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What Would Plato Say?….And Then There’s Noodle Kugel

Shtopf mikh nit keyn lokshen — a Yiddish expression that translates literally as “Don’t stuff me with noodles.” In traditional Eastern European households, feeding a guest cheap, filling egg noodles in place of something more substantial could be considered a cheap trick, even an insult. The guest might leave with a full stomach but little nourishment. 

Figuratively, the expression means: Don’t feed me nonsense. Don’t try to pass off something insubstantial as something of value. And please don’t insult my intelligence by expecting me to swallow it.

What has happened to our ability to think critically? To break down information, identify hidden assumptions, assess the credibility of sources, distinguish fact from opinion and propaganda, recognize our own biases, and, above all, ask questions? Have we forgotten how to exercise these faculties, or have we simply decided that doing so is too exhausting? Is critical thinking a kind of intellectual muscle memory that must be flexed continually to remain strong? And what happens to that muscle when it is confronted by fear, apathy, or the promise that someone else will do the thinking for us?

Perhaps the more unsettling question is not whether we can think critically, but whether we still consider it necessary.

We live in an age of relentless information, much of it delivered with the confidence of an oracle and little evidentiary foundation. Assertions arrive dressed as facts. Opinions acquire the authority of pronouncements. Repetition masquerades as proof. The loudest voice can drown out the most carefully reasoned argument, while a claim repeated often enough may begin to feel true simply because it has become familiar.

But familiarity is not evidence, and confidence is not credibility.

The first obligation of a thinking citizen is to beware of granting credence to inflammatory statements unsupported by facts. A rumor is not transformed into truth because it confirms our suspicions, flatters our prejudices, or comes from someone we admire. Indeed, the claims we most eagerly accept may be the ones that deserve our closest scrutiny. Critical thinking requires us to interrogate not only the assertions of others but also the assumptions we are most reluctant to question in ourselves.

This is an inconvenient discipline. It demands patience when outrage is easier, reflection when certainty is more gratifying, and a willingness to admit that we may be wrong. It also requires us to tolerate ambiguity. The world rarely arranges itself into the neat categories of heroes and villains, saints and sinners, friends and enemies that political rhetoric so readily supplies. Reality is untidy. It refuses to fit comfortably into slogans.

Beware of complacence, that comfortable state in which we convince ourselves that nothing requires our attention. We lean back, content that someone else is surely monitoring the situation. Institutions will take care of themselves. Someone else will challenge questionable assertions, investigate dubious claims, defend principles we have come to take for granted. What happens when everyone is waiting for someone else?

Complacence can become acquiescence: silent consent, quiet compliance, passive acceptance, perhaps even reluctant submission. We may not agree with what is happening, but we decide that protest is inconvenient, that disagreement is futile, or that the consequences of speaking up are too unpleasant. Silence begins as a personal refuge and can end as a public endorsement. Those who wield authority may interpret our failure to object as permission to proceed.

From acquiescence, the transition to obeisance is easy. Obeisance implies deference, a posture of submission before someone whose authority is treated as beyond ordinary question. The individual who once exercised independent judgment begins to defer automatically. 

And then comes subservience: the willingness to place another’s wishes above one’s own judgment, needs, or principles. Independent thought becomes an inconvenience and personal conviction becomes a liability. The individual learns to anticipate what authority wants and to accommodate it before being asked.

Finally, we arrive at obsequiousness, that excessive eagerness to please, flatter, and reassure those in positions of power. Honest disagreement gives way to calculated praise. The truth becomes less important than the reaction it might provoke. The courtier learns that approval is safer than candor and that a flattering lie may be more welcome than an inconvenient fact.

Consider the progression: credence, complacence, acquiescence, obeisance, subservience, obsequiousness. A descent into madness, from the initial willingness to believe an unsupported claim to the eventual surrender of independent judgment. The danger is in the gradual replacement of thought by deference, and of civic responsibility by passive acceptance.

It is worth remembering that the erosion of democratic habits need not begin with a dramatic event. It can begin with a small concession: overlooking an unsupported claim; excusing an abuse of authority; dismissing a question as disloyal; deciding that the truth is less important than winning an argument. Each concession may seem harmless in isolation. The cumulative effect, however, can be profound.

Which brings us to Plato.

In The Republic, Plato explores the relationship between knowledge, opinion, appearances, and the difficult work of seeking truth. His philosophical metaphor, Allegory of the Cave, imagines prisoners who mistake shadows on a wall for reality since shadows are all they have ever known. Their world is limited, but within that limitation it appears complete. When one prisoner encounters the possibility of a reality beyond those shadows, the experience is unsettling. What seemed self-evident must now be reconsidered.

What would Plato say about a society in which shadows travel at extraordinary speed, multiply across screens, and are endlessly reinforced by people who have little incentive to question them? What would he make of our willingness to accept the familiar image over the inconvenient evidence, the persuasive performance over the painstaking argument, the comforting fiction over the complicated truth?

Perhaps he would remind us that seeing is not the same as understanding, and that possessing information is not the same as possessing knowledge. A mind crowded with assertions is not necessarily an informed mind. One must still ask how those assertions were established, what assumptions sustain them, and whose interests are served by their acceptance.

Plato might also recognize the danger of confusing popularity with truth. A proposition does not become sound because a multitude applauds it. Nor does a speaker become wise merely because an audience is captivated. Persuasion can illuminate, but it can also manipulate. The distinction lies not in the volume of the applause but in the quality of the reasoning.

Yet Plato’s challenge is not confined to those who make pronouncements from positions of authority. It is directed at all of us who must decide what to believe. The prisoner in the cave is a reminder of our own susceptibility to habit, convenience, and illusion. We may congratulate ourselves on our independence while accepting, without examination, whatever reinforces our existing convictions.

Intellectual humility, therefore, is indispensable. To think critically is not to assume that everyone else is wrong. It is to recognize that our own conclusions are provisional, that evidence can change our minds, and that genuine inquiry begins with questions rather than predetermined answers.

Democracy depends upon this willingness to question. It depends upon institutions capable of restraining power, public officials answerable for their actions, courts able to operate independently, a free press able to investigate, and citizens willing to insist that authority be justified rather than merely obeyed. These checks and balances are not bureaucratic inconveniences. They are safeguards against the concentration and misuse of power.

A democratic society cannot function on blind trust, any more than it can function on universal suspicion. It requires informed scrutiny: a willingness to examine evidence, challenge assertions, acknowledge uncertainty, and hold those in authority to the same standards we apply to everyone else. Loyalty to a democratic system should not mean unquestioning loyalty to any individual who occupies its offices. Indeed, the capacity to question authority is one of the ways in which democratic loyalty is expressed.

There will always be purveyors of convenient explanations, ready-made enemies, flattering reassurances, and slogans that promise to make complexity disappear. 

The old Yiddish admonition still serves us well. Shtopf mikh nit keyn lokshen. Don’t stuff me with noodles. Don’t mistake volume for nourishment, insistence for evidence, or obedience for virtue. Don’t ask me to surrender my judgment.

Perhaps the most dangerous form of intellectual surrender is the one we scarcely notice: the moment we stop asking questions because the answers have become too comfortable, too frightening, or too inconvenient to examine.

Shakespeare understood the usefulness of the stage as a place where pretensions are exposed and hidden truths brought into view. In Hamlet, the prince arranges a play designed to reveal the king’s conscience through his response to a dramatized version of a suspected crime. Hamlet declares:

“The play’s the thing
Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king.”

The scene is an experiment in accountability. Rather than accept appearances, Hamlet seeks a means of testing them. He understands that what people say about themselves may differ from what their actions reveal, and that observation, evidence, and scrutiny can expose what polished language conceals.

We need citizens who are neither dazzled by authority nor paralyzed by fear; who understand that skepticism is not cynicism, that disagreement is not disloyalty, and that questioning is not an act of hostility but a necessary condition of responsible citizenship.

Plato might ask us to leave the cave. Shakespeare might ask us to watch the play. And our grandmothers, with considerably less philosophical fuss, might simply remind us not to mistake a plateful of noodles for a proper meal.

After all, democracy, like the mind, cannot live on empty calories forever.

And then there’s my mom’s noodle (lokshen) kugel. A baked pudding with egg noodles, eggs, cottage cheese, sour cream, raisins, sugar, cinnamon (and love), it is the perfect side dish to a well-balanced meal.

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WHEN I WAS YOUNG, PLUTO WAS A PLANET

When I was young, Pluto was a planet.

Until it wasn’t.

There was a meeting somewhere – scientists, criteria, votes – and, I imagine, lots of coffee. And just like that, Pluto was demoted. What I had experienced as true in my childhood became untrue in my adult years without the object itself having changed at all.

We humans seem addicted to this type of behavior. A country exists for centuries, acquires borders, builds cities, creates languages, engages in wars, pledges loyalty to kings, establishes bureaucracies, composes national anthems, propagates citizens when – suddenly- someone announces it should be renamed.

Geography, however, stubbornly remains as it was. Mountains decline to move. Rivers, indifferent to political branding exercises, continue to flow as before. Ocean waves lap the same shores.

To be fair, countries may have legitimate reasons for changing names that may represent colonial histories, political revolutions, cultural distortions or restorations, linguistic preferences, or the desire of a government to declare an old chapter closed and a new one begun.

Somewhere, there are government warehouses with smoldering stores of discarded paper and folders bearing obsolete names.

Human history is a long-running argument over the designation of objects. Cities, streets, airports, lakes, monuments, buildings, oceans, constantly named and renamed. Perhaps instigated by money donated by a private benefactor, or the winds of cultural or societal appropriation, or simply the whims of heads of state.

But here’s the thing: renaming gives us the illusion of having changed history when, in fact, we have merely changed a label.

A new name can be meaningful – it can acknowledge people that have been marginalized; restore indigenous names; symbolize independence; mark an event. It is not, however, a magic eraser. Changing Rhodesia to Zimbabwe did not make a colonial past disappear. Changing a street sign does not cause the events that transpired there to evaporate into thin air.

Mountains stay put. Rivers flow. Buildings persist. People remain complicated.

We rename objects to reclaim them, correct them, politicize them, redefine them. And, really, to what end?

Pluto was a planet. And then it wasn’t. But you know what? On my birthdate, March 23, in the year 2178, Pluto will complete its first full orbit around the Sun since humans discovered it in 1930. And I say, way to go, kid – bravo!

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Of Fathers and Daughters and Mile-High Sandwiches

My father was 46 years old when I was born. My sister and I were his second family, a second chance at fatherhood after unimaginable loss. His first wife and young daughter had been caught up in the final liquidation of the Piotrkow Trybunalski ghetto during the Holocaust, herded onto trains bound for concentration camps, and piled into the crematoria that ended their lives in tendrils of smoke and ash. This was the penultimate grief that he silently carried for the remainder of his life.

After the war, my parents found each other in a displaced persons camp in Germany. Both had survived, though survival itself came with scars that could never fully heal. They married, hoping to build a future from the wreckage of the past. In 1950, they arrived at Ellis Island with my older sister in tow, carrying little more than resilience and a fierce determination to begin again.

Two years later, they opened a cafeteria on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. They worked tirelessly, pouring every ounce of energy into the business and into creating a stable life for their family. It was there, amid the bustle of New York City and the aroma of home-cooked food, that I was born—a first-generation American and a second-generation Holocaust survivor.

My mother rose before dawn each day. She would make her way from the Bronx into Manhattan, to the cafeteria’s kitchen, to ignite the enormous black stove, and begin preparing the nourishing meals that would feed her customers. Without discussion or ceremony, my father assumed responsibility for me and my sister each morning. Long before anyone spoke about shared parenting or challenging traditional gender roles, my father was doing what needed to be done. Each weekday morning, he woke us, made us breakfast, brushed and braided my unruly hair, packed our lunches, and shepherded us out the door in time for school.

My brown-bag lunch was a thing of beauty. Wanting to do things properly, my parents had asked our neighbors what an American school lunch should contain. “A sandwich,” they were told. Neither of them had ever encountered such a thing before. But once the concept was explained, my father embraced it wholeheartedly.

He approached the task methodically, much as he did everything in life. It began with slices of Levy’s Jewish rye bread. He would spread these generously with mustard, and then piled on layer upon layer of meat—pastrami, corned beef, salami, whatever happened to be at hand. The type of meat was irrelevant; abundance was everything. The sandwich would often stand two inches high. There were no vegetables added to dilute the experience—no lettuce, tomato, or pickle. Just pure protein sustenance. An apple was tucked into the bag as an afterthought, a token nod to the food pyramid. Looking back, I understand that those towering sandwiches were about so much more than lunch. They were an expression of love and protection from a man who had known hunger and uncertainty intimately and was determined that his daughter never would.

As I grew older, my father followed every step of my journey through school and into adulthood with unwavering attention. Every achievement was important. Honor roll certificates, awards, diplomas—each one was carefully mounted on a laminated wooden plaque and proudly displayed. The collection grew year after year, eventually culminating in my Juris Doctor degree. For a man who had been forced to leave school after sixth grade in order to help support his family, education was sacred. My accomplishments were not merely my own; they represented the fulfillment of his dreams that history had once tried to extinguish.

When my parents finally retired in their seventies, exhausted but undefeated, they settled in Miami Beach. By then I had children of my own, and our visits became treasured family rituals. My father would wait eagerly by the door of their condo for our arrival. The moment my sons appeared, he would open his arms wide. “Pupeleh!” he would exclaim, his face transformed by a rare, broad smile. In those moments, the hardships of his life seemed to fall away, replaced by pure joy.

Tatishi, I remember your hands—large, strong, and protective—holding mine as we walked along the Grand Concourse on warm summer evenings, heading to Krums on Fordham Road for an ice cream cone. I remember those same hands braiding my hair before school, hanging my diplomas on the walls of our apartment, and carefully constructing my mile-high sandwiches. I remember your quiet courage in choosing to have children again and giving them the world. Most of all, I remember your boundless love.

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Raisins and Almonds

The Yiddish lullaby “Raisins and Almonds” — known in Yiddish as “Rozhinkes mit Mandlen” — has endured for generations since it addresses a fundamental human desire: the promise of a safe, prosperous and sweet life for one’s child, a life in which the child is treated with dignity and respect.

The lullaby is one in which a mother rocks her child to sleep while imagining a future in which hardship gives way to stability: she of a snow-white small goat under his cradle. The goat is going off to market, to trade in raisins and almonds. You, too, my son, will grow up and go off to market. This is your calling. You will have a secure life. And now you can go to sleep.

The familiar figure of the goat going to market becomes more than a charming detail; it symbolizes honest work and survival. Through this lullaby, love is transformed into aspiration.

The world from which the song emerged was often uncertain and precarious. Jewish families in Eastern Europe lived with economic instability, discrimination, displacement, and the constant fear that security could disappear overnight. In such conditions, dreams for children became acts of quiet resistance. Parents could not promise wealth or ease, but they could offer hope. The mother in the song does not imagine her son becoming a prince or a conqueror. Instead, she imagines him becoming a merchant — someone able to earn a living, support a family, and move through the world with a measure of independence. The modesty of the dream makes it even more powerful. Prosperity here is not extravagance; it is freedom from fear.

This theme continues to resonate in these uncertain times. Today’s parents confront economic anxiety, political division, war, migration, climate disasters, and rapid social change. Many wonder what kind of world their children will inherit. In moments like these, lullabies and stories become more than sentimental traditions. They are emotional shelters. Songs such as “Raisins and Almonds” remind families that past generations faced instability and still found ways to nurture tenderness, hope, and resilience.

The lullaby offers comfort as it frames prosperity not only as material success, but as continuity and endurance. The mother sings while her child sleeps safely beside her. The immediate comfort of the present moment matters just as much as the imagined future. This balance is important for families living in today’s turbulence. Parents often feel pressure to solve every future problem for their children, yet the song suggests another truth: love itself is a form of security. The gentle rhythm of a lullaby reassures the child that even in a fragile world, they are cared for and protected.

There is also something profoundly communal about the imagery of raisins and almonds. These are humble foods associated with trade, nourishment, and celebration. They evoke marketplaces, family tables, and traditions passed across generations. In this way, the song connects personal dreams to cultural survival. The mother hopes not only that her son will prosper individually, but that he will remain rooted in a living tradition of work, family, and memory. For communities that have endured displacement and hardship, such continuity becomes a source of strength.

We search for signs that hope can survive adversity. “Raisins and Almonds” endures because it answers that search with quiet humanity. It does not deny suffering or promise an easy future. It is affirmation that the desire for a child’s well-being is universal and timeless. Across generations, parents continue to sing children to sleep with the same wish in their hearts: that those they love will live safely, prosper honestly, and carry forward the warmth they themselves received. The lullaby reminds us that even when the future is unclear, hope can still be sung softly into the night.

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Crushin’ On Cuomo

In these times of Covid -19, there is one bright spot in the day – Andrew Cuomo’s press conferences. This is according to my sister, who, apparently, has a crush on Cuomo. To be fair, and in her defense, what’s there not to like? The man is easy on the eyes – he is trim, well-dressed, with a nice head of hair. When he speaks, it is in grammatically correct English, with sentences that complete a thought. He is lucid and rational with his explanations, measured in tone, and well-informed. He knows history. His affection for his daughters – out there for all to see – is sweet. His visual aides are straightforward, comprehensive and comprehensible, based on scientific research. And the on-air riffs with his brother are hilarious. His eyes twinkle when he smiles. While he takes his position as governor seriously, he knows how to laugh at himself. No gaffes here, nothing like what we are routinely tormented with these days – unwittingly cringe-worthy statements consistently made by old men.

Given the current panoply of – well, frankly – morons out there who talk too much and yet have nothing valuable or helpful to say, who makes you want to tear your hear out – well, really – who can blame a mature, knowledgeable and discerning woman for crushin’ on Cuomo? You go, girl.

So my sister, who does not live in New York state, listens to Cuomo’s conferences every day in order to receive a clear, accurate picture of the current state of affairs. It allays, somewhat, the anxiety felt as we navigate through this pandemic. Sometimes, a little extra is thrown in – like a tour through the Governor’s mansion. It is human, and it is a connection between a true political leader and his constituents. Next step, the White House? A girl can only dream.

On Memorial Day, we honor true heroes – men and women who have laid down their lives to protect certain ideals: democracy, liberty and honesty. And to protect them for everyone, young, old, vulnerable, poor, black, white, sick, healthy. Loving others is not a weakness – it is the truest measure of a man.

So, here’s to Cuomo – you can check him out every day, around 11:30 EST – a little piece of clarity in the midst of all this chaos.

***

Sour Cherry Cake (for the picnic) (and to gain even more weight)

  • 3 T dried breadcrumbs
  • 2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 ½ t baking powder
  • ½ t kosher salt
  • 1 ½ sticks unsalted butter, room temperature
  • 1 ¼ cups sugar
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 ½ t vanilla extract
  • ½ t grated lemon zest
  • ¼ cup milk
  • 1 ½ cups sour cherries, pitted

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Lightly grease a 9-inch round cake pan and sprinkle with the breadcrumbs.

In a bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt.

In a mixer, beat together the butter and sugar at medium speed until light and fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating each until incorporated. Beat in the vanilla and lemon zest. Add half the flour mixture and beat at low speed, scraping down the sides of the bowl, until just incorporated. Beat in the milk, then the rest of the flour mixture.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan. Top with the cherries. Bake until golden brown and a skewer inserted into the center of the pan comes out clean, about 40-45 minutes. Transfer the cake pan to a wire rack to cool.

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Becoming A Grandmother Brought Out The Yiddish In Me

In February, my grandson was born. It was before all this pandemic mishegas (craziness), so I was able to visit him in the hospital and actually touch his little hands and marvel at his perfect toes. As I held him in my arms, the strangest thing happened – the words of love that spewed forth from my mouth were in Yiddish! He was my bubbeleh, (child), the cutest pitzsele (little thing), a zeeskeit (sweetness), a puppele (doll). 

Apparently, for me, terms of endearment seemed richer, fuller, more resonant in Yiddish, especially suited for a grandchild. I was surprised by the vocabulary by which my heart had subconsciously chosen to express itself. There is a trove of seemingly never-ending nouns and adjectives to depict the wonder of a child. I realized that these were the same words that had cloaked me with love and a tremendous sense of well-being and security when I was a child. Words that lay buried in my soul, half-forgotten, unused, waiting for the right moment to bubble up.

It was the language spoken in our house, by my parents, one fraught with layers of meaning – reminiscent of a town left, a life lost, of tremendous sorrows, yet laced with whispers of hope and redemption. It set us apart as immigrants, yet with the goal of becoming good Americans. It informed the way I thought (always answer a question with a question), my voice (sing-song), the cadence of our social life (gatherings where everyone spoke over each other, too impatient to let others finish their sentences). It also embodied a code of conduct – to be righteous, fair, understanding and empathetic. So many emotions wound into the spoken word.

So, these days, as I FaceTime with my ainikle (grandchild), sadly the sole source of our contact as we observe social distancing, I continue to slather him with my Yiddish words of love: his Bubbe (me) is farklempt (choked up) whenever she thinks of him, I kvell (get pleasure) from him, what a cute ponim (face) my tattele (little one) has, a gezunt of his keppele (a blessing on his little head), such nice pulkes (scrumptious little thighs), a sweet piskele (mouth), bekelach (cheeks) made for pinching. In fact, he has alle tam (full of taste), kinnahara followed by three spits against the evil eye.

When I see him, I shep nachos (draw pleasure). I have a groys fargenigen (great joy) from him. But most of all, I look forward to his growing up to be a mentsch (no translation needed).

*******

Dessert Crepes (makes 15)

  • 3 eggs
  • 1 ¾ cups milk
  • 2 teaspoons sugar
  • ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
  • ¼ teaspoon kosher salt
  • 1 ¼ cups all-purpose flour
  • 5 tablespoons butter for frying
  • Jam for filling

In a large bowl, whisk together the eggs, milk, sugar, vanilla, salt, and flour until the consistency of heavy cream. Cover and let rest for one hour.

In a nonstick frying pan, heat butter over medium heat. Once hot, pour ¼ cup batter into pan. Immediately pick up the pan and swirl the batter in all directions to coat the bottom evenly. Cook until the bottom is golden brown and the center dry, about a minute. With a spatula, flip the crepe over and fry until golden, about 30 seconds. Transfer the crepe to a plate. Fry the remaining batter.

To serve: Spread the crepes with jam and roll up like a jelly roll. Drizzle with powdered sugar.

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Bird’s Milk (A Love Story)

They met in a bar on Jaco Beach. She walked in, early evening, sat at the corner of the counter, off to the side, ordered a beer and quietly nursed her drink. It wasn’t that she looked lonely or uncomfortable, and yet… He was tending bar that night, took note of her. It was a slow night, so, after a while, he started talking to her.

She’d just finished her Master’s in education and had a teaching position at a private school lined up for the fall. She’d decided to have one last fling before settling down to the rest of her life, so had bought a ticket to Costa Rica and intended to visit for a month. She’d spent a week in the Arenal Volcano region, and decided to learn how to surf, something she’d always wanted to do, so rented a place in Jaco. And here she was, first day of surfing done.

She had an air of quiet vulnerability about her. Although he’d known her all of an hour, he felt oddly protective of her. Wanted to keep her near. So he offered her a beer on the house as she listened to his story.

Two years into medical school, he’d discovered, to his family’s horror, that he didn’t really want to be a doctor. He’d taken a leave of absence and boarded a plane to London. Three years and twenty countries later, the leave long expired, he’d landed in Jaco and started working at the bar for a much needed infusion of cash. He figured he would keep wandering until he figured out what to do with his life…

They were both surprised at how comfortable they felt with each other, how easy it was to be together. When the bar’s owner announced last call, they each felt that there was still so much more to share. So they agreed to meet the following afternoon and visit Manuel Antonio National Park.

He picked her up the next day, and they drove in companionable silence. The day was hot, humid. They walked deep into the park. Their shirts were soon drenched in sweat. A bird rustled in the suddenly still air. 

She spoke. 

“There is a folk tale about a princess who tests her suitor’s love by sending him out into the wilderness to find the one thing she does not have – bird’s milk.”

“There is no such thing,” he said.

“Exactly.”

“So he spends the rest of his life seeking the unattainable?”

She shrugged. They spoke of the impossibility of desire. Or was it the desire of the impossible? 

And then, inevitably, they made love, in the grass. And it was in that moment – in that hush among the trees – the melding of their bodies – that they were undone.  Unbeknownst to them, the shape of the years to come, those years that would hold both joy and sorrow, triumph and disappointment, love and despair – their shared destiny – was forged at five o’clock in the afternoon. Gods at play in the woods.

She took him back to her shack and extended her stay for three weeks. They spent her remaining time in the country together. She listened as he spoke to her of his confused desires, his blank future terrifying him. He dreamed as she described the city, her apartment, her life-to-come.

And then came the moment to say goodbye. On a whim, the morning of the day she was to return home, she slipped a piece of paper with her address into his shirt pocket. He drove her to the airport. As she was about to pass though security, she hesitated, waiting for him to say something that would hint at the promise of future contact. He hesitated, confused, not sure what he wanted. So he watched as she boarded her plane and vanished into the clouds.

She returned home, to what became the unrelenting monotony of days filled with teaching math to high school students and not much else. At night, settling into bed after a few glasses of wine, she would remember the moments spent in that shack by the ocean. He spent a few more months in South America, but suddenly became acutely aware of the loneliness in his wandering. He surprised himself: feeling that he’d had enough, he bought a plane ticket. And, one morning, she walked out of her apartment building to find him outside, waiting. 

It was the hubris that only the young have. They had each decided, in the blink of an eye, that the other was to be their savior. Did either experience a twinge of doubt? How ironic that it was the small acts in life, those most easily taken for granted, never properly thought through, that were the ones most fraught with danger. Innocent traps that ensnared a person’s destiny while the individual was not looking – the foundation of a house that Jack and Jill would build. 

It took him awhile to find himself. He never did have that flash of inspiration, so wound up working at an investment bank. She had three children. They moved to the suburbs, where she discovered, to her dismay, that she had developed “Achilles Heel” – a condition resulting from too much driving, inducing excess contact of the right heel of the foot with the floorboard of an over-sized SUV, creating numbness in the heel, cramping of the toes and flabbiness of the thighs. Recommended course of treatment: numerous diet fads, various gyms, sculpting treatments and trainers – the spending of an amount of money that probably could have bailed out a bankrupt small nation.

He was restless, irritable. Too secure, too comfortable. Irrationally, he began to remember those years of sad wandering with a certain fondness. As his mind receded into the past, he became distant. They became strangers occupying the same space.

One evening, she went to see a ballet performance. The choreographer, Danish, came out onstage to speak with the audience after the show. Asked to describe the source of his inspiration, he talked of the “vo-ka-bu-lary” of dance. That’s when she understood – it was all about where you put the accent on the “syl-la-ble” of life. Passion – obsession. Flip sides of the same coin. “Pain perdue” (lost bread) – is what the French call “French Toast”. Is it all a matter of perception? 

They’d gone through life learning the rudiments of a language whose cadences were familiar, reassuring. Now, suddenly, they were uncertain of a gesture’s arc. Cut adrift from the mooring of shared meaning, each word began to weigh heavily on the tongue.  Those years together – had they really accomplished nothing?

Somewhere along Route I-95, despite the good intentions of the parties involved, their marriage sputtered to an end. It took them three years to leave each other. It was difficult to discern the leaver from the leavee – so they both suffered. Once the surge of passion ebbed, all they had left was the taste of ashes in their mouths. The dust of unsettled dreams.

Infidelity committed but not admitted. Infidelity contemplated but not committed. It didn’t matter, really. They each endured the sensation of being suddenly-bereft of the body-next-to-yours. A life together full of color and meaning had become meaning-less. Once they were a couple.

She was no longer the Wife. He was no longer the Bright Young Thing. Half-baked decisions had thrown their lives into strange tangents. Were they has-beens? In their minds, they had just started out of the gate. Shifting sands of time made it so they were unable to stand firm on the ground.

So much for the steppes of life. It now became a question of identity. Des she keep his last name and remain someone she could no longer claim to be? Or shake the mothballs off her maiden name and return to someone she no longer was? She was suddenly a nameless free agent. The conundrum of last names.

It would take additional decades for them to understand that those once  loved were never left behond. You carry them within the recesses of your soul, conjuring them up in times of need or sorrow or joy. A never-ending rope that chains you to the ground. Only Icarus could fly high enough to be scorched by the sun. Mere mortals, the ones who live to be old and full of lost love, are left to puzzle through their could-have-beens.

They thought they had bequeathed the gift of their success to their children. That the specters perched on their shoulders would grace those of their progeny. It was, after all, the circle of life. Yet another illusion.

Her son, when he was fifteen, told her he knew what an ellipsis was. So did she. It was the loss of the illusions of youth that brought on the hard-edged lines of old age. And so it goes…

Those woods still stand to tell the tale of two young adults at play one afternoon – two naïve individuals who believed in fusion without combustion, endless possibilities and happy endings. Does life lose its dazzle once the bright future morphs into the painful past? Should we reach out to these two souls soon to be lost and tell them to hurry up and wait? But then, their sorrows, their lives, their particular legacies, would not exist. 

Within each of them still lives the child hoping, dreaming, of bird’s milk.

***

Challah French Toast

6 eggs

¾ cup milk

½ teaspoon kosher salt

6 slices of challah

2 tablespoons unsalted butter

Maple syrup and ground cinnamon, for serving

In a shallow dish, whisk together the eggs, milk, and salt. Lay the challah slices in the egg mixture and let sit, turning once, until soaked through.

In a frying pan, melt butter over medium heat until foaming. Fry the bread slices, flipping once, until golden brown on each side. Serve immediately, drizzled with maple syrup and sprinkled with a bit of cinnamon.

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The Maradona

“Mom, am I what you were?” asks my ten year old child.

“What are you?” I reply.

“What were you?” he responds.

            Fathers and daughters, husbands and wives, sons and mothers. We are defined by our relationships – a web of articulated bonds.

            I learned about the “Maradona” from my soccer-crazed younger son. Named after a famous Argentinian soccer player, it’s a move that involves faking to your right while kicking the ball with your left foot. Or something like that. I pretended to understand as my son flicked the ball, seemingly dancing on the field of green grass.

            What my sister and I grew up to fear most was failure. The inability to meet expectations. More specifically, the goals set by parents and family:

  • We must be a high-minded and productive member of society, ergo, a doctor, lawyer, teacher or, lower on the status pole, a social worker.
  • We must be philanthropical, which requires our being wealthy.
  • We must be the best, code for the smartest in the room.
  • We must be a mentsch, but also pleasing to the eye.
  • We must conquer the world, but in a nice way.
  • And, most important of all, we must be more successful than the children of their friends.

So what my sister and I came to dread, most of all, was being mediocre. When you are a child of Holocaust survivors, plain living is a denouement. Bleeding gums is not a tragedy. Although, my family heirloom, passed down to me from my mother – were my grandmother’s dentures, the only keepsake my mother could sneak into her pocket as her mother lay dying in Auschwitz. The specter of my mother weighing 80 pounds at the time of her liberation – what am I to do with that image knocking around in my head? Or seeing her agonize over her guilt at outliving her two sons, aged four and six, taken out to a field and shot as she, along with the remaining Jews in her town’s ghetto, were loaded onto trains during the final deportation to Treblinka. 

My parents met after liberation, in a DP camp in Germany. Two lost souls, they found each other and, together, attempted to wend their way through a world of shadows and ghosts. They went on to have two children, my sister and me. The irony was in my recognition, early in life, that, but for Hitler, I would not have been born. My existence shaped by hearing my mother’s cries at night, wracked by the shame of having survived and, in so doing, wanting children again. Her ambivalence at having been given a second chance at being a mother.

My parents immigrated to the States, landed in New York City in 1950. They wound up running a restaurant in the basement of a magnificent Beaux-Art mansion on the corner of Madison Avenue and 78th street. They were handed this opportunity by the Jewish Labor Bund. The building was owned by the Atran Foundation and housed various Jewish charities and philanthropies. The idea was to have a cafeteria that would feed the inhabitants of the place. But, through the years, news of my mother’s succulent roast chicken and sumptuous mushroom barley soup spread among the gallery and boutique owners of the Upper East Side, so that, with time, well-dressed doyennes of Fifth Avenue mixed with staff from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Jewish artists and socialists,  and hungry students from the art institute down the block (to whom my mother would serve a heaping bowl of soup and chunk of bread for fifty cents) all crowded into the cafeteria. Everyone, as equals, seated around small tables covered with red-and-white checked tablecloths, cigarette smoke hovering over conversations occurring in a babel of languages, from Yiddish to English to French to Italian to German.

My sister and I helped, in the kitchen, washing thousands of dishes by hand. There were three sinks – one to spray the dishes, the second to soak them in soapy water, the third to rinse them in boiling hot clean water. We would then stack the dishes on wooden tracks to dry, beads of perspiration forming on their surfaces. 

“The dishes are crying,” my father would say. My father – a poet. Go figure. This was my world, one my own children will never know, could not fathom. The birth of my consciousness. 

As for my mother- well, when we were little, she would tell us the tale of her seven years of enchanted living. Born into a family with too many daughters, in a small town in Poland, she was sent to live with her grandparents, to work in their tiny buttons-and notions store. Growing up, she was always hungry, lonely and cold. She could hear her friends playing in the courtyard outside the store, in the early evening. She was made to stay inside and retire early, to be ready for the next day of work. Her future was bleak, in this village with no escape.

In spite of these circumstances, she had grown into a beautiful eighteen-year-old. On a sultry summer day, a rare day off, swimming at a lake with her family, she caught the eye of the good doctor – a sought-after eligible bachelor twenty years her senior. He was a prominent member of the Jewish elite, a member of the Bund, had an apartment at the Jewish Hospital over which he presided. He started courting her. Her family incredulous, one of her aunts stating that a cactus would sooner grow from her hand than the good doctor would marry my mother. But propose he did – instead of a ring, he gave her a bicycle. And whisked her away.

 There followed seven years of utter joy – working as a nurse beside this man she adored, safe in his arms, surrounded by friends, no longer hungry or cold. She was Cinderella, at home at last with her prince. And with time, two children were born, two boys. Hearing this story, how could my sister and I not grow up believing that a prince would appear in our own lives and carry us away to a castle of our own? Or, at the very least, to a spacious three-bedroom ranch in Westchester. 

All was like a fairy tale – until Germany’s invasion of Poland in 1939. So while we envisioned joy in our future, we were also taught its flip side – that one must pay for one’s happiness. That life, in the end, is a Greek tragedy. And my mother paid, with the death of her husband and two sons.

Her strength to live on is something I can’t begin to comprehend. Her ability to love again – nothing short of miraculous. Her agonizing and self-demonizing guilt over her ability to do both – heart-breaking. I am humbled by my mother’s ferocious will. She was just a woman in love, who had it all and lost it, and then tried to rebuild the happiness she had once known. Nothing ever measured up in this recreation. How do we live with that?

Two days before my father died, he asked me to trim his hair. He was always very particular about personal hygiene. He claimed that the sole reason he survived the camps, from September, 1942 until April, 1945, when he was liberated, was because he kept himself clean, washing himself in the snow outside the barracks. My father was mostly a quiet man – he didn’t share much about his life in Poland before the war, his time in the camps, or the wife and daughter he lost. I cut his fine, gray hair in the companionable silence that was our way together. His love for me had been evident throughout our lives together – as my mother left early in the morning to prepare the food at the cafeteria, my father had taken care of getting my sister and me off to school. He braided my hair and filled my lunch box with overstuffed pastrami sandwiches (god forbid his children would ever feel the hunger he had). He paid for private college and law school. And he absolutely and unconditionally loved the two grandsons I gifted him, my boys. An unassuming man, who led a quietly exceptional life in the love and fortitude he exhibited to those around him. No man could ever live up to that. 

They have long since passed, my parents and most of my family. Their stories are branded in my memory, their souls enfolded in mine. What will happen when I am gone? 

Ingredients

***

Chicken soup (what else?) –

1 whole chicken

3 large carrots

3 celery stalks

2 yellow onions

1 large parsnip

¼ cup dill

1 T kosher salt

Freshly ground pepper

Prep

Place the chicken, carrots, celery, onions, parsnip and dill in a large soup pot and cover with cold water by one inch. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to low and gently simmer, skimming off any foam that accumulates, until the chicken is tender and falling off the bone (about 2.0 hours). 

Remove the chicken and vegetables from the pot and let cool. Strain the broth through a sieve and return to the pot. Remove the chicken meat from the bones and chop. Discard the dill. Slice the vegetables into bite size pieces and return the vegetables and chicken to the pot. Stir in salt and pepper, to taste. Serve hot. 

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New Year’s/New York

To know a city like the back of your hand: each street as familiar as the steadily encroaching lines on your face, traffic noise as insistent as the onslaught of years, the incessant ebb and flow of the city crowds as comforting in its existence as it is frightening in its absence. A pulse outside your own, a breath enveloped in yours. Rhythms inherent in the seasons: summertime evacuation to the beach, wintertime escapes to the slopes, spring to the south to see cherry blossoms and autumn to the north for the changing leaves. The momentary hush that befalls a city caught naked on the heels of a newly fallen snow. The throbbing of clubs, the search for the ultimate high-low-new-old thrill, the all-too-bright, all-too-loud, all-too-muchness of it all. An in-your-face attitude touting cellulite-destroying, breast-enhancing, wrinkle-devouring, muscle-developing treatments/pathways/systems. All to be had at the drop of a large bundle of money. To live seduced by the sounds of a city’s pain, the sights of its triumphs, the song of its promise. To be part of the hottest new trends in this hottest of cities at this end-of-a-decade.

            Yet, to entertain the thought of leaving it because of its overwhelming-ness. To run to a desert, the eyes of a coyote staring you down on an impossibly-hot-early-summer morning. Or to another city, deceptive in calling itself a city because it turns out to be small and not-all-that. Or to the mountains, with its mute expanse of black star-crazy sky. To the silence of a wind howling outside a window. A bird’s call echoing the sound of wind chimes. Where one’s breath is measured against the ticking of a second-hand. Where a New York minute becomes an unnecessary hour.

            To reject the thought of escape, because, after all, there is nowhere like New York, where the sunrise is carelessly thrown above a still-slumbering city. Where you reach out your hand and never come up empty. Where the days are full of color and meaning, so life never becomes meaning-less. Where your heart is bursting and your soul filled with regrets. Where you tremble in anticipation of Armageddon. Where you don’t follow the north star but the smell of a good hot-dog vendor. 

            It’s all about beginnings and endings, except that you never know you were at the beginning until you’ve reached the end. 

            So you start over. You go to the square and look up at the sky to see a crystal ball descend from the heavens.

            Happy New Year, New York.

***

Ring in the New Year with a Champagne cocktail

Ingredients:

  • 1 sugar cube
  • 2 to 3 dashes bitters
  • 1 ounce brandy
  • 4-6 ounces Champagne
  • Garnishes – orange slice, maraschino cherry

Place the sugar cube at the bottom of a Champagne flute. Pour bitters over the cube. Add the brandy. Fill the flute with Champagne; the sugar cube should dissolve. Garnish with the orange slice and maraschino cherry.

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Amuse-Bouche

Amuse-Bouche – a small fanciful offering from the chef, an enticing harbinger of the meal to come.

Beggar’s Purse – a savory morsel wrapped in delicate layers of flaked pastry, tied at the top as if beckoning to be opened by a slight tug of the hand, itching to reveal the delights hidden within.

                                                                                  ***

Would she ever inspire such passion?

An idle thought that darted through her mind midway through what was promising to be a very long and somewhat painful evening.

It was 9:00 p.m. and they were only now being served the first course of an eight course meal. The amuse-bouche had been a beggar’s purse, which she had dabbed at it. It was quite good, actually, but she was just not in the mood, angry at letting herself get roped into attending this event. She didn’t even celebrate Christmas. But here she was, Christmas Eve, seated at a table with 24 strangers. The 25th, Bev, the hostess, was her colleague at work. Bev needed a last minute substitute to fill the seat of an invitee who had gotten the flu. So Bev had asked her to come, knowing that all she had planned for the night was streaming a movie at home and ordering Chinese. She owed Bev, who had recently managed to salvage a deal that was almost doomed.

She was wedged between a thirty-five year conceptual artist on her left and a twenty-five year old middle school teacher on her right. That had been quickly established over the beggar’s purse. She herself was on the wrong side of forty, almost too old to understand half the references being discussed at the table.

She made another effort with the artist, asking him what kind of art he created. Tilting his head to his left, looking down his nose at her, he drawled, “conceptual”.

 “Ah,” she said, “like a banana taped to the wall?”

 “No,” he sniffed, “like meaningful interactive ephemeral videography”.

She had no clue what that was.

Seeing her confusion, he continued. “Political statements momentarily caught in time, that self-destruct.”

 “So, if I bought the piece, I would get a whole lot of – nothing?”

He shot her a look of what could only have been pure hatred and turned to his date, on his left. As the wait staff began to collect the amuse-bouche plates, her gaze fell upon the couple across the table. She recognized the pair – he was a young newscaster from a local television station; she, an “influencer”. They were deep in conversation, totally oblivious of everyone else in the room, their eyes devouring each other. And that’s when the idle thought about passion crossed her mind.

Suddenly single – a state that sneaks up on you.

Hubris – the Fates (probably male) laughing at your dreams.

Life- measured in heartthrobs of time. What happens when the ticking stops?

Her father had raised her to believe in the illusion, however fleeting, of good luck. Behave, do what is expected of you, and good things would come your way.

If she ever hesitated, he would ask her – “What are you waiting for, an invitation to life?”

As she continued to look at the couple across the table, she imagined that her response to her father tonight would have been along the lines of – “Dad, do you realize that it is out of sheer callowness that we embark on relationships in our youth that we then spend the rest of our lives extricating ourselves from?” She could hear her mother piping up at that point – “Honey, life is the same sentence rewritten countless times. You just need to know how to read the lines.”

The couple reached for each other’s hands. Never underestimate the power of touch. She could almost feel the electricity running through them.

The idea that people were born to be happy was a startling notion for her. She had been taught that only by dint of hard work, and some sacrifice, could she taste some flavor of joy.

“So, what exactly are you going to do when you grow up?”, her twelve-year old son had asked her earlier that day. She had been drifting lately, feeling irrelevant, her shelf-life past due. Passing days in a state of suspended animation. Somehow the leaps in her imagination hadn’t been borne out by the daily scrub of life.

“You’re a friend of Bev’s?” It was the twenty-five year old to her right, pulling her back to the dinner, to the soup being placed in front of her.

“I work with her, yes. How do you know Bev?”

“She’s my sponsor this year. I’m from Mobile – Alabama? – I teach sixth grade there – and I’m on a program where I get to teach sixth grade here in New York for a year.”

“How are you liking it so far?”

“It’s like a year abroad for me.” He smiles, a genuine smile, all teeth. “I haven’t been anywhere until now.”

Self-deprecating humor. She likes this young man – a rare gift. 

“Well, you should keep on going. Once school is out in June, why don’t you take your bag to Europe for the summer?”

“Have you traveled much?”

“I have, yes.” And she began to tell him her story. A life that at first seemed full of promises. A career in the making, a husband found, a child delivered, a modicum of success at the firm she joined. Days consisting of long hours of work, deals found and successfully closed, years interspersed with travel to exotic places. And then, imperceptibly, becoming overwhelmed by the mundane details of living – running just to keep in step. A marriage ended. Junior associates at work climbing over her to be promoted. Sold on the notion that she could do it all, she was not yet willing to admit the impossibility of having it all. Time shifting the ground beneath her feet, throwing her off-balance.

“Once you take your feet off the fast track, there is no return,” she told the young man. “Lying flat on your back, you see the past events in your life from a skewed perspective.”

“Would you do it all again, in the same way?” he asked.

She thought about his question. And then realized, astonished – “Absolutely. It’s worse not trying. There is never ‘later’ – only a should-have-done filled with regret. I may have a sack full of mistakes I carry on my back, but no could-have-dones.”

He thought about this. Should she tell him that she was feeling adrift right now, an almost-too-old, perhaps unnecessary fount of irrelevant information, at loose ends? She leaned back into her chair. She wanted to tell this young man – “Go for it. I had some fantastic moments back then. So, yes, lope into the horizon. You may get singed, but you’ll never understand what there is until you have seen what may be.”

She was waiting to enter a state of grace. In the meantime, there were two more courses waiting to be eaten.

                                                                     ***

Beggar’s Purse

Crepe bundles with caviar and sour cream.

For crepes:

5 T unsalted butter

1 cup whole milk

½ cup all-purpose flour

2 large eggs

¼ t salt

2 T chopped chives

For purses:

16-20 long chives

¾ cup sour cream

4 oz. caviar

Make crepe batter:

Melt butter in a skillet over medium heat; set aside 2 T for cooking crepes. Continue to cook butter remaining in the skillet until it is golden brown, about 2 minutes. Blend butter with remaining crepe ingredients, except chives, in a blender until smooth. Add chives and pulse 1 or 2 times to just combine. Let batter stand for 30 minutes.

Blanch whole chives in a small saucepan of boiling water for 10 seconds. Drain and pat dry.

Make crepes:

Lightly brush skillet with butter, then heat over medium-high heat until hot but not smoking. Stir batter. With skillet off heat, add ¼ cup batter, tilting and rotating skillet to coat bottom. Cook until golden around edges, maybe 15-30 seconds. Flip crepe over and cook until underside is set. Slide onto plate. Make more crepes.

Assemble purses:

Top each crepe with 1 1/2T sour cream and 2 t caviar. Gather crepe around the filling and tie 1 or 2 chives in a knot to close purse.