THE BLOOD-SUGAR CONSPIRACY

Do you have diabetes? If not, are you sure that you’re Jewish? Remember a generation ago? The misery of sterilizing the equipment, watching Mama stab herself with a dull, thick needle, trying to calculate the right injection of insulin, and maintaining a stringent diet.

My mother was meticulous. Not like crabby Mr. Finkelstein who lived next door, the one who hated children and chased them off his property with an outstretched cane. He browbeat his mousy wife into buying him chazerai. He inhaled it with a grunt, as his helpless children watched his blood sugar rise and plummet.

Finally, his son Irving moved in with Papa and Mama to police him. He straightened out his diet, got his medications in order, watched him like a spy, and suffered great abuse.

But, Mr. Finkelstein’s blood sugar remained perilously high. The doctor hadn’t a clue. The children said that everything was under control, each meal measured, and insulin dispensed.

Mr. Finkelstein tolerated only one child. Me. It was probably because we walked to schule together on dark, frigid Chicago mornings, as he would rasp bitterly about his children, his idiot-son Irving, and of course, how “none of my rotten kids go to schule.”

The schule was a cabal of crabby old men griping about their children. Each one had an assignment. Every morning, Mr. Finkelstein’s mission was to put out breakfast for his conspirators. The aroma of brewing coffee was so enticing that we could barely finish Alenu. Always the same menu: sweet-sour herring, kichel rolled in coarse sugar, coffee, and always a l’chayim over a shot of schnapps, hidden under the bimah. Every once in a while, Mr. Finkelstein would surreptitiously pour me a schnapps, so I “wouldn’t be too cold waiting for the bus.”

Aha! A robust breakfast, just like in the Old Country, was the secret to the old man’s rocketing blood sugar: sugar in the herring, the kichel, the coffee, and of course, the daily l’chayim.

I kept our clandestine breakfasts to myself, now being one of the cronies. Off I would trudge to school. But, one day at 9:00 AM a teacher smelled alcohol on my breath. I was hauled off to the principal’s office and my mother summoned.
“What did you do? Is this the son we raised?” my mother barked. I knew that I would be black-and-blue by lunchtime and slashed by her well-honed tongue. An explanation wad demanded. Finally, they tortured the truth out of me about schule, the old men, their secret breakfast, and starting the day with a schnapps.

“And Mr. Finkelstein has this breakfast with you?” My mother smelled the rat.

I got my swift, exacting punishment. But, before we walked in our door, Mama appeared before Irving and ended his quest for the ultimate answer.

The Finkelstein’s held a family meeting. They decided that the old man should no longer go to schule. He was ferocious. Irving would stand guard at the door every morning, and from next door I would hear: “Anti-Semite! I’m going to schule! You are not going to schule! All right, so I won’t eat breakfast! Why should I trust you? Because I’m your father! You’re not my father when you act like a baby!”

Ah, so what became of Irving? Truth be told, his kidneys failed and he went on dialysis at the age of 48. Mr. Finkelstein, though, lived to a crabby 93, a refugee from too much schnapps and too little insulin.

I am certain that when Morris Finkelstein arrived at Heaven’s gate, God was right there waiting for him. Then He hoisted a shot-glass twinkling with schnapps, offered Morris a l’chayim, and welcoming him home.

WHO ATE THE MEATBALLS?

No one will ever be able to convince me otherwise. The manna that rained down from heaven was ground beef. It is the most versatile of all foods:

Hamburgers. Meatloaf. Sausage. Ragout. Meatballs. Spaghetti sauce. Meatballs and beans. Meatballs in cholent. Creamed ground beef on toast.

In our family, ground beef has attained legendary proportions. The story is told of how my Aunt Leah made a pot of meatballs to be served the next evening.

Aunt Leah was a huge woman who, as I remember, snored loudly, suffered from sleep apnea, and slept the sleep of the dead. Her husband, Uncle Izzy, was puny and hyperactive. Most nights he wandered the house, turning the radio on and off, ruffling the newspaper, starting but never finishing the crossword puzzle.

Knowing that Aunt Leah slept deeply, Izzy would occasionally raid the refrigerator. That night, he ate half the pot of meatballs. It wasn’t until Leah came to warm them that she discovered the great escape. She instantly lined up Izzy and the four kids, ready to prosecute with a leather sharpening strop, her favorite weapon of inquisition.

“Who ate the meatballs?!” she demanded.

Silence. Then, one by one, she seethed at the children: “Did YOU eat the meatballs?!” For the first time in their lives, the kids told the truth, “Ma, honest, we didn’t eat the meatballs!”

“And Izzy, what about you?”

”Sweetie, how could I have eaten the meatballs? I’m always sleeping in bed right next to you”

Oh no, that was not the end of the story. Aunt Leah, you see, was a plodding woman. At an occasional Purim party or Pesach Seder, she would announce, “I still can’t figure out who ate the meatballs.”

Years went by. Uncle Izzy lay on his death bed. As the end neared, he beckoned Aunt Leah to draw near. Then he gasped and whispered, “I ate the meatballs.” That was his final breath.

The children cried and hugged, but Aunt Leah smugly announced, “Aha, I knew it all along! The red on the towel wasn’t because he cut himself! It was tomato sauce!”

HEAVEN – A NICE PLACE TO SPEND SOME TIME

A few days ago, I spent five minutes in hell. As I left the doctor’s office, I was accompanied by a pathetic woman struggling to negotiate the few steps outside the building.

Dressed from Salvation Army counters. A two-year-old on one hip. A baby-bag slung over her shoulder. Hugely pregnant. And wincing with such horrific pain each time she stepped forward on her tiptoe that her hair was matted with greasy sweat. I swear that I saw white-hot sparks crackle from the blacktop.

I offered her my arm and asked if I could carry the baby. I brought her to her battered car and asked how I could help. No, there was nothing more I could do.

Please don’t see this as a plea for adulation. I was simply doing what Momma taught me. And I knew that if I didn’t, she would instantly have reached down from heaven and administered an omnipotent frosk, “Let that be a lesson to you!”

Besides, I did not create heaven. I spent five minutes in hell.

Ironic thing about heaven. When we talk about heaven, the conversation is usually so contention and shrill. “Our side will get there. You won’t get there. It’s in this book. No, it’s in that book. Follow him. Follow me. Blah, blah, blah.” In my own times, I have added my own voice to the shrillness, and I dread to say that in moments of weakness, I might do it again.

But, an inner whisper that has lately brought me to unrelentingly bitter tears has given birth to a more calm and measured vision of heaven. It did not come to me as a theological epiphany, so I confess in advance to its doctrinal impurity.

Life batters me, and it batters you. Life can be so damned mean, and for every time we deserve it, ten times the meanness comes by way of people who are greedy, ruthless, and just plain heartless. Sometimes it is so unbearable that it can no longer be numbed by a martini or hope in a heaven that is a contentious and smug place where I get in and you keep out.

To the broken of heart and those who withstand the worst of unbearable meanness, this is the peace and healing that I believe heaven will bring:

Heaven is a place where everyone is nice.

No stiff, fancy doctrine or hoo-hah to obfuscate the basic promise.

“I see you need a job. I’ll take a chance on you. I’ll train you. When can you start?” Nice.

“I see that you’re crying. Would you like a tissue? Would you like to talk? Maybe I can help.” Nice.

“I see that your family has no place to eat. Come, eat and stay with us. Tomorrow we’ll go find someone who can help you get on the right track.” Nice.

“Let me carry that bag. Help you cross the street. Hold open the door. Give you my seat on the bus.” Nice.

“Let me prop you up and help with your baby, walk you to your car. Let me give you at least a moment of heaven before you must descend back to your hell.” Nice.

Heaven is a place where everyone is nice.

Ah, sounds like a heaven we could replicate on earth. Right. Right, were their no insurmountable walls barring a world full of niceness. Not merely the Saddam’s and Hitler’s, but a receptionist who doesn’t offer a wheelchair to someone wincing in pain or a boss who won’t give a kid a chance.

This is precisely why the broken of heart and the spat-upon need keep faith in a heaven boding peaceful, calming niceness. Meanwhile, we who are blessed with the ability would do well to share some of the appetizers of heaven to folks here on earth. Perhaps that will tide them over by the reassurance that there is a good measure of niceness yet to be found among us.

HIGH HOLIDAYS TORTURE TABLES

“Good things come to those who wait.”

So, I waited and waited for 35 years to abdicate the rabbinate. For the first time, I will spend the Yom Tovim with my family, not having to worry about my sermons or whether the chazzan would take too long singing Kol Nidre.

After all those years, I will finally have the time and energy to prepare my own gourmet holiday feasts. Whether they are delicious or not, my family and friends will have to feed my fragile ego by telling me that they were “marvelous,” and once again, I will have to klop an Al Chet for the sin of arrogance.

But how many years did I spend in other people’s dining rooms futilely trying to ingest Yom Tov meals that we would universally declare torturous?

Have any of you had gritty gefilte fish? No, not gritty from too much matzo meal, but gritty because they were riddled with shrapnel of fish bones that the balaboste was either too lazy or too cruel to remove.

While we are on the subject of appetizers, how could I not forget walking with a congregant to his house for lunch on Rosh Hashanah. He prated on and on about his wife’s cooking, every superlative synonym, as if he’d swallowed Roget’s for breakfast.

Nu? You have already figured out the rest of the story, but not the magnitude of its horror. Each place was set with a reddish-brown lump atop the customary leaf of lettuce. After Kiddush and Motzi, the balabos insisted, “Go ahead, try it.”
I tried. And the liver oozed blood. Rare chopped liver. The prospects of chug-a-lugging liver blood and contracting e-coli ran neck-and-neck in my imagination. Then, an atypical stroke of genius: I reached under the table with my fork and stabbed my hands and arms with the tines. Reaching up, I asked the balaboste what kind of oil she used.

“Canola.”

“Canola?” I shrieked. “You can’t imagine how allergic I am to canola,” and displayed the horrible “rash” on my arm. Beware of rare chopped, and keep your fork nearby.

What do you eat before Yom Kippur? Scientists have debated the issue, but none of them has found anything yet to prevent my backache. Beside, isn’t rotten the way we’re supposed to feel on Yom Kippur?

One Erev One Yom Kippur dinner was particularly memorable. To set the backdrop, the hosts had a huge parrot that kept screaming, “Elliot!” throughout the meal. The lady of the house preceded the main course with a chicken soup that shimmered with layer of fat so thick and shiny that women were furtively checking their hairdos in it. Not to be outdone, the turkey was so hairy that it begged fitting as a toupee.

Then there was another Erev Yom Kippur trying to go into the fast on a dinner of Froot Loops Chicken. Someone must have thought that it was the culinary equivalent of A+B=C. Sweet chicken tastes good. Breaded chicken tastes good. Therefore, Froot Loops Chicken must taste good. Maybe in your world. In my world, it’s one of those “funny recipes from kids” on Leno. How about chocolate-dipped herring?

A girlfriend once took me home on Rosh Hashanah to meet the family. The aroma of holiday dinner wafted from her aunt’s kitchen. A beautiful table was set with honey, apples and round challah.

I recited the Kiddush. They were impressed. They presented the appetizer. Hmm. It was too smooth to be gefilte fish. And besides, it was pink. I tentatively tasted it.

“This is delicious,” I said to the host. “What is it?”

“It’s crabmeat salad. It’s our tradition to eat it on the first night of Rosh Hashanah.”

Fortunately, the dog ate it ravenously. Afterward, I asked my girlfriend if there were any other family secrets that I should know about. I made it plain that crabmeat salad even once a year was a deal breaker. Then I told her that if we were to go any further, I would happily dye the gefilte fish pink.

THE SCHOOLYARD LOSER

Anyone who has lost a schoolyard fight will tell you that you don’t need to wait until adulthood to know whether you’re a “winner” or a “loser.”

Despite superior grades and victories in science fairs and essay contests, I was a loser, with Coca-Cola-bottom glasses and pudgy-face crewcut. Kids picked on me. The desperate need to assert my machismo momentarily overruled my basic nature as a crybaby. So I took the bait and always lost.

Georgie was wiry and half my size. He was adept at teasing, and I was an easy mark. One Friday on the way home from school, resplendent in my Cub Scout uniform (which made fighting a cardinal sin), Georgie picked a fight, and I obliged. In a second, he had me pinned to the ground and pummeled me, encircle by a mob of third-graders jeering, “Fight! Fight! N**ger (albeit that Georgie was Caucasian) and a white! C’mon, Georgie! Beat that white!” I cried and ran home to momma. Loser.

By fifth grade, I owned two sources of pride: an Esterbrook fountain pen, just like my dad’s, and a bright red parka. The parka made me even pudgier, but my parents reassured me that it also made me look “just like a Royal Canadian Mountie.”
On the way out to recess, Mickey grabbed the Esterbrook from me. I clumsily chased after him. But Mickey, who still dances in a Broadway chorus line, was fast and wily. He dodged and weaved as I lumbered and stumbled. Then, in a final mockery, he opened the Esterbrook’s bladder and shot black ink over my Mountie coat.

A teacher put Mickey in detention for a week and made him pay for the cleaning. His parents were smug and treated it as a rite of passage. My parents, as usual, made no waves toward them and turned their wrath toward me. My mother saw the ruined coat as the squandering of hard-earned cash and understood nothing of the shame of being the schoolyard lummox. My father, the WWII hero, lectured me on how “the best defense is to just walk away.” I was grounded for a month. Loser.

A few years went by. Another creep discovered my vulnerability and goaded me. But, this was nerdy Talmud camp, so we were all a bunch of losers. I assessed my chances with Moishe and beat him until he started gasping. Not knowing what brutality I had inflicted, I ran to the dining hall to summon the doctor, who made short shrift of the incident. “You just knocked the wind out of him,” he dismissed me. “That’s what happens when you win the fight.”

“Win the fight.” After lo the many years, the victory still feels almost Pyrrhic: You beat Moishe to a pulp, then call the doctor while Moishe gasps for breath. And now he’s a professor at NYU. Loser.

Now no longer 7 or 17, but 57, what I wouldn’t do to have my column syndicated. For years, I’ve sent off packets to various syndicates, predictably receiving no response or a generic rejection note. Once, I did receive a response: The editor told me that my style and language usage were wonderful. “But,” he wrote, “Your writing has one fatal flaw that you’ll never overcome. It is insipid to the core.”

“Insipid to the core.” “Fatal flaw.” Loser.

From that day on, I haven’t spent much time mailing off packets. I fear that the response I receive would just make me want to run home crying to momma. A column of mine might appear here and there, and that makes me happy. And when it doesn’t, I put on my white jacket and pretend that I’m a chef. I make pate de foie, Peruvian ceviche and duck prosciutto. You may not like them. But this I promise: They’ll never be insipid to the core.

So much for the schoolyard loser.

ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

Let me talk one more time about Ben and Joy’s wedding, and I promise it will be the last . . . unless you insist on seeing the pictures in my wallet.

It was a full-tilt Chasidische affair and resoundingly freilach. The only discordant note was the unanticipated Kabbalah-based distress that Meta and I faced as a divorced couple, despite decades that have transpired and our now amicable relationship. Fortunately, the issue was resolved, wounds have healed, perspectives have changed and most importantly, Ben and Joy are settling into a marriage that, please God, will last 120 years in health and happiness.

This is not a clarion call to anti-orthodox sentiment. Rather, it is about our attitude to the panorama of the Jewish experience. It is about the mandate to invoke freely the healing, conciliatory words “all things considered.”

The disposition of Lubavitch to our divorced status is patently indefensible. No Kabbalistic gymnastics or holy books could convince me otherwise. My gut reaction was of complete fire-breathing rejection. So it was, too, to the craziest outer fringe of those who believe in the Rebbe’s messianism (by the way, not including the vast majority of Lubavitchers who nonetheless believe that the Rebbe is the messiah).

But, all things considered, and these are operative words, they do magnificent work throughout the world, and not all of it is about marketing Judaism. Likewise, they and the Rebbe were there for me unconditionally in times of deep personal crisis, while colleagues that are more liberal turned their backs. And I am close enough to them to know that I have not been bamboozled.

All things considered.

I can’t see the orthodoxy of tearing toilet paper on Erev Shabbos or not shaking a woman’s hand. But I can certainly see the orthodoxy of Yeshiva University creating Einstein School of Medicine and Cordoza School of Law along with a superior rabbinical seminary.

All things considered.

Conservative Judaism? A cogent and sensible theology: God calls for each generation to engage in a tug-of-war to determine its point of equilibrium between tradition and change. Attentiveness to Halacha. Vibrancy of its services. But, then again, confusion between Halachic change to accommodate the whims of its constituencies versus responsiveness to the demands of justice and social realities. I cringe at some of its capricious changes, yet celebrate its perceptiveness of the future, not merely veneration of the past.

All things considered.

And the Reform? Feh? No. Incredible scholarship. Creative educational programming. Indignant calls for social justice. Some pundits would say that they are as “orthodox” in the Torah’s cry for social justice as the self-proclaimed “orthodox” are in their meticulous observance of ritual law. But still, they seem too easily confused between Judaism and ethical monotheism. Their Shabbat services often seem more like a hootenanny than a davenen. “Did you like my Selichot service?” a Reform colleague asked me. “It was terrific,” I answered, “but it didn’t have any Selichot prayers in it.”

All things considered.

The problem must have already vexed our European ancestors, because they had coined the Yiddishism, “yeder ainer macht Shabbos farzich alien – everyone makes his own Shabbos.”

Call me a Pollyanna. Any Jewish community should be able to lop off at least a few rough edges, not to do everything as one, but to do more things as one. Otherwise, just listen to what we are inferring about ourselves. We all have “special needs,” right? In our everyday vocabulary, to whom do we refer as having “special needs”? Children. Disabled children. And what is our highest aspiration for them? To draw them into the “mainstream.”

All things considered.

HARRY IS STILL MEETING SALLY

During our recent visit to New York, Linda and I took the opportunity to walk around the Lower East Side. It is now a trendy area, full of bars, bistros and expensive apartments, but once it was a neighborhood full of decrepit tenements through which thousands of Jewish immigrants passed on their way to a better life in America.

Some remnants are still intact. Shmatta clothing hangs from racks in the streets. One tenement has been converted into a museum to remind us of the squalor in which our ancestors lived.

And one grimy “kosher style” delicatessen, Katz’s, remains in its original environs. One notices on entry that Katz’s origins go back at least to World War II, as a fly-specked sign declares “Send a Salami to Your Boy in the Army!” which actually rhymes in some American dialects.

Katz’s forever gained international fame about 15 years ago in a memorable film, “When Harry Met Sally.” It was the setting for Sally to prove to the doubting Harry over a pastrami sandwich that a woman can deceive a man into believing that she is having an orgasm. At the conclusion of her tawdry, and I assume, realistic display, an older woman sitting at the next table announces to a waiter, “I want whatever she’s having!”

One cannot imagine how infamous that scene has become. But, do you know what has become even more infamous? The table at which Sally performed her feat. Everyone knows precisely where it is. Do people fight over sitting there? What do you think? Do they order the pre-coital pastrami sandwich? What do you think? Do the women attempt to perform Sally’s infamous deed? I’ll let you use your imagination.

As I am nearing 60, I made the proprietor a suggestion for one more kosher-style item on his menu, small and blue. The only drawback is that it would require the presence of a doctor and pharmacist. Viagra. Now those of us sitting at the next table will again be able to proclaim to the waiter with renewed self-assurance, “I want whatever he’s having!”

THE CELLPHONE – CHASIDISM’S TRUE MORAL ENEMY

My son, albeit a modern orthodox young man, is not what you would call a Lubavitcher Chasid. Yet, he recently married a most sweet and exotically beautiful Syrian bride on the steps of 770 Eastern Parkway, the world headquarters of the Lubavitcher/Chabad Chasidim. He was regaled in full Chasidic garb, she wore a classically modest gown and thick “deck-tichel” (veil), and I even got to wear my fedora.

You must know that Benjy getting married in a Lubavitcher ceremony made me tremendously proud. I kvell. I say this neither gratuitously nor with apology. Since 16, I have been close to Chabad, and they have been a consistently positive influence in my life. The Rebbe’s divinely enlightened wisdom and guidance literally saved my life. Is the Rebbe still alive? Certainly. He lives in my soul.

Simply put, Lubavitchers are my people. Thus, my reverence does not preclude me from lighthearted laughing at some of the Chasidic communities’ idiosyncrasies. Knowing as I do the typically robust Lubavitcher sense of humor, I assume that (maybe) they would be laughing along with us.

One of the mandates of a Chasidic wedding, as you likely know, is that men and women are separated from beginning to end. This I can understand for the ceremony, as it is a sacred time of worship. I might even understand it during the smorgasbord – universally called “the sh’morg” – extravaganza, when vodka and other libations flow freely and might loosen the tongue to speak licentiously to the opposite sex.

(Let me digress for a moment and talk about this binge called “the sh’morg.” The sh’morg, not the pious words spoken to the bride and groom by the Rabbi, is the true yardstick of a bounteous wedding. The lamb-chop station. The pasta station. The stir-fry station. The sushi station. What is it about Chasidim and sushi? Once I heard a landsman in beard and payes announce that the faux crabmeat “tasted just like the real thing.” A-ha.)

End of the sh’morg. Back to the festivities.

I can even see how during the dancing the separation is justified, as skirts and tzitzis go swirling in the frenzy.

But, I will never understand why men’s and women’s dinner tables must also be separated by a nine-foot mechitza. I mean, what immorality could possibly be perpetrated by pious men and women sitting next to each other while fressing on a nine-course glatt-kosher bacchanalia? After an orgy of more faux-crabmeat, prime rib and Viennese pastry, I certainly do want to go to bed, but not with someone else’s wife, or probably even my own. And take a Tagamet first.

Let me tell you what really ought to be banned from Chasidic weddings: Cellphones. Separated as they are, cellphones are the only way that men and women are able to communicate with each other during the evening. How many times have I seen husbands and wives innocently use their cell-phones to determine when to leave the reception? Or, “Did you call the babysitter? “No, I thought that you called that babysitter.”

Cellphones for innocent purposes, you say? How do you know that Yankel or Reizel is not clandestinely calling a paramour for a tryst the next afternoon at the Pierre, and doing it under cover of the din and the raucous Chasidic music? Or that Sh’muel isn’t calling in an inside trade on a new offering of an Oriental hi-tech, Kin Ah Hora.

Please, please tell my Chasidic friends that I am just having a good time at their expense and that I need to dunk my mind in the mikvah. But, also remind them that I, like they, can always tell the difference in the look in a man’s eyes when he’s hungry for strudel or for something more toothsome.

HOW DO YOU KNOW THAT CRABMEAT'S FAUX?

The operative word for the kashrut-observant Jew of the 21st century is “faux.” That is, we prefer to eat kosher imitations of goyische food than food that our ancestors considered “traditional.”

Where did it all start, you ask? Its origin is in the Jews’ discovery of mayonnaise. The consistency of mayonnaise is so much like faux cream that it is the only foodstuff whose hechsher specifically identifies it as “pareve,” so close is the resemblance.

My recollection of nearly 50 years ago is that pareve faux coffee-cream and butter were still miraculous to the kosher palate. Thus, on public occasions, a card was placed at each table assuring the bamboozled diners that they need not fear; the cream and butter were certified non-dairy.

We zap the clock forward to the 21st century. The kashrut-observant world is obsessed with all means of kosher faux treferai. Trust me, my travels even in the Chasidic world have taught me that Chasidim are even more zealous about faux kosher than their clean-shaven brethren.

Certain fish with fins and scales, pollock I think, is indistinguishable from crabmeat and lobster. If the factory molds it in a different shape, it becomes faux shrimp.

A fatty, tough cut of beef ironically called “plate,” when properly cured and smoked, makes for equally carcinogenic faux bacon. Through my own dabbling with veal breast, I have come to make an indistinguishable faux ham.

Attend any Chasidic wedding, and indulge yourself in a bacchanalian “sh’morg.” Kishe and knishes? I think not. Faux sushi napped in wasabi. And we all love the faux Alfredo sauce dripping down our beards as we discuss an intricate comment of Rashi on last week’s Torah portion. Then, not to be undone, we delight in our faux filet mignon oozing a pat of faux garlic butter.

This leaves me with only one dilemma: How does any pious Chasid know the taste of authentic crabmeat to be able to announce, “Ah, now that faux crabmeat tastes like the real thing!”? How does that guy in beard and payes know good faux from bad?

Please,please, help me resolve that conundrum, I’ll reward you with a pot of steaming oyster stew if you do. Faux? Only you and I will know.

THINGS GO BETTER

I came from a home in which any meat that momma served was pot-roasted for six hours. Growing up, though, I had occasion to eat dinner in the homes of affluent friends. They frequently served a cut unknown to us peasants, “ribeye,” which was juicy, pink, marbled with fat, some of which had caramelized around the roast’s edges. Could this be a hors d’ouvres of the mythical Shor Ha-Bor that would be served upon the messiah’s arrival?

Ribeye, I vowed, would one day be the signature of my own arrival to affluence. On a rabbi’s salary, I never gained riches, but soon ribeye became the highlight of every family occasion, even as the price to serve six skyrocketed to over $120.

Then there are the occasions when we really wanted to impress our guests. We tried to do so recently with a ribeye roast that cost nearly $200, as we welcomed our new machatonim.

I had long believed that the less one played with a fine cut of meat the better: a little salt, pepper and perhaps some garlic, then straight into the oven. Recently, though, I had read in one of those silly hausfrau magazines about a “simply delicious, secret” glaze made from a list of exotic herbs and spices. Then, I violated the cardinal rule of haute cuisine: “Never experiment on recipes with guests.”

I bathed and rubbed the ribeye with the “secret” glaze until the ruby-red meat turned a morbid brown. Upon roasting, though, the ribeye was beautifully glazed and rich-pink within. As I presented my masterpiece, I smugly announced that the glaze was a “secret” recipe of herbs and spices, and that I would defy the guests to tell me what they were.

Before I collapsed into a puddle of humiliation, I remember only the pained expression that crossed each guest’s face as he or she attempted to savor the roast’s miserable “secret” glaze. Only my four-year-old granddaughter Sophie penetrated the secrecy and loudly, and correctly, announced, “Zayde, why did you pour Coca-Cola on the meat?”

“YOU’D NEVER BELIEVE IT WAS TRAIFE!”

My son Ben is on his way to becoming a talented chef. As hedonistic as Jews are, he is likely to be more successful than his sister the physician or his brother the executive.

His mentor is proprietor of Mike’s Bistro in Manhattan, a superior restaurant that happens to be kosher.

At that point, similarity to the “typical” kosher restaurant ends. One will find no pickles on the table, surly waiters or greasy kugel. The restaurant is home to haute cuisine: Duck Panzanella, Ginger-Crusted Mahi-Mahi, Wild Mushroom Farfalle, the finest wines, the most comfortable ambiance.

“You’d never believe it was kosher!” Right? Of course, if you consider restaurant-style kashrut a cuisine, not a religious mandate. Then the “typical” kosher restaurant becomes a study in inferiority – ill-prepared food, impatiently served, ordered from fly-specked menus.

But, it is also a study in Jews being a tormented minority, especially for those of us who see everything in terms of being a tormented minority. The truth is that kosher food becomes increasingly attractive as it becomes increasingly goyisch.
Quenelles de poisson roll lighter off the tongue than gefilte fish does, because one is more likely to eat them at Pierre’s, while Yehudim are more likely to eat the latter at dingy delicatessens called “Moishe’s.” The same is true of gnocchi above knishes, Plaza del Lago above Kol Tuv Pizza. Hollandaise above schmaltz. Tarte de Pomme, oui! Apfelschalet, nein!

Dream along with me about a world in which we are dominant, and the goyim are the tormented minority. Consider them emerging from a grimy establishment called “Yankel’s,” rapturously exclaiming, “You’d never believe it was traife! Imagine that chopped liver, better than pate. And darling, what about the kugel? How could I ever go back to gratin dauphinois? The tzimmes made me forget that I have ever eaten ratatouille.”

Now wake up! You and I will remain a tormented minority. We will forever judge the quality of kosher food on how un-kosher it seems. I have already told Ben that this poses no problem, so long as he remembers how to make a good matzo-ball soup.

A YOKEL GETS NO SUPPER

My friend Arnie, despite his Jewish birth, lives like gentile in a gentile world. That seems to be slowly changing. Perhaps a little of it is due to the chopped liver that I occasionally serve him.

Arnie recently regaled me in his first experience of a “real New York” Bar Mitzvah. The father of the bochur was the lead counsel for a television network. The mother was a society matron. Arnie expected a celebration that was equally dignified. And indeed, the service was. In fact, he used the word “uninspiring,” as though his Yiddishkeit was already better prepared for my son’s Lubavitcher wedding next month.

Arnie thus had every reason to expect an equally sophisticated celebration on Saturday evening. Then, his world of lofty Jewish expectations came crashing down. You entered, he said, through a huge kids’ ballroom blaring hip-hop music and cluttered with video games. Interspersed among the games were screens narcissistically broadcasting the Bar-Mitzvah bochur’s picture and the caption, “He’s the One!”

The next ballroom, Arnie told me with his eyes wide open like Alice in Wonderland’s, was a bacchanalia – a League of Nations, he said, of every imaginable cuisine: sushi, Peking duck, Weiner schnitzel, spareribs, pork Wellington, Dom Perignon, a bar of shrimp, crab legs and men in white jackets shucking fresh oysters . . .

Arnie, the cosmopolitan multimillionaire, said that he felt like a complete yokel. He assumed that the decadent buffet was the evening’s dinner, indulged himself accordingly. Only then did he discover that this was merely the appetizer course and that he had already eaten too much to enjoy the entrees of prime rib of beef and duck l’orange.

I commiserated with him and reassured him that even though I had spent 12 years in yeshiva, I had made precisely the same mistake at my first “real New York” Bar Mitzvah.

“But what about all the pork and shellfish?” he asked.

“OK, Jews cheat. Let’s just hope it’s here and not in their business. Did you cheat?”

“No comment.”

Then I taught Arnie his first Yiddish expression: “Schver tzu zein a Yid.”

IT’S HARD TO BE A JEW . . . ON SUNDAY

Any time that I have the opportunity to escape my goyische hometown of Greenville to visit New York, my spirits are lifted as if I were praying before the Holy Wall in Jerusalem. Even more so recently, when the trip was to commemorate my son Ben’s graduation from Yeshiva University and his engagement to Joy, a Syrian-Sephardic girl whose Oriental beauty conjures an image of the exotic Shulamith in the Song of Songs.

That evening, the family celebrated the events at a simply delightful kosher restaurant, Mike’s Bistro (shameless plug) where Ben has been interning. But the wonderful experience was overshadowed the following Sunday by attempting to drink a simple cup of coffee on my way to the airport.

Prior to the trip, I suggest that the bride and groom join me at a little restaurant across the Yeshiva campus. As we enter, I realize that the diner is a dump that observes kashrut. Recognizing that I would not eat again for a number of hours, which would wreak havoc on my blood sugar, I decide to get a simple bite to eat. What could be wrong, I think, with a salad or a slice of kosher pizza?

Strutting to the counter, I see pizzas festooned with broccoli and green pepper. But green pepper hurts my stomach and I just don’t like broccoli. Would you not assume that a simple cheese pizza was also in the offing? No, they say, all the cheese pizzas were frozen from before Shabbos and would take at least a half-hour to thaw.

“Well then, OK,” I tell the server, “let me have a salad.” I note from the menu that I have my choice of between “iceberg” lettuce and “mixed greens.” Having been force-fed iceberg lettuce as a child, I opt for mixed greens. The server brings forth the mixed greens, but does he serve them to me? No, he starts chopping iceberg lettuce and adding it to the greens in huge proportions, telling me that the iceberg was “left over from before Shabbos.”

“All right, the menu says I get a choice of toppings for my salad. I’ll have the ‘fresh white albacore tuna’.” But I look over to the counter and see that the tuna bears a dark brown crust. “Is that fresh white albacore?” I ask. “It was, but that was before Shabbos.”

“Well then, give me the black olives.” “Uh, we mix them with the leftover green ones before Shabbos.” “How about red peppers?” But I already know the answer: You can’t light Shabbos candles until the red and green had been mixed together.
“Fine, just pour me a cup of coffee.” “I hope you like that black because we haven’t had a delivery from the dairy since before Shabbos.”

“What about a Diet Coke?” I ask with exasperation. “Sorry, we only have regular. They won’t be delivering Diet until tomorrow because of Shabbos.”

Ah, the Starbuck’s coffee and Hershey bar at LaGuardia might as well have been nectar and ambrosia from the gods. For the first time in my life, I actually dreamt of being back in goyische Greenville, where black and green olives come out of separate jars and you can get fresh milk for your coffee seven days a week. I instantly kissed Greenville’s earth, drank a Diet Coke and reveled in Ruby Tuesday’s salad bar, where I lustily ate mixed greens with fresh toppings of my choice.

God willing, the next time I return to New York, it will be for the Ben and Joy’s wedding. I have already told the machatonim that they may do whatever they please but not have the wedding too soon after Shabbos, so that at least the pizza will be fresh.

DA VINCI AND THE BIBLE - A SUBJECT OF INTERPRETATION

Maybe it’s because I am so accustomed to having the Jewish understanding of the Bible delegitimized that I cannot get overly excited at the hoopla over the Da Vinci Code. Have I read it? Sure. Will I see the movie? Doubtful. Foolish, I know, but I still have a hard time thinking of Forrest Gump going toe-to-toe with the Apostles.

I’ve also read Constantine’s Sword, the Gnostic Gospels and copious chunks of Sts. Augustine and John Chrysostom, watching them vacillate between teaching Christianity as fact and fiction.

This might be precisely the point in putting to rest the rancor over a 21st-century pop-hit of fiction-purporting-to-be-fact or vice versa. The source of real interest in the Da Vinci Codes is not the response among fundamentalist Christians. For them, the stuff of the Da Vinci Codes is heresy, plain and simple. Their rejection of this fact-cum-fiction is a function of their pure faith. I say God bless them, and leave them alone. We Jews, too, have entire movements that reject the legitimacy of any faith less than in the verbatim Divine revelation of the Torah at Sinai, and I say, bless them, too.

The real test of the Da Vinci Code and its like falls more squarely on those of us whose faith is unwavering, yet derived of an interpretive reading of the Bible, or even more radically, from an alternative notion of what it means for the Bible to be “true.”

Ironically, Jesus himself subscribed to an interpretive, far from literal, understanding of the Bible via the Midrash and other contemporary sources. The Gospels are rife with his references to them, including Hillel’s citation of the Golden Rule and the majority of the Lord’s Prayer, crafted from the traditional Kaddish.

In such an interpretive tradition, variant explanations of “how things got to the way they are” may never have been intended as truth, but simply points of interest. Or, perhaps they were differing accounts of the same events told around family campfires from one generation to the next, until one reigned supreme, or another was ruled too barbaric or silly, or one seemed to be most supportive of the rising faith. Is this any less “the truth” when God guides the Story of All Stories to emerge from the spirit of His people?

Then too, perhaps we have confused the modern Western notion of literalism with Oriental truth, forgetting that our Bible is in its entirety an Oriental document. The notion of “truth” in the Oriental tradition is that which delivers a transcendent, ennobling and enduring lesson:

Does it really matter whether Creation took place in six 24-hour days, or that unlike any other early creation epic, ours has the world created solely by one benevolent God? Or perhaps that God creating the world over eons is a sign of His majesty, that anything less would infer His wimpiness. Likewise, did Methuselah literally live 969 years? Who cares? What’s important is that God’s world was built on men who were larger than life (like the fabled George Washington and Abraham Lincoln).

Likewise, should faith be intimidated by scientific inquiry? Why not consider scientific truth and Divine truth two seemingly incomparable slices taken vertically and horizontally by a CT scan? Better yet, let people of faith covenant among themselves that truth is defined by loving ones neighbor, taking the destitute poor into ones home, doing justly, loving mercy, walking humbly, the redemptive power of a loving God, the God who welcomes the repentant. Scientific inquiry, then, may be helpful, but it will never be the truth, because it is cold, merciless, soulless, ruthless.

We whose faith is built on an interpretive tradition and a differing understanding of truth dare not be smug or strut with superiority. But, neither should we be defensive. We ought declare our faith without equivocation, lustily chant our hymns and prayers, relish our sacred texts and defend them without apology to those sad souls who deride them as meaningless.

We Jews have experienced plenty of attempted debunking of our own beloved traditions. Thus, even though I am not a Christian, I can speak to you about the Da Vinci Code and its like: You will encounter plenty of challenging, even threatening, forces along the path. Some of you will see them as points of interest. Some of you will see them as heresy.

But, let there be no mistaking. From Matthew through Revelations, you have your truth. Nothing, certainly no book nor movie, will ever stand in its way.

COLUMBUS DISCOVERS . . . CACKALACKY

Not too long ago we visited the children in our sister state of North Carolina. My eyes caught a tee-shirt referring to North Carolina as “North Cackalaky.” Odd, I thought, but not odd enough to trace its origin.

A few weeks later while strolling down Main Street of our hometown, Greenville, South Carolina, I beheld another tee-shirt calling South Carolina, “South Cackalacky.” Now my curiosity could not be restrained.

I searched the internet only to find that no one really knew what “cackalacky” meant. There are over 200 definitions, ranging from an Indian word, to the corruption of the name “Carolina” by local mountain people, to the sound of a chicken coop.

I even discovered a website, www.cakalacky.com, which I assumed held definitive authority of the word’s meaning. Their “Cackalacky,” though, is a spicy pepper condiment manufactured in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

I contacted the president of Cackalacky, who turned out to be a landsman Yehudi. But, before I could say a word, he shouted with great surprise, “You aren’t Marc Wilson, the columnist, are you?”

“Yes,” I answered. “How did you know?”

“I read your column in the Judische Allgemeine!”

“Well,” he said, “I have always assumed that ‘cackalcky’ was how the goyim referred to the Yiddish accent of the Jewish peddlers who sold their wares in North and South, Carolina.”

Ah, I thought, not only have the Jews discovered the polio vaccine, theory of relativity and dirigible balloon. They have also given names to two of the original American colonies, North and South, Cackalacky . . . I mean “Carolina.”

Then was Christopher Columbus, who discovered America, also a Jew? We had always heard rumors to that effect. Perhaps he loaded up his ships in 1492 with a Jewish crew to escape the Spanish Inquisition and take refuge in the New World. Perhaps he mustered his crew with the Hebrew cry, “Kacha lechu!” (“This is how we shall go!”). And so they went.

I ask you, doesn’t “kacha lechu” sound just like “cakalacky”? I’ll let you ponder that. But keep in mind: These Jews are a very strange people. So you never know. You never know.

WORTHINESS, DISCOVERED 35 YEARS LATER

I have done some horrible things in my life, mostly long ago. For most of them, I have been forgiven. I thank God for keeping to a limit those people who still wish me ill and for granting me chances to regain my respect.

I have largely been blessed by forgiveness. But I have yet to forgive myself. Ask Linda about waking up to screaming nightmares and fits of crying at the memory of wrongdoings that cannot be undone. Ask her most about the episodes of self-deprecation and worthlessness. What good has my life ever done? What worthy deed have I ever done that has not been undone by some equal but opposite hurtful act?

Certainly, there are moments of joy. Family celebrations. A loving wife. Delight from my children. Bliss from my grandchildren. Sometimes I wonder whether a man should expect any more sources of happiness.

Saddest of all is that when the morose cycle starts, I simply don’t have the moxie to count my blessings and contrast them to the horrific pain that people I meet every day have suffered. The preoccupation with my own failures and my inability to put insignificant woes in perspective only redoubles my self-perception as a whiner and narcissist.

The month before this Passover brought on one of those hellish pits deeper than I have sustained in years. I suffered a stroke. None of our kids could come to the Seder. The congregation that I’d led for the last four High Holy Days informed me that my services were no longer required. My application for a job at Barnes and Noble was rejected because I was “too smart.” And, to gild my already withering lily, I attended a Shabbat service at which the young rabbi reminded me precisely of my own salad days 30 years ago. Despite therapy and pills, my setback of worthlessness was of immeasurable proportions.

Then a zap emanated from the heart of an incomprehensible God, a seeming manipulation of smoke and mirrors. This, keep in mind, is the very God to whom we whack ourselves on the chest as we mechanically declare our worthlessness. But this is also the very God whose timing is impeccable, and sometimes winks down from Heaven and chuckles, “Just didn’t want you to think that I’ve forgotten you!”

And so, on the Monday of Passover week, when worthlessness seemed its most dismal, an email arrived without fanfare from a student whom I had taught 35 years ago. Am I the same Marc Wilson? Do I remember him? Yes, of course I remember him. I describe his looks and even recall his Hebrew name. He continues:

My parents wanted me to be serous about Hebrew school, but they never thought I would be wearing Tefillin. There was a period I even thought about being a Rabbi. Even though it was so long ago, I do remember you had a passion for teaching. It’s too bad most of my regular teachers never had that. Lastly, I would really like to say thank you. You really did leave me with things I still carry with me to this day and try to pass on to my kids.

How God knew that at that particular moment I was obsessed with the worthlessness of my life is a non-issue. God knows everything. Why God chose to be gracious to me, no one knows, certainly not I. The injustice of God not showering grace upon people who are vastly more deserving, and whose pain is vastly greater, is incomprehensible.

There is simply no way to measure the worthiness for which one receives such a Divine gift. It is a pure manifestation of God’s grace to one who hasn’t earned it, but who is in deepest need. It is given as a reprieve from the depths of self-inflicted hell, a chance to look down upon a gap of 35 years and realize that maybe we did fill it here and there with a shot of inspiration or kindness that has endured.

I have already sent the email for framing. And of this, too, you may be sure: When everyone at our Seder exclaimed, “Next year in Jerusalem!” I shed tears that this year I might attain to a personal Jerusalem in which even small acts of kindness should suffice to banish the demons of worthlessness.

UNNATURAL FOOD

One of my greatest pleasures is to baby-sit for my four-year-old granddaughter, Sophie. Naturally, she is a genius and the most beautiful child in the universe.

“Zayde,” she says to me one recent Saturday evening, “I’m hungry.”

“What would you like, my sweet Soshkeleh?” I call her by my mother’s name of endearment.

“Chicken fingers and ketchup.”

“Chicken fingers and ketchup? I can’t give you chicken fingers and ketchup. You know that chickens have no fingers!”

At this point, Soshkeleh realizes that it’s going to be a long, frustrating evening, because Zayde would rather play around with her than feed her supper.

“You know what else you can’t have, Soshkeleh? Boneless chicken wings. After all, how would chickens fly if they didn’t have bones in their wings?”

“Zayde, chickens don’t fly!”

“Nonetheless . . . “ I say. “And you know what else you can’t have? Boneless chicken breast. The chicken would fall over if it didn’t have bones in its breast, whether it could fly or not. It’s just not natural!”

“How about a fish-burger with American cheese?” Now Soshkeleh is more giddy than hungry.

“Look, Soshkeleh,” I admonish her, “I’ve told you before. It’s unnatural. What part of a fish is square? And a fish-burger is just an imitation of a hamburger, so it should be made out of ham, not fish, and since we keep kosher, we can’t have one anyways. Besides, a fish-burger has no bones, so it would flop around in the water, and not play and swim with its friends. No wonder they made it into a sandwich.

“And as far as American cheese is concerned, do you know what the French call French fries? Fried potatoes. Maybe we should call American cheese ‘fried cheese.’ It’s just not natural!”

Poor Soshkeleh. By now, my four-year-old genius has come to the realization that every food is unnatural.

“Zayde, can I pleeeese have something to eat?”

“Well, I tell you, Soshkeleh,” I usually don’t let little girls have dessert before their supper, but just this one time I’ll make an exception. Let’s go for ice cream. I’m warning you of only one thing: You may not order jelly-bean flavor. It’s not natural.”

IN THE HOSPITAL, WE CATER TO YOUR NEEDS

I would tell you that I am in excellent health. In fact, I have recently lost 32 kg, but don’t tell the editor! But, if you’d ask my doctors, you’d be certain that I have one foot in the grave: a pacemaker, diabetes, high blood pressure, s small stroke and other assorted maladies.

You may thus assume that I am familiar with hospital life. You should not be surprised that I had one of my perennial visits to the hospital just last week for a minor procedure.

All went well, thank God, and the cuisine was expectedly miserable. I would have considered it normal were it not for the obnoxious message on my dinner tray, “Our goal is to enhance your dining experience by offering you personalized service and warm hospitality that you deserve and we deliver. We’re here to cater to you.”

That “we cater to you” baloney busted my gut. So, I decided to put them to the test. I simply requested my normal diet: my meals should be vegetarian (in Greenville, kosher is too much to expect), soft and dietetic.

On their first attempt at dinner, the attendant brought mashed potatoes, dietetic pudding and a slice of . . . meatloaf, because “it was soft.” On the second try, she brought fried fish, with ice cream for dessert. The fried fish, she reasoned, was softer than the alternative, fried chicken. The third time, she presented vegetables cooked to mush in a ham-flecked stock.

Obviously, neither Jesus nor his Disciples, who observed kashrut and after whom the hospital was named, were watching over me. Linda finally walked in, and after we stopped laughing over my culinary plight, she ran home for some of her matzo ball soup, potato kugel and gefilte fish.

In the aftermath, I tried to think of even one indigenously Jewish food that was was not “soft.” Kugel? Matzo balls? Gefilte fish? The only “hard” Jewish food that I could recollect was crunchy matzo. Matzo? Didn’t the goyim eat that at the Last Supper? Aha! Something else we stole from them! It’s all part of an international Jewish conspiracy. What will be next? Lox and bagels?

STARBUCK'S REVENGE

My mother and father did not have a marriage. They had a lifelong love affair. My father’s given name was Simeon. His friends called him “Sim” or “Si.” My mother never called him anything but “my dear Shimondel.” In turn, I never once heard my father call my mother by her birth name, Sophie. She was always, “my darling.”

My mother was far from the world’s greatest cook, so she wisely prepared basic, unadorned meals. To her great fortune, my father was a man of simple tastes whose palate was indifferent to an extraordinary recipe, much less haute cuisine. Were my mother to have made a particularly tasty dinner, my father’s highest accolade was, “Darling, this is a recipe that you can keep.”

Thus, as you can imagine, breakfast was the quintessential picture of simplicity. Each morning for 48 years of their marriage, my mother would align before him glasses of orange juice, milk and water. Before him, too, was a bowl of cornflakes and sliced bananas. He would pour half the milk in the bowl, eat the flakes, drink the remaining milk, the juice, and then the water each day in the same order.

As breakfast would end each morning for 48 years, my mother would make the same offer: “Would you care for a cup of coffee, Shimondel?” And each morning for 48 years, my father would politely respond, “No thank you, my darling.”

Slowly, my father descended into Alzheimer’s. We were finally obliged to place him in a nursing home. One morning, my mother and I arrived just as the attendant was helping him eat breakfast. He heartily ate a plate of eggs and toast. And, as you might have guessed, he concluded the meal with a robust cup of coffee.

“Shimondel,” my mother asked with loving consternation, “After all these years you started drinking coffee with breakfast?”

In his senility, she expected no response at all. Imagine our surprise as he looked up from his cup and softly announced with complete clarity, “Darling, this is a recipe that you could keep!”

SLICE IT RARE FOR THE SAKE OF THE POOR

Contrary to my usual perception as rabbi in our little village, I was recently asked to prepare a buffet for a local charity ball. The greatest irony, to be sure, was that 200 gentiles unwittingly dined on haute cuisine prepared in a meticulously kosher kitchen.

Now on to the strictly kosher menu: First, my jambalaya, a dish that originated with French-Canadians who immigrated to Louisiana. Jambalaya is highly seasoned rice containing chicken, sausage, vegetables and shrimp, or so they thought. For Yehudim who do mix fish with meat, halibut is a delicious substitute for the mud-groveling crustacean, and the goyim were none the wiser.

Then, I brought forth a tureen of Caribbean ceviche, which one might call “sushi for cowards”: raw tuna, tomatoes, onions, peppers, all pickled together for a few hours in lime juice. As the local aristocrats bathed in it, all I could think was that it would be wonderful to serve at a bris.

The piece de resistance, however, posed a deep dilemma. In the course of gathering contributions, I had unthinkingly schnorred a monstrous chunk of treife roast beef from a local hotel. The hotel would roast it in its oven.

Ah, but who would carve it? By now, you should know that the only schlemiel who knew how to wield a knife was . . . the rabbi! For three hours, I sliced roast beef for 200. “Would you like yours rare? Well done? Another slice? Some sauce for that?

They loved every morsel. And whom do you think they assumed roasted it? I tried not to burst their balloon: “Wherever did you get that roast?” From a friend. “How did you roast it?” In a friend’s oven. “What seasonings did you use?” That’s a secret. “How long did you marinate it?” Hours and hours.

When I arrived home, I kashered my hands and tongue with a blowtorch. I made these solemn vows: to teach someone else how to carve a roast, to never get so drunk on Purim that I blurt out this episode, and to warn my grandchildren to be careful what they schnorr.