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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 . . .

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!”

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.

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.

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.

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.”

SOMETIMES MORE THAN A LITTLE IS ALREADY TOO MUCH

You remember the old joke: “Where’s the best place to hide an elephant? Right out in the open.” I’ve visited New York at least 50 times since my teens, but just two weeks ago, I found the elephant right in Upper Manhattan, and it’s been there only 100 years.

Recently, Linda and I sought a breakfast place that served good smoked fish. There are plenty delis and diners in New York that serve smoked fish, but my son Googled and found only one at which smoked fish ruled by mandate. Barney Greengrass.

I felt like an idiot not knowing about the place, because Christopher Columbus dined on lox and bagels there immediately upon discovering America. Coke boasts that “It’s the real thing,” but it will not vie for Barney’s authenticity. Indeed, authenticity is the first thing that catches your eye: Roll-up windows with gilt lettering worn by decades of up-and-down. Bulk dairy products behind the counter, right from the cow, which only experienced countermen are allowed to touch.

The place is thoroughly Jewish, yet there is not one silly picture of Tevya or Yiddish admonition, "ess, ess mein kind," on the wall. Greengrass is still real after a century, not going for cheap nostalgia.

The variety of home-cured and smoked fish is exhaustive. Salmon is baked or broiled. It is smoked into lox, nova, gravlax. It is pickled with and without sour cream, fried and scrambled with eggs. Herring is pickled, schmaltz, matjes, creamed, fried. Trout. Sable. Whitefish. Kippers. Sprats. Sardines. Char. And this too: They know how to fry an egg. The bagels and bialys are superior.

Enough!

All right, they also serve Beluga caviar. But do you mean that Barney’s patrons would eat it on a bagel washed down with a glass of heise tai? At best, cruel satire.

Unlike other delis where portions are phantasmagoric, Barney’s are not huge, but appropriate. As Mama taught me, "You shouldn't see tooth-marks in the lox when you bite into a sandwich. Anything more is uberik (over the top).” Barney has taught four generations that smoked fish's virtue is in its moderation. It is a jewel from Tiffany, not the schlock you find on eBay.

THE SACRED TRADITION OF A L’CHAYIM AND CHEESEBURGER

I live within eyesight of Bob Jones University, an institution so conservative and fundamentalist Christian that it makes Presbyterians and Episcopalians look like Satmar Chasidim. Naturally, they want the rest of the world, including us, to be Christians like they are. So, my basic attitude toward them is that if they leave me alone, I will do the same for them. This I will tell you: Their integrity and ethical standards are unimpeachable, and all in all, they are the best sort of neighbors. That’s what recently led me to them.

You see, I recently catered a Kiddush-bacchanalia at my old schule. Bluntly, the regular workers in the kitchen detest me. I have my way of doing things, and they have theirs. I had a lot to do and little time to do it, so I could not afford to put up with their mishugas.

What to do? Ah, Bob Jones has a culinary arts program. In keeping with the school’s spirit, the students are neat, respectful, obedient, and their veneration of the Bible allows for no shortcuts in kashrut. I called over to the school, and what do I find? The Dean is Mark Moritz, an apostate member of our tribe from Queens.

Chef Moritz immediately dispatched four of his top students, who, by the way, worked for even less than we offered. They were wonderful, just as I had expected. They even asked to rush to the dorm to shower between cooking and serving, so they could look their best.

Well into the cooking it dawned on me that not only are Bob Jones kids not allowed to partake in alcohol; they are not even allowed to work in a place where alcohol is served. In complete honesty, I told the boys that we served thimble-sized cups of wine as part of the sacrament of Kiddush, not unlike Holy Communion (which, by the way, Bob Jones does not observe).

They were sure that it was all right, but they wanted to ask the Dean a shayleh, nonetheless. They quickly brought back the good news. It was a sacrament, so there would be no problem.

But then it dawned on me that we had a bigger problem: What about the l’chayim of schnapps that the old-timers poured each other in a corner of the social hall after the Motzi? Again, I told the boys the truth, albeit this time slightly shaded in my favor.

“Is it a sacrament?” they asked.

“Well, you might say that.” I invoked the principle of Minhag Yisrael din hu, a custom among Israel has the strength of the law. “You see,” I said, “the old-timers, especially the ones who came over from Eastern Europe, saluted each other with a little whiskey after Sabbath services to warm themselves for the long, frigid trek home. So, for the old-timers, it was a beloved sacrament, part of a consecrated heritage.

Again, the boys returned to campus to ask the shayleh. The Dean remembered from his days in Queens that the l’chayim was a venerated ritual. He quickly gave his approval.

On the morning of the Kiddush, though, the boys naturally saw a number of younger people, including yours truly, toasting a l’chayim over the ritual schnapps. They looked at me quizzically. I grinned sheepishly at them and said, “You’ve got to understand. These young men are merely carrying forth the custom ordained by their saintly elders, so that our sacred traditions will never be forgotten.”

The servers understood perfectly. When you think of it, I was probably telling the truth in spite of myself.

Now, if it were only that easy to get the Rabbonim to understand that a cheeseburger at McDonald’s is also a sacred tradition . . .

SOME DAY I'LL BE A STAR

Have I told you that you that I might become a television star? No, really, it’s true. A group of producers heard about this rabbi who loves to cook and tell stories about food. It’s me. Don’t ask me how.

The producers are a bunch of goyim who think it’s hysterical that a rabbi in the most goyische part of the country is noteworthy for cooking kosher food. They believe that the public will find the premise so entertaining that they will watch me cook and chatter on their TV screens every week.
They have already engaged a publicist and found editors and investors. They have even hired an old blues musician to play a funky “Hava Nagila” for the show’s introduction. I’d say that this was a dream come true, but all I think is that they’re crazy.

They want me to cook traditional Jewish fare: chopped liver, gefilte fish, brisket, potato kugel, but with typical “Southern style” – peppery, greasy, overcooked – just like bubbe used to make.

But, they also want me to adapt classical Southern-style cooking to the kosher kitchen. Oy, what to do? They cook their vegetables with pork fat. I’ll do mine with pastrami. They sauté potatoes in lard. I’ll use schmaltz. They fry dough and call it “hush puppies.” I’ll make them latkes.

My producers have already entered me in a Southern-style cooking contest in Vienna (pronounced “VAH-ennah”), Georgia, a place where they used to shoot Jews for recreation.

One of the entries is to be grilled pork. I told them that I would use veal. Ah, wunderbar! The other is to be “Brunswick Stew, a thick soup made of beans, corn, potatoes, and . . . squirrel. I thought and thought. Then, I had an epiphany. I made up a pot of my Brunswick Stew for the producers. They loved it! The ideal consistency and flavor, and the meat fell off the bone.

I thanked my God for having such a Yiddishe kop. For, while they were lusting over my Brunswick Stew, you and I know that I was serving them a perfect pot of my cholent.

Now, who wants my autograph?

THE TOXIC BUFFET

Anthony Bourdain is a former junkie and shikker who went on to establish some of the finest restaurants in New York. He has become my mentor and idol.

Tony also writes bluntly about the realities of the restaurant kitchen. Among his observations: Don’t order fish on Monday. It’s probably left over from Thursday. And for God’s sake, don’t eat the Sunday brunch. It’s mostly last week’s remnants prepared by indifferent cooks. Where else would you find “sirloin salad”?

What are the anti-Semitic implications? Well, we, too, have our end-of-the-week brunch buffet. It’s called Shabbos Kiddush.

Do you know where that open jar of grey gefilte fish has been over the past month, the one soaking in the iridescent juice? What about its sister, the jar of fuzzy pickled herring? Don’t forget the accompanying horseradish, originally a deep red, now puce.

Beware, too, of the once-white albacore tuna, presently a salad ringed by a crust of yellow-brown mayonnaise. Likewise the plaster-of-Paris egg salad. Or is it Ecru Play-Doh? What about the Jewish innovation, the pizza-bagel? Wasn’t the tomato sauce just a little tinny? Why is that orange juice so hinky? What are those turquoise flecks in the bagels? Likewise the cream cheese. And, when did Entenmann’s stop making that kind of cake? And that generic de-fizzed soda?

The schnapps is rarely Glenlivet; it’s three-buck chuck. In order to save space, the remnants of scotch and bourbon are often combined in one bottle, on the premise that “They’re both the same color,” as old Mr. Alembik used to muse.

Yet, after years of persecution, we Jews are a hearty sort. Just keep in mind that the last Yehudim to die are always the ones who l’chayim down half a bottle of that rot-gut schnapps each Shabbos, smoke three packs of cigarettes a day, eat all that chazerai at Kiddush, and take the leftovers home.

On second thought, Tony Bourdain, keep your cursing to yourself and go back to frying your gaufrettes. You are and always will be one goyische kop!

CHICKEN PERFUME

I can’t believe that it’s been 35 years since I began my rabbinical career just outside of Chicago. Mine was a tiny schule, actually a remodeled greasy-spoon. We served Shabbos Kiddush from the short-order counter.

We were new and few in numbers, so we did everything for ourselves: No custodian. No kitchen manager. No one to shop for us, clean the bathrooms, set up the chairs. But, we were young, and we had a lot of fun.

I was their rav, and I held on to my strict orthodoxy. My congregants were another story. No one observed kashrut, but within the walls of the synagogue, it was the strict rule. God bless them for that. No matter how obedient, though, they could never understand why Corn Flakes were kosher but Corn Flake Crumbs required a separate hechsher. If someone would explain it to me, we’d all understand.

Then there was the time that they were preparing a Shabbos dinner for the congregation. A delegation from the sisterhood was dispatched to the kosher butcher in Chicago, where they purchased a huge bag of frozen poultry and left it in the schule refrigerator to defrost.

Thursday night, I received a frantic call. “We need you to check the chicken, and it’s an emergency!”

“All right,” I told them. But, I thought, what could be wrong with a bag of kosher chicken?

Two of them appeared on my doorstep carrying the dripping bag.

“Why don’t you come in?” I offered.

“No, it’d probably be better if you came outside.”

They gingerly opened the bag. It reeked. Rancid. Putrid. Disgusting. I reeled from the stench.

“What’s your question?” I asked. “That chicken is rotten.”

“Well, that’s what we thought. But then we started wondering if that’s the way kosher chicken is supposed to smell.”

35 years have passed. The questions have gotten easier, and I have yet to be asked to poskin on a broken chicken wing. I should have become a shoemaker, but I couldn’t drive the nails straight. Instead, I heard the calling to become a rabbi, and have paid by spending decades trying to convince balabotim that kosher chicken doesn’t smell funny. Or does it?

MY HUMBLE ORIGIN: NOM DE DOODLE, CIRCA 1968

Just like my doppelganger Bart Simpson, I write it on the chalkboard a hundred times each day: “Why should the origin of “Rabbi Ribeye” matter to anyone?” Regardless . . .

“Rabbi Ribeye” did not originate for its alliteration. Nor was it intended to be my nom de plume. It is the product of 40-year-old doodling during another narcolepsy-inducing Talmud class during my yeshiva years. The late Rabbi Aaron Soloveichik would lecture for three hours on an arcane point of Jewish law. He was an absolute genius, certainly the magnitude of an Einstein. But, like most luminaries, his mind worked immeasurably faster than his gift of speech. The geniuses in the class absorbed his enlightenment, while the rest of us doodled. Had it not been for borrowing the notes of one of the geniuses, I would probably be a cable guy rather than an unemployed rabbi who fritters away his time cooking and trying to write the great American cookbook.

As I look back over yellowing notes, I remind myself that some of my doodling is actually a collection of dated anti-war shibboleths (“Dump the Hump!” – a reference to pro-war candidate Hubert Humphrey) and vain stabs at profundity. I see that I had boldly inscribed atop one page, “God Is the Ultimate Prankster!” an aphorism that I later cultivated into a theology that I called “The God of Booga-Booga.”

Call it prescience, but even in my formative years, my doodling had led me to gastronomical subjects: puns of culinary personification, people who in my imagination took on the names of favorite foods: Terry Aqui. V.L. Piccata. Cheri Coque. Biff Steaque. Coco Vann. Chuck N. Soope. Chuck and Ella King. Sam N. Salade. Every class became a new pun, a new challenge, a new doodle, a new diversion.

Across from me sat Jay Hirshman. Jay was a diligent student with a terrific work ethic, which struck me as particularly admirable since he was one of only a few classmates who came from real wealth. When my folks moved to the Coast, I spent many weekend as Jay’s guest.

His home was ruled by a wonderful live-in housekeeper of the old school. She always had a whiskey sour waiting for Jay’s dad just as he walked through the door. This was the quintessence of luxury. Friday dinner always revolved around rare, succulent . . . ribeye, another quintessential luxury relative to the meatloaf or “roasted out” (that’s what my mother called it) chicken that graced the Wilsons’ Sabbath table.

One day, as I watched Jay hunched over his Talmudic tome, my wandering memory flashed up “ribeye.” A nanosecond later, my mind refocused on those few special occasions that my mother served steak, invariably the texture of dried out liver. Thinking of the long anticipated encounter between Stanley and Livingstone, I doodled in my notebook, “Rabbi Ribeye, meat Doctor Liver!”

Now you know the origin of my 40-year-old culinary nom de plume. Its meanderings since then have been bittersweet. In 1972, the same Jay who introduced me to ribeye went off to Israel and joined the army. A training injury forced him to watch helplessly as his platoon was wiped out in the Yom Kippur War. He was never the same. A few years later, he was murdered in a holdup.

Truth be told, Jay was always singularly unimpressed by my silliness. Be that as it may, I believe that every time “Rabbi Ribeye” brings a smile to someone’s face, it is recompense for all the smiles that Jay could yet have smiled, had he only been given the inclination. As for me, despite the good humor with which the name is spoken, the edges of sweetness will forever be furrowed by a twinge of melancholy over 40-year-old reminiscences of what might have been.