Monday, October 1, 2018
What is the upper age limit to be able to distinguish Kanye West from Jay-Z? Whatever it is, I have certainly passed it even after watching Kanye West, or so I was told it was him, perform on Saturday Night Live this weekend. His appearance was notable not for the banal tune that he performed imperfectly disguised as a bottle of Perrier, but for comments that he made as the show went off the air. In our democracy, everyone is entitled to a point of view, but in this modern age his celebrity qualifies his remarks to be quoted near and far.
West’s advice to his fellow citizens was concise: "Follow your heart and stop following your mind.” Of course, this denies a central theme of Western philosophy dating back to Aristotle and Plato, the attempt to elevate reason over passion. Should we instead follow our mind and stop following our heart? Philosophical purity aside, I doubt that either approach would get us through one 24-hour day.
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Choosing how to live has always been a challenge, but in modern times, blessed or cursed with great mobility, so too is where to live. The weekend's real estate section provides a list of the most energy efficient places in the US, in case you would like to delay turning the Earth into a cinder.
Here, the mind directs us toward density, where resources are concentrated and we benefit from the economies of scale, while the heart might point to the wide open spaces, broad vistas and some privacy, consuming land, water and energy at a disproportionate rate. While I acknowledge that the latter (suburban, exurban) approach might offer beauty, it would only be for some, because open space is finite while our (collective) ability to reproduce is not.
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Speaking of where to live, the real estate section also offered an interesting tale of a couple who decided to buy an apartment after renting for many years in a Harlem building. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/
They were thoroughly happy with their neighborhood, but the couple moved to Brooklyn "[a]fter watching Harlem slip out of their budget." This illustrates, for better or worse, the power of market economics. A "bad" neighborhood has become "good," even better than good. For whose benefit?
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Further on the subject of switching identities, today's paper informs me for the first time about "clean meat — meat that is grown in laboratories from animal cells."
The article carries the seductive headline "Meat Labs Pursue a Once-Impossible Goal: Kosher Bacon." Currently, "facon" is available, a vegetarian concoction, and beef fry, thin, fatty slices of Kosher cured beef that fries up crispy. Each has its limitations. Facon tastes like, well, facon; beef fry falls on the meat side of the great Kosher divide -- dairy vs. meat. Apparently, clean meat may not be classified as meat, opening up the wonderful world of cheeseburgers to my people, some of them at least.
In the spirit of Aristotle and Plato, however, there is an overarching question: Is imitating a forbidden product a willful defiance of laws that date back millennia? Shouldn't there be a price for being Jewish, besides pogroms, expulsions, ghettoizing, forced conversions and rhinoplasty?
Tuesday, October 2, 2018
America has generally proclaimed itself a land where anyone could get ahead, ignoring the explicit and implicit barriers placed in the way of some of our people. Yet, I would grant that upward mobility has been characteristic of our society over generations. A new study graphically represents the influence of neighborhoods on how and whether children prosper in later life.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/
For instance: "Children raised in poor families in some neighborhoods of Memphis went on to make just $16,000 a year in their adult households; children from families of similar means living in parts of the Minneapolis suburbs ended up making four times as much." Not surprisingly, race is a vital contrasting element. Otherwise, "[r]esearchers still don’t understand exactly what leads some neighborhoods to nurture children, although they point to characteristics like more employed adults and two-parent families that are common among such places." So, middle-class values seem to generate middle-class lives.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/
For instance: "Children raised in poor families in some neighborhoods of Memphis went on to make just $16,000 a year in their adult households; children from families of similar means living in parts of the Minneapolis suburbs ended up making four times as much." Not surprisingly, race is a vital contrasting element. Otherwise, "[r]esearchers still don’t understand exactly what leads some neighborhoods to nurture children, although they point to characteristics like more employed adults and two-parent families that are common among such places." So, middle-class values seem to generate middle-class lives.
Thursday, October 4, 2018
Hello from London. Our flight yesterday across the Atlantic was quite pacific. The only things worth noting were the dreadful food and the presence of 3 dozen or so Satmar Hassidim returning to London after spending the Jewish holidays in New York. The sight was disorienting. Satmars, possibly the most reclusive Hassidic sect, belong in Brooklyn and Kiryas Joel, an enclave in Orange County, New York, named for the late Rabbi Joel Teitelbaum, who rebuilt the Satmar Hassidic dynasty after WWII, not London.
It reminded me of a business trip to Germany, my first trip to Europe in 1972. Our hosts took us to a Chinese restaurant in Dusseldorf for lunch. While a novice at foreign travel then, I was already well versed in Chinese restaurants. So, I was surprised listening to the waiters. They spoke Chinese and broken German; the waiters that I was used to spoke Chinese and broken English.
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Speaking of Jews, I saw why Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the Labour Party, finds it easy to offend Jews, locally and worldwide. In anticipation of soon winning the New York Lottery, we are staying in Knightsbridge, a ritzy part of London. Harrods is at the nearest corner. We walked around the neighborhood for much of the day and saw countless Muslims, Muslim women at least, distinguishable by their hajibs, headcovering scarves; chadors, full-length robes; or niqabs, head-to-toe coverings leaving only the eyes visible (letterboxes, as some Brits irreverently call them). Recognizing their significant presence, many stores had signs in Arabic and hookahs were widely available at cafes and restaurants. I have no way of knowing whether the many people I saw were UK citizens or if Muslims are found as readily in other parts of the country, but successful politicians know how to count and I imagine that Jeremy has done the ethnic math.
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Food outranks politics, at least it did for us at dinner. We ate at Al Arez, Lebanese Cuisine Cafe & Juice Bar, 128 Brompton Road, one of a small chain. It has a large menu with hoummus (their spelling), lamb, chicken, falafel, eggplant, chick peas and rice in familiar and unfamiliar combinations. Olives, a sweet and hot chili sauce and a garlicky yoghurt are complimentary, along with fresh, thin pita breads. That was an excellent start, but nothing that followed made it past fair. I had mixed shawarma, roasted thin slices of marinated lamb and chicken (£13.25), and my young bride had Mousakaa B'zeit, a stew of "Fried aubergines baked with tomatoes, chick peas, onions & spices" (£12.00). In my meat, the marinade had long evaporated without a trace, and the spices meant for the stew must have missed the pot.
On the other hand, our two waiters, one Lebanese and one Palestinian, were charming and eager to please.
Friday, October 5, 2018
An absolutely necessary element in this trip to London was time spent with David and Katherine Brodie, dear friends for almost two decades, since David and I met at Cardozo Law School. While the girls went off to the Frida Kahlo exhibit at the Victoria & Albert Museum, the modern day version of Laurel & Hardy headed for Chinatown.
We chose wisely, Beijing Dumpling, 23 Lisle Street, a long, narrow room with crude square wooden tables and backless stools. Ordering is done from a 100 item checklist, only about 20 that might be identified as dim sum. Accordingly, we mixed our choices: pan fried pork dumplings (£3.60 for 3, the only overpriced item), chicken soup dumplings (£6.20 for 8), special mixed meat and seafood ho fun (£7.50, a large portion of wide noodles with chicken, shrimp, lobster and whelk (and would you know if it's not whelk?), and crispy aromatic duck (£17.50 for half a duck, including 10 pancakes, cucumber and scallion threads, and hoisin sauce; all the makings of Peking duck except the duck was shredded, not sliced -- a great dish and a great bargain).
We rolled out of Beijing Dumpling and strolled around Soho, the theatre district and Piccadilly, making a strategic stop at Vanini Swiss Chocolate, 1 Sherwood Street, for gelato (1 scoop £3, 2 scoops £5), their extra dark chocolate, a thing of beauty and a joy forever.
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After a well-deserved nap, madam and I took the short walk to Westminster Synagogue, Kent House, Rutland Gardens, for Friday night services. It's a Reform congregation claiming 1,000 members, but we got a very different impression. About 35 people were present, more than half boys and girls in B'nai Mitzvah training (you know when you get gifts). The service itself seemed conventionally Conservative, male pronouns all over the place, no mention of the Matriarchs (an interesting omission after more than five millennia of Jewish mothers), Hebrew prayers straight from the book. They did give me a 60th anniversary yarmulke, though.
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Multiculturalists that we are, we chose Indian food for Shabbos dinner after services. Haandi, 7 Cheval Place, deserves its reputation as one of the best Indian restaurants in London. I've never had better chicken biryani (£18.00) and my lady wife thoroughly enjoyed her Punjabi Aloo Bagan, "Whole baby aubergines and potatoes prepared in a special onion masala" (£10.90).
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This entire wonderful day, no one in my hearing said "I like beer."
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