Different Slants

© July 2009 by Robert M. Katzman

 

Part 4: Reflections on Delicatessens Past

 The middle of the night…in the middle of the light…as Times Square sizzles all around me.

 There’s an endless Dow Jones moving electric news strip, winding around the corner, black and white and moving too fast.  It’s talking about General Motors closing over one thousand dealerships, and also which horse won which race, someplace, both stories equally important, I guess.

 In the pulsating center of the vortex, I see giant signs for Chase Bank, Target, Budweiser, Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum (isn’t that an English thing?), Shrek, the musical, Ruby Tuesday Restaurant, The Hard Rock Café…..damn neon E-V-E-R-Y-W-H-E-R-E!!!….Red Lobster, Samsung advertising on a towering TV screen, The Amsterdam Theater now showing Mary Poppins!, Walgreen urging all of us to shop at their 64,000 locations nationwide.

 Cars and cabs screeching through the streets, even more giant screens advertising cameras, stocks, TV shows, Toys R Us, McDonald’s, JVC, NASDAQ, Bubba Gump Shrimp Company—and I’m thinking that they must sell a hell of a lot a shrimp to be advertising in Times Square…

 Then, amid all this sound and light, I hear, and then I see a single Yellow Finch chirping while perched high above a traffic signal.  I watch it, fascinated.  A solitary and fragile bird, alone in twinkling chaos.

 Chevrolet has an enormous sign up too, but maybe not for long, and I see some cops lounging in front of a jewelry store, can’t recall their- name, maybe Diamonds R Us or something.  As I trudge past the storefront and glance over at the cops, I see the name plate on one of the guys reflecting the garish colors all around us.

Then I stop, and I look again.  O’Reilly?  No, it can’t be.  Thousands of cops here and I run into the same one twice, miles after the first encounter.  I look up at his face.  Damn! It’s the same guy.  I say his name, like a question:

 “O’ Reilly?”

  (Read on …)

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You may not think of Bob Katzman as shy or modest but there are some things he will not tell you about himself for fear of being too self serving.  This is one of them.

This week, Bob is on the cover of “Chicago Jewish News”.  Inside is a lengthy article about Bob and his writing.  Just click on the picture above to read it.

Mazel tov, Bob!

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© June 2009 by Robert M. Katzman

New York City, however, is NOT a big synagogue, the world’s assumptions not withstanding.  It is a blaze of noise, extremely LOUD noise, color, neon, hustling people, 24-hour traffic, a thousand swearing and suicidal taxi drivers, exotic markets, dozens of ethnicities, and the capitol of In-Your-Face screaming outdoor advertising. 

It has energy, attitude, a sense of individualism and collective identity at the same time. 

So, for example, if three New Yorkers: a Puerto Rican singer, a Ukrainian-Jewish taxi driver and a West African street vendor of trinkets, all found themselves suddenly stranded (God forbid!!!), say, in Nebraska–after their hysterical wailing ceased–all three would undoubtedly see themselves as (culturally superior) New Yorkers before anything else, and then they’d join forces and desperately go hunting for a bus station to get them the hell out of “nowhere”.

Why?

Because to New Yorkers, in my experience, every other place is somewhere they don’t want to be, and NYC is the throbbing, screeching, electric heart of everything worth seeing, hearing or wearing. 

That often repeated line” If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere” (I believe from the great Broadway musical “Annie”) is not correct.  Besides, it better applies to Chicago, a tough enough town.  Because if you can succeed in the arts, or business, or fashion, or writing, or acting or open a killer restaurant in NYC, why in the world (I can just see the stupefied expressions on a million of their faces) would it matter if there were “anywhere else?”   Because to so many striving souls who aspire to be recognized as at the top of their field, success in New York City is the very definition of “success”.

And, honey, if somehow you don’t get that, well then, get your innocent fanny back to Kansas, or Oregon or Oklahoma or whatever softer place you are from, where the standards are lower and the people more forgiving of your averageness.   Mother will comfort you there, but don’t expect to find her in NYC.

What follows is a stream-of-consciousness type of description, mostly, of what it was like for me to walk the streets of Manhattan from 2 a.m. until 7 a.m. when I walked out the door of that fabled, reborn delicatessen.

 

(Read on …)

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© June 2009 by Robert M. Katzman

 

Part 2: In Search of the Succulent Brisket

 

So, in the final few minutes of our brief journey from Newark, New Jersey to New York City, Mark and I delved further into unlikely Jewish territory, after I mentioned the upcoming Bat Mitzvah of my daughter, Sarah Hannah, who coincidentally was born on 9/11/96, since I was telling Mark about her in that place where 9/11 has the most meaning. 

My Illinois Rabbi, Jonathan Magidovitch, tells me (frequently) that there are no coincidences. 

 Who am I to fathom that statement?  But it certainly makes you tend to reflect about things that happen to happen, after the fact.

 We get to talking about the number three in Jewish tradition, mythology and practice.  I think of some and he thinks of some.  This is a game in which there are no winners, but it does make you contemplate on the Jewish fascination with reoccurring numbers which seem to have a pattern, may possibly have something to do with there being so many Members of the Tribe who are CPAs, mathematicians,  or physicists.

 Here is what I recall of that back and forth about “3’s” in our culture. In the event of errors, none of my 1958 Hebrew teachers would be surprised in the slightest:

 1-Forefathers of Judaism: Abraham, Isaac and Jacob

2-Noah’s sons: Shem, Ham and Japheth

3-Custom of leaving three stones on a grave site after visiting someone you loved. Varies sometimes, but not in my family.

4-Division of Jews in Exodus: Kohen, Levi and Israelite.

4-Central prayer of devotion in Jewish life, The Sh’ma is required to be said 3 times a day, if possible.

5-Ways to gain atonement: Repentance, prayer and charity.

6-Divorce (ancient): A man circled his wife three times, repeating three times: I divorce you, etc.

7-There are three daily prayer services in observant communities.

8-Moses was the third sibling in line, after Miriam and Aaron.

9-A Jewish court, a Bet Din, has 3 Judges. (Clever.  Prevents any ties.)

10-A convert to Judaism must dip three times in a Mikva, or ritual bath.

 

There are likely endless more examples than these, but it was fun to try to remember them.  But after the tenth one, we both immediately saw how this “3” thing migrated to other groups:

 Christianity:

1-Three wise men visit Jesus (technically, they were witnessing the birth of a Jewish child, but why quibble?).

2-They left 3 gifts.

3-Jesus rose on the 3^rd day after his crucifixion.

4-Holy Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Ghost

5-Roman Catholic’s central ideas: Faith, Hope and Charity (sounds familiar, doesn’t it?)

 Moslems:

1-Three holy cities: Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem

 

I found all this fascinating.  Seems like we all have good reasons to get along, doesn’t it?

 But then, the bus was pulling into its spot on the curb, right near Grand Central Station. It was close to 1 am.

 As he gathers up his things from the storage area under the bus, and I am wearing my two bandolier-type of traveling devices, I asked Mark for some directions, in the event he had ever heard of this certain place I was looking for.  It was for me, my own personal “Mecca”. 

The famed, but doomed Second Avenue Delicatessen.  America’s best deli.

  (Read on …)

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© May 2009 

 

Part 1: Ethnic Bait, Offered and Taken

 

Twenty-two hours.

 

I had twenty-two hours to be in New York City, without a hotel room, to attend an annual poster convention and to visit an old pleasure I’d thought was gone forever.

 

All I took with me was a kind of narrow, over-the-shoulder, sling-like duffel I’d designed to hold jackets, sweaters, gloves and scarves when I went through the periodic agony of America’s airports so my hands remained free.  It was May, but NYC is by the ocean, so the weather could vary significantly in a day.

 

My silent Korean tailor, Ki Sook, was used to my eccentricities, but never failed to smile when I told her what I wanted her to do for me.  And she always turned over a first-class result about a week later.

 

I also took another customized travel bag made from durable denim that was light-weight with not too many pockets but had a large central space to carry anything from a walking lunch (crusty Italian bread, grapes, cheddar cheese, and a brownie with some personality to it) to convention catalogs. It had good zippers, too.

 

A good strong zipper can keep things that seem to want to be elsewhere, from going there.  A bad zipper can get you into all kinds of trouble.  I’m talking about travel here, no matter what you may be imagining.

 

My wife dropped me at O’Hare Airport, just west of Chicago, kissed me good-bye (yes, after thirty-four years together, kissing is still important) and I went through all one must go through to get on a plane and fly somewhere.  It was 7 pm Saturday night and I’d been up since 7 am.  Twelve hours and counting.

 

Uneventful flight, didn’t chit-chat with my neighbor, read when I should have cat-napped, but I wasn’t tired. The flight was mostly smooth, except for the part where it ran into rain squalls in eastern Pennsylvania and the little express plane kind of hiccupped…every so often. 

 

Wings tipped to the right, then…they tipped to the left.  Then the plane seemed to abruptly drop about a foot.  The wind howled outside my window and the heavy rain splattered insolently against the glass.  The lights flickered, momentarily.  I prayed, momentarily.  You can never be too careful.

 

Like I said, for an American airline, it was an uneventful flight.

 

We landed in Newark, New Jersey at midnight (East-coast time) and I went looking for transportation to Grand Central Station.  A friend told me there was a train now to NYC since I was last there, five years before.  That meant I didn’t have to endure the long, long bus ride from Jersey to Manhattan.  Good.

 

But, as usual, I became confused and meandered around the smallish airport for a little while looking for the “Trains to New York” sign.  A kind soul who must have recognized a wandering Jew when he saw one, directed me to a bus counter and I waited in line.  There were only three people ahead of me and one behind me.

 

                                                                                                                                                             (Read on …)

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My dear friend, Mike Hecht, 90, died this morning.  When I received this message from our Rabbi, this was my reply to him.  It was written eleven days after my previous post on April 30th (my 59th birthday) with Mike in mind.  I handed it to him when I last saw him.  I don’t know if he read it.  I’m going to believe he did.

 

Sometimes, being able to put words on paper to express such pain…is an incredible privilege.

This will certainly end up in my 6th book, about poetry, to be dedicated to Mike when it’s published this Fall.

This is a eulogy I’ll never deliver.

I just can’t do things like that.

Mike Hecht Dies

© May 11^th 2009

Robert M. Katzman

No, Jonathan

You are wrong

 

Mike Hecht’s not dead

 

We can’t see him, but he’s still there

He’s in the mortar of the Temple

He’s the wind blowing through the trees outside your window

He’ll be on the bima

Punching the air every Shabbat

Whenever there’s a blessing

He’ll be flickering in the candles

Whenever you nail a good sermon

Whenever another Jewish child becomes thirteen

and

Thanks his parents

Mike’ll be nodding and smiling

Kvelling that as a people

We will continue

 

And, for me?

 

I’ll still feel his solid weight in my hand

When I gently pushed against his back

As he struggled up the Temple’s stairs

On Friday nights

Grateful to be a part of us

I’ll feel his strong grip in both of our

Two left hands

As he descended those same stairs

Trusting that I would never

Let him fall.

 

I would never let him fall

 

(Read on …)

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