Clash of the titans

joselitSeptember 9, 2013November 16, 2017Leave a comment

It so happened this year that Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, coincided with New York’s Fashion Week, prompting some eagle-eyed observers to trumpet the possibility of a showdown between the “shofar and the shows,” a clash between the “Goddess of Fashion” and the God of the patriarchs and matriarchs.

Garment District, New York City. Flickr/Saaleha Bamjee

That didn’t happen, of course. For the most part, those participants who were directly affected by the calendrical conflict made their peace with it. Some stayed away from the runway, others adjusted their schedules and still others clucked their tongues in dismay.

What no one did, near as I can tell, was launch a public protest. What a missed opportunity! Way back in May, when Fashion Week’s schedule was first announced, its sponsors issued the following, rather tepid, statement:

The CFDA greatly respects and understands the importance of this holiday but, given the international calendar of European shows directly after New York, we do not have the option to shift the dates later. We realize that the observance of the holiday will impact some in their ability to attend or present shows -- but we are asking that everyone please work with us to make this situation work as best as possible.

Here’s a situation in which globalization trumps both localism and history -- and no one says ‘boo.’ Once upon a time, the garment industry and with it, the triumph of American ready-to-wear was not only vital to the economic well-being of the Empire City, it was also an industry peopled by Jewish manufacturers, factors, cutters, button-hole makers and union leaders, an industry as sensitive to the rhythms of the Jewish calendar as it was to the vagaries of fashion.

Revolutionizing the way the nation dressed, the garment industry proudly boasted of having transformed the American woman into the “best-dressed average woman in the world,” and her menfolk into men about town. Immigrants were particularly attentive to the magic of ready-to-wear: “Cinderella clothes,” one Jewish immigrant writer called them.

Consigned to the dustbin of history, along with the corsets, stockings, feathers and furbelows of yesteryear, these kinds of sentiments seem to have no place in a world where globalization now rules the roost and age-old religious traditions can be dismissed out of hand as if they were merely an inconvenience or, worse still, just one more commodity.

Season’s greetings

joselitSeptember 2, 2013November 16, 2017Leave a comment

The Jewish New Year is right around the corner, but with the advent of a new semester and its attendant responsibilities, I haven’t been able to give the holiday the attention it deserves, especially when it comes to figuring out what I’m going to serve, to whom, and when.

Rosh Hashanah greeting card. Flickr/Max Bacou

Little wonder, then, that I can’t help giving more than a passing glance at the list of foodstuffs ready for purchase and a quick turn in the microwave which Zabar’s, that fabled Manhattan food emporium, has made available for “Rosh Hashanah/Yom Kippur 2013.”

In addition to dutifully notifying would-be consumers when these two Jewish holidays take place, a function once filled by the local kosher butcher who distributed a Jewish calendar along with the brisket to his customers, Zabar’s offers a wide range of provisions. They run the gamut from “Great Beginnings” to “Main Courses,” and from “Veggies and Sides” to an “Apples & Honey Gift Crate.” There’s the requisite chopped liver, of course, as well as two kinds of gefilte fish. Stuffed cabbage, brisket, and a roast turkey round out the main bill of fare; the latter is even accompanied by a gentle, grandmotherly warning: “Do not overheat.”

Vegetables are also widely available but, with the exception of mashed potatoes and that old, Frenchified standby, string beans almondine, they strike a decidedly contemporary note: Asparagus with sun dried tomatoes, anyone? Braised brussel sprouts?!

So far, so good, especially if you eat your vegetables. But then, throwing caution to the wind -- or something -- the Zabar’s Holiday Dinner Menu ups the ante, leaving no Jewish culinary cliché unturned. It encompasses virtually every item that ever graced the family table of yesteryear: bagels, cream cheese, blintzes, smoked salmon, whitefish, belly lox, and chopped herring salad. All this and brisket, too? On the same table?

It took me a moment or two to adjust my sights, much less my stomach, before it occurred to me that the smoked fish and dairy delights were intended for the Yom Kippur break fast, and not for Rosh Hashanah. Even so, their collective appearance under the rubric of a Jewish holiday dinner strikes me as a bit odd, even misplaced.

It isn’t just that the Zabar’s list of Jewish gastronomic favorites dissolves the traditional boundaries between milk and meat products. Huddling together on a menu designed for Rosh Hashanah and (post)Yom Kippur, they also seem, well, unmoored from their traditional context. Once a regular feature of the American Jewish diet, these items are meant these days to be consumed only now and then. Eating Jewish food has become an occasion rather than the staff of life.

Chasing the zoom

joselitAugust 21, 2013November 16, 2017Leave a comment

Many, many years ago, when I was a graduate student in history at Columbia, aspiring historians like me were inclined to give the university’s computer center a wide berth. It wasn’t just that the place was downright inhospitable: noisy, freezing cold, airless and even a tad scary. It was also a matter of illiteracy. Much as I tried, I simply could not summon up the requisite digital skills.

DEC 10 main frame computer operations at BYU -- Circa 1969 — DEC 10 main frame computer operations at BYU, c. 1969. Flickr/arbyreed

If you had told me way back when that, someday, I would be involved with a project that sought to deploy the latest digital technology in the study and teaching of Jewish history and culture, I would have laughed myself silly.

But lo & behold, there I was earlier this week, back on Morningside Heights to participate in a remarkable initiative, the New Media in Jewish Studies Collaborative, whose objective, among other things, is to energize the discipline of Jewish Studies through the sustained and thoughtful use of the latest digital tools.

I came away from my two day campus visit in the company of web savvy colleagues, dedicated teachers and the imaginative technologists of Columbia’s Center for New Media Teaching & Learning all agog about the possibilities of enriching my teaching and, in turn, the experiences of my students were I to engage more fully -- and strategically -- with the marvels of the digital universe. I also acquired a brand new vocabulary, whose lingo ran the gamut from “multi-modal presentation” and “web-based environment” to “digital assets,” “demo-ing” and “chase the zoom,” a reference to a practice particular to Prezi.

I can’t wait to brandish these new words. More to the point, I look forward with keen anticipation to putting them to good use and, with a battery of technologists by my side, to coming up with ways to enlarge my students’ capacity for wonder. Here’s to revelation, ca. 2013!

Line in the sand

joselitAugust 12, 2013November 16, 2017Leave a comment

Summer conjures up notions of ease and freedom, a release from the strictures and tensions of everyday life. You could even say that the allure of summer rests on the erasure of boundaries.

Little wonder, then, that many residents of Southampton, Long Island -- that doyenne of summer resorts -- are up in arms at the prospect in their very own backyard of an eruv, a boundary-setting device that enables observant Jews to reconfigure public space as private space and, as a result, to proceed unimpeded on Shabbat. They've even gone to court to block it.

According to The Southampton Press, which featured the story on its front page, the Southampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals denied the East End Eruv Association a variance that would allow it to proceed any further with its plans to erect an eruv.

The zoning board’s ruling was based on a provision of the town code that prohibits the posting of signs on utility poles. Since an eruv deploys utility poles (though in ways that are visible only to those in the know), its creation and maintenance, strictly speaking, ran counter to the law of the land (or the town). And that’s that.

But, of course, there’s much more to the story. Whether or not to install an eruv in Southampton is not just a legal issue or one of collective aesthetics, but an expression of social norms and values: neighborliness run amuck. The situation has quickly devolved into an ugly contretemps, pitting one set of residents against another. Property values, the First Amendment, and, sad to say, more than a hint or two of anti-Semitism entered the mix.

More disturbingly still, the emergence of a real divide between the Jews who favored an eruv and those who did not also made itself sharply felt. The Jews who fell into the latter camp formed a group called “Jewish People Opposed to the Eruv,” to press their claim that the eruv was a potential affront to the values they held dear. We have a right, they said, “not to be confronted on a daily basis … by the permanent display on multiple public utility poles of a deeply religious and sectarian symbol of a particular religious belief that they do not share, and in some cases find offensive.”

The carefree days of summer, anyone?

Woodworking

joselitJuly 28, 2013November 16, 2017Leave a comment

They didn’t offer a course in woodworking or ‘shop’ at the Yeshivah of Flatbush, where I attended high school, and even if they had, I doubt I would have been the least bit interested.

Francis Cape Utopian Benches — Francis Cape. 'Utopian Benches.' Source: Murray Guy website

Boy, what a missed opportunity! I only just realized how fascinating wood can be as a medium of artistic expression in the wake of a recent visit to the Murray Guy gallery in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan. Located in the shadow of the storied High Line and up a flight of very steep stairs, it now hosts a fascinating exhibition, Utopian Benches, by the artist Francis Cape.

Seventeen wooden benches, fashioned out of poplar, take up residence in the gallery’s austere main room, their clean, unfussy lines echoing the tightly wedged, slender planks of the wooden floor on which they rest. There’s no explanatory text panel, no sound, no video -- no hidden aesthetic agenda -- to distract the viewer from the objects on display. What you see is, well, what you see: row upon row of beautifully made benches of varying size, lovingly and subtly detailed.

It turns out, though, that there’s a fascinating back story, a history, to these benches. In constructing them, Mr. Cape took his cue -- quite literally -- from the backless prayer benches built by the Shakers and other American religious communitarian groups of the 19th century. He measured the originals, researched the ways in which they were used, and then constructed his own.

The gallery prefers to call them “sculptures.” The New York Times describes them as “faith-based furniture.” Students of religion might label them “shared seating,” focusing on their relationship to community and ritual, the leveling of social status and the promotion of equality.

By whatever name (and corresponding perspective), Cape’s benches not only succeed, on their own terms, as art. They’re evocative of history, too, underscoring the ways in which faith, then as now, assumed material form.

That’s what I’d call an ‘object lesson.’

Heat wave

joselitJuly 21, 2013November 16, 2017Leave a comment

In preparation for a series of talks on American Jewish history that I’ll be giving next month, I went digging in the archives to see what I might learn about how earlier generations of American Jews, especially our immigrant forebears, coped with the heat.

Summer day — 'It's Hot!' Flickr/Eric Konon

Like us, they took off for the beach and the mountains, creating new Jewish communities wherever they vacationed. And, like us, they spilled a lot of ink talking about their experiences. Year in and year out, as regular as the tides, articles appeared in the English language and Yiddish press that took the cultural temperature of the Jewish summer resort.

These sociologically-attuned pieces paid attention to what people wore and what they talked about, noting how some young women on holiday “appeared in different garments at least four times a day,” while their male counterparts talked only of “pinochle, Wall Street and the hotel menu.”

In the years prior to World War I, when vacationing was still something of a novelty, comparing notes on what went on in hotels with a Jewish clientele with those establishments that catered to non-Jewish guests was a topic of abiding interest. If you could “inject a bit of reticence, round off the edge of refinement and put on a coating of social veneer,” there wasn’t too much of a difference, concluded one keen-eyed observer of “seaside types.” The Jews, like their gentile counterparts, knew how to have a good time.

While some applauded this development, others expressed disdain, wondering whether Jewish values went out the window come June, July and August. “Summer works its metamorphosis, completely and effectually effacing all that is self-respecting, restraining and elevating in the life of the Jew,” hotly observed Esther Jane Ruskay early in the 20th century, singling out the Jews of Arverne, New York, for their cool disregard of the Sabbath and their avid embrace of the good life.

Ruskay’s article, which she titled “Summer Resort Judaism,” will be one of the texts I look forward to drawing on next month. I suspect that its juicy prose and hard hitting indictment of American Jewry will make for good conversation. But then, my interest in Ruskay’s piece is personal as well: My grandparents, you see, were among those who summered in Arverne.

America eats

joselitJuly 14, 2013November 16, 2017Leave a comment

Several lifetimes ago, in the late 1930s, the Federal Writers’ Project commissioned hundreds of unemployed and presumably hungry writers across the country to chronicle what their neighbors put on their table, hoping to compile a book called America Eats. World War II, however, intervened and nothing came of its efforts except heaps of notes which, for years, lay untouched and fallow in the archives of the Library of Congress.

Wrapping the beef in cheesecloth, Los Angeles Sheriff's barbecue. One of many photos from the WPA's America Eats project (1930-1941)/Library of Congress

Recently, though, thanks to the efforts of Mark Kurlansky, we’ve had the opportunity to make up for lost time. In The Food of a Younger Land, he published a selection of reports, observations and even the occasional poem from this treasure trove of material. Kurlansky’s book makes for good reading, even if our taste runs to a more sophisticated bill of fare than that detailed within its pages.

Eating their way through picnics, fish fries and church suppers, the writers not only filled their stomachs, they also seemed to have had a good time. “Nostalgia flowed copiously through these reports and the happy talk rarely let up. Every fish fry and Masonic lodge supper glowed with love and good cheer,” observed Laura Shapiro, as she took the measure of this early foray into American food writing.

Having had the pleasure of working with some of this material at the New York City Municipal Archives where, many cartons later, it bore the title,“Feeding the City,” I know just what Shapiro means. There’s something free, unfettered and even innocent about the New York writers’ observations. One of their number, pitching an idea for a section on Jewish food, put it this way: “This chapter offers a chance to talk about food here with the same reverence, enthusiasm and gusto that a Jewish Escoffier, Savarin or George Rector might write about the sort of food about which Jewish people are most fond. It isn’t all garlic!”

I dwell on the history of “America Eats” because I think we’re long overdue for a contemporary version, one that would pay heed to the profound culinary changes that have occurred in the United States since the 1940s. Food manufacturers, as the New York Times observed recently on the first page of its business section, now make a point of catering to the varied palates of a steadily increasing ethnic market. At the same time, a substantial number of ethnic products, from dulce de leche to lemon grass, have gone ‘mainstream,’ much like the bagel and dim sum of a previous immigrant generation.

America eats differently these days. I hope there’s a 21st century Escoffier, Savarin or Rector taking note.

On your toes

joselitJune 30, 2013November 16, 2017Leave a comment

Now and again, I make a point of encouraging my students to venture beyond the precincts of their digital universe and to take in a film, attend a live performance or visit a museum. There’s something about the immediacy of the experience that will lift your spirits, say I to them, promisingly. In response, they nod their heads dutifully, muster a fleeting smile and then, pronto, return to their iPhones and tablets.

Léon Bakst, costume for The Firebird/Wikipedia

They’re not alone. I freely confess that I don’t always follow my own advice, either. When it comes to practicing what I preach, I often fall short and end up reading about rather than actually experiencing the latest ballet, concert or exhibition. In my case, what keeps me away from the cinema, the concert hall and the museum is not so much a matter of being tethered to digital devices as it is a matter of work. I can’t seem to break free of its demands.

But the other day, I did and, leaving my academic responsibilities to fend for themselves for the time being, I took off for the National Gallery and its exhibition, Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes, 1909-1929: When Art Danced with Music. Spending several hours in its company left me happy and even exhilarated -- so much so that I can’t stop thinking about it.

With a dazzling panoply of costumes, set designs, paintings, posters, photographs and two immense stage curtains whose impact is nothing less than jaw-dropping -- how, I wondered, did they ever manage to survive the passage of time, let alone the rigors of the stage? -- the exhibition highlighted the immense array of talents critical to the success of the Ballets Russes. Even if you were well steeped in the company’s history, the material on display seemed like a revelation.

You needn’t be a balletomane, an artist or an historian to appreciate, and benefit from, the exhibition. What makes Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes so memorable is the way it quickens the imagination, giving rise to all sorts of expansive thoughts about life’s possibilities.

I’m pretty sure I wasn’t the only one who left the National Gallery with a lift in my step.

Bricks & mortar

joselitJune 23, 2013November 16, 2017Leave a comment

Late one evening, unable to sleep, I was channel surfing when I happened on a documentary about Hudson River bricks. Lest you think, as I did at first, that the subject would put me to sleep in no time at all, I found myself utterly engrossed – and wide awake.

The documentary, Hudson River Brick Makers, looks at an industry that once animated the Hudson River Valley, gainfully employing thousands of workers, many of them immigrants, and transforming any number of sleepy river towns into lively commercial centers. Who knew?

But that wasn’t the only revelation in store. What made the history of the Hudson River brick industry especially fascinating was that its products were destined for New York City. As it turned out, the rise and fall of the Hudson River Valley was tied up with the literal rise of the Empire City, whose face was lined with bricks. When, as a result of changing tastes and the advent of new technologies, the demand for this building material faded, so, too, did the fortunes of its manufacturers, distributors and everyone else involved in its creation and circulation.

A cautionary tale, to be sure, but one that also opened my eyes to the near ubiquity of brick in my hometown. It’s not that I walk down the streets of Manhattan oblivious to my surroundings. On the contrary. I’ve always prided myself on my ability to zero in on an unusual architectural detail and on my attentiveness to the landscape and those who inhabit it. Ever since I read A Walker in the City, Alfred Kazin’s celebrated paean to the sensory experiences of urban life, I’ve made a point of taking it all in.

Even so, it wasn’t until I watched this documentary that I fully reckoned with the built environment. I now saw things afresh. Everywhere I looked, there was brick: brick on the side streets and broad avenues of my neighborhood, red brick, dun-colored brick, yellow brick, white brick. I had never given much thought to bricks and now they had me in their sights.

My neighborhood goes back a ways, to a time when brick was the building material of choice. When I venture into those neighborhoods whose pace is quickened by development (I’m thinking, for instance, of the High Line area of town), glass-sheathed buildings now tower over the streetscape, putting the older brick buildings and their history in the shade.

It makes me wonder whether future generations will know what it means when they come across references to the fabled yellow brick road.

Mamaloshn

joselitJune 10, 2013November 16, 2017Leave a comment

Remember the lyrics to George and Ira Gershwin’s wonderful 1937 song, “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off?” You know, the ones that go like this:

Matzoh balls — Flickr/Jessica and Lon Binder, FoodMayhem.com

You like potato and I like potahto
You like tomato and I like tomahto
Potato, potahto, tomato, tomahto,
Let’s call the whole thing off.

Both celebrating and poking fun at the range of accents and spellings that characterized interwar America, the Gershwins’ droll linguistic perspective came to mind this week amid a flap within the Jewish community about the proper way to invoke the Yiddish word for dumpling, otherwise familiar to many as a ‘kneydl.’ Or is it a ‘knaidel?’

When it became known, courtesy of a smartly written article by Joseph Berger on the front page of the New York Times, that the winner of the Scripps National Spelling Bee had rendered the word ‘knaidel,’ those who preferred an alternative orthography weighed in.

Before long, the blogosphere was cluttered with variant spellings -- and much more. In short order, what had begun as a light-hearted, human interest story metamorphosed into impassioned screeds about the integrity of Yiddish, the importance of cultural literacy and the legacy of East European Jewry. No one, it seemed, was prepared to call the whole thing off or, for that matter, to give it a pass.

Nor should they. At a time when Yiddish has become, in Jeffrey Shandler’s words, a “postvernacular language,” whose speakers range from Hasidim in Brooklyn to the Hispanic countermen at appetizing stores such as Russ & Daughters on Manhattan’s Lower East Side and the Dominican doorman at my Upper West Side apartment building who, come Friday afternoon, wishes me a “gut Shabbes,” there’s every reason to think long and hard about its fate.

At once funny and poignant, cause for laughing out loud and for wringing one’s hands in despair, this latest orthographic contretemps reminds us what’s at stake when it comes to the languages we speak and those we don’t.