Never On White Bread

Monday, March 2, 2020

There are certain stores in Manhattan that put up big signs saying "Going out for business," hoping, no doubt, that bargain hunters won't sweat the prepositions.  What to look out for is the local eating establishment with the hand-written sign in the window announcing "Closed for renovations until further notice: sorry for the inconvenience” or something similar.  This is the Kiss of Death.  The only renovations will be to the owner's bank account.  It is exactly this wording that showed up in the window of Fine & Schapiro Kosher Restaurant, 138 West 72nd Street, within the last week.

Fine & Schapiro properly identified is a Kosher delicatessen, a place where you go to eat a pastrami or corned beef sandwich or maybe a pastrami and corned beef sandwich on rye bread, of course.  I am not going to test your patience by trying to explain the intricacies of Kashrut, the Kosher food laws.  (Here is a thoughtful, but very long, discussion of the subject: https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-life-and-religion/297701/eating-our-way-to-holiness.) 

Suffice it to say that a "Jewish" or "Jewish-style" delicatessen is not a Kosher delicatessen.  If you have any doubts, a Reuben or a cheeseburger is not served in a Kosher delicatessen.

Is the distinction of any importance to Gentiles and non-observant Jews?  Decidedly.  With the rarest exception, you must not order a pastrami or corned beef sandwich at a non-Kosher delicatessen/restaurant.  It doesn't taste good.  For a turkey club or a grilled cheese, you can trust an experienced Greek short order cook.  But, it takes a counterman at a Kosher delicatessen, even if he is Puerto Rican, working with right ingredients to serve a first-rate pastrami or corned beef sandwich.  The exceptions - Katz's Delicatessen, 205 East Houston Street, Manhattan, and Langer's Delicatessen Restaurant, 704 South Alvarado Street, Los Angeles.  Once upon a time, I would have included the Carnegie Deli, 854 Seventh Avenue, closed three years now.   Note that there are other Kosher restaurants, but, in contrast to delicatessens, they are generally inferior to conventional establishments.  It's all about the pastrami and corned beef.

So, why is this important?  According to Pastrami on Rye: An Overstuffed History of the Jewish Deli by Ted Merwin, there were 1,550 Kosher delicatessens in the Holy Land in the 1930s.  With the demise of Fine & Schapiro, the number of Kosher delicatessens in the Holy Land is apparently down to 17 overall, 6 in Manhattan plus Katz's.  This has to support 8.5 million people, an impossible challenge.  Imagine then if the talented Mike Pence doesn't quickly put an end to the coronavirus outbreak emerging from China.  All those Jews who regularly patronize Chinese restaurants might turn to the comfort food of their ancestors.  Where will we put them?

Ruminating about Kosher delicatessens made me aim today at Gottlieb's Restaurant, 352 Roebling Street, Brooklyn, a Kosher deliatessen right in the middle of one of the densest Orthodox Jewish communities outside of Jerusalem.  However, when I got downtown to change trains, I learned that nothing was going across the Williamsburg Bridge, the necessary link from Manhattan.  So, I reversed course and took the subway to Turnstyle, the imaginative food court underground at the Columbus Circle station. 

Again, I was thwarted when I found Chick'n Cone (fried chicken stuffed into a waffle cone) closed for operating without a permit.  I cruised the many open stalls, chose Russian Dumplings by Daa! Dumplings and ordered a combination of potato/mushroom dumplings and chicken dumplings (7 of each) in dill-flavored chicken broth ($11.50), a very satisfying luncheon dish. 
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"When Your Ex Starts Dating Lady Gaga" was a headline that sort of kind of spoke to me.  https://www.nytimes.com/weekender

Shortly after starting graduate school, I got engaged to Laura, a young woman whom I dated as a college senior.  She was the first holder of the Gotthelf Diamond, with the curse.  We broke up at the end of that first academic year and had no contact for the next 5 or 6 years.  When we sat down for drinks then, I learned that, among others, she dated Joe Namath, Super Bowl hero, in that interval.  Hoo Hah!  I was delighted.  What a validation of me, I thought with juvenile glee.

Tuesday, March 3, 2020

When Stony Brook Steve joined me for lunch today, we chose to simply cross Central Park rather than the East River for Kosher delicatessen.  We went to Pastrami Queen, 1125 Lexington Avenue, ordering one pastrami sandwich and one corned beef sandwich ($20 each) and trading halves.  Unfortunately, this turned out to only be half right.  The pastrami was fine, but the corned beef wasn't fatty, it was fat.  When I showed this to the waiter, normally a very responsive guy unlike the stereotype at the center of so many "Waiter!  Waiter!" jokes, he said to order "lean" next time.  However, this would have only yielded lean fat.  

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The good news was that tonight's Rangers game was the quickest hockey game that I ever attended, over in two hours and ten minutes; the bad news was the bad news.
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I discussed my interest in the Catholic Worker movement recently and now a biography of Dorothy Day, its founder, appears.  https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/03/books/review/dorothy-day-john-loughery-blythe-randolph.html

The headline on the review is appropriate: "Was Dorothy Day a Saint or a Subversive?"  She is on the path to sainthood in the Roman Catholic Church, because of her devotion to the poor and powerless in society, exemplified by the creation and maintenance of houses of hospitality devoted to the works of mercy.  Today, 40 years after her death, over 200 Catholic Worker communities offer food, clothing and shelter unconditionally to those in need.

It was her subversiveness, however, which first attracted my attention, when she sat in City Hall Park during annual citywide air raid drills, getting arrested regularly.  This in itself was unlikely to gain her sainthood in the Roman Catholic Church. 

I haven't read the book and I don't know what the authors think, but I believe that she held a profoundly radical view of society, much more than a subversive stance on some political issues.  "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's" is a teaching of Jesus found in the gospels of Mark, Matthew and Luke.  This is considered an early statement of the separation of church and state or, at least, a recognition of the legitimacy of civil authority.

However, Dorothy Day, a convert to Roman Catholicism after a period of profligacy, rejected this proposition, recognizing only one realm, governed primarily by the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7).  Following Jesus's precepts devotedly would obviate the need for civil authority, which is why I encountered Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker Movement in a seminar on Anarchism.

Wednesday, March 4, 2020
I had lunch a K-Bap, 62 West 56th Street, a small, busy Korean joint.  It is long and narrow, with an assortment of chairs and stools at 6 tables of varying size.  One long wall is exposed brick, the other covered by rough planks. 

I ordered a seafood pancake (pajun), a cross between a scallion pancake and a frittata, loaded with little pieces of shrimp, scallops, octopus, squid and some of their friends, none of which are served in a Kosher delicatessen ($11).

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I think that there aren't enough smart people to go around, so I loved listening to Elissa Bemporad, a Queens College historian, discussing her book, Legacy of Blood: Jews, Pogroms, and Ritual Murder in the Lands of the Soviets, tonight at Fordham University.  While the subject is hardly entertaining, I hung on her every word.  She maintains that the Soviet regime repressed pogroms, but continued to use anti-Semitism for its own purposes.

Thursday, March 5, 2020  

"Some people have a knack for buying products that flop, supporting political candidates who lose and moving to neighborhoods that fail to thrive."  Read this to learn if you have a flair for failure.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/05/opinion/harbinger-failure.html

Friday, March 6, 2020

According to Andy Borowitz: "Susan Collins Unable to Decide Whether to Wash Hands."