Dear Reader,
The dizzying twists and turns of the Mideast peace process - including the prospect of the release of convicted spy Jonathan Pollard - is one of our main stories this week. As talks between the Israelis and Palestinians teeter, Jewish leaders are conflicted about using Pollard as a bargaining chip in the negotiations.
INTERNATIONAL
Leaders Conflicted On Pollard Release As Talks Teeter
Some question tying convicted spy to peace negotiations.
Stewart Ain
Staff Writer
Jewish leaders here expressed conflicted emotions and policy differences this week about reports that President Barack Obama was willing to consider the release of imprisoned Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard as part of a last-minute bid to keep alive Palestinian-Israeli peace talks.“Pollard’s early release should be based on humanitarian grounds and the strong bilateral relationship between the U.S. and Israel,” said Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League. “It should not be intertwined with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. That conflict has enough complications that it doesn’t need this one.”
Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, said he believes Pollard should be released “as a matter of clemency and fairness.” But he added that “if the need to move the peace process forward brings him [Obama] to that decision, we are all in favor of it.”
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said Tuesday afternoon that Obama had “not made a decision to release Jonathan Pollard.” He acknowledged that there have been talks about such a release, but he said he was “not going to get ahead of the discussions that are under way.”
Carney later revealed that it was the Israelis who suggested Pollard’s release as part of a deal that would keep the two sides at the bargaining table.
“It’s pretty well known that the Israelis frequently raise this issue, and they have raised this issue in our discussions,” he said.
Gerald Steinberg, a professor of political science at Bar-Ilan University, said it is of little consequence whether Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or Secretary of State John Kerry raised the issue of Pollard’s release because “Pollard is always on the Israeli-American agenda, and always comes up when terrorists are released in the context of an agreement. … An agreement that includes Pollard would be in the political interests of both Obama and Netanyahu.”
Pollard, 59, a former Navy intelligence analyst who was arrested in 1985, has served 28 years of a life sentence for selling American secrets to Israel. Pollard’s supporters contend that the length of the time he has spent in prison is out of all proportion with the sentences meted out to others who committed similar crimes.
The Obama administration just last week was quick to deny reports that Pollard might be released as part of the peace talks. A senior administration official told The Jewish Week on March 24: “Jonathan Pollard was convicted of espionage against the United States, a very serious crime, was sentenced to life in prison, and is serving his sentence. There are currently no plans to release Jonathan Pollard.”
But early Tuesday there were media reports quoting Israeli officials as saying Pollard would be released as part of a deal in which both Israel and the Palestinians would remain at the peace table into 2015. In return for Pollard’s release, Israel was said to be ready to free the last 26 of 104 prisoners whose planned release last Saturday had been delayed; free another 400 low-level Palestinian prisoners — including women and children — whose release was just a few months away, and freeze settlement construction in all but Jerusalem. The Palestinians in return would reportedly promise not push for international recognition at UN-affiliated agencies as a stepping-stone to statehood. The U.S. and Israel are deeply opposed to such a move, insisting on resolving outstanding issues through direct talks.
Foxman said he believes that “if the Israelis are ready to agree with it, the overwhelming majority of the Jewish community would be supportive.”
Asked why he believes Obama would agree to Pollard’s release, Foxman said: “America has invested an awful lot in the talks by [Secretary of State John] Kerry, and the president in moving the talks forward. If they think the missing ingredient [in continuing the talks] is Pollard, OK.”
Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, said that although he would like to see Pollard released, “he should be released on his own merit having served all this time.”
Hoenlein pointed out that “people who are strong advocates for him [Pollard] have raised questions about the deal. He himself has expressed reservations, saying he does not want to be released in return for Israel’s release of terrorists.”
That sentiment was echoed by Morton Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America, who said that although his organization has worked over the years for Pollard’s release, “we are opposed out of respect for Jonathan Pollard’s own wishes.”
He explained that he has spoken with Pollard more than 50 times during his imprisonment and that “he has urged me to urge Israel not to make concessions of land or to freeze the building of Jewish homes in Judea and Samaria [the West Bank] to gain his release.”
Uri Ariel, an Israeli cabinet member from the hardline Jewish Home Party, told Israel Army Radio Tuesday that Pollard had also told him he opposes such a “shameful deal” because it involves the release of men convicted of killing Israelis in terrorist attacks.
Elliott Abrams, a top Mideast advisor under Presidents Reagan and George W. Bush, wrote on his Pressure Points blog that while he favors Pollard’s release, the proposed plan “sets a very bad precedent,” namely releasing “someone who spied on America in order to free foreign terrorists…Where does it stop?”
But Seymour Reich, a former chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and a longtime advocate for Pollard’s release, said despite Pollard’s wishes “it is time to let him go.
“If that is what it takes to continue the [Israeli-Palestinian peace] discussions, then it should happen,” he said. “And I think he will accept that. Time has passed and it’s time to get him out. It shouldn’t be done this way, but I’m glad he [may be] getting out.”
Fred Lazin, professor emeritus at Ben-Gurion University and a visiting scholar at the Taub Center for Israel Studies at New York University, said it would be a “wonderful thing” if Pollard is released, but he questioned why the U.S. has kept him imprisoned for so long.
“The fact they kept him so long has nothing to do with him being Jewish or anti-Semitism,” he said. “I think there is more there than we know about.”
Lazin said he “cringes” when he hears what some of the Palestinian prisoners did who are being released — some were involved in the murder of Israelis — “but if their release keeps the talks going, why not free them.”
Asked about the tough talk from the Palestinians — who on Tuesday announced they had started the process to sign agreements with 15 international agencies and organizations and would pursue joining more because of Israel’s failure to release the prisoners on Saturday — Lazin said he is “not optimistic” the peace talks would succeed.
Should Obama release Pollard to keep the talks going, Lazin said, he would see it as a “desperation move.”
Reich said he found it “surprising” that Netanyahu would agree to release so many Palestinian prisoners — including 14 Israeli Arabs imprisoned for terrorist attacks — and to freeze settlement construction outside of Jerusalem.
“But he was anxious to continue the talks, so that is what he is doing,” he said. “He had to swallow hard and accept it. I can’t explain it. I have to believe that the prime minister thinks it is worthwhile for the peace process to continue. The Palestinians have not given anything in exchange, unless there is something on the table we haven’t seen.”
Steinberg said Netanyahu was prepared to accept the deal he had worked out with Kerry “because he wants to avoid a huge clash with the United States and doesn’t want to be blamed for the failure of the negotiations. Netanyahu doesn’t want to end his second term in office with the status quo in place.”
He said the prime minister is aware of Israel’s growing international isolation and the strategic threats it faces.
“He has enough political support in the government and … is interested in a two-state framework of some kind.”
Asked what would happen if the talks fail, Steinberg said there has been much talk of a Plan B in which Israel would unilaterally establish its own borders.
“I don’t see this entirely divorced from Netanyahu’s own views,” he said. “But the first step is to reach an agreement. The release of prisoners and a [settlement] freeze shows that Netanyahu wants to find a way to do a deal.”
But he also stressed that he is opposed to the release of Pollard “as a quid pro quo for releasing Palestinian terrorists. The two sets of circumstances are entirely different. I see this as a cynical move designed to quiet Israeli criticism of the fourth such release of terrorists during the Kerry negotiations. … I consider the comparison between Pollard and terrorists to be immoral, even if politically expedient.”
Steinberg added that should the talks collapse, Netanyahu would seek the support of the U.S. as it draws its own borders.
stewart@jewishweek.org
Also this week, staff writer Stewart Ain charts the decline of the Long Island delicatessen, as a staple of Jewish life recedes amid demographic changes and changing eating habits.
NEW YORK
Kosher Delis Close Across Long Island
'You Come Here And Buy Memories:’ A staple of Jewish life is dying out.
Stewart Ain
Staff Writer
And then there were two — kosher delis left in Suffolk County, that is.Like independent bookstores or Amtrak stops on the Great Plains, the Long Island kosher deli, squeezed by changing demographics and eating habits, as well as competition from superstores like Costco and Trader Joe’s, is fast becoming a thing of the past.
In the past year alone, five kosher delis have closed in Nassau and Suffolk, two of them with histories stretching back more than a half-century. Several others, with their proprietors’ eyes peeled on the bottom line, have converted, so to speak, from kosher to non-kosher.
One recent afternoon, Barry Holzman and his wife, Arlene, who were visiting from upstate Cambridge, peered with obvious relish at the display counter in the front of Pastrami N Friends, a kosher deli in Commack. It was filled with deli staples like lean cuts of pastrami and corned beef, tongue, knishes, creamy potato salad and coleslaw.
“You come here and buy memories,” said Holzman, who said he remembered this food from his childhood.
If Jewish memories can’t always pay the delis’ bills, especially in an area where the Jewish population is thinning out, perhaps non-Jewish ones can.
As he made change behind the counter, Ronny Roman, an owner of Pastrami N Friends, quipped, “We truly are a United Nations of customers.”
He was making change for Mike Phillips of Huntington, who is African American, while Xian Chen, also of Huntington, waited for a table, and Frank Paduano of Ronkonoma downed a frankfurter hot off the grill on his way out.
Paduano’s lunch companion, George Cavanagh, paid their check and confided, “I’m Irish and I bring all my clients here. I come for the pastrami sandwich — there’s nothing else like it.”
Only a few of the customers interviewed during the busy lunch hour Monday said they were Jewish. The others either grew up eating kosher deli food or developed a taste for it after eating at Pastrami N Friends.
Ernie Quartarone, who opened Pastrami N Friends in 1975, said in an interview last week that there had once been four or five other kosher delis within a five-mile radius of his store. Today, his and Zan’s Kosher Deli, about 25 minutes away in Lake Grove, are the only ones left following the closing last month of Commack Kosher Caterers Deli & Market and of Delsen’s Kosher Delicatessen in Bay Shore last year.
Of course, Long Island is not the only place where kosher delis are closing. Last fall, the last full-service kosher restaurant on the demographically morphing Lower East Side, Noah’s Ark, closed its doors (a non-kosher diner is reportedly taking its place). But the situation is particularly acute on the Island, away from Orthodox strongholds like the Five Towns, Great Neck and Plainview.
“There are fewer Jews [in Suffolk] and fewer who are keeping kosher in this part of the world,” said Rabbi Jonathan Waxman, spiritual leader of the Conservative Temple Beth Sholom in Smithtown, L.I.
Pat Ruggiero, the owner of Zan’s, agreed: “There is no growth in the Suffolk Jewish community, and there are fewer practicing Jews here who keep kosher. There are many who are just Jewish by descent, and there is a lot of intermarriage.”
Caryl Walsh of Huntington, who is Jewish, brought her mother, Beth Stull, for lunch at Pastrami N Friends.
“She loves the Jewish deli,” Walsh said. “She loves the chicken salad and coleslaw. And the size of the sandwiches you get here you don’t get elsewhere.”
Chen said he comes regularly because “the food is good.” He said he has had non-kosher deli meats and prefers kosher meat.
“I don’t know why, but the other just doesn’t taste the same,” he said.
Despite the changing demographic landscape, Quartarone said he plans to remain kosher.
But two longtime kosher landmarks on Long Island, Deli King in New Hyde Park and Boomy’s in Plainview, became non-kosher in the last year.
“There isn’t as much kosher business as there once was,” Harvey Ovadia, Boomy’s owner, said in explaining the switch. “And our clientele was getting older.” He said he became non-kosher six months ago after 30 years in business. “It was tough,” said Ovadia, who is Jewish.
Asked if he lost business as a result of the switch, Ovadia replied, “Not a lot.”
Has business improved? “No.”
But his bottom line has improved because, Ovadia said, there is a 10 to 20 percent price difference in what he now pays for food. “It’s the only way to make it nowadays,” he said.
♦
David Newman, executive director of the JCRC-Long Island, suggested that the delis have failed because of a change in people’s eating habits.
“Perhaps people are not eating out as much or the Jewish diet may be different from what it was 10 years ago,” he said.
That was confirmed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which found last year that meat consumption declined 12.2 percent between 2007 and 2012; the agency said the decline continued slightly in 2013 and predicted meat consumption would fall still further in 2014. And National Public Radio’s nationwide poll of 3,000 adults last year found that 39 percent said they eat less meat than they did three years ago.
Newman noted that the latest UJA-Federation Jewish Population Study in 2011 said the number of Jews in Suffolk decreased in 10 years from 90,000 to 86,000. It said also that the Jewish population in Nassau increased from 221,000 to 230,000.
Rabbi Howard Buechler, spiritual leader of the Dix Hills Jewish Center, said there is more to the change than a declining Jewish population.
“From Florida to upstate New York and New Jersey, the trend has been that large chain supermarkets have sections dedicated to kosher bakeries, butchers and takeout,” he said. “Several Costco stores have a huge array of kosher food — including a kosher dairy bakery. So there has been a seismic shift in how people get kosher food. It more available than ever.”
Menachem Lubinsky, president and CEO of Lubicom Marketing and Consulting and an expert on the kosher food industry, pointed out that not only have “supermarkets and club stores like Costco, Target and Trader Joe’s ventured into kosher in a big way … [but] there are also a number of super kosher stores that are capturing the lion’s share of the business.”
But for some, there is nothing like deli meats.
Laura Coniglario said she grew up on Long Island, moved with her family to Chandler, Ariz., 13 years ago, and “missed” Pastrami N Friends.
“We tried to find other hot dogs, but there is nothing like it out there,” she said. “We used to come here every week. We’re leaving tomorrow and I’m here now buying to bring it home with us. Yes, Italians know what a good hot dog is.”
Ronald Dragoon, the owner of Ben’s, arguably the most successful kosher deli chain and one that is opening another store in Scarsdale this summer, said he believes delis are failing because of a “decrease in the number of kosher processors, which has resulted in prices going up.”
“And there used to be many kosher slaughterhouses,” he added. “Now very few are left and prices are very high. Between the cost of product, rent, electric and gas and all kinds of labor pressures today — rightfully so — put that all in the mix and it becomes very difficult to make a living.”
Dragoon said he succeeded because “I want to be more of a restaurant than a delicatessen. …The restaurant section is separate [from the deli counter] and has more of a restaurant feel.”
Ruggiero pointed out that not only are many kosher delis hurting but kosher butchers are hurting as well.
In addition to the demise of Commack Kosher, which had been in business for 60 years, Kosher Emporium in Merrick closed last year. Interestingly, another glatt kosher butcher, For Goodness Steaks, opened in January in Merrick.
Among the kosher delis that have closed in the last year: Andel’s Kosher Delicatessen, which closed in December after 60 years in Roslyn Heights; and Deli on Rye in Albertson. Another deli, Ruven’s in Plainview, closed a few years ago.
♦
At Woodbury Kosher Meats & Catering in Hicksville, L.I., a customer, Lisa Hadar of Woodbury, said she believes the fact that Commack Kosher and many of the kosher delis were not under Orthodox supervision contributed to their demise.
“The Orthodox didn’t go because they said it was not kosher enough,” she said.
And she pointed out that supermarkets like Fairway that carry kosher meat and kosher prepared food “are open on Shabbat and can still sell glatt kosher meat.”
One of Woodbury Kosher’s owners, Ray Lisoski, said part of his shop’s success lies in its sense of tradition. “We help customers continue following their mothers’ traditional recipes. This is more of a family business than an impersonal place — and we’re going after the younger crowd.”
Another shopper, Dawn Grabois of Plainview, said she had once lived in Commack and found herself “the only kosher person in that neighborhood.”
“There are very few of my generation who keep kosher,” Grabois, 48, said. “None of my friends do. They look at the prices and say, ‘It’s so much money.’”
Jonathan Greenfield, the owner of Shoprite stores in Plainview and Commack, said that because of the closing of Commack Kosher he intends to increase the amount of kosher meat he sells in his Commack store. “The demand is there,” he said.
“Kosher is growing in those areas that have a core Orthodox clientele, and declining in those areas that do not have the core base,” Lubinsky observed.
One of Plainview’s kosher establishments, Kosher Emporium, was sold this month to 24-year-old Denny Wang, who said he plans to continue keeping it glatt kosher under the supervision of the Vaad of Queens.
“I have a lot of Jewish friends I am close to and I see that there is a need for such a store here,” Wang said. “I feel the community is supportive of it and I want to keep it here. The community people I have talked to said they are glad I’m keeping it kosher.”
While Wang may have a good shot in a place like Plainview, Scott Horowitz, president of Nassau Provisions, the only kosher wholesaler on Long Island, sounded an ominous note. He said the only way for delis to survive is to find “a new way of presenting it — kosher tapas, for instance — to introduce people to corned beef and pastrami. If they taste it, they will like it. … It is not the staple it once was, and if they don’t get the young people, there is no future in the business.”
stewart@jewishweek.org
In a story that mixes romance and controversy, associate editor Jonathan Mark tells the tale of an Israeli horse carriage driver struggling to keep his job amid mounting pressure from the City Hall to end the New York tradition that harkens back to a bygone era.
NEW YORK
Horse-Drawn Carriage Driver Fears End Of Tradition
Jonathan Mark
Associate Editor
In a turbulent city, where the winter chill lingers and the mayor, no less, wants you to lose your job, Ariel F. finds serenity as he has for 33 years: He travels down to Hell’s Kitchen from his apartment near the Yonkers line, and when he sees Rebecca he runs his hand through her black hair, gently stroking the curves of her body and back.She is beautiful, a 17-year-old bay mare, white cuffs of hair around the base of her rear legs. He, a 59-year-old Israeli, is beautiful, too, a sentimental kibbutznik with an easy smile, quite dashing in the top hat he wears when taking Rebecca for a ride through the park. He’s had her since she was a young filly in Pennsylvania, trained by the Amish to nonchalantly share a road with the horseless carriage. From Amish carriage makers, Ariel bought an elegant blue and gold carriage, “the colors of Maccabi Tel Aviv,” Israel’s iconic basketball squad, “so every time I go in my carriage I think of my favorite team.”
Rebecca, he says, or “Rivkah,” as he calls her in Hebrew, “not physically but spiritually is the mother of all the [78] horses” in Clinton Stables, the three-story building on West 52nd Street. “Rivkah is the Jewish mother. She is the most gentle horse you can find. She can handle any situation that needs handling.”
He is heartbroken that anyone would say the treatment of the horses is “inhumane,” ostensibly the reason that the mayor wants to replace the horses and carriages with antique-styled cars. As one cynic told The New York Times, “That’s all we need in this city — more cars.”
The Central Park carriage trade, more than 150 years old, is run out of four Manhattan stables housing between 150 to 175 horses. The stables mostly have three attendants to care for the horses, day and night. Another 50 horses, at any one time, are on their annual five-week (minimum) vacations in Pennsylvania or upstate New York. The horses work no more than a nine-hour day, with breaks, and are regularly seen by veterinarians. An Amish gentleman regularly travels to Manhattan to give each horse a new set of horseshoes every five weeks. “We have a very close working relationship with the Amish,” says Ariel, who requested that his surname not be used.
When he came into office, Mayor de Blasio said, “We are going to quickly and aggressively move to make horse carriages no longer a part of the landscape. They’re not humane.” The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals added, “These horses are surrounded by buses, cabs and traffic. We believe that it no longer is, or never was, quaint or romantic.”
According to the drivers’ union, which is part of the Teamsters, the horses, and 220 licensed carriages, have made more than six million trips in the last 30 years, with only three equine deaths from accidents and no human fatalities. The very logo of the Teamsters union is a horse and a wheel.
Andrew Rosenthal, editorial page editor of The New York Times, recently pointed out that “people who spend time with horses know it’s not inhumane to make them draw carriages. … And it’s worth noting that one of the big driving forces hiding behind the anti-cruelty front of the anti-carriage campaign are real estate developers. Is it possible they want to turn the stables in prime Manhattan locations into far more lucrative condos?”
In 2011 the Times dropped in unannounced to the Clinton Stables and found “the horses are treated better than advertised.” Living in spacious, well-ventilated stalls, with windows and fans, each horse has access to “water than flows with the nudge of a nose and plenty of hay.”
The horses have the day off when it’s too hot or cold (above 89 degrees or below 19), or in severe storms. Some years, says Ariel, he misses 80 or 90 days to the weather. Of course, he says, he always errs on the side of the horse’s well-being. “Believe me,” says Ariel, “we always feed our horses before we feed ourselves.”
In the face of the mayor’s campaign promise to eliminate the horse-and-carriage rides, the New York Central Labor Council of the AFL-CIO sent letters to the City Council, asking for “support and solidarity” with the horse-carriage drivers of Teamsters Joint Council 16 and Local 553, “who stand to lose their jobs in the face of powerful, wealthy interests.” The Labor Council adds that the Central Park rides are one of New York’s “top three” tourist attractions, and the horses “are treated with great love and respect…”
Last week, Ariel went to City Hall, “to share my 33 years of experience. We want people in City Hall and the City Council to come to our stable and see how much we take care of our horses, how a horse-drawn carriage ride is a way to connect to nature, a beautiful way of travelling, taking people from the present to the past.” A Quinnipiac poll, taken earlier this year, found 61 percent of New Yorkers are against the proposed ban on the horses.
Ariel, whose father fought alongside the Yugoslav partisans, learnt his way around horses in Kibbutz Buchenwald, founded in Israel by survivors of the camp. (The kibbutz was later renamed Netzer-Sereni.) “The kibbutz had a lot of animals, agriculture, a lot of responsibility was given to the kids,” Ariel remembers. “I’ve been working with horses since I was 3!”
When Ariel and his wife first visited New York in 1981, they were introduced to a Jewish carriage owner who offered them work as drivers at Chateau Stables. Ariel’s wife is now a teacher in a Jewish day school, but Ariel stayed with the horses. “I worked as many days as I could,” says Ariel. “The stable was on 48th Street. We lived in a studio, two blocks away. I loved it so much, if work began at 9 o’clock, I’d be there 6 o’clock to take care of the horses. We worked mostly with draft horses,” Belgians and Percherones.
“My mother, zichrono l’vracha (of blessed memory) used to visit from Israel, and sit on a bench, and I’d say, ‘C’mon Ima, bo’i (come with me.) Sit in my carriage. We’ll go for a ride.’ ‘She’d say ‘No, no, no. You have to make a living.’” When people ask Ariel where he is from, he might take out a photo of his mother, lighting Friday night candles, bringing her hands to her eyes.
In Central Park, he points out the old Dairy, the Carousel, the Bethesda Fountain that reminds him of its Jerusalem cousin, the pool of Bet Hesda, a place of grace. “I know every tree in the park,” says Ariel. “I can talk with every tree in the park as I go by. To be in the park is to lose the stress, to unwind.”
When lovers ride with him, on their honeymoon or after a wedding proposal, “I wish them mazal tov, a life of joy and trust. I make for them a tefillah, a prayer, for a happy life together. They call me the rabbi of Central Park. It makes me happy, to bring the light of my kibbutz and Jerusalem to Central Park.” The world is a more romantic place at two or three miles per hour, when seen from his carriage, under the moon.
As he rides with Rebecca, Ariel writes songs to and about his horses. The songs are all ballads, to the rhythm of the clip-clops. As he rides in the carriage, pulled by Rebecca, people wave. “Even those who don’t ride feel happy from us,” says Ariel.
And so he waves back, hoping they’re not waving goodbye.
Jonmark50@gmail.com
With Passover approaching, our Food & Wine section features stories on a Syrian family whose exodus story includes prime cuts of beef, a recipe that tweaks the chocolate matzah dessert and one for Passover punch. We've also got a roundup of new Haggadot and cool Pesach gifts.
http://www.thejewishweek.com/special-sections/special-holiday-issues/passover-5774
Passover 5774
From Syria, with prime cuts of beef; chocolate matzah truffles; Passover punch. Plus, new Haggadot and cool gifts.
In the arts pages, Diane Cole looks at the legacy of the great novelist Bernard Malamud as the Library of America releases two volumes of his collected works. And with the biblical epic "Noah" bringing in the big bucks, we interview the film's co-writer, Ari Handel, on making the film and the controversy surrounding it.
BOOKS
Malamud’s Magic
Re-evaluating the great (but underappreciated) novelist as the Library of America enshrines his deeply humanistic works.
Diane Cole
Special To The Jewish Week
Finally: with the publication of two handsome volumes (and a third in the works) of the novels and short stories of Bernard Malamud (1914-1986), the Library of America has at long last welcomed into its pantheon of American literary greats the Brooklyn-born author of such well-known works of fiction as “The Natural” (yup, the source for the blockbuster baseball movie starring Robert Redford), “The Fixer” (which won the Pulitzer Prize and also spawned a movie, this one starring Alan Bates), “The Assistant,” and others. Literary reputations are more unpredictable than the weather, so one can only guess why it took longer for Malamud to receive such eminently deserved recognition than it did for Saul Bellow and Philip Roth; they are the two literary luminaries with whom Malamud’s work is most often linked, by virtue of the fact that all three frequently (though by no means exclusively) drew upon their experience as Jews to write about Jews. Each of these three writers is distinctive in his greatness. But Malamud’s relative neglect in recent years has been a mystery. His carefully crafted sentences can dazzle with their deft precision and unexpected humor. His plots easily mix the absolute realism of daily life with the zany illogic of myth and magic. Many of his characters can be described as heroic schlemiels — downtrodden, vulnerable, and mournful of their past failures, yet nonetheless persistent in their eager and often clueless efforts to redeem their losses and start anew. Whether they succeed or not, it is in their pursuit of such quests that their souls are revealed, both to the reader and to themselves.
And now the Library of America publication of Malamud’s works from the 1940s through the 1960s — the decades in which the author was at his most productive — has made the time ripe for a re-evaluation through re-reading for those familiar with his work, as well as an introduction upon first reading for those new to the fiction of this great literary humanist. Humanist, because what it means to be human — and what it takes to remain not just human but humane despite great suffering — are among the subjects Malamud explores in greatest depth.
My personal favorite among his novels is his second, “The Assistant,” published in 1957. The setting — a mom-and-pop neighborhood grocery store always on the verge of failing — comes from Malamud’s life. Malamud’s father was — like Malamud’s fictional character Morris Bober — a Russian-Jewish immigrant with limited education who, as a grocer, struggled to make a decent living for his family. Decency is the key word here, the defining quality that Morris will not let go of, even after he is robbed and beaten in his deserted store, threatened out of business by a newly opened price-cutting supermarket around the corner, saddened by his inability to brighten the limited prospects for his beloved daughter Helen. It is she who becomes the romantic focus of the sad-sack “assistant” of the title, Frank Alpine, a non-Jew who ultimately apprentices himself to the goal of learning what it means to be a mensch.
For these characters, and throughout Malamud’s work, menschlichkeit is akin to a spiritual value that transcends observance or religious belief. The rabbi’s plainspoken eulogy for Morris Bober sums up this creed this way: “There are many ways to be a Jew,” the rabbi declares. “Morris Bober was to me a true Jew because he lived in the Jewish experience, which he remembered, and with the Jewish heart. Maybe not to our formal tradition — for this I don’t excuse him — but he was true to the spirit of our life — to want for others that which he wants also for himself. ... He suffered, he endured, but with hope. ... What more does our sweet God ask his poor people?”
In terms of asking, in Malamud’s short stories it’s usually the poor immigrant Jews struggling to make ends meet who pray for a miracle. But whether the events that transpire in the aftermath of those requests are the work of God, fate, or the trickster powers of coincidence is left for the beseeching protagonists, and the reader, to decide. Particularly in his short stories (a genre at which he excelled), these themes play out with the upended logic of fable and folklore, infused with what I think of as Malamud’s own brand of magical realism. Malamud’s first short story collection, published in 1958, was in fact titled “The Magic Barrel,” after one such magical story: a serious-minded rabbinical student becomes a fool to Cupid after engaging the services of a cagey matchmaker who consults Tarot-like cards filled with descriptions of any number of possible matches.
In a similar vein, in “Angel Levine,” a tailor prays for his wife’s recovery from fatal illness and unwittingly conjures an angel who happens to be both black and Jewish. In “Idiots First,” a dying father desperate to seat his disabled son Isaac on a train bound for relatives who will care for him must wrestle first with the conductor (or is he the angel of death?). And in “The Jewbird,” a crow that calls himself Schwartz flies through the window of a Jewish family in New York, aks, in fluent Yiddish, for “a piece of herring with a crust of bread,” and then explains he’s on the fly (literally) from “Anti-Semeets,” including “eagles, vultures and hawks.”
Malamud grappled with anti-Semitism most directly and at greatest length in “The Fixer” (1966), which he based on the infamous “blood libel” case of the Russian Jew Mendel Beilis, falsely accused and unjustly imprisoned in 1913 for the purported ritual murder of a Christian boy. Malamud’s fictional stand-in for Beilis is Yakov Bok, a “fixer” or handyman singled out for punishment by the Tsarist government for no other reason than his happening to be a Jew. This book, more than any other by Malamud, can be said to be “about” something — a clear indictment of prejudice and injustice. But as fiction, it did not stand up to my memory of it, with Malamud’s writing sounding uncharacteristically flat, as if constrained by the importance of his historical subject, his voice trapped within the confines of Yakov Bok’s prison cell.
All these works demonstrate Malamud’s deep commitment to what the rabbi in “The Assistant” aptly calls “the Jewish experience.” Yet readers who think of Malamud as only concerned with Jewish subjects can make the mistake of assuming that those novels and tales without Jewish characters at their center (including most notably his first novel, “The Natural,” published in 1952) are marginal to his opus. The “collected works” nature of the Library of America volumes loudly refutes that view. It makes the case instead not just for the breadth of Malamud’s vision and for the agile versatility of his craft, but also for the continuity of his themes throughout his career.
“The Natural,” for instance, is ostensibly about the “natural” baseball pitcher and slugger Roy Hobbs, a player for the New York Knights so supernaturally gifted that he can rip the cover off a baseball with a mighty whack of the hand-made bat he has dubbed, in child-like innocence, “Wonder Boy.” The subject is certainly not discernibly “Jewish,” but there is as much to ponder about the unexpected workings of fate and magic as there is in Angel Levine and numerous other of Malamud’s tales. To be sure, Roy plays in a baseball field imbued with mythic hope and tragedy — a strikingly different setting from the Depression-era grocery store of “The Assistant” — but like Morris Bober and Frank Alpine, Roy is also struggling to beat the long odds with which his past has burdened him.
So is S. Levin, the no more than nominally Jewish anti-hero of “A New Life,” Malamud’s novel of academia (1961), who leaves behind him the sorrows of life in New York to re-vivify his very being in the wondrous natural beauty of the Pacific Northwest. That bucolic, light-flecked panorama could not differ more from the rancid grimness of Yakov Bok’s cell. But Malamud’s imagination encompassed both Bok and Levin, as well as Morris Bober and Roy Hobbs and Angel Levine and so many others. May his writings, and his magic, endure.
editor@jewishweek.org
THE JW Q&A
Interpreting Noah For The 21st Century
Alan Zeitlin
Special To The Jewish Week
Ari Handel, a neuroscientist whose career path ultimately took him to Hollywood, is the co-writer, with director Darren Aronofsky, of “Noah,” which opened last week. (It was the top-grossing film last weekend, with a haul of $44 million.) Handel was the executive producer of “The Wrestler,” “Black Swan,” and “The Fountain,” which he also wrote. Handel and Aronofsky, it turns out, were suitemates at Harvard. In a phone interview, Handel spoke about the challenges in making the film, which he also produced, and the critics who say the film strays too much from the Bible. This is an edited transcript.Q: Did it take longer for you to build the ark than it took Noah?
A: Nobody knows for sure how long it took Noah but I think they said 10 years. It took us six months in design but it took him longer.
Do you think Noah is weak because he doesn’t fight to save people?
I don’t know if he’s weak. It’s part of the story of what he was and that is in contrast to the story of Abraham. Abraham is an icon of mercy whereas Noah is more of an icon of justice.
Some say you’ve hijacked the biblical story of Noah to promote an environmentalist agenda. What do you say to that?
I think environmentalism is a politicized issue. There is biblical evidence about the need to protect the land. Anyone who says this film is anti-biblical is not looking at all the evidence.
Why did you decide to give such a central role to the giants, known as Nephilim?
It’s right there in the text so they had to be featured. They were useful in terms of storyline but in also to answer the question of how does Noah get the ark built. They are mythical and otherworldly.
In what way did your Judaism impact your filmmaking?
I’d say here there was my fascination with the story of Noah, midrash and tradition and how you can take on the text and look at its closely. There are a lot of questions that are left unanswered and can be interpreted in different ways. As a storyteller, you look at it and wonder about how Noah lived when it doesn’t say it in the text.
There is a scene where we hear the cries of and see the people who are about to drown. Did you have any concern that audience would think you were portraying God as evil?
We’re telling the story, maybe in an evocative way, but the fact is that all the other people were wiped out. This is a film that doesn’t shy away from questions. You have to think about what kind of world are we living in and what sort of film are we making. We weren’t making a film just about Noah with his family, and they’re happy and smiley and everyone is under one roof. There are a lot of things it doesn’t say in the text, and you have to imagine how it might have been. Our goal was to create a film that would bring the Noah story to the 21st century that examined the truths that there was wickedness and destruction.
In the film, Noah sees another version of himself. Are you trying to say that everyone should guard against being taken over by their darker impulses?
One of the things we feel the story is about as a myth and as a parable is that there is goodness and wickedness in all man, and we’re trying to grapple with that. There are good people but that doesn’t mean they are totally good. After the flood, you flip the page and you have the story of the Tower of Babel and there is wickedness again.
What was the greatest challenge in making the film?
It was a huge undertaking from the sets to CGI [computer-generated imagery] to being in Iceland in extreme environments to making a film where you are not tied to expectations.
Were you surprised that there was criticism from some who hadn’t seen the film?
No, it makes a certain kind of sense when you look at it because there is such a religious divide and I think when people see the movie they will feel differently.
editor@jewishweek.org
Enjoy the issue,
Rob Goldblum
Managing Editor
P.S. Please check out the newest version of our website ¬ faster and easier to navigate and read ¬ for breaking stories, videos and exclusive blogs, op-eds and features.
http://www.thejewishweek.com/
Between the Lines - Gary Rosenblatt
Reaching Young Russian-Speakers, Where They Are
Gemadiy Elikman came with his family to Chicago from Moldova, formerly a part of the Soviet Union, as a teenager in 1999. He was immediately enrolled at the Ida Crown Jewish Academy, a Modern Orthodox day school, knowing “nothing, zero” about Judaism, he says. But he has a vivid memory of being given a Torah to hold. “I didn’t know what it was but my hands began to shake — it was a powerful feeling.”Now a physician in Chicago, he takes pride in his strong Jewish identity, having been involved in Hillel at DePaul University and currently helping to start a local Russian Kehillah (Jewish community).
Last weekend Elikman was in Parsippany, N.J., as one of more than 800 participants in the fifth annual American conference of LimmudFSU, a nonprofit group that offers a unique window into young Russian-speaking Jews. In part it reflects the volunteer-led, cross-denominational model of Limmud, the international organization that focuses on Jewish learning and celebration. And it emphasizes the heritage and interests of the Russian-speaking Jewish community — geared to those in their 20s and 30s.
Purists might describe this three-day conference as Limmud Lite, with little Jewish textual study or exploration of religion. But organizers and participants say LimmudFSU fits the needs and interests of young Russian-speakers who express their Jewish identity more through culture than religion and who have a strong interest in meeting and socializing with people like them, as they seek to navigate American society while maintaining their ethnic heritage.
Elikman, a first-timer at LimmudFSU, said he came because his friends told him about it and he loved the experience, especially meeting other singles and attending lectures on a variety of subjects. Among the more popular of the dozens of offerings: a session on Jewish matchmaking from the shtetl to the Internet; Lihi Lapid, a novelist and Israeli newspaper columnist (and wife of Israeli Finance Minister Yair Lapid) on finding her voice as a woman; cutting-edge entrepreneurs discussing their innovative style, featuring LimmudFSU chair Matthew Bronfman, real estate developer and community leader Edward Mermelstein, and business and communal leader Jerry Levin; and a debate between Rabbi Shmuley Boteach (author, most recently of “Kosher Lust”) and businessman-philanthropist Feliks Frenkel on whether there is a God. (The results were inconclusive but the hour was entertaining and drew about 400 people.)
On Shabbat afternoon I moderated a discussion on the status of the current Mideast peace process with two Knesset members and a former key aide to Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir. Representing right, left and center, Herzl Makov (the former Shamir aide), Omer Bar-Lev (Labor) and Ronen Hoffman (Yesh Atid) agreed that the short-term prospects are bleak and called for anchoring any agreement with the Arab states, not just the Palestinians. Not surprisingly, the questions and comments from the audience, reflecting the right-of-center political views of many Russian-speaking Jews here and in Israel, were highly critical of the peace talks and expressed frustration with Israel’s perceived lack of resolve.
Aggressive Recruiting And Funding
The LimmudFSU approach is based on lessons learned from past failures in engaging Russian-speaking Jews in communal life here.
Early efforts to bring large numbers of Russian Jewish immigrants into the active Jewish community in the 1970s and ’80s, when the floodgates opened, met with limited success. Our timing was off. On their arrival, when we offered synagogues and Jewish schools, they wanted homes, jobs and a chance to learn English. A few years later, when they might have been ready for more Jewish content after growing up in the godless USSR, we’d given up on them.
A generation later, though, many young Russian-speaking professionals are responding to a variety of communal efforts to address their interests and needs.
Sarah Polyansky of Clark, N.J., and her friend Irina Kogan, from Brooklyn, both came to the LimmudFSU conference via RAJE (Russian American Jewish Experience), a popular New York group that offers educational and social programs and trips to Israel to college students and young professionals.
Esther Lamm, the director of development for RAJE, estimated that up to 100 participants at the conference were recruited through her group. Others heard about LimmudFSU from COJECO (the Council of Jewish Émigré Organizations) in New York, campus Hillels, and word of mouth, much of it from satisfied former attendees.
Registration for the conference was $275, which included two nights in a hotel and kosher meals. But there were various discounts, and an estimated 60 percent of the participants received subsidies.
They came mostly from the New York area but there were groups from Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Toronto, and elsewhere. LimmudFSU was created in 2006 by an unlikely duo in their 60s who are still at the helm. Chaim Chesler, an Israeli who served as treasurer of the Jewish Agency for Israel, has a long history of leadership in the effort to free Soviet Jewry. Sandra (Sandy) Cahn, a New York philanthropist, serves on a variety of boards, including UJA-Federation of New York and the American-Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. Chesler is the sometimes brash Israeli and Cahn is the sophisticated New Yorker; together they are a formidable pair, raising funds for and extolling the virtues of LimmudFSU as an invaluable vehicle for sparking and sustaining Jewish identity among a large and Jewishly-vulnerable population here and around the world.
Some critics complain about Chesler and Cahn’s relentless promotion for their conferences and imply that they profit unduly from their efforts; others, though, credit the pair for their commitment and drive, and dismiss the complaints as motivated by jealousy over LimmudFSU’s success in attracting large numbers of funders as well as participants to annual conferences that have been held in Russia, Ukraine, Moldova and Belarus as well as in Israel, the U.S. and Canada.
Mikhail Chlenov, a wealthy Russian businessman and Jewish leader, helped found the group, and Matthew Bronfman has been chair almost since the outset (and participated this year on crutches after a recent ski accident).
At this conference LimmudFSU announced a new dean and partner in Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, who founded and heads the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, which raises more than $100 million a year in donations from Christians for Israel and Jewish causes. Sources say Rabbi Eckstein’s group is now the chief supporter of LimmudFSU, which he attended for the first time.
Based on this most recent conference, the formula of creating a comfortable environment for social and professional networking as well as Jewish exploration seems to be working.
Misha Britan and Gregory Magashak, local partners in Qbix, a social mobility networking app they created for organizations, said they enjoyed the sessions on innovation, this year’s conference theme. And Boris Nekatlov, a law school graduate from the Bukharian community in Queens, said he appreciated the conference because one could be observant or not, and “there were so many [program] choices.”
Esther Lamm of RAJE said she loves the idea of LimmudFSU “bringing the community together.” Her father was a Refusenik in her native Lvov — she and her family came to the U.S. when she was 7 — and she remembers hearing of the famous Soviet Jewry March on Washington in December 1987, which drew 250,000 protestors.
“It touched me deeply,” she said, “and it’s important to remember that we are still one family, one nation.”
Gary@jewishweek.org
Gary Rosenblatt has been the editor and publisher of The Jewish Week for 20 years and has written more than 1,000 "Between The Lines" columns since 1993. Now a collection of 80 of those columns, ranging from Mideast analysis to childhood remembrances as "the Jewish rabbi's son" in Annapolis, Md., is available. Click here for details.
NEWS and FEATURES
The Guardian Angels patrol in Brooklyn after string of "knockout attacks." Adam Dickter
Despite 'Knockouts,' Anti-Semitism Down
Overall numbers follow long trend, but rise in city assaults 'disturbing.'
Steve Lipman - Staff Writer
The Anti-Defamation League this week reported that anti-Semitic incidents are continuing a decade-long decrease.According to the ADL’s “Audit of Anti-Semitic Incidents,” a total of 751 incidents — including assault, vandalism and harassment — that targeted Jews and Jewish property were reported in 2013 to the ADL or law enforcement officials. That figure is a 19 percent drop from the 2012 total of 927. The intensity of anti-Semitic acts has also declined, according to the study.
The number of anti-Semitic incidents in New York State similarly fell during the same period, by 18 percent, from 248 to 203, according to the study.
“The falling number of incidents targeting Jews is another indication of just how far we have come in finding full acceptance in society, and it is a reflection of how much progress our country has made in shunning bigotry and hatred,” said Abraham Foxman, ADL’s national director, in a news release.
The total decrease in reported incidents took place despite the spate of so-called knockout attacks that began last year in several U.S. urban areas, most notably New York City, against mostly Jewish targets. In this so-called “knockout game,” perpetrators post videos of their attacks online, which the ADL believes fuels further assaults.
The latest assault came on March 25 when a 65-year-old Orthodox man from England was attacked after leaving a wedding reception on the outskirts of Borough Park in Brooklyn. The victim was grabbed by the head, his face smashed into the pavement; he was treated in the hospital for a busted lip and chipped tooth.
Of 22 anti-Semitic assaults reported in New York City last year, seven by categorized by the ADL study as knockout attacks.
Evan R. Bernstein, ADL’s New York regional director, said in the release that the increase in anti-Semitic assaults in New York City and Brooklyn in particular is “both disturbing and a sobering reminder that anti-Semitism is not just history but remains a current event.”
Gregg Mashberg, ADL New York’s regional board chair, said in the release that while the knockout attacks were “deeply troubling, particularly because visibly identifiable Jews were among the primary targets” the “vigorous response by law enforcement and the community to stop and address these attacks was commendable.”
The number of anti-Semitic incidents in regions of Greater New York in 2013 were as follows: Brooklyn, 64; Manhattan, 43, Queens, 13, Bronx, 5; Staten Island, 8; Nassau County, 26; Suffolk County, 26; Westchester, Rockland County and Upstate, 8.
The ADL said one reason for the national decrease last year was — despite the rise in BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) activity — “a relatively quiet year for anti-Israel activity in the public sphere” compared with previous years when “military conflicts involving Israel … spurred hundreds of demonstrations in major cities across the U.S. that sometimes featured blatantly anti-Semitic slogans, signs and rhetoric.”
steve@jewishweek.org
Food and Wine
Mexican Gefilte Fish?!
Talking Jewish diaspora cooking at the 92nd Street Y.
Lauran Rothman - Food and Wine Editor
Persian “matzah ball” soup made with chickpea-flour dumplings. Tender smoked brisket. Gefilte fish “a la Mexicana” in a bright-red, chile-laced sauce. These are just a few examples of the startling diversity of cooking in the Jewish diaspora, the subject of discussion at a lively talk held at Manhattan's 92nd Street Y last night.At “More Than Matzah Balls: Food and Cooking in Jewish Culture,” Joan Nathan, the cookbook author and Jewish recipe maven, spoke with three chefs from very different walks of life: Pati Jinich, the host of TV show “Pati’s Mexican Table” and a Mexican native; Louisa Shafia, author of the cookbook “The New Persian Kitchen” and the daughter of an Iranian Muslim and a Jew from Philadelphia; and Ari White, a Texan whose Eastern European family has been smoking Texas-style barbecue for three generations.
In the course of an hour-long conversation, each chef introduced herself and talked a little bit about her family history.
“People won’t believe that there is Mexican Jewish cooking,” said Jinich, whose Austrian and Polish grandparents fled European anti-Semitism to settle in Mexico. Growing up, she said, the Mexican-Ashkenazi fusion food cooked in her home seemed natural to her, and she never realized that such cuisine was really a union of two distinct styles. Each Friday night, Jinich’s grandmother prepared two types of gefilte fish for Shabbat dinner: the traditional European white version, as well as the aforementioned Mexican variation, which was served warm in a spicy tomato sauce; gribenes were eaten on griddled corn tortillas.
“That’s a real treat in Mexico,” Jinich said.
Just across the border from Jinich—and around the same time—another exiled Eastern European Jewish family was busy adapting its native recipes to a new locale. Ari White, who has made a successful pop-up kosher food business, The Wandering ‘Que, out of his family’s barbecue recipes, grew up in the border town of El Paso, where his family settled in 1910. White is third in a line of male smokers: his grandfather, accustomed to eating the smoked and cured meats of his homeland, began using Texas-style wood-fired smokers to cook everything from brisket to turkey to lamb, and flavored his dishes with the fiery rubs and sweet sauces used by native Texans. Later, White’s father continued the tradition.
“A holiday was defined by my father standing outside, tending his smoker,” White said.
Over on the east coast, Louisa Shafia grew up in a hybrid household. Her Iranian father, longing for the Persian dishes of his former life, schooled her Philly-born Jewish mother on all the classics: colorful, flavorful legume-heavy stews and pilafs enlivened by fruits such as molasses and fresh herbs such as dill and mint. But on the high holidays, Shafia’s mother whipped up all the Ashkenazi classics. In Shafia’s world, Persian food and Jewish food were totally distinct, and it wasn’t until researching her cookbook that she discovered a rich tradition of Iranian Judaism which relied on staple foods such as the aforementioned “matzah ball” soup.
“I literally didn’t know that there were Iranian Jews when I was growing up,” Shafia recalled.
Naturally, at an event taking place so close to Passover, the conversation eventually turned towards the seder table. After each chef shared her favorite holiday treat, Nathan explained what would be gracing her own table, and her choice echoed the diversity of flavors explored over the course of the evening.
“Five kinds of charoset,” she said. “To represent each corner of the Jewish diaspora.”
Travel - Barcelona
Gaudi's Casa Mila, the most famous of the "cut-corners" buildings in Cerda's Eixample neighborhood. Wikimedia Commons
Urban Design At Its Best
Hilary Larson - Travel Writer
It’s a pity Ildefons Cerda wasn’t more famous.That was my conclusion as I strolled along the streets of his chef d’oeuvre, the Eixample (ay-SHOM-pla) neighborhood of Barcelona. The Catalan city planner created such a singular masterpiece of urban design that professionals the world over make pilgrimages to this elegant district, drawing inspiration from its sunlit angles and human scale.
Cerda, who created the master plan for the northern “extension” (“eixample”) of Barcelona’s medieval core, was reportedly never paid for his efforts and died a pauper. But his vision endures of a progressive urban alternative to the narrow, dark warrens and choked tenements of the Old City, where sunshine rarely enters.
In Cerda’s Eixample, the streets are just wide enough to feel breathable, but intimate enough that you might wave to neighbors across the block. Facades please the eye with Art Nouveau curlicues and gracious bay windows; sidewalks offer the shade of lush green trees. Most significantly, every intersection features buildings cut on a diagonal to form an octagon, a design that invites light and a feeling of spaciousness into the urban grid.
Cerda’s civic legacy is today the most iconic and fashionable district of a city awash in both icons and fashion. The best-known of the architectural icons are smack in the heart of the Eixample: two buildings by the famed architect Antonio Gaudi, Casa Battló and Casa Mila, whose fanciful, undulating exteriors grace prominent blocks along the boulevard Passeig de Gracia.
These are the most obvious of the Eixample’s attractions. But as a good day of strolling reveals, the Eixample has plenty more treasures in store. Amid the graceful blocks named for Mediterranean cities — Corsica, Naples, Valencia — you can slip into the rhythm of modern Barcelona while savoring its vintage charms.
And while the medieval zone, with its antique synagogue and museum, is home to Barcelona’s historic Jewish quarter, uptown is the center of gravity for modern Jewish life — an eclectic, fluctuating community of Latin American expats, Sephardim from around the Mediterranean rim, and visiting Jews from America, Israel and beyond.
A second kosher restaurant, Kosher Club, recently opened on Carrer Diputació in the Right Eixample (the Eixample is charmingly divided into “right” and left” zones, corresponding to east and west). Many of the patrons are reportedly Israelis who fly in to catch a game of the fabled Barcelona soccer team. Until now, the only kosher eatery has been the airy, chic dining room at the glatt kosher Delicias, which is uptown in the Sant Gervasi district; now kosher diners have a more centrally located option.
I met a friend for café con leche at the Velodromo, a stylish café at the Eixample’s northern edge. Velodromo is a favorite not for its menu, which is standard and unexciting, but for its vintage Art Deco ambiance: light streams in through the double-height windows as bowtied waiters scurry with trays of Spanish tortillas.
Strolling down Carrer Muntaner, my next stop was a newer addition to the Eixample food scene. Cremeria Toscana, on a particularly picturesque corner, is an Italian-owned artisanal gelateria whose flavors— amarone and fig, for instance — epitomize the local bent toward fresh fare.
I continued along Aribau, a major thoroughfare of the Left Eixample and the unofficial center for Barcelona’s gay scene. Although I’ve heard the zone referred to over the years as “the Gay-xample,” apart from a few hotels and bars sporting the rainbow flag, the district never struck me as being particularly gay. After dark, Aribau throbs with the beat of bars and dance clubs, where students crowd into tiny parlors to drink beer, and flamenco guitarists take turns at open mikes.
But the Eixample is not just about consumption. All along Consell de Cent Street are upscale galleries reminiscent of those in Manhattan’s East 70s. If you tire, as I do, of the predictable array of Picasso and Miró in Barcelona’s touristy museums, these more refined spaces offer a refreshing rotation of first-rate art.
Whether you like the art inside the Fundació Antoni Tapies, on Arago Street, depends on your appetite for the avant-garde. Tapies was a beloved artist, writer and Catalan nationalist who died two years ago; his own production is, for me, eclectic and somewhat forgettable. But the building — with its bird’s-nest facade and glorious roof deck — is worth a visit in itself, as are the frequent concerts of so-called new music, a bargain at just seven euros.
In the wry, experimental spirit of Tapies, the current exhibition is a retrospective of the American-Jewish artist Allan Kaprow, who coined the noun “happening” a generation ago. Kaprow’s legacy — drawings, assemblages and social provocations — feels right at home in Barcelona, a quirky city where artistic happenings are apt to break out in plazas.
Back on the Passeig de Gracia, plenty was happening. A mime in head-to-toe silver paint was entertaining a crowd of Japanese tourists. A limousine pulled up in front of Santa Eulalia, a very tony ladies’ boutique, and let out a half-dozen Middle Eastern women in full religious garb. From around a corner, a small crowd of protesters emerged whistling, clapping and waving signs against healthcare cuts.
Kaprow would have been proud. So, surely, would have Ildefons Cerda.
editor@jewishweek.org
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