TDG: Rabbi Ribeye: Schmaltz & Pornography

[bloviatrix]

The Claremont/Weequaic Salad was very different.

The major ingredients were Shredded Cabbage, Carrots, Cukes and Green Peppers.

The seasoning was Pepper, Salt, Sugar and White Vinegar mixed together in a sweet sour mixture to taste and pickled together in a Barrels [55 Gallons].

Hmmm, this sounds suspiciously like the health salad my would buy from the appetizing store.

[wesza]

The Claremont/Weequaic Salad was very different.

The major ingredients were Shredded Cabbage, Carrots, Cukes and Green Peppers.

The seasoning was Pepper, Salt, Sugar and White Vinegar  mixed together in a sweet sour mixture to taste and pickled together in a Barrels [55 Gallons].

Hmmm, this sounds suspiciously like the health salad my would buy from the appetizing store.

I've been trying various Health Food Store Salads for years and so far none have even come close. Most recently from Metro Markets, Whole Foods and PCC all seattle area stores. Just a few months ago: Russ & Daughters, Zabars and several other NYC places.

It's easy to put together, but requires enough expertise to allow for variations of ingredients to adjust the sasonings to keep the tasre consistant.

It's something that requires that someone be in charge that cares about consistant results that has experience and versatility. Even though it seems simple it's not a formula type of product like whats used in Baking.

Items like Cabbage must be treated different, especially during different times of the year.

Irwin

[Rabbi Ribeye]

Kinderlach . . . thought you might be interested in my own (serious, believe it or not) contribution to "the night before Christmas":

“RABBI SANTA”

And in despair, I bow’d my head. “There is no peace on earth,” I said, “For hate is strong and mocks the song of peace on earth, goodwill to men . . .”

So wrote Henry Wadsworth Longfellow of Christmas Day, 1863, deep in the most depressive shadows of the Civil War. Prophetic of our own times? Or, a timeless commentary on the melancholy that creeps into even the most optimistic mind when it ponders the seemingly unbridgeable chasm between shining ideals and morose daily reality.

Who would deny the melancholy? A fool? A saint? Since I am neither, I confess to an edge of holiday depression that neither Miracle on 34th Street nor Effexor could resolve. Worse than ever? Perhaps. 9-11 has certainly left a pall of the morose. Kissing goodbye to my sweetest grandbabies Sophie and Simeon left a tremendous void. And, as the precarious roller-coaster of departing the rabbinate and ensuing long-term unemployment goes, this has been a season of careening personal descent.

Hence, the afternoon that I had been ordained to play Santa Claus to 30 homeless children in Anderson County, I was in the foulest mood. I knew that there was no escaping. I do, after all, have the natural gift of girth and full, almost white beard. And, my wife was running the program, so the wages of failure would be painfully high.

Thus, a lot of muttering about “How did I get myself into this?” That, and knowing deep down that every “ho-ho-ho!” I would emit would be the shallowest playacting, so as not to disappoint kids who had suffered enough disappointments already. The spirit was “the show must go on”; joviality was way beyond expectation.

And then I walked in to the sparse community center. Radiant light shone from 30 sets of widening, innocent eyes: Santa! Santa! Look at my new shoes! Santa! Santa! I’ve been a good girl! Santa! Santa! Can we sing “Jingle Bells”? Santa! Santa! Do you have a present for me? So, I “ho-ho-ho’ed,” and asked each his or her name, and repeated it again and again, and told each one how beautiful or handsome she or he looked, and let them hug me and kiss me and cling to me as long as they wanted. Santa! Santa! You are a funny Santa! Santa! Santa! You are a nice Santa! Santa! Santa! I love you!

Each one sat on my lap and posed for a picture and got some presents. Most remarkably, each child was perfectly delighted by the teddy or dolly or little paint-by-numbers kit that I produced from my sack. Even the inevitable socks and underwear, so welcomed by their parents, met with little childish whining – certainly far less than I have ever heard among the children of the jaded upper middle class.

Oh, their luminous eyes. Oh, the innocent simplicity. Oh, the sweetness of their souls. Oh, the spontaneity of their joy, so free of self-consciousness. Oh, the purity of their spirit. I found myself, quite unexpectedly, awash in being their Santa, perhaps the only embodiment for these homeless babes of a world in which a warm swaddling of all’s-wellness enveloped them. Lifted from me, at least temporarily, was the nadir of cynicism and self-doubt and disillusionment that had laid me so low. For one sweet, sublime moment, I lost my mind and regained my sanity.

Let me tell you, dear friend: It should happen to you. You behold the radiant joy and sheer innocence of homeless babes reveling with their Santa. In a second, tears uncontrollably well up your eyes, and every ounce of your rationality melts away into an overwhelming wave of delicious compassion and love for God’s most fragile gift to an otherwise cold and ruthless world, the gift of life untarnished. And, for a blessed moment or two, your prejudices also melt away, as you partake in a crystalline vision of the world at one with itself, no us-versus-them, no slayers, no slain, no masters, no slaves, no rich, no poor, no oppressors, no oppressed, a common hope, a common destiny.

Oh, those kids did a number on me. In exchange for a couple of teddies and a few games, they gave me back the innocence of youth, the simplest joy of childhood, the passion and compassion that midlife and cynicism too easily extinguish. They blessed me with a sense that “peace on earth, goodwill to men” might one day become more than just an iridescent dream. Who could ask for more?

[if ya wish, I'll even email ya the picture of me in full Santa regalia! ]

[wesza]

Rabbi, could you please explain some of the more esoteric items, like Weequahic salad, Gehakte leber garni, and Zisse rossel?

How on earth did a VP of Bob Jones U. decide to visit a Jewish house?

Weequahic salad = pronounced "Week-wake," named for a reknowned diner in NJ, similar to a health salad, cabbage and other veggies in a vinegar-sugar marinade.

Gehakte leber = chopped liver

Zisse rossel = sweet-sour pickled beet salad

We live less than a mile from Bob Jones. Our next door neighbor is a VP. He and his family are extremely friendly, decent people, and we do not -- as the cliche goes -- discuss religion, sex or politics. However, even then I will give them the benefit of the doubt because I am the resident flaming liberal of our local op-ed page, so they know where I stand on all the fundamentalist flashpoint issues. (If you're interested in reading a column I wrote after Dubya spoke at BJU during the 2000 campaign: http://marcmusing.com/whatami_inwalking.html)

Despite their wackiness, the folks at BJU are not a monolith. Some of them, like our neighbors, are pretty easygoing folks who, if they condemn you to hell, do it at 40 decibels behind your back. Others, particularly fire-breathing upperclassmen, preach damnation tag-team style from the downtown corners of Main and Coffee nonstop all Saturday afternoon at 140 decibels. Just another cool Shabbos afternoon activity . . .

Blessings on your fressings!

OOOOPS ! OOOOOPS ! I THOUGHT I WAS QUOTING FROM THE "SANTA RABBI".

Reb Marc: You are the most special Rabbi that i've ever come across.

Your Santa posting should be sent to for publication to every religious or secular publication. There is no more articulate from the heart experssion of giving and getting the love and meaningfull feelings that we all attempt to express whatever holiday we celebrate.

Thank you for making my Holiday special for 2003.

Of course it may soon become a tradition that every official Santa should first become a learned Rabbi or at least been Bar Mitzvahed just to spread the love with a real Mitzvah of feeling.

Irwin

Edited December 24, 2003 by wesza (log)

[bloviatrix]

Thank you for such a beautiful example of Tikkun Olam, repairing the world. To bring joy to little kids is truly mitzvah.

[Fresser]

How many rabbis does it take to change a light bulb?

One, it is written.

However, it is also written...

[theabroma]

What??!! No slivovitz apres Tagamet? But, Rebbe .... !!!

zei gezunt ...

Theabroma

[Rabbi Ribeye]

What??!!  No slivovitz apres Tagamet?  But, Rebbe ....  !!!

Yes, yes, you read my mind. But, that final treat would derive from the assumption that all the guests would be walking/rolling, not driving, home after Shabbos dinner. Alas, this is Greenville, where the term "Shabbos goy" is almost as unknown as "designated driver." Hence, in an act of good neighborliness and lawsuit avoidance, we will cogitate and reminisce over a fine post-bacchanalian slivovitz, but leave the imbibing for an occasion of lesser liability.

A plum has never been more nobly exalted . . .

[howard88]

Suzanne F, my family always pronounced it with a "v" also. Having spent my high school years in the 60's at Weequahic High and my college years in the 60's in Rutgers Newark campus, all this talk about the Weequahic diner brings back all kinds of memories. The late nite eating at the diner with fraternity brothers, the salad and pickles and chopped liver etc. Thanks for the memories.

[Rabbi Ribeye]

OK, just to see if there is any more life in that dwindling pot o' chicken fat, anyone have reminiscences about faux-schmaltz, Nyafat ("Reach for Rokeach!") or its lesser known competitor, Schmaltz-A-Dige?

I have an untouched jar of Nyafat in my pantry. Do you?

[bloviatrix]

I have an untouched jar of Nyafat in my pantry. Do you?

Why on earth do you have that stuff?

[Rabbi Ribeye]

Why on earth do you have that stuff?

Collector's item. I have also secreted away two bars of Rokeach kosher dish soap, one lettered in orangish-pink, the other in sky-blue, to keep milchig and fleishig from intermarrying.

Conversation pieces to bore the grandchildren when I spin romanticized yarns about my long-departed youth, by cracky -- along with the peace armband that I wore to my college graduation and a top-of-the-stove wire-frame toaster, c.1920, from back when bread was really bread and toast was really toast. (That stuff you get today? You call that toast? Feh.)

Then I bring out that well-pummeled ancient wooden bowl and hockmesser (chopping knife, proof positive that the Jews also invented the mezzaluna) to illustrate my lecture on how "back then" we used to hand-chop gefilte fish and chicken liver . . . and by that time the kids are as glazed over as a bowl of Victorian sugarplums.

Edited January 13, 2004 by Rabbi Ribeye (log)

[pjs]

I just spoke to my mom and she told me she liked the chopped liver I made for her last weekend, but it needed more oil. I told her I didn't use oil, I used schmaltz. She then proceeded to tell me, from memory, how to make ersatz schmaltz--very popular in the Catskills she said. All I remember of the recipe is that it included some carrot for color.

PJ

[bloviatrix]

Why on earth do you have that stuff?

Collector's item. I have also secreted away two bars of Rokeach kosher dish soap, one lettered in orangish-pink, the other in sky-blue, to keep milchig and fleishig from intermarrying..

I think you can still find it in some stores. Particularly around Boro Park.

Being that I grew up in an era of kosher dish washing liquid and color coded sponges, it was until about 5 years ago that I realized that the soap came in red and blue to differentiate it. But why no green for parve?

Years ago, I had to deliver a peckalach of kosher soap to a friend's daughter in Jerusalem. I could never figure out why of all things, that was what she requested from her mom. Like you can't find kosher soap in Israel.

The still sell Nyafat as well. Both plain and onion flavored. I've seen it in the kosher aisle at Shop-Rite. That stuff looks nasty.

[bloviatrix]

I just spoke to my mom and she told me she liked the chopped liver I made for her last weekend, but it needed more oil. I told her I didn't use oil, I used schmaltz. She then proceeded to tell me, from memory, how to make ersatz schmaltz--very popular in the Catskills she said. All I remember of the recipe is that it included some carrot for color.

PJ

You think your mom is misguided? My mil thought chopped liver contained mayonaise. We're still shaking our heads over that one.

[Rabbi Ribeye]

My mil thought chopped liver contained mayonnaise. 

Some other "goyishe kop" addenda from my own experiences:

1. Friendly here with a very assimilated guy, CEO of multinational corporation, not involved in anything formally Jewish, but a personal friend. Twisted his arm to come to our seder. Served him chopped liver, and he went nuts with memories of grandparents, childhood, his growing-up years. Initially, said he had to leave at 10 PM, but after the liver, stayed all the way through Chad Gadya, howling the barnyard noises (our minhag/custom) right along with us.

Had dinner with us again recently, primed by bait of more chopped liver. Brought with a friend not of the Israelitish persuasion. She had never had chopped liver. He described it to her as "pate . . . but a whole lot better"!

[Remniscent of a line attributed to Heinrich Heine: "Long after my grandfather's theology failed me, my grandmother's potato kugel kept me Jewish."]

2. My dad once had to meet at home for an entire day with a client, an older gentleman from the deep, deep South. Lunchtime came and my mother put out an array of coldcuts from Hungarian Kosher. The old guy went wild and commended my mom for "the best hay-um ah've ever tasted"!

3. Once made a glazed veal breast for Shabbos dinner. As was his custom, a minister-friend of mine, a Cherokee, stopped by unannounced mid-Friday afternoon. Spying the well-lacquered veal breast, he bellowed, "What's that ham doing in here?" When I explained to him, he announced, "Cut me a piece of that, huh?"

On his first bite, he shouted "HOT DAMN!" and proceeded to finish up half the breast, proclaiming repeatedly, "Better'n ham!" My kids revel in that story, and to this day refer to veal breast as "HOT DAMN," as in, "Daddy, when are you gonna make HOT DAMN again?"