“Even if you are Catholic, if you live in New York, you’re Jewish. If you live in Butte, Montana, you are going to be a goy even if you are Jewish.”

-Lenny Bruce

             While today’s New York may be more about hedge fund managers and high end chain stores than shtetl-like neighborhoods and kosher delis, it retains a distinct Jewish flavour. Montreal, Toronto and our own capital city have their particular Jewish charms, no doubt, but there is nowhere in North America where you can go and be engulfed by so much Jewish culture.            

New York is a place where you walk into an elevator and find a young, ultra-orthodox couple soothing their baby in Yiddish. It is a city where the hot dogs are often from Empire Kosher or Hebrew National, even when the hot dog cart is in Chinatown. In New York, many people know when the Jewish holidays fall, that a tuchus is a butt and that lox is not the same as smoked salmon.            

On my first of three days in New York in mid-August, I made my way down to Battery Park City, home of The Museum of Jewish Heritage. Not to be confused with the ritzier and more art-centric Jewish Museum uptown, this museum presents Jewish history, before, during and after the Holocaust, arranged by floor. The eye patch wearing man (obviously going for the Moshe Dayan look) at the reception desk told us, “The first floor is depressing, the second even more so, than when you can’t take any more depression, we have an exhibit on Jews on vacation on the third floor. Enjoy your visit.”            

The museum sits in the far left corner of lower Manhattan, with stunning views of New York Harbor and the statue of liberty, but its real charms are in its permanent collection. Among the artifacts on view was a “Jewish flag” in blue and white, flown in defiance of the Nuremburg law which stated Jews could not fly the German flag; and a recreation of a wall in Kovno, Lithuania where one Jew, near death after a pogrom in 1941, wrote his last words in his own blood, “Yidn Nekamah,” which translates as Jews revenge. Both are part of an exhibit dedicated to Jewish resistance. The temporary exhibit on Jewish vacations did not disappoint, with menus, postcards and other memorabilia from familiar destinations like a matchbook from Kutsher’s Resort in the Catskills and a sign from the Copacabana club in Miami Beach. The museum even has what I was told is “the best glatt kosher café in Battery Park.” Actually the only kosher café in that area, it had a variety of sandwiches and drinks to please most palates. There is also a theatre, Edmond J. Safra Hall, named for the Jewish Lebanese-Brazilian businessman, which holds Jewish book discussions and performances.           

Jewish resistance and bygone Catskills resorts are important subjects, but I wanted something more upbeat and contemporary. I found it in “The J.A.P. Show,” which featured four comediennes who pay homage, via small screens behind them, to the female pioneers of Jewish comedy, like Totie Fields and Pearl Williams. While you may not be old enough to know who Fields and Williams are, they are brought to life in old radio and television clips showing them in their glory days.But the heart of the show is the three Jewish comediennes and, by her own admission, token goy, who presented mostly contemporary, sometimes raunchy, female-centered jokes. The following joke is representative of their schtick, “What do you get when you cross a Jewish American princess with a computer? A computer that never goes down.” The show was uneven, but for fans of Jewish humour, it was a delight.  The J.A.P. show takes place at the Actor’s Temple, also known as Congregation Ezrath Israel, a working synagogue in the heart of New York’s theatre district. The Actor’s Temple, through the years, has counted several of the stooges, Jack Benny and Red Buttons as congregants. It now holds both services and Jewish themed performances throughout the year.            

New York is the city of my parents, my parents’ parents and their grandparents, most of who originally settled in the Lower East Side of Manhattan after arriving from Europe. Many years removed from its days as a Jewish enclave for tenement dwelling Eastern European, Russian and German Jews, it is now home to trendy boutiques and, oy, a Whole Foods Market. Yet, it is still a place of great significance for many American Jews. Beneath the layers more recent immigrants have added, a Jewish heart still beats in the LES if you know where to look.             After spending the morning walking along Manhattan’s eastern edge, past Battery Park, South Street Seaport and the Brooklyn Bridge, we headed north on Eldridge Street, where we were surrounded by the sights and sounds of Chinatown, including a myriad of noodle shops and a street market where the bartering was entirely in Chinese.

Walking up Eldridge, between Canal and Division Streets, I spotted the Eldridge Street Synagogue, a National Historic Landmark and the first major synagogue structure erected by eastern European Jews in the LES. Built in a mixture of Moorish and Gothic elements, it is a sight to behold. Although the neighborhood has changed (cow’s foot soup, anyone?), the shul’s claims to fame is that they have never missed a Shabbat service since 1887 when it first opened. While the main sanctuary is being renovated, services take place downstairs in the old rabbi’s quarters.            

Nothing represents Jewish New York to me, more than the small, one of a kind, family-run stores in the Lower East Side. Despite the intrusion of boutiques and chain stores, some of these still dot the neighborhood. Among them are stores selling undergarments, luggage and leather accessories just as they have for most of the last century. Other Jewish-owned stores sell edible goods such as smoked fish (Russ & Daughters), kosher wine (Schapiro’s Wine) and even matzo (Streit’s Matzo Factory). As it was my last day in New York and I was hungry, these types of stores held greater appeal. I sampled the knishes at the legendary Yonah Schimmel’s Knishery on Houston Street, where a sign proclaims “You don’t have to be Jewish to eat a knish.” Indeed, you don’t, as an Asian couple holding a Chinese guidebook attested to as we walked in. The store sells both savory knishes such as potato and kasha and sweet knishes like strawberry-cheese and blueberry-cheese. Both kinds are filled with old-world flavour. Note to Knish boys: You have never had a knish until you have been to Yonah Schimmel’s.           

A few minutes’ walk away on Orchard Street is Guss’ Pickles of “Crossing Delancey” fame. Still kosher and sold from barrels on the sidewalk, there is simply no equivalent in Canada (that I know of) to these. As close to heaven as one can get with a cucumber, the pickles are available in sour, three quarter sour and half sour and are sold alongside barrels of hot peppers, sour tomatoes and other related products. “What should we get?” a couple of youngish mid-western women wondered, within earshot. “You can’t go wrong with the half sours,” I said. And they did not.            

Eating old school Ashkenazi treats was fulfilling to the soul and stomach alike, but the best experience in the Lower East Side came from wandering into Global International Menswear on Orchard Street, between Grand and Hester, one of a number of old school clothing stores in the area. Not to be confused with nearby stores selling vintage couture dresses, these stores sell things like “pocket books” and, for men, business suits. “We’ve been in business for 48 years and I am semi-retired now; I like to come in on Sundays and help out,” the salesman, Bob, said as he leads me up to the second floor showroom. Picking up a navy blue, hand stitched imported Italian suit, he says “This would cost $1200 at Barney’s; I can do it for $300.” A dubious claim perhaps, but the man obviously knew suits. He handed my wife two bottles of water (“Take them, it’s hot outside”) as I headed back downstairs to be fitted.           

The downstairs of the store was occupied by an orthodox father and son duo, the Glocks, who owned the store. After finding out where I was from (“Oh, I have family in Montreal”), what I did for a living (“Oh, my son is a Municipal Lawyer”) and how much I paid for my downtown hotel (“Mazel Tov, that is a great price!”), the son, Sam Glock, arranged for my new suit to be tailored and shipped to Canada. Even with the shipping costs, the suit was a bargain; fitting for a store in what used to be known as Manhattan’s “Bargain District.” “That was really fun,” my wife said as we left the store. “It made me want to be Jewish.” In New York, it’s as if everyone is.