December 25, 2014--Christmas, Jews, Chinese Food

Now our little secret is exposed--Atlantic magazine just published a piece titled, "Why American Jews Eat Chinese Food on Christmas."

I could have told you that. From personal experience I have known about this for more than 60 years. Every Christmas everyone in my family and Brooklyn neighborhood went out for Chinese food (or, if you'll forgive me--chinks) stuffed themselves with chicken chow mein, shrimp with lobster sauce, and pork fried rice.

When I asked why we did this so ritualistically on Christmas day I was told that with Catholics (how Jews referred to all christians) eating at home with their families, it would be easy to get a table--the same point made in the Atlantic article.

Further, I learned, since the only other restaurants in the neighborhood were Italian and Italians were Catholics and thus at home their restaurants were closed. And so Chinese food was our only option.

"Only option"? Most of us ate at home 360 days a year.

And I added, "There's never a problem getting a table. Catholics don't like Chinese food. Only Jews. Since there are so few Catholics in our neighborhood what difference does it make anyway?" I was a bit of a smartass.

I never got a satisfactory answer, just a little slap on the back of my head and the admonition to finish my egg drop soup.

And the Atlantic piece also doesn't supply a satisfactory answer. They claim that eating Chinese was the easiest way for Jews to eat out and fool themselves into believing they were still being kosher--like with authentic kosher food, the Chinese do not mix dairy products with meat.

But that's where the self-deception ends--shrimp with lobster sauce is kosher? Shrimp? Lobster? And pork fried rice? Really?

The author needs to revisit Deuteronomy where the foods that are forbidden are explicitly listed.

At the very top of that traif list are shellfish such as shrimp and lobster (though I suspect there was never any lobster in the lobster sauce--just a lot of shellfish stock flavored cornstarch) and of course the most forbidden of traif, finger-licking pork in all its forms.

Thus, one has to dig a bit deeper to figure out why I and my people will be found later today gorging on spareribs and shrimp wantons.

From me, then, here are a few actual reasons--

Perhaps foremost, Jews (as is true for most others) don't like to be exposed as hypocrites. In a small neighborhood, being observed eating traif in public qualifies as being thus exposed. So, we could indulge ourselves in as much forbidden food as we liked on Christmas day, knowing we would be doing so in private, among our "own kind," without being concerned that there would be any Catholics around to observe and expose us for what we were--well, food hypocrites.

Then, there is the reality that traif is scrumptious (does anyone not like shrimp or bacon?) and to have any excuse to get one's hands on it can quickly turn into an annual ritual. Like always going out for Chinese on Christmas day.

Plus, for those of us who were over-coddled by proverbial Jewish Mothers, participating in anything forbidden (even eating egg rolls) added additional spice to the experience. Being bad within safe limits was something pretty much everyone I knew who was leading an over-monitored life found to be alluring. Even something seemingly as benign as loving clams with black bean sauce.

So, you'll know where to look for me later today. At Noodletown in Chinatown or Phoenix Gardens up by the UN where they make the best salt-baked shrimp in New York. Or, back in the old neighborhood, at the Happy Garden on Pitkin Avenue for their classic pork egg foo young.

November 26, 2014--Sacred Spaces

I once had a colleague who for his doctoral dissertation wrote about scared spaces. Mainly those places that held special, spiritual meaning for native peoples. Places that they attempted to hide and if necessary defend against outsiders.

I asked him if there were equivalent places that were held to be scared by people in the so-called developed world. He smiled at me, as if to indicate how naive I was.

"Just look around you," he said.

"Even here in Midtown Manhattan?"

"Even here. During lunch let's walk over to Saint Patrick's Cathedral and look at the people worshipping there. Sense what that physical place means to them."

I didn't take up his offer but two years later, in Jerusalem, I understood all to well what a sacred space is and how those for whom it is sacred, who couldn't hide it from "outsiders," were willing, eager to defend it. Even to give up their lives to protect it from encroachment.

This was most emotionally vivid at the Western Wall. A sacred place to observant Jews who claim it is one of the walls of the Second Temple, which itself stood on the site of the even more sacred First Temple, constructed, it is believed, nearly 3,000 years ago by King Solomon. And it is at this very place where the Third and final temple will be built, the intra-orthodox fervently believe, when the Messiah appears.

They await him now and some are making preparations for his arrival, including moving in on the Al-Aqsa Mosque which sits on top of the Temple Mount, one of the most sacred places for Muslims, the place from which it is reported the Prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven. All of this not very far from a number of sacred places for Christians--the Via Dolorosa, the road along which Christ was said to have  borne the cross as he proceeded toward Calvary and the Church of Holy Sepulchre, which was built to mark the sacred place where he was crucified, entombed, and resurrected.

All of these places--central in meaning to Jews, Christians, and Muslims--are located literally within a square kilometer of each other. Those who are skeptical, even non-believers (me included) when there feel overwhelmingly that this is a special place, charged with spiritual power.

A sacred space, a site where our search for meaning, truth, and divine inspiration commingles with religious beliefs and practices in the attempt to find the most fundamental of answers--just what my long-ago colleague was attempting to get me to understand.

How then, with so much at stake, in the world's most-contested piece of real estate can there ever be a resolution to the conflict between Israeli Jews and Muslim Palestinians, both claiming, in the flow of blood, that they have special rights and historical, divine, prerogatives for exclusive control of the place that one side calls the Temple Mount and the other the Dome of the Rock?

This is not a situation where compromise and splitting-the-difference has much chance of working.

August 5, 2014--Brothers Under the Skin

I always wondered why the late Chairman of the Palestinian Organization, Yasser Arafat, looked so much like my Uncle Louie.  Now I know.

We're related!

Take a close look at that punim, that face.

And then take a look at mine--just over there on the right.

Get the picture?

But there is more evidence than just from photos.

According to Wikipedia--

Genetic analysis suggests that a majority of Palestinians, including Arab citizens of Israel, are descendants of Christians, Jews, and other earlier inhabitants of the southern Levant whose core may reach back to prehistoric times. A study of high-resolution haplotypes [DNA sequences] demonstrated that a substantial portion of Y chromosomes of Israeli Jews (70%) and of Palestinian Muslim Arabs (82%) belonged to the same chromosome pool. 

So there you have it.

What is happening in the Middle East is a "family dispute" and we know how ugly these can be.