This goes back 2 generations, 3 if you are over 50. It also explains why many Jewish men died in their early 60’s with a non-functional cardiovascular system and looked like today’s men at 89.
Before we start, there are some variations in ingredients because of the various types of Jewish taste (Polack, Litvack, Dutch and Gallicianer).
Just as we Jews have six seasons of the year (winter, spring, summer, autumn, the slack season, and the busy season), we all focus on a main ingredient which, unfortunately and undeservedly, has disappeared from our diet. I’m talking, of course, about SCHMALTZ (chicken fat). SCHMALTZ has, for centuries, been the prime ingred ient in almost every Jewish dish, and I feel it’s time to revive it to its rightful place in our homes. (I have plans to distribute it in a green glass Gucci bottle with a label clearly saying: “low fat, no cholesterol, Newman’s Choice, extra virgin SCHMALTZ.” (It can’t miss!) Then there are grebenes – pieces of chicken skin, deep fried in SCHMALTZ, onions and salt until crispy brown (Jewish bacon). This makes a great appetizer for the next cardiologist’s convention.
There’s also a nice chicken fricassee (stew) using the heart, gorgle (neck), pipick (a great delicacy, given to the favorite child, usually me), a fleegle (wing) or two, some ayelech (little premature eggs) and other various chicken innards, in a broth of SCHMALTZ, water, paprika, etc. We also have knishes (filled dough) and the eternal question, “Will that be liver, beef or potatoes, or all three?”
Other time-tested favorites are kishkeh, and its poor cousin, helzel (chicke n or goose neck). Kishkeh is the gut of the cow, bought by the foot at the Kosher butcher. It is turned inside out, scalded and scraped. One end is sewn up and a mixture of flour, SCHMALTZ, onions, eggs, salt, pepper, etc., is spooned into the open end and squished down until it is full. The other end is sewn and the whole thing is boiled. Yummy!
My personal all-time favorite is watching my Zaida (grandpa) munch on boiled chicken feet.
For our next course we always had chicken soup with pieces of yellow-white, rubbery chicken skin floating in a greasy sea of lokshen (noodles), farfel (broken bits of matzah), tzibbeles (onions), mondlech (soup nuts), kneidlach (dumplings), kasha (groats), kliskelech and marech (marrow bones) .
The main course, as I recall, was either boiled chicken, flanken, kackletten, hockfleish (chopped meat), and sometimes rib steaks, which were served either well done, burned or cremated. Occasionally we had barbecued liver done to a burned and hardened perfection in our own coal furnace.
Since we couldn’t have milk with our meat meals, beverages consisted of cheap soda (Kik, Dominion Dry, seltzer in the spritz bottles).
Growing up Jewish
If you are Jewish, and grew up in city with a large Jewish population, or are gentile with Jewish friends or associates, the following will invoke heartfelt memories.
The Yiddish word for today is PULKES (PUHL-kees). Translation: THIGHS. Please note: this word has been traced back to the language of o ne of the original Tribes of Israel, the Cellulites.
The only good advice that your Jewish mother gave you was: “Go! You might meet somebody!”
You grew up thinking it was normal for someone to shout “Are you okay?” through the bathroom door when you were in there longer than 3 minutes.
Your family dog responded to commands in Yiddish.
Every Saturday morning your father went to the neighbourhood deli (called an “appetitizing store”) for whitefish salad, whitefish “chubs”, lox (nova if you were rich!), herring, corned beef, roast beef, cole slaw, potato salad, a 1/2-dozen huge barrel pickles which you reached into the brine for, a dozen assorted bagels, cream cheese and rye bread (sliced while he waited). All of which would be strictly off-limits until Sunday morning.
Every Sunday afternoon was spent visiting your grandparents and/or other relatives.
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You experienced the phenomenon of 50 people fitting into a 10-foot-wide dining room hitting each other with plastic plates trying to get to a deli tray.
You had at least one female relative who penciled on eyebrows which were always asymmetrical.
You thought pasta was stuff used exclusively for Kugel and kasha with bowties.
You were as tall as your grandmother by the age of seven.
You were as tall as your grandfather by age seven and a half.
You never knew anyone whose last name didn’t end in one of 5 standard suffixes (berg, baum, man, stein and witz).
You were surprised to discover that wine doesn’t always taste like cranberry sauce.
You can look at gefilte fish and not turn green.
When your mother smacked you really hard, she continued to make you feel bad for hurting her hand.
You can understand Yiddish but you can’t speak it.
You know how to pronounce numerous Yiddish words and use them correctly in context, yet you don’t know exactly what they mean. Kaynahurra.
You’re still angry at your parents for not speaking both Yiddish and English to you when you were a baby.
You have at least one ancestor who is somehow related to your spouse’s ancestor.
You thought speaking loud was normal.
You considered your Bar or Bat Mitzvah a “Get Out of Hebrew School Free” card.
You think eating half a jar of dill pickles is a wholesome snack.
You’re compelled to mention your grandmother’s “steel cannonballs” upon seeing fluffy matzo balls served at restaurants.
You buy 3 shopping bags worth of hot bagels on every trip to Stamford Hill orEdgware and carefully shlap them home like glassware. (Or, if you live near Chigwell, Manchester or another Jewish city hub, you drive 2 or 3 hours just to buy a dozen “real” bagels.)
Your mother or grandmother took personal pride when a Jew was noted for some accomplishment (showbiz, medicine, politics, etc.) and was ashamed and embarrassed when a Jew was accused of a crime… as if they were relatives.
You thought only non-Jews went to sleep away colleges. Jews went to city schools… unless they had scholarships or made an Ivy League school.
And finally, you knew that Sunday night and the night after any Jewish holiday was designated for Chinese food.
Zei gezunt!!
Well stated Ted, funny as it may seem growing up in an Italian family there are a number of similarities, understanding Italian yet not being able to speak it. The food may be different but parents and grandparents whether Jewish, Italian, Irish or whatever behaved the same.
You know what, we aren’t all that different after all. Who the hell ever told us we were different.
I know growing up with Jewish neighbors we didn’t notice any difference.
Who made others think otherwise?
Yes it does, especially if you went out to have supper at 4:00 PM or so.
By the way, I didn’t write it but I lived it..
Mr. Belman,
I can’t believe you actually wrote something enjoyable that wasn’t serious!!!
I look to you for some informative news that’s not on the tv.
I’m not Jewish, but I used to live in Miami Beach. Does that count?
Mary Anne
Ruben,
I just thought you might find some lantzmen in Toronto.
I know a Katz but I am not even going to ask. There are a lot of them.
I have a close friend whose surname was shortened from Katzenelnbogen, an honoured Jewish name.
And another Katz whose first name is Mickey, an honoured Disney name.
It is so refreshing to get a little levity in Israpundit though.
Mickey
Mickey, thank you, but no thank you – I’m not yet ready for my obituary. But should I ever plan a visit to Toronto, I will get in touch with my ‘lantzmen’ but without the burial priviligies or arrangements – thank you.
@ Rubin Katz (Stefanek):
Rubin,
My lost letter is beginning to fade from my memory.
To not publish it without telling me what sin I have committed or what laws I have broached is kind of kangaroo courtish.
OSTROVTZER SOCIETY
Perhaps you might find some long lost relative at:
Ostrovtzer Independent Mutual Benefit Society
Provides burial privileges for its members as well as social activities.
Last updated: January 2012
Location: OSTROVTZER INDEPENDENT MUTUAL BENEFIT SOCIETY
Address 2 Covington Road
Apt. 301
Toronto, Ontario
M6A 3E2
Tel/Fax Tel. (416) 785-5688,
Contacts Albert Speisman (President) Tel. (416) 785-5688
Mickey
@ Mickey Oberman
Pity you were blocked, I wanted to see what you had to say, insults in all. It is not beyond me either, to reply in similar vein using some choice expletives in Yiddish, that you won’t find in any Leo Rosten! It can’t be because you’re a Lutvak, because you’d be living in SA and not in Toronto! (For the un-initiated the feud between the Polish Chassidim and Lutvak Misnagdim goes back for almost 200 years, since the days of the Vilna Gaon and I merely carry on the tradition!)
Tell me, is there still an Ostrovtzer Society in Toronto? That’s the shtetl I hail from. In days gone by we boasted of the acclaimed Ostrovtzer Rebbe, of blessed memory. In an effort to hasten the redemption, he fasted for 40 years, no less, until he passed away. He died at a ripe old age, that’s because he didn’t partake of such delicacies as fatty goose, schmaltz, grieven and so on, that his followers indulged in. He apparently survived on a diet of dried dates and some milk before retring at night. As a young boy, I became rather disillusioned when I discovered that our Rebbe did not in fact survive entirely without sustenance! Many years later, my schooled elder son told me that it is indeed possible to survive on such a diet for some years. Our humble esteemed Rebbe knew something about 80 years earlier, that my son only discovered after I had put him through a costly private school, a First at Cambridge, followed by Queen Mary Ph.D. Nu, geh weiss…!
Hey Rubin,
Forgive my deep fried error. My mother never gave me the recipe. I only remember her taking it out of the pan with a slotted spoon. With a pale green handle and the smell of frying in the air. That was 75 and more years ago. I assume the liquid dripping from the spoon was chicken schmaltz, not lard.
As I said, the correct pronunciation of grieben/grieven depended heavily on whether the teeth were in or out.
Father’s family from Poland via London.
Mother’s family from Romania via North West Territories.
Which, undoubtedly, makes me Canadian.
An elaboration **********
Kasha – a soft food made from boiled grain.
Groats – hulled or crushed grain
Buckwheat – Asian plant of the dock family that produces starchy seeds.
Kasha in English generally refers to buckwheat groats (Wikipedia). So that would probably be boiled hulled buckwheat seeds. Let us agree that it is pretty good stuff especially with brust gravy poured over it..
@ Rubin Katz (Stefanek):
@ Laura:
Laura Said:
Not in my family EVER.
My father could and did speak and curse in Yiddish he spoke fractured English like a native (of where I am not quite sure) but my mother and Bubbe produced these forgotten delicacies to perfection. When I got married and learned about ‘healthy foods’ I adapted traditional kosher recipes to suit the present day lifestyle. Round about the same time I had the Yiddish curses that I remembered translated and the delight and merriment that this gave me creases me up even today.
What happened to my reply to Rubin Katz?
I tried posting it twice with no showings. Have I been banned?
It was a polite letter. No insults although I am not above such tactics.
But this is a civilized discussion about very important cultural matters.
We cannot just leave grieven/grieben and kasha just hanging in the air.
Please find my letter or let me post it again.
Yes
Though the piece is not new, the author is obviously American, but some Shmerl must have added along the way a few places in London where Jews reside, to make it universally applicable, I suppose. But it makes it as English as fish ‘n chips is American! It gives the game away by including such things as knishes, whitefish- salad and seltzer which are all-American.
As a ‘limey’ but an original product of the Polish shtetl (there are still a few of us about) I can both understand and speak Yiddish fluently, but not necessarily in a loud voice, as implied here. People in the old country were humble and low-key; the loudness came with the American confidence.
All-in-all, the writer of this piece has done an admirable job by leaving little out, considering he is an American. However, what the writer calls ‘grebenes’ we called grieven in my neck of the wood – the guy must be of Litvak extraction! I will forgive him, though years ago we would not be seen talking to each other. Furthermore, grieven are not fried in schmaltz as such, but is the by-product of the melted-down crispy pieces of chicken fat and skin. Reminiscent I believe, of pork crackling, but as a good Yied fun der heim, I shouldn’t know from such things! And Farfel is not broken bits of matza which is called eingebrokts that some like to ruin their chicken soup with. But Farfel has its own rightful place at the Shabbat table, unlike Lokshen, Kliskalech and Kneidlach – it is served with eingedempte sauce (stewed brisket) and should not be downgraded to matza crumbs. Furthermore, Kasha is not groats but buckwheat – but I shall not elaborate on it, because its not really a Shabbat dish – only Litvaks would think of serving it up for Shabbat, as they did the salt herring; Polish Jews traditionally ate sweet things on Shabbat.
And finally, the Litvaks may have gone to the deli on Shabbat morning to stock up, as the writer says, whereas we went to Shuhl…!
Shavua Tov.
Addendum.
We must not forget those great delicacy’s, chicken schmallz liberally spread on rye bread or challah and heavily sprinkled with salt.
And
Grieben or grieven if Zaidy had his teeth in. Chicken skin deep fried in schmaltz until crispy and chewy.
“To die for.”
You are apparently writing from England.
Everything you say applies to us Toronto Jews except real (NOT Montreal) bagels were readily available all over. A baker’s dozen – 13 that is – on a string. No bag.
“Mickey, please go to Mr. Cohen’s and get a dozen bagels. Bring me the change.” (This from a dollar bill.) But I only remember plain bagels. Not fancy shmancy.
There must be one difference that I can think of. Everyone who was not Jewish was English regardless of what country they came from.
I’m not Jewish but laughing anyway – many of those things relate to many ethnic groups – including traditional foods. People used to die of communicable diseases. Heart disease – not much because people ate high fat diets with fats from animal sources, raw milk and raw milk products with their enzymes and living attributes still intact, and fermented foods loaded with gut-saving and life-giving probiotics and significantly higher vitamin levels.
LOL, these are especially true.
So true!