.
October 31, 2008
STABBED INTO GOOD MANNERS
I am not an expert at many things, but I do have good table manners. This was my father’s special mission in life. Whenever I would forget to say “please” or slobber my soup, he would reach over and stab my hand with his fork. This in itself was dreadfully bad manners, but no matter, it obviously worked.
Some parents were apparently not so demanding. About four years ago, I sat at a dinner next to a candidate for President, who shall remain nameless. As dinner concluded and he was preparing to speak, he stopped the server and told him to leave his dinner fork. With that, he proceeded to pick his teeth in front of an audience of 1,200. He never received his party’s nomination. I doubt that it was over the tooth-picking, but for me, it certainly didn’t help.
Lest one think that crude manners are reserved for the goyische species, let me tell you about this:
Once I was invited to dinner at a rabbinical home. The rebbetzin put out a wonderful spread, simply delicious. As I expected of a Bais Yaakov girl, her conduct was demur and impeccable. Not so my host. He threw chunks of bread to the kids. He dangled his beard in the soup. He held his spoon like a derrick. He chewed with his mouth open. He licked his knife, which is also dangerous. (Is this how Moshe Rabbenu came to his speech impediment?) And yes, all stereotypes aside, he really did wipe his mouth with his sleeve.
By now, the rebbetzin had a point of comparison.
“Look how nicely Rabbi Wilson eats,” she announced. “He has such good manners.”
Her husband paused, impassive, indifferent.
“See, Sheindel,” he finally said. “What’s the difference? He looks like a goy. He talks like a goy. He dresses like a goy. Why shouldn’t he eat like a goy?”
Nu, what did you want me to do? I almost reached over and stabbed him with my fork. But, at the last moment, I restrained myself. After all, that would not have been good manners.
I am not an expert at many things, but I do have good table manners. This was my father’s special mission in life. Whenever I would forget to say “please” or slobber my soup, he would reach over and stab my hand with his fork. This in itself was dreadfully bad manners, but no matter, it obviously worked.
Some parents were apparently not so demanding. About four years ago, I sat at a dinner next to a candidate for President, who shall remain nameless. As dinner concluded and he was preparing to speak, he stopped the server and told him to leave his dinner fork. With that, he proceeded to pick his teeth in front of an audience of 1,200. He never received his party’s nomination. I doubt that it was over the tooth-picking, but for me, it certainly didn’t help.
Lest one think that crude manners are reserved for the goyische species, let me tell you about this:
Once I was invited to dinner at a rabbinical home. The rebbetzin put out a wonderful spread, simply delicious. As I expected of a Bais Yaakov girl, her conduct was demur and impeccable. Not so my host. He threw chunks of bread to the kids. He dangled his beard in the soup. He held his spoon like a derrick. He chewed with his mouth open. He licked his knife, which is also dangerous. (Is this how Moshe Rabbenu came to his speech impediment?) And yes, all stereotypes aside, he really did wipe his mouth with his sleeve.
By now, the rebbetzin had a point of comparison.
“Look how nicely Rabbi Wilson eats,” she announced. “He has such good manners.”
Her husband paused, impassive, indifferent.
“See, Sheindel,” he finally said. “What’s the difference? He looks like a goy. He talks like a goy. He dresses like a goy. Why shouldn’t he eat like a goy?”
Nu, what did you want me to do? I almost reached over and stabbed him with my fork. But, at the last moment, I restrained myself. After all, that would not have been good manners.
October 28, 2008
THE PATHOS IN THE PICTURES
When I was a young rabbi, I counted among my dearest friends an elderly man . . . warm, generous, pious, a loving husband, father, grandfather, respected – even venerated – by the community. He has long since passed on.
He and I would frequently have lunch. Occasionally, he would offer me a book on a philosophical or historical topic that he would encourage me to read.
Once, traveling to New York, I grabbed one of them and in an idle moment started to read. Two seconds later, an envelope dropped from between the pages. Unsealed and unaddressed. Right or wrong, I looked. A handful of Playboy photos dropped out, each with lurid comments scribbled in his unmistakable handwriting.
A gasp of disbelief.
Shortly thereafter, a frantic voice, desperate for composure, appeared on my voicemail: “Marc, there might have been an envelope in the book I loaned you. Please just disregard it. Someone left it in my office, and I must have shoved it in the book while I wasn’t thinking.”
I returned his call: ”Not to worry,” I had the presence of mind, not piety, to say. “I saw the envelope and didn’t open it because it was yours. I’ll seal it up and return it to you.”
“A sheynem dank (many thanks),” he said to me, almost whispering. “He might be looking for it.”
Until he died, he never spoke to me quite the same as before. Still with warmth, still sharing a book or quote, but always with a barely audible edge of self-consciousness and shame.
From time to time, the Rolodex of my memory spins and stops unanticipated at that episode. I have always found it easier to crystallize the emotions that I do not feel for him, those that prevent from me from standing in judgment. No, I say to myself, he was not a pervert. Not a hypocrite. Not a lecher. Not a cheat. Not a dirty old man. I resist thinking any of those, regardless of what other people might have seen in him. Labels come more easily to most of us than understanding does.
It is infinitely harder for me to articulate what he was. Perhaps the best description is the simplest: Underneath it all, he was just so very sad. Simply a sad man, well cloaked in prosperity, yet so very sad. His memory does not evoke consternation, but empathy for my own fears of old-man-ness – unrequited yearning for bygone youth, bittersweet remembrances, and salad days. The pathos in the pictures tells me that he contended then, as I do now, with a life drawn only in one direction, so afraid of the loss of vigor and the promise of a world brimming with possibilities, so scared of becoming dependent, a burden.
Tell me that I am naïve, or projecting my own neuroses, or rationalizing the hypocrisy of a friend. But, I know that those pictures speak of a sadness he shared with every one of us who aches for just one more yesterday: excitement that once coursed through our veins, bowties and corsages to the prom, iridescent dreams of young love. Oh, for one more moment of teenage innocence. She would squeeze your hand and you hers, and all in the world was right.
What other chances for comfort and love and prosperity might there have been in the freshness of youth, had only this-or-that opportunity been seized, or had poor judgment or a misstep not led to a lesser place? Enough Googling – I say to myself – of classmates who became professors and authors and playwrights and business magnates.
I am blessed with a loving wife, whom I cherish, with whom, please God, I will grow old. Kids and grandkids, too, the quintessence of my being. My elderly friend was blessed with them, too. Still, who could not dream of the deliciousness left behind in the salad days? The success, the riches, even sometimes – let us confess – the pictorials in Playboy? All craving for just one more serving of vivid youth.
I pray that in heaven above, God has finally granted my friend a place of peace. As for me, let my epitaph speak Wordsworth’s final intimation:
To me the meanest flower that blows
Can give thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.
When I was a young rabbi, I counted among my dearest friends an elderly man . . . warm, generous, pious, a loving husband, father, grandfather, respected – even venerated – by the community. He has long since passed on.
He and I would frequently have lunch. Occasionally, he would offer me a book on a philosophical or historical topic that he would encourage me to read.
Once, traveling to New York, I grabbed one of them and in an idle moment started to read. Two seconds later, an envelope dropped from between the pages. Unsealed and unaddressed. Right or wrong, I looked. A handful of Playboy photos dropped out, each with lurid comments scribbled in his unmistakable handwriting.
A gasp of disbelief.
Shortly thereafter, a frantic voice, desperate for composure, appeared on my voicemail: “Marc, there might have been an envelope in the book I loaned you. Please just disregard it. Someone left it in my office, and I must have shoved it in the book while I wasn’t thinking.”
I returned his call: ”Not to worry,” I had the presence of mind, not piety, to say. “I saw the envelope and didn’t open it because it was yours. I’ll seal it up and return it to you.”
“A sheynem dank (many thanks),” he said to me, almost whispering. “He might be looking for it.”
Until he died, he never spoke to me quite the same as before. Still with warmth, still sharing a book or quote, but always with a barely audible edge of self-consciousness and shame.
From time to time, the Rolodex of my memory spins and stops unanticipated at that episode. I have always found it easier to crystallize the emotions that I do not feel for him, those that prevent from me from standing in judgment. No, I say to myself, he was not a pervert. Not a hypocrite. Not a lecher. Not a cheat. Not a dirty old man. I resist thinking any of those, regardless of what other people might have seen in him. Labels come more easily to most of us than understanding does.
It is infinitely harder for me to articulate what he was. Perhaps the best description is the simplest: Underneath it all, he was just so very sad. Simply a sad man, well cloaked in prosperity, yet so very sad. His memory does not evoke consternation, but empathy for my own fears of old-man-ness – unrequited yearning for bygone youth, bittersweet remembrances, and salad days. The pathos in the pictures tells me that he contended then, as I do now, with a life drawn only in one direction, so afraid of the loss of vigor and the promise of a world brimming with possibilities, so scared of becoming dependent, a burden.
Tell me that I am naïve, or projecting my own neuroses, or rationalizing the hypocrisy of a friend. But, I know that those pictures speak of a sadness he shared with every one of us who aches for just one more yesterday: excitement that once coursed through our veins, bowties and corsages to the prom, iridescent dreams of young love. Oh, for one more moment of teenage innocence. She would squeeze your hand and you hers, and all in the world was right.
What other chances for comfort and love and prosperity might there have been in the freshness of youth, had only this-or-that opportunity been seized, or had poor judgment or a misstep not led to a lesser place? Enough Googling – I say to myself – of classmates who became professors and authors and playwrights and business magnates.
I am blessed with a loving wife, whom I cherish, with whom, please God, I will grow old. Kids and grandkids, too, the quintessence of my being. My elderly friend was blessed with them, too. Still, who could not dream of the deliciousness left behind in the salad days? The success, the riches, even sometimes – let us confess – the pictorials in Playboy? All craving for just one more serving of vivid youth.
I pray that in heaven above, God has finally granted my friend a place of peace. As for me, let my epitaph speak Wordsworth’s final intimation:
To me the meanest flower that blows
Can give thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.
October 19, 2008
TRENDY SCHMALTZ
Now that things are moving forward with my TV show, I’ve become something of a celebrity in Greenville. Lest I get a swelled head, I remind myself that the most famous person in Greenville was a baseball player bribed by a Jewish gangster to throw the World Series.
Amazingly, local periodicals are running features about me. One magazine even sent out a camera crew to shoot photos of how I cook. Naturally, they asked for the typical Jewish menu: chicken soup, matzo balls, gefilte fish.
I denude the chicken to ensure that the soup would be healthful. I was left with plenty of skin, so I decided to fulfill a secret passion: to render a pot of schmaltz. It is the single most deadly foodstuff that Mephistopheles created. If Linda sees me in its presence, she sends me to the doghouse. All she knows is that my matzo balls and chopped liver have a je ne se qua that she has not been able to replicate.
Here come the photographers. I line up the carrots, celery, and chicken for the photo shoot. Meanwhile, one of them spies the pot of schmaltz.
“That’s rendered chicken fat,” I tell her apologetically, “and it is toxic.” “So, it’s like lard?” she asks. “I bet you could make a really flaky pie crust with it.” “Not exactly,” I tell her. “We usually use it with mashed potatoes.” “And what are those? she says, pointing to the gribenes. “Uh, we like to call them ‘Jewish popcorn’. Try one.” She pronounces it “delicious,” as the cholesterol rushes through her pristine arteries.
With that, she starts snapping pictures of the schmaltz, gribenes, and me. “Wait! What about my chicken soup?” “No, no, we know what the readers like. This is so much more interesting.” “I’m a chef!” I shout, “not a yokel!”
So, schmaltz has become my culinary legacy in a fancy magazine, my picture surrounded by ads for haute couture and Rolex watches. Now the entire world knows that I’m a fraud. No more hiding from the truth. But, none of that really matters in the larger scheme. Nothing will be as traumatic as what Linda has to say.
Now that things are moving forward with my TV show, I’ve become something of a celebrity in Greenville. Lest I get a swelled head, I remind myself that the most famous person in Greenville was a baseball player bribed by a Jewish gangster to throw the World Series.
Amazingly, local periodicals are running features about me. One magazine even sent out a camera crew to shoot photos of how I cook. Naturally, they asked for the typical Jewish menu: chicken soup, matzo balls, gefilte fish.
I denude the chicken to ensure that the soup would be healthful. I was left with plenty of skin, so I decided to fulfill a secret passion: to render a pot of schmaltz. It is the single most deadly foodstuff that Mephistopheles created. If Linda sees me in its presence, she sends me to the doghouse. All she knows is that my matzo balls and chopped liver have a je ne se qua that she has not been able to replicate.
Here come the photographers. I line up the carrots, celery, and chicken for the photo shoot. Meanwhile, one of them spies the pot of schmaltz.
“That’s rendered chicken fat,” I tell her apologetically, “and it is toxic.” “So, it’s like lard?” she asks. “I bet you could make a really flaky pie crust with it.” “Not exactly,” I tell her. “We usually use it with mashed potatoes.” “And what are those? she says, pointing to the gribenes. “Uh, we like to call them ‘Jewish popcorn’. Try one.” She pronounces it “delicious,” as the cholesterol rushes through her pristine arteries.
With that, she starts snapping pictures of the schmaltz, gribenes, and me. “Wait! What about my chicken soup?” “No, no, we know what the readers like. This is so much more interesting.” “I’m a chef!” I shout, “not a yokel!”
So, schmaltz has become my culinary legacy in a fancy magazine, my picture surrounded by ads for haute couture and Rolex watches. Now the entire world knows that I’m a fraud. No more hiding from the truth. But, none of that really matters in the larger scheme. Nothing will be as traumatic as what Linda has to say.
October 16, 2008
RECIPES FOR THE BIPOLAR PALATE
Have you already figured out that I am as bipolar as a rubber band? When I am up, I am a hyena. When I am down, I make Hamlet look like Jerry Lewis. Thank God for leading-edge medication, an understanding therapist, and a loving and ever-patient wife.
You probably do not know that I am a columnist for BP Hope, a magazine for manic-depressives. Usually I write book reviews – self-help books, autobiographies, even a DVD that follows crazy-quilt images through the eyes of a bipolar photographer.
Then, an editor determines that I like to fool around in the kitchen. “How would you like to write a food column for BP?”
“You’ve got to be kidding. A bipolar food column?” “Sure,” he says, “simple dishes like salads that won’t become too frustrating. And for God’s sake, no alcohol!”
Nah, I think. This will never work. What we need is “bipolar food” for bipolar people – obvious dishes like sweet-and-sour meatballs. What about hot-and-sour soup? Frosted Flakes breaded chicken? Now let’s get creative: Crush up Sugar Pops and shape into matzo balls. I knew a hausfrau who shrouded her gefilte fish in aspic of lemon juice, horseradish, and raspberry gelatin. Now, that’s what I call a bipolar recipe.
Why limit ourselves to bipolarity? Paranoids might get a rush out of chicken feet from the soup. God knows what they’ve walked through. What about masochists? Give them the hairy cow’s knuckle from pitcha. The chronically depressed? Teach them to make oatmeal. Obsessive-compulsive? Show them how to mix five flavors of jam together, like my bubbe used to. Manic? Here’s how to make a fresh hot cup of coffee, coffee, coffee, then a bottle of Coke. Delusions of grandeur? Tell them your recipe for gefilte fish is really quenelles de poisson. Ah, schizophrenia: Feed their hallucinations with onion sundaes and chocolate-dipped herring.
Wait! My mind is running too fast! I’m suffering from delusions! I’m so worried! I might get fired! I’m craving raw garlic! I need my potato chips NOW!
What’s that, Boss? You want me to review Alice in Wonderland? Whatever you say. But have you ever read that book? You may not know what you’re getting me into.
Have you already figured out that I am as bipolar as a rubber band? When I am up, I am a hyena. When I am down, I make Hamlet look like Jerry Lewis. Thank God for leading-edge medication, an understanding therapist, and a loving and ever-patient wife.
You probably do not know that I am a columnist for BP Hope, a magazine for manic-depressives. Usually I write book reviews – self-help books, autobiographies, even a DVD that follows crazy-quilt images through the eyes of a bipolar photographer.
Then, an editor determines that I like to fool around in the kitchen. “How would you like to write a food column for BP?”
“You’ve got to be kidding. A bipolar food column?” “Sure,” he says, “simple dishes like salads that won’t become too frustrating. And for God’s sake, no alcohol!”
Nah, I think. This will never work. What we need is “bipolar food” for bipolar people – obvious dishes like sweet-and-sour meatballs. What about hot-and-sour soup? Frosted Flakes breaded chicken? Now let’s get creative: Crush up Sugar Pops and shape into matzo balls. I knew a hausfrau who shrouded her gefilte fish in aspic of lemon juice, horseradish, and raspberry gelatin. Now, that’s what I call a bipolar recipe.
Why limit ourselves to bipolarity? Paranoids might get a rush out of chicken feet from the soup. God knows what they’ve walked through. What about masochists? Give them the hairy cow’s knuckle from pitcha. The chronically depressed? Teach them to make oatmeal. Obsessive-compulsive? Show them how to mix five flavors of jam together, like my bubbe used to. Manic? Here’s how to make a fresh hot cup of coffee, coffee, coffee, then a bottle of Coke. Delusions of grandeur? Tell them your recipe for gefilte fish is really quenelles de poisson. Ah, schizophrenia: Feed their hallucinations with onion sundaes and chocolate-dipped herring.
Wait! My mind is running too fast! I’m suffering from delusions! I’m so worried! I might get fired! I’m craving raw garlic! I need my potato chips NOW!
What’s that, Boss? You want me to review Alice in Wonderland? Whatever you say. But have you ever read that book? You may not know what you’re getting me into.
September 05, 2008
BREADSTICKS AND STRICKOLEAN
I learned the truth about kishke at the age of 12. It was at Larry Dellheim’s bar mitzvah. He had always been pretty obnoxious. “You know what you’re eating, don’t you?” he poked. “Cow’s guts.”
It was like hearing about sex for the first time. Just to play it safe, I put down my fork. “Get out of here!”
“Go ask you mom,” Larry jeered.
Years went by, and I’ve finally gone back to kishke. But cow organs – lung, heart, pancreas, brains – still give me the willies.
I was in good company. Northerners don’t eat much slimy innards. Then I moved South and discovered that organ meat was not a delicacy, but a sacrament.
Take, for example, the steaming bowl of pork intestine enhanced with hot-pepper sauce that they call “chitlins.” They look like they have the resilience of uncut rubber bands, but people slobber in them.
Then, I discovered that if you order cooked vegetables in a restaurant, their preparation is not so simple. They are invariably cooked with ham hock. This causes a slithering pool of grease to form atop the bowl and shards of pork to infuse the vegetables. My friends and I used to call it “mystery meat,” but there is no mystery about it.
I finally found it safe to eat lunch at a salad bar, where the vegetables are fresh and clean. At least I thought so. Once at a salad bar I loaded my plate with raw veggies. Well, maybe this isn’t as bad as I thought. They even had a stack of breadsticks, fairly cosmopolitan for the rural South. I bit into one, but it was oddly greasy. “This is not bread,” I said to the man at the next table. “No,” the man answered. “That’s fatback and strick-o-lean.” Well, I knew that fatback was a grubby pork delicacy. But “strick-o-lean”? “It’s a streak of lean bacon,” he explained impatiently.
“Oh.” I wanted to gargle with lye.
Then I came to resolution. I was the one who chose to move South. Besides, what a great story to tell my kids. Surely my two older ones would laugh. But then there’s the one who’s a Lubavitcher . . .
I learned the truth about kishke at the age of 12. It was at Larry Dellheim’s bar mitzvah. He had always been pretty obnoxious. “You know what you’re eating, don’t you?” he poked. “Cow’s guts.”
It was like hearing about sex for the first time. Just to play it safe, I put down my fork. “Get out of here!”
“Go ask you mom,” Larry jeered.
Years went by, and I’ve finally gone back to kishke. But cow organs – lung, heart, pancreas, brains – still give me the willies.
I was in good company. Northerners don’t eat much slimy innards. Then I moved South and discovered that organ meat was not a delicacy, but a sacrament.
Take, for example, the steaming bowl of pork intestine enhanced with hot-pepper sauce that they call “chitlins.” They look like they have the resilience of uncut rubber bands, but people slobber in them.
Then, I discovered that if you order cooked vegetables in a restaurant, their preparation is not so simple. They are invariably cooked with ham hock. This causes a slithering pool of grease to form atop the bowl and shards of pork to infuse the vegetables. My friends and I used to call it “mystery meat,” but there is no mystery about it.
I finally found it safe to eat lunch at a salad bar, where the vegetables are fresh and clean. At least I thought so. Once at a salad bar I loaded my plate with raw veggies. Well, maybe this isn’t as bad as I thought. They even had a stack of breadsticks, fairly cosmopolitan for the rural South. I bit into one, but it was oddly greasy. “This is not bread,” I said to the man at the next table. “No,” the man answered. “That’s fatback and strick-o-lean.” Well, I knew that fatback was a grubby pork delicacy. But “strick-o-lean”? “It’s a streak of lean bacon,” he explained impatiently.
“Oh.” I wanted to gargle with lye.
Then I came to resolution. I was the one who chose to move South. Besides, what a great story to tell my kids. Surely my two older ones would laugh. But then there’s the one who’s a Lubavitcher . . .
September 03, 2008
ONE MILKSHAKE: $150
I never met a chocolate milkshake that I didn’t love. My family was relatively poor, so Saturday night entertainment was to stroll “once around the track,” as my father called it, at Walgreen’s drugstore. Then, they would seat me at a stool in the cafeteria, ordered me a milkshake for 25 cents and sat impassively nearby as they waited for me to finish it.
What was the most I ever paid for a milkshake? $150. $150?!! It was December. The road was icy. I had just picked up my first pair of hearing aids and decided to stop for a celebratory milkshake. Away I drove, the milkshake in one hand, tuning my hearing aids with the other. I got distracted. The derrière of a truck loomed before me. I hit the brakes. I skidded. I missed the truck. Inertia, though, whipped the milkshake forward.
Thick, gooey milkshake exploded over windows, steering wheel, leather upholstery, the slot for the CDs, my suit, my shoes. And me with one wispy napkin. The car and I limped home. Two bottles of schpritz-cleaner later, I had not even made a dent. The reek of sour milk was setting in.
I took the car to the car wash, and all they could do was laugh. “Mister, you got one dirty car there.” They suggested an “auto detailing” service. “Mister,” again I heard them snickering, “you got one dirty car there.”
“How bad is it going to be?” I asked.
“We usually charge $75 to clean a car.”
“Usually?”
“We’ll have to charge $150 for yours.”
“All right.” Anyone who’s ever roiled in sour milk and gotten his bottom stuck to his seat knows that there is no alternative.
That’s the story of my $150 milkshake.
Regrets? Well, Linda didn’t let me back in the bedroom for a week. And $150 is still $150 to the unemployed. Honestly, though, the real regret? That I didn’t get to finish that damned milkshake, one of the best I’d ever tried. Was there any consolation? Yes, and here it is: The hearing aids are simply great, just great enough to shut off when Linda raves, “I told you so!”
I never met a chocolate milkshake that I didn’t love. My family was relatively poor, so Saturday night entertainment was to stroll “once around the track,” as my father called it, at Walgreen’s drugstore. Then, they would seat me at a stool in the cafeteria, ordered me a milkshake for 25 cents and sat impassively nearby as they waited for me to finish it.
What was the most I ever paid for a milkshake? $150. $150?!! It was December. The road was icy. I had just picked up my first pair of hearing aids and decided to stop for a celebratory milkshake. Away I drove, the milkshake in one hand, tuning my hearing aids with the other. I got distracted. The derrière of a truck loomed before me. I hit the brakes. I skidded. I missed the truck. Inertia, though, whipped the milkshake forward.
Thick, gooey milkshake exploded over windows, steering wheel, leather upholstery, the slot for the CDs, my suit, my shoes. And me with one wispy napkin. The car and I limped home. Two bottles of schpritz-cleaner later, I had not even made a dent. The reek of sour milk was setting in.
I took the car to the car wash, and all they could do was laugh. “Mister, you got one dirty car there.” They suggested an “auto detailing” service. “Mister,” again I heard them snickering, “you got one dirty car there.”
“How bad is it going to be?” I asked.
“We usually charge $75 to clean a car.”
“Usually?”
“We’ll have to charge $150 for yours.”
“All right.” Anyone who’s ever roiled in sour milk and gotten his bottom stuck to his seat knows that there is no alternative.
That’s the story of my $150 milkshake.
Regrets? Well, Linda didn’t let me back in the bedroom for a week. And $150 is still $150 to the unemployed. Honestly, though, the real regret? That I didn’t get to finish that damned milkshake, one of the best I’d ever tried. Was there any consolation? Yes, and here it is: The hearing aids are simply great, just great enough to shut off when Linda raves, “I told you so!”
August 26, 2008
WOULDYA PLEASE PASS THE SCHNITZEL?
My old schule recently entertained the idea of inviting me back to be their rabbi. It’s a long story, but instead they hired a woman who does not know how to read from the Torah. As I was told, she has more charisma than I do.
“It’s all for the best,” I said to myself. This will give me more time to work on my television show, “Rabbi Ribeye.” The name rhymes in English. In German, it would be loosely translated as “Rabbiner von Beefsteak.”
I am not kidding about my television show. Two producers discovered that I am a fairly good chef and comedian, at least for a rabbi. People would be interested, they said, in a rabbi who cooks like a yokel – but strictly kosher – tells funny stories, and plays the harmonica with a blues band. I can also, they said, cook matzo balls and veal breast and make the goyim think that they’re hush puppies and roast ham.
So now, we’ve taped a pilot, and five networks are ready to buy it. I have my own production company, agents, and lawyers. I am making personal appearances and showing old black chefs how to cook kosher barbecue.
Ach. My biggest problem is that the want me to write a cookbook. Funny, but I don’t know what to write. None of my recipes have measurements, just “throw it in.” I have to go back to figure out how large a “handful” of matzo meal really is.
What to do? I am tired of all the ways of making tuna casserole and brownies. So, I have a challenge for you: Send me your recipes – but no more potato kugel, gefilte fish, and latkes. I want authentic German recipes, kosher, of course: Schnitzel ala Holstein, Schwartzwalder Kirschtorte, Rouladen . . . you know.
If I include yours in my cookbook, I will not give you a penny, but all the credit, at least for the 15 people who buy it. If I really like your recipe, I will send you an authentic “Rabbi Ribeye” cap and an autographed picture of me eating Spaetzle.
Send them to me fast. After all, Chanukah is right around the corner, and I wouldn’t want anyone to miss Frau Unterdorfer’s recipe for Rotkraut zum Gaensebraten.
My old schule recently entertained the idea of inviting me back to be their rabbi. It’s a long story, but instead they hired a woman who does not know how to read from the Torah. As I was told, she has more charisma than I do.
“It’s all for the best,” I said to myself. This will give me more time to work on my television show, “Rabbi Ribeye.” The name rhymes in English. In German, it would be loosely translated as “Rabbiner von Beefsteak.”
I am not kidding about my television show. Two producers discovered that I am a fairly good chef and comedian, at least for a rabbi. People would be interested, they said, in a rabbi who cooks like a yokel – but strictly kosher – tells funny stories, and plays the harmonica with a blues band. I can also, they said, cook matzo balls and veal breast and make the goyim think that they’re hush puppies and roast ham.
So now, we’ve taped a pilot, and five networks are ready to buy it. I have my own production company, agents, and lawyers. I am making personal appearances and showing old black chefs how to cook kosher barbecue.
Ach. My biggest problem is that the want me to write a cookbook. Funny, but I don’t know what to write. None of my recipes have measurements, just “throw it in.” I have to go back to figure out how large a “handful” of matzo meal really is.
What to do? I am tired of all the ways of making tuna casserole and brownies. So, I have a challenge for you: Send me your recipes – but no more potato kugel, gefilte fish, and latkes. I want authentic German recipes, kosher, of course: Schnitzel ala Holstein, Schwartzwalder Kirschtorte, Rouladen . . . you know.
If I include yours in my cookbook, I will not give you a penny, but all the credit, at least for the 15 people who buy it. If I really like your recipe, I will send you an authentic “Rabbi Ribeye” cap and an autographed picture of me eating Spaetzle.
Send them to me fast. After all, Chanukah is right around the corner, and I wouldn’t want anyone to miss Frau Unterdorfer’s recipe for Rotkraut zum Gaensebraten.
August 17, 2008
THE RIGHT FIT
My youngest, Ben, now dons the garb of a Chasidic Jew when he celebrates Sabbath, holydays, and sacred occasions – long, black frockcoat, broad-brimmed hat, ritual fringes, woven prayer-sash, and the rest. He has come to identify with an Orthodox sect, Chabad, with which I, too, was once closely associated.
Chabad has recently gained some modicum of controversy, having posthumously declared their Rebbe (“Grand Rabbi”) the Messiah. The disagreements between us have never become rancorous, because Ben knows my watchword: “Son, as long as you are first and foremost, in every dimension of your life, a ‘mensch’ (a decent, God-loving, honorable human being), everything else is just parsley around the plate.” So far, he has been faithful to my watchword.
His siblings are not quite so tolerant. Oh, they would put down their lives for him. They, too, are quite religious, simply more modern. They see his “dress-up” as “mishugas” (foolishness) and have even asked me to try to straighten him out.
I won’t.
Maybe part of me is proud to have raised a child so devout, yet live such a responsible life. (He is a senior property manager for a multinational firm.)
But I think it’s more than that. Here’s how I see it:
Everyone should grant him/herself the opportunity, with impunity, to try on different outfits – to see which fit, which are transitory fads, which might be outgrown, which make us look like fools. I would like to believe that we’ve all been through it – groping around, perhaps for a lifetime, for the personae, tastes, cultures, friends, politics, philosophy, that “fit.”
How sad for people who don’t, who fear the intrigue, who refuse the human prerogative to change. How sad for those people who are deluded or brainwashed into believing that one size will always fit all. How sad for those people who mock and deride – as, by the way, my parents did – those others who try on different outfits, some garb whose silliness will be overcome, some not, and some that turn out isn’t really silly at all.
Of course, each new outfit might bode of a commensurate change in values: After each Sabbath, Ben changes from his frockcoat into basketball shorts and a grubby tee-shirt. So, we call him “neo-chasidic.” We laugh, and he laughs along with us. Another child of the extended family, age 28, dresses quite fashionably, but as a matter of commitment, just like her mother. Her persona is stuck at 60.
But values that form ones core? They must remain at the core, despite the permutation of clothing that circles around them. It’s as I tell Ben, “So long as you are a mensch . . . justice, mercy, humility, justice, mercy, humility . . .” Thanks to Micah. No matter, these must endure. If not, then all the changing of outfits becomes nothing more than an obscene striptease.
In adolescence, I was obliged to dress like a mama’s boy, quintessentially obedient. Then, the work-shirt and jeans of a ‘60’s radical. Then, like Ben, the pietistic chasidic cassock. Then, the intimations of prosperity cloaked in Brooks Brothers pinstripe and button-down, just out of Wall Street, which I wasn’t. With the denial of my collision with middle age, I dressed ridiculously retro-youth. Now, a bit more adjusted, slacks and a sport shirt, maybe an occasional pair of shorts, maybe a bowtie, just for the effect.
And that’s precisely the point – the fit marks the passing time and persona: obedience, radicalism, liberal, conservative, liberal, radical liberal, resolved . . . and maybe not resolved. That’s the story of my life. With old age, how can one know?
Long ago, the rabbis marveled at how the same King Solomon could have penned the mushy Song of Songs and the cynical Ecclesiastes. Some of them answered the obvious: He wrote Song of Songs when he was young and full of youthful romance, and Ecclesiastes when he was an old, sour crab. Others, though, showed more insight: No, they said. He wrote Ecclesiastes in the cynical disillusionment of youth. Then, he composed Song of Songs when he attained the resolution and romance that come from maturity and the philosophical mind.
I vote for interpretation Number Two. Or, at least I pray for it. I can see Ol’ King Solomon sitting on his throne in regal vestments and then a couple of hours later puttering around in his garden in tee-shirt and jeans.
I wonder if I can get there, too. That and justice, mercy, humility, always justice, mercy, humility. Finally, a pretty good fit.
My youngest, Ben, now dons the garb of a Chasidic Jew when he celebrates Sabbath, holydays, and sacred occasions – long, black frockcoat, broad-brimmed hat, ritual fringes, woven prayer-sash, and the rest. He has come to identify with an Orthodox sect, Chabad, with which I, too, was once closely associated.
Chabad has recently gained some modicum of controversy, having posthumously declared their Rebbe (“Grand Rabbi”) the Messiah. The disagreements between us have never become rancorous, because Ben knows my watchword: “Son, as long as you are first and foremost, in every dimension of your life, a ‘mensch’ (a decent, God-loving, honorable human being), everything else is just parsley around the plate.” So far, he has been faithful to my watchword.
His siblings are not quite so tolerant. Oh, they would put down their lives for him. They, too, are quite religious, simply more modern. They see his “dress-up” as “mishugas” (foolishness) and have even asked me to try to straighten him out.
I won’t.
Maybe part of me is proud to have raised a child so devout, yet live such a responsible life. (He is a senior property manager for a multinational firm.)
But I think it’s more than that. Here’s how I see it:
Everyone should grant him/herself the opportunity, with impunity, to try on different outfits – to see which fit, which are transitory fads, which might be outgrown, which make us look like fools. I would like to believe that we’ve all been through it – groping around, perhaps for a lifetime, for the personae, tastes, cultures, friends, politics, philosophy, that “fit.”
How sad for people who don’t, who fear the intrigue, who refuse the human prerogative to change. How sad for those people who are deluded or brainwashed into believing that one size will always fit all. How sad for those people who mock and deride – as, by the way, my parents did – those others who try on different outfits, some garb whose silliness will be overcome, some not, and some that turn out isn’t really silly at all.
Of course, each new outfit might bode of a commensurate change in values: After each Sabbath, Ben changes from his frockcoat into basketball shorts and a grubby tee-shirt. So, we call him “neo-chasidic.” We laugh, and he laughs along with us. Another child of the extended family, age 28, dresses quite fashionably, but as a matter of commitment, just like her mother. Her persona is stuck at 60.
But values that form ones core? They must remain at the core, despite the permutation of clothing that circles around them. It’s as I tell Ben, “So long as you are a mensch . . . justice, mercy, humility, justice, mercy, humility . . .” Thanks to Micah. No matter, these must endure. If not, then all the changing of outfits becomes nothing more than an obscene striptease.
In adolescence, I was obliged to dress like a mama’s boy, quintessentially obedient. Then, the work-shirt and jeans of a ‘60’s radical. Then, like Ben, the pietistic chasidic cassock. Then, the intimations of prosperity cloaked in Brooks Brothers pinstripe and button-down, just out of Wall Street, which I wasn’t. With the denial of my collision with middle age, I dressed ridiculously retro-youth. Now, a bit more adjusted, slacks and a sport shirt, maybe an occasional pair of shorts, maybe a bowtie, just for the effect.
And that’s precisely the point – the fit marks the passing time and persona: obedience, radicalism, liberal, conservative, liberal, radical liberal, resolved . . . and maybe not resolved. That’s the story of my life. With old age, how can one know?
Long ago, the rabbis marveled at how the same King Solomon could have penned the mushy Song of Songs and the cynical Ecclesiastes. Some of them answered the obvious: He wrote Song of Songs when he was young and full of youthful romance, and Ecclesiastes when he was an old, sour crab. Others, though, showed more insight: No, they said. He wrote Ecclesiastes in the cynical disillusionment of youth. Then, he composed Song of Songs when he attained the resolution and romance that come from maturity and the philosophical mind.
I vote for interpretation Number Two. Or, at least I pray for it. I can see Ol’ King Solomon sitting on his throne in regal vestments and then a couple of hours later puttering around in his garden in tee-shirt and jeans.
I wonder if I can get there, too. That and justice, mercy, humility, always justice, mercy, humility. Finally, a pretty good fit.
August 07, 2008
THE YEKKE SYNDROME
It wasn’t until I went off to college that I discovered that being a Yekke was not a nationality, but a syndrome. I’ve never met another species of Jew who named his child Irmgard or Berthold. Scott and Craig, of course. Those are real names. But not Gunther nor Franziska. Those are the kinds of names you find in stuffy operas, not baseball teams.
I wound up in Washington Heights, which proper Yekkes call “Frankfurt am Hudson.” A lovely elderly couple, Herta and Ludwig, took me in from time to time for Shabbos lunch. Their hospitality entirely gracious, but what kind of Shabbos lunch? Did we recite the Motzi on challah? No, on something they called “barches” that looked like a football. And where did that weird name “barches” come from? My research determined that it was derived from the twisted bread offered to Berchta, the Teutonic goddess of vegetation. I knew that German Jews were assimilated, but not idolaters.
What happened to the gefilte fish? Could it have morphed into a slice of boiled carp swimming in a blob of dense gray jelly? And that sauce? Mayonnaise?
The main course. We of real Jewish ancestry eat tongue picked and spiced, served on rye bread with mustard, an honorable deli sandwich. But who ever thought of roasting a whole tongue like an old boot and drenching it in a sticky raisin sauce, like ham? Only the Yekkes.
But, I dare not complain about apfelschalet – that wondrous deep-dish apple pie that makes cobbler of the southern US taste like pabulum. When I got divorced from my Yekke wife, I pleaded with her, “Please, take the house and the dog. Just don’t take the recipe for apfelschalet!”
Then there was the mandatory stroll through Fort Washington Park on Shabbos afternoon. In my life, I have never seen so many women in black coats and men walking with their hands clasped behind their backs.
Schule was the crowning experience. Oh, those majestic Teutonic oompah melodies for L’Dovid Boruch and Tzaddik Ka-Tomor. I still strut and sing them triumphantly whenever I walk the dog.
I found that as a visitor, you never, but never, simply take a seat in a Yekke schule. You are ushered to one, lest you choose a seat that is owned by a regular congregant. How dare you?
Once upon a time, I attended the schule of Rav Breuer, where every worshipper must surely have a lulav stuck up his . . . An usher led me to a seat next to a gap in the row. I asked the obvious: “Why the missing seat?” I assumed that it had belonged to a schule dignitary who had passed, and now the seat had been retired, the way one would retire the jersey of a superstar hockey or soccer player.
The usher quickly hushed me and said that if I were still interested he would tell me after services. My curiosity piqued, I approached him.
“You see that man on the other side of the gap?” he said, still whispering. “He hated the man who used to sit there. So, one Erev Yom Tov he came early, bought the seat, and had it unbolted.” If that is not the quintessential Yekke story, Lohengrin was just a jitterbug.
So, again I think to myself, being a Yekke is not a nationality. It is a syndrome. If they didn’t make such awesome aufschnitt, I’d tell you the real truth about them.
It wasn’t until I went off to college that I discovered that being a Yekke was not a nationality, but a syndrome. I’ve never met another species of Jew who named his child Irmgard or Berthold. Scott and Craig, of course. Those are real names. But not Gunther nor Franziska. Those are the kinds of names you find in stuffy operas, not baseball teams.
I wound up in Washington Heights, which proper Yekkes call “Frankfurt am Hudson.” A lovely elderly couple, Herta and Ludwig, took me in from time to time for Shabbos lunch. Their hospitality entirely gracious, but what kind of Shabbos lunch? Did we recite the Motzi on challah? No, on something they called “barches” that looked like a football. And where did that weird name “barches” come from? My research determined that it was derived from the twisted bread offered to Berchta, the Teutonic goddess of vegetation. I knew that German Jews were assimilated, but not idolaters.
What happened to the gefilte fish? Could it have morphed into a slice of boiled carp swimming in a blob of dense gray jelly? And that sauce? Mayonnaise?
The main course. We of real Jewish ancestry eat tongue picked and spiced, served on rye bread with mustard, an honorable deli sandwich. But who ever thought of roasting a whole tongue like an old boot and drenching it in a sticky raisin sauce, like ham? Only the Yekkes.
But, I dare not complain about apfelschalet – that wondrous deep-dish apple pie that makes cobbler of the southern US taste like pabulum. When I got divorced from my Yekke wife, I pleaded with her, “Please, take the house and the dog. Just don’t take the recipe for apfelschalet!”
Then there was the mandatory stroll through Fort Washington Park on Shabbos afternoon. In my life, I have never seen so many women in black coats and men walking with their hands clasped behind their backs.
Schule was the crowning experience. Oh, those majestic Teutonic oompah melodies for L’Dovid Boruch and Tzaddik Ka-Tomor. I still strut and sing them triumphantly whenever I walk the dog.
I found that as a visitor, you never, but never, simply take a seat in a Yekke schule. You are ushered to one, lest you choose a seat that is owned by a regular congregant. How dare you?
Once upon a time, I attended the schule of Rav Breuer, where every worshipper must surely have a lulav stuck up his . . . An usher led me to a seat next to a gap in the row. I asked the obvious: “Why the missing seat?” I assumed that it had belonged to a schule dignitary who had passed, and now the seat had been retired, the way one would retire the jersey of a superstar hockey or soccer player.
The usher quickly hushed me and said that if I were still interested he would tell me after services. My curiosity piqued, I approached him.
“You see that man on the other side of the gap?” he said, still whispering. “He hated the man who used to sit there. So, one Erev Yom Tov he came early, bought the seat, and had it unbolted.” If that is not the quintessential Yekke story, Lohengrin was just a jitterbug.
So, again I think to myself, being a Yekke is not a nationality. It is a syndrome. If they didn’t make such awesome aufschnitt, I’d tell you the real truth about them.
August 05, 2008
DISCUSS: AN EGG CREAM CONTAINS NEITHER EGGS NOR CREAM
The birth of our granddaughter in New York was all the excuse we needed to head Downtown and conduct “scientific research” on the quality of the pastrami, etc., at the newly reopened Second Avenue Deli, the Olympus of kosher dining. We had another good excuse: to introduce the gay couple that lives next door to the wonders of deli cuisine. “The Boys,” as we call them, happened to be in New York for a weekend of theater.
They’d never eaten heimische Jewish cooking, save the occasional dinners I’d prepared for them. It was no wonder. The Boys had grown up in tiny Seneca, South Carolina, where it was dangerous enough to be gay, not to mention falling in love with Jewish cuisine, or even finding it.
They, we commanded, had to join us for lunch at Second Avenue. On being seated, I discovered an auspicious lagniappe waiting at the table – a bowl of gribenes. Before I could explain the wonders of rendered chicken skin, The Boys had attacked the bowl and pronounced the cracklings “even better than pork rinds,” a kind of gribenes derived from pig skin. A klog!
Not I, but my pencil-thin Lady Linda ordered lunch – everything “for the table,” sharing it all until the last diner dropped. They had never tried chopped liver, so we demanded that they try chopped liver. “Mix in some gribenes!” I admonished them. “Ahhhhhhh, even better.” Then the fricassee. They recognized what they called “gizzards,” but I wouldn’t let them continue until they learned that proper people called them “pupiks.” Kishke, yes. Did the intestines bother them? Not a chance! Corned beef. Pastrami. Salami. Knobbelwurst. Potato and lokshen kugel.
At our insistence, they washed it all down with an “egg cream,” a beverage of seltzer and chocolate syrup. “Where were the eggs and cream?” they wondered. “Goyische kep! Those would be too hard to digest!”
We paid. We feared that otherwise we would be indicted for murder. All The Boys could say was, “How can we become Jewish like you?”
I asked if they’d been circumcised. They looked at me sheepishly. “Boys,” I said, “if you’re not, keep your knives at your plate. Just enjoy your gefilte fish, and you’ll be as Jewish as most Jews I know.”
The birth of our granddaughter in New York was all the excuse we needed to head Downtown and conduct “scientific research” on the quality of the pastrami, etc., at the newly reopened Second Avenue Deli, the Olympus of kosher dining. We had another good excuse: to introduce the gay couple that lives next door to the wonders of deli cuisine. “The Boys,” as we call them, happened to be in New York for a weekend of theater.
They’d never eaten heimische Jewish cooking, save the occasional dinners I’d prepared for them. It was no wonder. The Boys had grown up in tiny Seneca, South Carolina, where it was dangerous enough to be gay, not to mention falling in love with Jewish cuisine, or even finding it.
They, we commanded, had to join us for lunch at Second Avenue. On being seated, I discovered an auspicious lagniappe waiting at the table – a bowl of gribenes. Before I could explain the wonders of rendered chicken skin, The Boys had attacked the bowl and pronounced the cracklings “even better than pork rinds,” a kind of gribenes derived from pig skin. A klog!
Not I, but my pencil-thin Lady Linda ordered lunch – everything “for the table,” sharing it all until the last diner dropped. They had never tried chopped liver, so we demanded that they try chopped liver. “Mix in some gribenes!” I admonished them. “Ahhhhhhh, even better.” Then the fricassee. They recognized what they called “gizzards,” but I wouldn’t let them continue until they learned that proper people called them “pupiks.” Kishke, yes. Did the intestines bother them? Not a chance! Corned beef. Pastrami. Salami. Knobbelwurst. Potato and lokshen kugel.
At our insistence, they washed it all down with an “egg cream,” a beverage of seltzer and chocolate syrup. “Where were the eggs and cream?” they wondered. “Goyische kep! Those would be too hard to digest!”
We paid. We feared that otherwise we would be indicted for murder. All The Boys could say was, “How can we become Jewish like you?”
I asked if they’d been circumcised. They looked at me sheepishly. “Boys,” I said, “if you’re not, keep your knives at your plate. Just enjoy your gefilte fish, and you’ll be as Jewish as most Jews I know.”
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