June 8, 2008

“Godparents,” my wife said, as if I had not heard. “Godparents?,” I repeated, “Why do you want those?”

Visions of me bending down to kiss an old man’s hand leapt into my head as the theme to “The Godfather” wafted through my thoughts. No, that didn’t seem right. Who had godparents? Are they good for the Jews? I would need to look into this, before I could commit.

My wife grew up in France, marginally Greek Orthodox, but educated in Catholic schools. When she moved to Toronto as a young teen, religion was not a priority. In fact, aside from the perfunctory Christmas tree, she probably did not think much about it at all – until she met me, a liberal Jew from Long Island, when we were both in our 20s. Now, finally settling down and with a baby on the way, we were having one, of what will surely be many, discussions about religious lifestyle choices.

“Godparents?,” I asked again. “Godparents,” she said from the next room.

I knew that my parents had not appointed godparents for me or my brothers, and would likely be appalled at the idea, but I wanted to know what other Jews thought. While I knew it was not the most prudent place, I headed straight for the convenience of the web. As usual, on the internet there were as many conflicting answers as there are Polowins in the Ottawa Jewish telephone directory.  

Emohel.com stated, “The appointing of godparents is not a Jewish tradition,” but then added, “If a Jewish family wishes to appoint godparents, they may do so – it is simply an honorary title.” On Beliefnet.com, an uncle, who had been chosen as the sandek for his nephew’s bris wrote that he did not want the “religious responsibilities” that he thought came with the position. He was advised not to worry, because, unlike Christians, Jews do not have godparents and the religious upbringing of a child is reserved “exclusively for biological parents.”

Yahoo Answers offered a veritable seder feast of different responses to the question, “Do Jewish people have godparents?,” posed by someone “just curious” as neither he nor his Jewish friends knew the answer. The responses ranged from “I thought only Catholics have godparents” to “Yes, many Jewish people have godparents.” Another person wrote, “I don’t see why not. Jews can lose their parents as easily as anyone else.” The final Yahoo response on the page stated that the Sandek was indeed the equivalent of a godfather. I was beginning to get dismayed. Although I went into this project with the zest of a Yeshiva student, it appeared that I might have to use the pilpul method (a method of Talmudic interpretation) to get a straight answer.

Due to time constraints, I did not get to that level of examination, but I did do some research to confirm my understanding of the ceremonial roles at the Brit Milah. The sandek is the person in the Brit Milah ceremony who either holds the baby on his thighs during the circumcision or hands off the baby to the mohel. It is considered the highest honour a person can have at the ceremony and is usually given to a grandfather or other important male person. In more liberal circles, females are also given this honour. I also learned about the Kvatter or Kvatterin, who have the honour of handing the baby from the mother to the father of the baby at the ceremony to the sandek. They are often a couple who would like to have a child soon as superstition dictates that performing this ritual is a fertility rite.

Kvatter is derived from the German word “gevatter,” which means godfather. Their role is sometimes thought of as nurturing, educating and guiding the child through life. That sounded similar to the Christian notion of godparents to me. This was getting truly exhausting. If only I had the will of Rashi to go forward. I did attempt to contact a local rabbi, but, becoming impatient, I sought a response that would surely be contrary, likely halachically questionable and definitely animated. I called my parents.              

My father answered the phone and was terse as usual. “Jews don’t have godparents,” he said, before passing this hot potato kugel to my mother, the animated one. First, I asked her to think back to my bris in 1974. I wanted to know who acted in the ceremonial roles. “You did not have a bris or a sandek. We had a Pidyon Haben instead. Your father’s friend Morty Shine acted as the rabbi. I was tired and working to the end.”

“I did not have a bris,?” I exclaimed in disbelief. “No, just the Pidyon Haben, at the hospital. We had it done at the hospital for your brothers too,” my mother explained.

A Pidyon Haben is a ceremony traditionally held thirty-one days after the birth of a first-born son, when certain conditions apply including that the parents are not Cohanim or Levites and that the child arrived via natural birth. I am not sure why this was done, because my father is fairly religious and the conditions for a Pidyon Haben were not satisfied, but that is for another day. I moved on.

“What do you think about godparents?,” I asked my mother. Her tone changed immediately. She became as crazed as George Bush at a pro-choice rally. “I’ve never heard of that in my life. I don’t think it’s Jewish,” she said.

“Not one person in my entire life; who would ever do that? I would never do that.”

That was about the response I expected. But what was it about godparents that turned Jews away? Weren’t the sandek and kvatter at least comparable to the Christian notion of godparents? Apparently not; at least for my mother. “No, I don’t think so. Jews don’t call them that.”

I intend to do further research on the subject of godparents. I am not convinced that they are bad for the Jews, but I am not going to completely dismiss my parents’s reaction either. With three months to go until the baby is due, and then, god willing, many years of parenting after that, there will be many decisions to make and, hopefully, many compromises. Still to come: Naming the baby: Is there a heimishe name that also sounds good in French?, and Baby Showers: Conflict between economics and tradition.

And no, whether or not to circumcise is not on the table. We dodged that one when we recently found out – it’s a girl.  

Alef-Bet Cafe, Paris

 6/15/08

           Paris in the Spring – the Eiffel Tower, the Grands Boulevards, the shopping, of course, but a Yiddish Cultural Center and a kosher cooking school? Mais oui – if you know where to look. Paris has long been an important city of the Jewish diaspora, with successive waves of Jews, first Askenazi and later Sephardic, finding a home in the city. Though the home they found was not always a hospitable one, there has been a continuous Jewish presence in Paris since at least the sixth century. A large Askenazi population still exists, but there is a palpable Sephardic flavour – it is a city where you can walk into a kosher North African restaurant and hear a melange of French and Arabic. I love Paris and for my second visit to the city, I wanted to experience the sights, sounds, and especially tastes of Jewish Paris, a world at once familiar to my New York Jewish palate, yet bursting with exotic flavours.

Madame Tao, adopter of traif recipes

all the time after Torah classes” and because “J’adore Chinois.” Mme. Lafond assured me that a Chinese woman, Madame Tao, had adopted all the recipes from her authentic Chinese versions, even substituting faux shrimp for the real, but traif, kind. It was not long before my coFrance once again confronted its’ anti-semitic past, as it had in the aftermath of the Dreyfus Affair and the second World War. Instead of fragmenting the Jewish community, the Halimi incident brought a renewed awareness of Arab-Jewish tensions and racism in France generally. “A French woman in a supermarket started crying when she saw my boy with a kippa on his head after the Halimi incident. She said she was so sorry,” recounted Mme. Lafond. 

My experience at Lotus de Nissan ended on a lighter note, not with a parve fortune cookie, but with schtick. “Did you hear who senator Mccain told Chelsea Clinton were the most hated people in the world?,” Mr. Susskind asked. “No, who?,” I answered.

“Osama, Obama and your mama,” he replied; fitting for a people who, in France as in New York, have usually managed to face adversity with humor.

Sexy?

 The next day, after walking through the much lamented, rapidly gentrifying Marais area, we went to the Mémorial de la Shoah, a museum that opened in 2005 as both an admission of the horrors of the Vichy regime during the holocaust and a celebration of French Jewish life. After entering the outdoor courtyard just beyond the front door, we were greeted by a large Star of David, meant to signify the six million Jews without a burial place and a wall, with the names of 76,000 Jews deported with the cooperation of the Vichy government during the holocaust. The museum also celebrates leading Jewish figures in French history, such as Andre Citroen who founded the eponymous car company and Theodore Herzl, a Hungarian immigrant whose Zionist vision led to Israeli statehood. 

 

The siren call of “Shawarma, Falafel. Get it here” greeted us as we ambled up narrow cobblestone streets onto Rue des Rosiers in the Marais, well known as the ancestral center of Parisian Jewish life. Much like Orchard Street on the Lower East Side or Boulevard St. Laurent in Montreal, it is fast becoming a caricature of it’s former self, with a few Judaica stores, delis and synagogues dotting an area dominated by high end clothing boutiques with prices that would make your nana blush. True, many of these stores are still owned by Jews, but can 225 Euro jeans be called shmattes?

A certain degree of haimishness remains though, between the boutiques and the scaffolding signifying more urban infill condos, especially on Rue Des Rosier and Rue Des Ecoffes. On two different nights, I devoured top-notch falafels, dripping with tahini sauce, spicy eggplant and cabbage at L’as du falafel, billed as Lenny Kravitz’ choice and their competitor, Mi-va-mi, just feet away. For around five euros, there may not be a more satisfying Jewish culinary experience in Paris. Even if we did have to run over, or, more accurately, get run over, by bugaboo strollers and dogs with pink outfits to find it, the Marais and its Jewish character cannot be counted out yet. As shabbos descended on the Marais, orthodox young men rushed home to change in gym shorts, tzit tzit blowing behind them, and the main Marais synagogue, on Rue Pavee, buzzed with acticity, just as it has for ninety five years.

Far removed from the hustle of the falafel barkers and physically fit Orthodox in the Marais, we sought tranquility, at the cemetery. Père Lachaise is the final home of many of France’s greatest figures. The painter Pissaro, the composer Chopin and the singer Edith Piaf are among the luminaries buried there. In Père Lachaise’s Jewish section, one can find simple graves of long forgotten French Jews as well as ornate mausoleums seemingly designed to rival their Christian brethren one section over. Among the Jews buried there are the painter Modigliani, the singer Sarah Bernhardt and the philosopher Gertrude Stein, but finding them will take some perseverance. We were chanceux enough to find a friendly guide, who, free of charge, showed us the way to Modigliani. On our way out of the cemetery, my wife insisted that we stop by to see its most famous denizen, James Douglas Morrison, late of the Doors. He was not Jewish, although I heard his agent was.

After exiting the cemetery, we headed to nearby Belleville, a fascinating multi-cultural neighbourhood with colourful multi-hued people clinging to the cultures of their homelands, mostly in Africa and Asia, which they or their families left behind. A sephardic counterpart to the Marais, Belleville is still home to a large Jewish Tunisian community, who are concentrated on a stretch of Boulvard de Belleville. That is where I found the Aux Délices de Kifolie restaurant. From his adjoining table, a Muslim man from Tunisia explained that Tunisian Jews and Tunisian Muslims had a mostly congenial relationship and that although most Jews have left, many keep vacation homes in Tunisia to which they return year after year. Yes, but what about the food? The speciality at Kifolie, the man explained, was fish couscous. When in Belleville, do as they do, so that is what I ordered. Next to us sat a large contingent of Jewish Tunisians, at a big table, speaking at once in Arabic and French, with Arabic tunes wafting through the air. Each time someone new came up to the outdoor patio, they were welcomed into the loud and boisterous big table, as if they all knew each other from the old country.

We were presented with a virtual feast of appetizers, including mini pizzas, mini tuna sandwiches, known as “Tunisian sandwiches”, olives (my wife, an avid olive eater pronounced them “great”) and a tomato dish described as “Mechoui.” If that sounds like a whole meal before the mains even arrived, it was. Still, when my fish couscous arrived, along with potatoes and other veggies in a separate bowl of broth, I was anxious to try it. “Use more of the juice,” the man next to me admonished. I did, and it was the best meal of the week. We left Belleville with an appreciation not just for the food, but for the coulurful and friendly Tunisian Jewish way of life and wondering what life was like for Jews in the old country. I tried to ask the owner, a middle aged Tunisian what it was like for him. “I don’t know. I was born here,” he replied.

Going from one transplanted culture to another, I found the Yiddish Cultural Center on Passage Amelot, in a barely marked alleyway across from a large Renault car dealership. It was there that I met a woman named Ruby Monet, a Yiddish teacher at the Center. Another transplanted New Yorker, from the Bronx, Ms. Monet had moved to Paris in the 1960s. Although she grew up speaking Yiddish with her grandparents, she had not spoken it in years, until she found out about the center in 1989 and decided to see how much Yiddish she could remember. She remembered enough to become a teacher and has been there ever since. “When I taught English, students had to learn it, but with Yiddish, what do you need it for but pure pleasure. It’s a pleasure to teach,” she said. The center contains the largest Yiddish library in Europe, which Ms. Monet called “one of the great unknown treasures in Europe” and a Yiddish language school with about 200 students. It also holds seminars, klezmer concerts and other events celebrating Yiddishkeit, and has a small café.

As my wife and I left Paris, our bellies full of falafel and couscous and our minds at ease, knowing that the largest Jewish community in Europe is flourishing, I was already plotting a return visit to the city of light. I ran out of time before I could sample what I hear is the best kosher Indian restaurant in the world (no joke – google “Darjeeling Paris”) I could work up another appetite for that.

If you go:

Alef-Bet Café and Cooking School, 25, rue Galande 75005 – whether for a cooking class or for a quick bite, it is fun, stylish and inviting.

Aux Délices de Kifolie, 112, blvd. de Belleville 75020 – a lively taste of a lost world, get the Tunisian sandwich or the couscous.

L’As du Falafel, 34, rue des Rosiers and Mi-Va-Mi, 27, rue des Ecoffes 75004 – dueling kosher falafel makers, watch for free samples.

Lotus De Nissan, 39, rue Amelot 75011 – old-school glatt kosher Chinese, for solid rice and noodle dishes minus the traif.

Mémorial de la Shoah, 17, rue Geoffroy l’Asnier Paris 75004 – not far from the shopping and falafel in the Marais, a well done review of  France’s Jewish history, good and bad.

Pere Lachaise Cemetery, enter on Boulevard de Ménilmontant, 75020 – Yes there are Jews here and a “graveyard usher” will help you find them.

Yiddish Cultural Center18, Rue Passage Amelot, 75011 – Even if you don’t know your noz di from your tokhes der, it is worth a visit. Ask for Ruby.

 “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.              

(Picture courtesy of Gothamist.com)

Target, in NYC??? What next? How about just putting St. Louis inside NYC or Sacramento?

 Well, it should be a good trip anyway even if NY is looking more like everyplace else and they are looking more like NY.

We are staying at the Millenium Hilton, by the World Trade Center Site, courtesy of priceline.com. I plan to go to the Museum of Jewish Heritage and Coney Island, a place in peril:

http://grahambrunk.vox.com/library/post/astroland-to-close.html

If I have any room left after staging my own private hot dog eating contest, I also plan to sample Lombardi’s Pizza, the oldest Pizza parlor in NYC.

http://www.lombardipizza.com/zgrid/proc/site/sitep.jsp;jsessionid=aws9iqwOO499

Will write upon return…

Of all the blogs, in all the world, you walk into mine; the musings of an American, soon to be Canadian, over-educated, underemployed dreamer.

 The inspiration for this blog is the Momousse, a yacht formerly docked in Brockville, Canada. While I don’t know who owns the Momousse, it seems as close to paradise as I can think of.

 What is paradise? The thrall of new love, the ability to go anywhere, the contentedness that comes with success? The Momousse represents all this to me.

The past year has been one of dissapointment, fear and loathing. The Momousse represents the hope of the future. It may be just a boat, but, unlike many of us, myself included, it is going places.

 Au revoir, Momousse. Tu est dans mes reves. Je n’oublierai jamais.