Category Archives: Essay Categories
Forty Days and Forty Nights
Tears poured from my eyes as I paused by the windows of the jetway, girding myself for the flight abroad. Through the glass, I gazed upon the 747, an old warhorse with “Jerusalem” painted on its brave nose, the Magen David proudly adorning its tail. What made me choke with emotion and recognition? Was this […]
Also posted in Yiddish Land + Jewish Themes
Getting In Her Licks…
Lourdes draws the faithful, and Mecca has the Hajj, while hot June brings masses of pilgrims to Jerusalem. But New York has the strangest shrine of all. Earlier this summer I sat in a vest-pocket park down on Perry and West 11th Streets. In ones and twos, earnest acolytes appeared out of nowhere, each clutching […]
Also posted in A Walker in the City: Flaneur Pieces
Cold Storage
My wife tells a story that I never get right. The details don’t really matter, though it’s the moment that counts: A precious thing bonds her psyche to mine: the Yiddish inflection of older relatives (though hers was Bronx-ite and mine through parents who fled Philadelphia to live among the lost tribes in East Tennessee). […]
Also posted in Lost New York
Ad Lo Yada: Til One Doesn’t Know
“Until one doesn’t know,” goes the traditional imprecation towards insobriety for Jews celebrating the hanging of Ahashueros’ evil minister Haman and his ten sons. The group had plotted to kill all the Hebrews in Persia, and were foiled only by the intervention of the King’s favorite dancing girl, the Jewess Esther, implored by her cousin, […]
Also posted in Yiddish Land + Jewish Themes
Hillbilly Kheyder
August 1966. I’m fourteen years old, an acne-ridden, hook-nosed Jewish kid from Oak Ridge, Tennessee, on the train to Jordan, a Greyhound bus neaded up north, alone through the summer night. My parents trusted me to spend an entire week wandering around New York on my own, staying with my uncle in his tiny rent-controlled […]
Also posted in Yiddish Land + Jewish Themes
What’s in a name?
[Author’s Note: This essay, like several I’ve written, is liberally sprinkled with Yiddish words, transliterated with English letters via the standard system adopted by the YIVO Institute many decades ago. In most places I’ve translated the word(s) in a parenthetical immediately thereafter]. WHAT’S IN A NAME ? goes the popular refrain. Redolence, I say. Taste […]
Also posted in Faves, Yiddish Land + Jewish Themes
A Pesach’s Worth
The Passover holidays are upon us at the end of March and I’ve some urgent business to transact. Does anyone know how to get in touch with the Bureau of Weights and Measures of the Yiddish-speaking nation? Time is short ! Perhaps I’d best apply to the French Academy of Sciences for my particular need. […]
Also posted in Yiddish Land + Jewish Themes
The Great Unwashed
Walk the moonscape of far East 38th Street today: the sidewalks are empty, devoid of life, though the streets hum and clog with traffic at rush hours as the entrances and exits to the Queens Midtown Tunnel spill forth. Those who emerge from the taxis and limos are well-scrubbed, their private baths drawn and terry […]
Also posted in Lost New York
Listen to Joe Franklin interviewing me on Bloomberg Radio
Joe Franklin did a terrific interview on Bloomberg Radio in the summer of 2007. Listen in at http://www.adrive.com/home/downloadfile/200602689
Also posted in Butchery on Bond Street: Essays
Gold In Them Thar’ Hills…
Back at the start of this year I received the email I’d been waiting for. Out of the blue, a woman from San Diego, California surfaced identifying herself as Emma Cunningham’s great-great-grandaughter. Sure I said to myself… Another notoriety seeker. But like a good historian, I followed it through. Cunningham is a mighty common name, […]
Also posted in Butchery on Bond Street: Essays
