Dear Reader,
The saga continues. A leading Teaneck rabbi compared The Jewish Week to Nazi newspaper Der Strumer, and now that rabbi has been publicly rebuked by the RCA.
Rabbi Rebuked For ‘Nazi’ Reference
RCA says Teaneck leader's use of ‘Der Sturmer’ to criticize The Jewish Week ‘crosses the line of decency.’
Staff Report
Rabbi Leonard Matanky, right, president of the Rabbinical Council of America, and Rabbi Steven Pruzansky.
The president of the Rabbinical Council of America this week issued a rebuke to a colleague for making comments that appeared to compare The Jewish Week to Der Sturmer, the official and virulently anti-Semitic Nazi newspaper.
Rabbi Leonard Matanky of Chicago, president of the major Orthodox rabbinic group in the U.S., spoke out against comments written by Rabbi Steven Pruzansky, a member of the organization’s executive committee and rabbi of the 800-member Congregation Bnai Yeshurun, the largest Orthodox synagogue in Teaneck, N.J.,
In an interview with The Jewish Week, Rabbi Matanky said: “I am pained that I have to distance myself from a colleague, but the kind of language that Rabbi Pruzansky used is unacceptable and crosses the line of decency and discourse.”
He noted that if a non-Jew had used such language “we would be up in arms. It simply cannot be condoned, especially coming from a rabbi.”
The Nazi reference appeared in a personal blog by Rabbi Pruzansky that took strong exception to The Jewish Week’s reporting on his recent decision to step down as head of the Beit Din of the Rabbinical Council of Bergen County, N.J. He said his move was not prompted by the fact that women were appointed to a new RCA committee to oversee the group’s conversion process and that he had made his decision before the composition of the committee was known.
The Jewish Week article quoted from Rabbi Pruzansky’s blog — he declined to be interviewed — which said “the committee consists of six men and five women, bolstering the trend on the Orthodox left to create quasi-rabbinical functions for women.” He questioned whether there is “a role for women to play” in reviewing the conversion process, which he described as “a purely rabbinical role.”
In an updated post, the rabbi insisted that his decision was not based on women being on the committee but rather on the likelihood that it will “water down the standards” for conversion.
The committee was formed in the wake of the arrest last month of Rabbi Barry Freundel in Washington, D.C., charged with videotaping women undressing to use the mikvah.
Rabbi Pruzansky also was upset that a phrase in The Jewish Week story said he “shared the company” of Rabbi Freundel on the RCA executive committee. He felt it implied that he was “somehow … connected to the alleged malfeasance in D.C.”
The phrase was not intended to suggest that Rabbi Pruzansky was personally involved in the scandal. While The Jewish Week apologized for the phrase in an Editorial last week, it also pointed out that Rabbi Freundel and Rabbi Pruzansky were politically aligned in an unprecedented effort to challenge the RCA’s slate of officers in an off-year election in 2012. They called for the group to resist more open approaches to Orthodoxy. In a bitterly contested election, Rabbi Pruzansky was the only one of the 16 challengers to win a slot; he was elected to the executive committee, where he now serves.
Rabbi Pruzansky, on a subsequent blog entry entitled “Gary Rosenblatt Lies. Now He Should Apologize,” personalized his attack on The Jewish Week editor and publisher, quoting an anonymous “astute observer” who charged that the publisher “never met a feminist, especially an ‘Orthodox’ one, he hasn’t tripped over his shoes running to worship. Likewise, he’s never met an Orthodox rabbi, especially ones that ignore him, that he hasn’t tried to vilify.”
(Rosenblatt is the son and grandson of Orthodox rabbis and a member of an Orthodox synagogue.)
Rabbi Pruzansky wrote of The Jewish Week: “They should apologize. But, I guess, to follow their way of reporting, both The Jewish Week’s publisher and Julius Streicher [Der Sturmer] published newspapers that dealt a lot with Jews. Same business, I suppose. That’s bad company to be in.”
After a request from RCA leadership, Rabbi Pruzansky removed the “Nazi” paragraph from the blog (though he did not note the change at the time) and insisted he did not mean to compare The Jewish Week to Der Sturmer. “Heaven forefend,” he wrote. “There is no comparison.”
In a third entry on the subject, posted Tuesday and entitled “The Last Word: Gary Rosenblatt Still Lies,” Rabbi Pruzansky said he used an allusion to the Holocaust only to show the flaws in The Jewish Week’s journalism, not to call The Jewish Week a Nazi paper.
“[A]llow me to state unequivocally that Gary Rosenblatt is not a Nazi, and the Jewish Week is not Der Sturmer,” he wrote. “The Jewish Week is adept at a modern form of yellow journalism, in which the use of commonality as comparison is rampant, in which lies are wantonly published and in which targets – especially Orthodox Rabbis, Orthodox Jews and the Holy Torah – are routinely assailed.”
Rabbi Matanky declined to engage in the particulars of the controversy. “This is not an issue about a disagreement or freedom of the press or who got the story right,” he said. “It’s about a rabbi’s use of rhetoric and language that crossed the line of decency.”
Rabbi Pruzansky, in his 20th year at Bnai Yeshurun, is no stranger to controversy. He is widely admired by many of his congregants as bright, learned, articulate, witty, firm in his convictions and a caring pastoral leader. But he is also known for his sharp tongue and strongly held opinions, with little tolerance for those who disagree with him.
RCA members appear divided on Rabbi Pruzansky, with some calling for his removal from the executive committee. Critics maintain that he is in violation of the RCA’s own statement on ethical conduct: “We will do our utmost to ensure that Orthodox organizations gain a reputation for ‘menchlichkeit’ [humanity] and strict adherence to moral and ethical standards that we espouse in our learning and our teaching.”
Others support the rabbi’s viewpoints, if not his language and style.
In a letter to his rabbinic colleagues last Thursday, Rabbi Matanky made reference to the controversy and wrote: “I implore all of our members that as role models of Torah behavior we must always adhere to the rabbinic dictum of ‘chachamim hizaharu bidivreichem’ [wise men, be careful with your words]. This is even more important at this unfortunate time when the kavod [honor] of our profession has been tarnished and rabbis find themselves under ever-increasing scrutiny.”
Amy Sara Clark and Gary Rosenblatt contributed to this report.
Another public figure who played the Nazi card recently is pop star Nicki Minaj. Her latest video played heavily on Nazi themes. From one of our writers, a piece on why Nicki's video broke her heart.
Nazi-themed 'Only' video is painful, for more reasons than just the obvious.
Maya Klausner
A still from Nicki Minaj's video for her latest single, "Only." via YouTube
Yes, rap superstar Nicki Minaj did a full twitter mea culpa for her Nazi-themed music video released last week on Kristallnacht's anniversary. But it's going to take more than a few tweets to get past it. Here are just seven of the many reasons why:
1. Nazis Were Not Very Nice
I don’t know if everyone is aware of this, but the Nazis were not known for their expansive warmth. As one Mensa candidate so incisively pointed out in her Twitter response to the video:
“The Holocaust was bad. Some people died!”
Truth girl.
I have never so much as squished a ladybug and I barely have 400 followers on Instagram. The Nazis have their own music video. The implied message is not very encouraging. (My handle is CruelladeKlaus by the way).
This is not to say preserving the knowledge of harrowing events is insignificant. On the contrary, recalling history’s horrors is paramount to ensuring such evil does not repeat itself. However, this video does not even feign an attempt at achieving that.
True, they are not exactly swastikas, but when an asterisk replaces a letter in a curse word, no one is baffled. Furthermore, at no point does the video provide any contextual aid that might enlighten viewers. Rather, the bizarre and egregious imagery is the unexplained décor in Minaj’s musical house of horrors.
2. I Really Liked Twerking To Anaconda
As a white, mostly awkward female, who nine times out of 10 opts for the Carlton Banks dance at parties over more salacious maneuvers, I don’t find many songs that ignite the twerk-worthy engine in me. Anaconda, which has tacitly come to be known as the twerk anthem, was one of these songs.
Now that I have this unshakeable association of the Harujuku Barbie (one of Minaj’s many alter-egos) with such an acute and indefensible lack of awareness, my twerking days are numbered.
3. The lyrics are abysmal
I mean this on a purely artistic level. Leave morality out of it. (Which seems to work for her anyway). Oh snap.
As a fan of hip-hop, an admirer of rap and a general logophile, I tip my hat to the talented artists who were clearly born to spit rhymes. Nas, Biggy, Wu Tang Clan, Eminem, Jay-Z, Tupac are all hip-hop poets worthy of entering into the rap anthology Hall of Fame.
But Minaj appears to have fallen asleep at the lyrical wheel with banal lines like “We had come from that video/You know L.A. traffic, how the city slow”. L.A. has a lot of traffic eh? Not impressed.
The rest of the song is riddled with tireless, repetitive profanities. There is no substance to these obscenities, but instead what I imagine might leak from the mouth of a drunken sailor who tripped over his pegleg in the middle of the night.
4. The Imagery Is Never Once Referenced
The video’s director, Jeffrey Osbourne, stepped into the light today releasing a statement “admitting” the video uses Nazi-inspired imagery. First off, this admission is about as honorable and revelatory as me admitting I have a neck.
Second, his defense includes that “it’s actually important to remind younger generations of atrocities that occurred in the past as ways to prevent them from happening in the future,” as quoted by Rolling Stone. I couldn’t have said it better myself Osbourne. Oh wait, I actually did earlier.
However, simply blasting aggressive visuals evocative of a devastating period of history devoid of any instructive context is not enough to send an educational message. The lyrics, insofar as I can tell, are about Minaj fervidly insisting she has never had sexual relations with a list of fellow rappers, (methinks the lady doth protest too much, ahem) without the slightest allusion to the boasted visuals. Also, the images themselves do nothing to betray the horror that occurred, but merely flaunt Nazi symbolism in an edgy, Sin Cityesque, animated style. Cartoons don’t grant artistic immunity buster.
5. Drake Betrayed Us
This one really gets me in the kishkes. Drake, my friend, my bar-mitzvahed golden kid, my hip hop Sammy Davis Jr., Why? What made you think this was a good idea? My heart hurts.
And I can’t even twerk to comfort myself.
6. I Used To Enjoy Cupcakes
I’m a human being, ergo I love cupcakes. In the words of SNL veterans, Chris Parnell and Andy Samberg, cupcakes are “crazy delicious.” They are moist, cylindrical, icing coated, bits of heaven. But now, thanks to “Only”, the once innocent, magical dessert, calls to mind a most unsavory act, evoked by the explicit simile in the first verse. For this, I will never forgive you Minaj. Shame on thee.
7. Nicki Doesn’t Value Other People’s Time
At one point in the song we learn that Nicki is also inconsiderate of other people’s schedules. As illustrated in her line, “When I walk in, sit up straight, I don’t give a (insert foul word here), if I was late.”
All I’m saying is send a text that you’re running behind.
Very unprofessional Minaj, and more so, uncool.
And from Rabbi David Wolpe, a Shabbos reminder that no less a figure than David knew he was subject to a law greater than kings.
Rabbi David Wolpe
Special To The Jewish Week
Rabbi David Wolpe
As king, David has grown satisfied and been blessed. When he sees Batsheba bathing on a roof, he acts as if he is a law unto himself. He summons and sleeps with this woman who belongs to another man. She becomes pregnant, and David cannot induce her patriotic husband, Uriah, to sleep with her when his fellow troops are risking their lives in battle. David arranges to have Uriah killed. It is probably the most cynical act of cruelty in the Bible.
Nathan steps into the silence: “You are the man.”
David recognizes that he is subject to a law greater than kings. He does not attack Nathan, or justify himself. He cries out to God in sorrow and repentance. For all that he has done — and indeed will do — at this crucial moment David’s humbling himself saves his soul.
The Bible is both our family diary, and a treasure house of moral drama. Its wisdom sustained our ancestors and can illuminate our lives.
Rabbi David Wolpe is spiritual leader of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles. Follow his teachings at www.facebook.com/RabbiWolpe.
Shabbat Shalom, everybody
Best,
Helen Chernikoff
Web Director
| The Arts |
Double Vision On IsraelZvi Sahar's 'Salt of the Earth' features puppetry set against shifting pillars of salt.
Sandee Brawarsky
Culture Editor
The puppet at the center of Zvi Sahar’s “Salt of the Earth” is made out of an Israeli combat bag from the 1967 war. Sahar thought that he might make the figure out of stone or olive wood, but when he saw the bag at a Jaffa flea market, he liked it immediately.
“It’s old and starting to crumble; it still has the DNA of a fighter,” he tells The Jewish Week, just before a rehearsal at BAM. He shows where the anonymous soldier kept track of his days, writing the day of the war, the date and the village where he may have slept or passed through. But at the fifth day, the list ends. Sahar doesn’t know what happened to the soldier — he likes to think that he was called home for a birth or some other occasion — but the bag well suits the faceless and nameless narrator of his story, based on Amos Kenan’s 1984 bestselling novel, “The Road to Ein Harod.”
Sahar, an actor, director and puppeteer, is artistic director of PuppetCinema, an Israeli-American company. This is the American premiere of “Salt of the Earth,” which has played in Hebrew in Israel, and it is also Sahar’s debut at BAM.
The live performance combines puppetry, music, voice and filmmaking — a film is being made as it is projected onto a large screen at the front of the theater — to creative and dramatic effect. Here, there is no backstage: Everything that goes on to create the show is visible. While the performers are manipulating the puppet hero onstage, a camera is recording the scene. So the viewer can see the action on the stage as well as the more perfect version — without the puppeteers in view — on screen. It’s a kind of double vision. The puppet is manipulated by one or two performers who infuse it with life, in a style Sahar calls a hybrid of traditional Japanese Bunraku puppetry, in which each puppet is handled by three performers. Sahar is the voice of the narrator, a former soldier trying to reach Kibbutz Ein Harod.
When Sahar’s wife brought him a copy of Kenan’s novel a few years ago, he knew that he wanted to adapt it. The story describes a military coup in Israel, with the protagonist trying to make his way from Tel Aviv, under siege, to Ein Harod, thought to be the last free refuge and, still, some sort of Utopia. Along the violent, sometimes dreamlike trail he meets others — a woman, a military commander, a general, an Arab named Mahmoud, and Liora, a young woman from the kibbutz. The others appear in shadow, silhouette, or as fragments, or, in the case of Liora, as reflection on water.
“The book is a masterpiece,” Sahar says of “The Road to Ein Harod.” “Kenan really caught the essence of Israel and the nation.” He explains that the “Salt of the Earth” is not a political play due to its specific references, but “a political play in a very deep sense.” At one point, the narrator says, “And here I am, fleeing from my country toward my country.”
Kenan was born in Tel Aviv in 1927, served in the 1948 War of Independence and soon after that became a peace activist. He moved to Paris for a bit and worked as a sculptor; he returned to Israel in the 1960s and worked as a journalist and satirist. His daughter Rona, a singer and songwriter, provided some of the musical material used in the production. She sings an old Hebrew folk song, “Night Silence,” referenced in the novel, which becomes the theme song.
Sahar and members of the production team visited Kibbutz Ein Harod and spent nights walking — following the character’s trail — and writing the adaptation.
In every performance of “Salt of the Earth,” the sets on which the actions take place are built and then destroyed, before the audience. Like the Buddhist monks who create intricate and beautiful designs from grains of sand and then, as they finish them, destroy them, the performers on the BAM stage form desert landscapes and then replace them with urban streets and then other scenes. They work not with sand, but salt — 1,000 pounds of the white grains — and use special brooms to move the piles of industrial-grade salt around.
When I visited the theater before a rehearsal, the salt was stored along the sides of the black stage in five-gallon white buckets. The miniature trees, benches, buildings and cars that will fill the landscapes are also inside the buckets, and will convey the tragic cycle of war. The salt intensifies the wounds and also has powers of healing.
As she describes the many layers of the production, Leslie Strongwater, U.S. producer of PuppetCinema, notes that it is technically complex, “but our whole philosophy is storytelling, simple.” She says that the film, being shot in the moment, “is like a live movie without the record button being pressed.”
“It’s risky,” Sahar adds. “Each time it’s a bit different.”
“I try to use the best of each genre,” he says. “The cinema can give us a beautiful closeup. The puppet can be strong and vulnerable on stage.
“Puppets can tell the stories in a better way sometimes from what we can do. They’re made of material, and we don’t see ourselves as material,” he says. “With a puppet, you have a bit of distance from the character. You can load it with everything you have.”
In an interview, Michael Vaknin and Yuval Fingerman, who manipulate the narrator puppet, with each controlling a different side, speak of the need to synchronize their efforts. “We have to bring the feeling of the text to him,” Vaknin says. To watch them up close-up in rehearsal — to see the narrator crawl painfully along the floor — is to witness uncommon choreography.
During his IDF service, Sahar was a tour guide in Jerusalem, guiding soldiers through the Old City’s streets and centuries of history. After working full-time as an actor in prominent Israeli theater for about seven years, he realized that he wanted to be responsible for more than just the part he was playing. He came to New York City and worked at St. Ann’s Warehouse and found the puppetry community very welcoming. He founded PuppetCinema in Israel in 2009.
“The only thing that really stays here is the earth and the salt,” he says, adding that the salt eats away at their props.
He thinks of the performance as optimistic, but declines to say more about the meaning. “If I was a message artist, I would have Facebooked,” he says. “I’m giving you an experience.”
“Salt of the Earth,” part of BAM’s Next Wave Festival, plays at BAM’s Fisher Hall, 321 Ashland St., Brooklyn, through Saturday, Nov. 1. Bam.org. $20.
 
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THE POLITICAL INSIDER | THE ROSENBLOG | THE NEW NORMAL | A COMIC'S JOURNEY | WELL VERSED
THE NEW NORMAL
What's The Deal With Seinfeld's Self-Diagnosis?
Rabbi Rebecca Schorr
Rabbi Rebecca Schorr
Last week, I shared with journalist, Renee Ghert-Zand of the Times of Israel my main concern: how might a self-diagnosis by a public personality might negatively affect those who struggle to have their autism understood by society.
Seinfeld revealed to NBC's Brian Williams that he often has difficulty picking up on social cues and that he is a very literal person. However, he views these behaviors simply as a different mindset rather than being a dysfunction. In fact, he stated that he doesn't believe that "being on the autism spectrum as a disability."
But here’s the problem: for thousands and thousands of individuals, the manifestations of their autism are a disability. Autism is a complex neurodevelopmental disorder that, by definition, impacts myriad aspects of one’s life. Our son, Ben, is now fourteen-years-old. He has a diagnosis of what used to be called Asperger’s Syndrome, but since the publication of the DSM-V, is now considered to have an Autism Spectrum Disorder. Regardless of what it is called, Ben has a number of deficits that routinely affect his daily life including his ability to establish and maintain normative relationships with his peers.
In short, Ben’s autism is a disability. To insist otherwise would invalidate the ongoing frustrations and struggle he faces each day as he makes his way into the world. He would be the first to admit that his “autism is not an excuse but it sure does make everything harder for [him] than for normal kids.”
There is a saying that if you know one person with autism, you know one person with autism. Ben’s autism doesn’t look like other people’s autism and, therefore, it would be wrong to assume that Jerry Seinfeld doesn’t have autism based solely on the fact that he is able to function so much more efficiently than my son.
To receive a diagnosis of having an Autism Spectrum Disorder, an individual must meet the criteria (http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/hcp-dsm.html) as determined by the American Psychiatric Association. One can exhibit what many would consider “asperger-like” behaviors and not actually be on the autism spectrum. Autism is not just about those behaviors; it is how much said behaviors impact one’s life. In other words, sometimes a quirky person is just that -- a quirky person.
If Mr. Seinfeld does truly believe that he is on the spectrum, I encourage him to seek a diagnosis and learn more about autism. Such research can serve to contextualize his relationships with others and how autism affects the way he experiences the world around him. In doing so, he will have the support of the entire autism community. If, however, his announcement was merely to garner attention for a quirky comedian, I urge him to consider the potential difficulties now faced by those who will never be the “successful autism” human interest story the media loves. It is challenging enough for individuals on the autism spectrum to have their diagnosis understood and taken seriously; I can only hope that Seinfeld’s announcement, in the absence of a diagnosis by a medical professional, will lead to his own self-understanding.
Rabbi Rebecca Einstein Schorr is a CLAL Rabbis Without Borders Fellow whose work appears regularly on the Rabbis Without Borders blog and Kveller.com as well as a variety of other online sites. Writing at This Messy Life (www.rebeccaeinsteinschorr.com), Rebecca finds meaning in the sacred and not-yet-sacred intersections of daily life. Follow her on Twitter @rebeccaschorr.
____________________________
WELL VERSED
Tale From The Italian Resistance
Gloria Kestenbaum
Courtesy Berkley Books
“The Garden of Letters” is the story of a young cello student, Elodie Bertoletti –- picture Audrey Hepburn in “Love in the Afternoon” –- who gets caught up in the Italian Resistance during WWII. There’s been much written and filmed about the French and Polish Resistance but this is my first introduction to the heroes and heroines of the Italian cause.Although the resistance is at the story’s core, various subplots run through the book. As the characters move back and forth in time and place, from Venice in the 20s to Portofino in the 30s to Verona in the 40s, with a nod to the disastrous Italo-Ethiopian War in the mid-30s, each personality is given an in-depth history, and background. If at times, some of the creations don’t sufficiently come to life, many of them do leave an indelible impression on the reader.
Elodie’s life as a cellist, both before and during her participation in the anti-Fascist campaign, is painstakingly well-researched, but I found this heroine less compelling and fully-written than some of the other characters, such as her parents and Angelo, the Veronese doctor who rescues her as the book begins. And although titled “The Garden of Letters,” based on another history running through the novel, the book might be better named after the musical notes that Elodie pursues, both in her playing and in her underground activities.
As the author explains in an explicatory coda, many of the characters are based on real-life historical figures. Luca, a bookseller and Elodie’s first love, who hides weapons and codes inside his books, was inspired by the original owner of an extant bookstore in Venice. Many of the other Resistance characters are based on documented histories, as well. Although this is not primarily the story of the Italian-Jewish experience during the War, Jewish characters abound, from Jewish Resistance fighters who worked alongside their Italian confreres to peripheral characters whose sudden absence or removal to unknown destinations is duly recorded.
By and large, the novel is engaging and enlightening on a subject not often depicted. If occasionally I found the dialogue somewhat overblown and falsely dramatic, especially between the various young lovers, perhaps you can put that down to my middle-aged insensibility.
Gloria Kestenbaum is a corporate communications consultant and freelance writer.
| Food & Wine |
A Recipe For Nostalgia, And AmbivalenceWhether you're newly arrived or a veteran citizen, reading 'Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking' makes sense on Thanksgiving.
Helen Chernikoff
Web Editor
Almost 40 years ago, just in time for the holidays, the young Anya von Bremzen and her refusenik mother Larisa Frumkin stepped onto American soil. The experience fell far short of any émigré fantasy, but became fodder for a high-flown food career and a book, “Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking” (Crown), published earlier this fall. Even today, von Bremzen remembers the hardships and weird pleasures of that first Chanukah and Thanksgiving in the Philadelphia suburbs.
She was happy with Chanukah gelt and a menorah, gifts from their American Jewish sponsors, but relentlessly begged her mother to carry on a beloved, secular New Year’s custom in the Soviet Union, basically a Christmas tree. Despite her fear that their sponsors would glimpse the tree and misunderstand, Larisa yielded; 11-year-old von Bremzen proceeded to make tree ornaments out of the foil-wrapped Chanukah chocolates.
Thanksgiving was even more tortured. Von Bremzen and Frumkin were living in a threadbare apartment, sleeping on a mattress they’d found on the curb, when Frumkin realized the rest of the country was caught up in a festival involving a huge roasted bird. She took herself off to Pathmark and brought home a frozen turkey that she had no idea how to cook, and that never fully thawed before she gave up the attempt.
“We were just sitting, sitting, sitting,” von Bremzen, now 50, told The Jewish Week in her Forest Hills apartment, with Frumkin at her side and homemade delicacies in the spirit of the new book on her table. “It was depressing. I don’t think we really knew what Thanksgiving was, but we knew it was a celebration, and there we were in our empty apartment with our garbage mattress.”
“Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking” is replete with such memories. Much like the cuisine of its title, culled from the foodways of the 15 former Soviet socialist republics, the book is a hybrid, a stew of national and family history, gastronomy and memoir. Food is the frame: the content proceeds from the 1910s to the 21st century, each chapter a reflection on the events of a period and their effect on the tables of the family and the nation. Except for the 1940s, illustrated with a ration card, an appendix of sorts offers a recipe per decade, such as kulebiaka, a decadent fish pastry beloved by pre-revolution aristocrats, and the gooey “Russian Salad” of mayonnaise, potatoes and canned peas ubiquitous in the stagnating Soviet state of the 1970s.
In some ways, von Bremzen and Frumkin’s tale is typical of that of their fellow émigrés. Readers of “When They Come For Us, We’ll Be Gone,” Gal Beckerman’s account of the struggle behind and beyond the Iron Curtain to secure Soviet Jews’ right to emigrate, will be familiar with what Frumkin had to go through to get herself and her daughter out. The capricious and cruel OVIR, or Office of Visas and Registration, which let some Jews go and blacklisted others; the operatic good-byes and the official limits on luggage all get their mention.
“In the 1970s, under Brezhnev, there was this malignant anti-Semitism throughout the whole society,” von Bremzen said. “The first people who wanted to emigrate were Zionists.”
But von Bremzen and Frumkin were not Zionists. Therein lies their story’s departure from that chronicled in “When They Come For Us, We’ll Be Gone.” Most of those heroes huddled in Hebrew classes or labored over samizdat in pursuit of passionate interest in either Israel or Judaism or both. Von Bremzen and Frumkin were not in those circles; rather, “Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking” gives the flavor of life for those many Soviet Jews who enjoyed professional success, education and relative material comfort. They were ignorant of their ancestors’ religion, and indifferent to their ignorance.
“There was no Judaism anymore. It was an ethno-national category,” von Bremzen said. “We had no idea what Jewish religion really entailed. Some old people read the Talmud and ate matzah hidden in a basket.”
Von Bremzen’s father, to whom her mother was married for decades, although they cohabited briefly and sporadically, wasn’t Jewish and didn’t accompany them to the United States. His ancestors, von Bremzen writes, were German aristocrats who married Caspian merchants’ daughters.
Her maternal grandfather, Naum Frumkin, enjoyed special status that contributed much to the family’s comfortable position in Soviet society. A dashing Soviet spy, he climbed the ranks to Baltic intelligence chief despite his ethno-national category. His exploits included a narrow escape from Tallinn, Estonia, during the Nazi invasion and the ability to obtain delicacies like chocolate and caviar during wartime. A phone call from him to a crony enabled Von Bremzen to attend a state school for the party elite where she ate well. She also later worked as a child actor in the Soviet film industry and became a gifted pianist. She studied at The Juilliard School here and contemplated a musical career.
Then again, both Frumkin and her mother, the blonde and Russian-looking Liza, refused to camouflage their Jewishness. Frumkin refused to back down, von Bremzen said, even when she was called yevreechka, the female equivalent of “kike” in the communal kitchen the pair shared with 17 other families for years.
“I wouldn’t give up my Jewishness for anything else,” Frumkin, 79, said between bites of her Soviet minced patties, kotleti, with Georgian cranberry relish, and devilled eggs topped with salmon caviar. “But when Anya was growing up, she could choose, because her father was Russian and I was Jewish. I was thinking very intensely that when she chooses Russian it will be easier for her life, but she will betray me, and if she chooses Jewish I would be ok but there would be many obstacles in her way. It was one of the many reasons we left.”
For the younger and then the older von Bremzen, food became a kind of replacement religion. As a child, she turned the sweets distributed at her fancy kindergarten into totems, stashing them inside her underwear bag. As a young immigrant, she despaired of the industrial comestibles, like the Pop-Tarts that her mother didn’t know to toast, that dominated American supermarket shelves in the 1970s. Later, the memory of her dense native bread would trigger waves of nostalgia.
“Inevitably, a story of Soviet food is a chronicle of longing, of unrequited desire,” she writes in one of the book’s central sentences.
And as an adult, she found a way to sublimate that desire. When a wrist injury ended her piano career in the late-’80s, she picked up work translating an Italian cookbook into English, and enjoyed it. (She’d picked up Italian on her way from Moscow to Philadelphia.) The thought occurred to von Bremzen that the Soviet Union, by then on its way to becoming what’s known today as the FSU, was much in the news and that she could combine her knowledge of the language and land and the cooking skills she’d picked up from her mother into a book about Soviet cuisine across all 11 of its time zones. The result, written with her boyfriend at the time, was “Please to the Table: The Russian Cookbook,” which won a James Beard Award in 1991.
She’s since won two more Beard Awards, writes regularly for the glossiest of food mags, like Saveur, and is a contributing editor at Travel + Leisure magazine.
But because of the culinary contrast between her past and present, she struggles with a feeling of cognitive dissonance. She can never forget that she’s the product of a state that used food, or the lack of it, as a weapon and a propaganda tool. It was that confusing feeling, she says, that inspired her latest book.
“What would be the point of confessing my constant feeling of inhabiting two parallel food universes: one where degustation menus at places like Per Se or Noma are routine; the other where a simple banana — a once-a-year treat back in the USSR — still holds an almost talismanic sway over my psyche?” she writes. “The stories I’ve kept to myself are the stuff of this book. Ultimately, they’re why I really write about food.”
Yet today, von Bremzen and her émigré friends have cause to long for the FSU, even now that the quality of American bread has improved and they know how to celebrate Thanksgiving. Frumkin’s kotleti, the recipe for which can be found here, is their version of roasted turkey. The Georgian cranberry sauce (you can find that recipe here) stands in for the supermarket version that used to disconcertingly retain the shape of the can. The kotleti, out of whose juicy middle butter drips, is far from kosher, although they can easily be made so.
Chanukah still doesn’t loom very large on her friends’ calendars. Maybe that’s part of the reason why neither von Bremzen herself nor “Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking” have become sought after on the synagogue speaking circuit.
Frumkin loves Kol Nidre and lectures on art in local synagogues, but like many Soviet émigrés, Von Bremzen’s is not and has never been a synagogue-centered community. Still, that feeling of connection is something she remembers fondly from her childhood.
“People miss [the FSU] now,” she said. “They miss the sense that everyone was in the same boat. The rewards were very rich. In terms of the food, it was almost an existential experience. The longing and desire and triumph that you invested into simple things gave life this kind of incredible intensity.”
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