Food Edition and a Trumpian Thought

Gilda’s always trying to get me to sample new restaurants, particularly those with a Latin flavor. So I went on the Web site of her latest suggestion, a Venezuelan restaurant in Mamaroneck, and the first offering under “Starters” was “classic Hummus” encompassing warm pita, cucumber, carrots, cherry tomato. 

Gee, I had no idea Venezuela stretched all the way to the Middle East!

Zabars pastries are overrated. By me. Though not by the birds that frequent the feeders in my yard.

For hosting her and her husband for several days Gilda’s sister sent us a thank you package of Zabars goodies which included a pack of fruit filled Hamantaschen, the triangular hard dough cookies associated with the holiday of Purim. 

Multi-problems: Gilda does not like any fruit-filled pastries. I’m okay with such delicacies if they in fact are delicious. Zabars’ Hamantaschen did not meet that standard. 

They lacked “ta’am”—taste. Flavor. Neshama—Jewish soul. 

The birds, however, devoured them after I extruded the fruit from the hard pastry triangles. 

The birds in our yard are international in their tastes. They similarly have enjoyed crushed Chinese fortune cookies and always make a meal of leftover rice regardless of country of origin.

Back to Zabars. I’m partial to black and white cookies, the round confection with equal parts chocolate and vanilla icing. I tasted one from Zabars. It was like eating sawdust. 

I resisted trying the soft rugelach in the gift pack. I prefer crisp crescent-shaped rugelach. Our daughter Ellie has from time to time made them for us. 

I was about to give up on the goodies from the Upper West Side of Manhattan emporium when I cut into a chocolate babka cake. Scrumptious! My appreciation of Zabars restored, I’ve been enjoying a slice of chocolate babka for the better part of a week. 

Brown Eggs: Anyone who has gone to the supermarket during the last half year knows egg prices have cracked the hen house ceiling barrier. The price of a dozen eggs is nearing double digit dollars.

If you’ve monitored egg prices you might have noticed that the least expensive eggs often are the brown ones.

My theory is there’s a degree of prejudice involved in egg purchasing. Shoppers prefer white eggs over brown ones. So to move brown eggs off the shelf grocers sell them for less than white eggs.

You’re probably thinking I’m a little daft. That’s okay. Journalists often look at the seamier side of life with and without obvious evidence. 

I’ve been buying brown eggs for about half a year. They taste just fine.

The Trumpian: During my professional career, the start of a new year always meant the beginning of trade show season, the first one being the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. 

Nowadays, CES has expanded beyond traditional products such as computers and video/audio equipment. What many news outlets concentrated on this year was the introduction of high end toilets with features including the ability to analyze a person’s health based on their deposits.

My warped mind wondered if one of the new models might have enabled the simultaneous shredding of documents without clogging the pipes. I’d call it The Trumpian.

What Will Kevin Do Now to Make US Better?

Now that he is Speaker of the House, what are Kevin McCarthy’s plans for making America better?

Specifically, how will he curb homelessness? How will he make housing affordable to middle class and working class families? 

How will he make healthcare more accessible and affordable? 

How will he make safe, clean water available to all? How will he make the air we breathe safer and cleaner? 

How will he reduce our dependence on fossil fuels? 

How will he invest in repairing infrastructure throughout our land?

How will he represent to the world America’s commitment to freedom and human rights? 

The title Speaker of the House implies a position of leadership, of advancement of benefits, not a retreat. 

As Speaker he is a representative of a nation beyond his conservative Bakersfield, Calif., district. 

How will he respond to the majority of Americans who favor a woman’s right to make her own health decisions, including the right to choose an abortion? What action will he take in support of the majority of Americans’ belief that more gun control legislation is needed? 

Oh, I am not so naive as to believe McCarthy will do anything but try to advance the fringe agenda of far right extremists in the Republican Party. He might even be willing to shut down the government and reject an increase in the debt ceiling limit if such actions would keep the extremists from ousting him as speaker, for his ultimate allegiance is to his aggrandizement and not the integrity and standing of the United States.  

We know he will agree to investigation after investigation of alleged misdeeds by President Biden, his family and members of his administration, even if such probes have no basis in reality or possibility of improving the lives of everyday Americans. 

Perhaps he will establish a new January 6 special committee to tell the Trump version of events. Of course, that might expose Trump, Mark Meadows, Rudy Giuliani et al to cross examination under oath by Democrats on the committee, so I guess that idea is a non starter. 

Poor Kevin. He was handed the ceremonial speaker’s gavel but truly has little of the power of the office.    

McCarthy—Not a Good Name for a GOP Leader

Comedians and pundits are having a field day lampooning Kevin McCarthy’s quest to become second in line to the presidency. His naked obsession to be Speaker of the House of Representatives has become an exercise in futility and self-neutering.  

The American tragedy we are witnessing is much more than the story of an ambitious politician thwarted by radical forces he helped cultivate and shield from recrimination for conduct unbecoming any elected official. What makes this a national crisis is that the Constitution bestows upon the Speaker the opportunity to ascend to the White House if misfortune strikes not once but twice, to the president and vice president. 

By backtracking on his immediate condemnation of Donald Trump for fomenting the January 6 assault on the Capitol, only to kneel before the insurrectionist-in-chief two weeks later in Mar-a-Lago, McCarthy has shown himself to be a pol without scruples or backbone, someone so in pursuit of power that now he has negotiated away almost all of the prerogatives of the Speaker. That such a politician could possibly be responsible for leading our country, for negotiating with domestic and foreign leaders, is a chilling possibility to consider.

The dysfunction exhibited by House Republicans runs deeper than just McCarthy’s embarrassment. Among the more important duties of the House is the power to declare war, to pass an annual federal budget and to establish a debt ceiling so that government can operate and world financial markets would not be plunged into free-fall madness. 

Whether it is McCarthy, Stephen Scalise or any other Republican sitting in the Speaker’s chair, the future of the House during the next two years under GOP control is clear. Expect investigations of President Biden and his family, of his cabinet secretaries and executive appointments. Expect passage of any legislation, especially budget matters, to be linked to budget cuts in social welfare entitlement programs and in our support of Ukraine. 

To be honest, those were the expectations way before McCarthy’s self-immolation. Aside from basking in the memory of how pleasant and functional their rule in the House was under Nancy Pelosi, Democrats may be beneficiaries of the Republican mess. By showcasing their legislative record 2021-2022 against that of the Republicans in 2023-2024, Democrats might enjoy solid election results the next rime the House and Senate are at stake. 

But two years of McCarthy-led extremism is a hefty price to pay. 

Republican. McCarthy. Investigations of government personnel. Where have we seen that shameful combination before? Ah, yes, the Army-McCarthy hearings of 1954 that ultimately exposed Wisconsin Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy as a charlatan. What’s that old saying?, “The more things change the more they stay the same.” 

Here’s a Wikipedia summation of the dramatic 1954 hearings: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Army–McCarthy_hearings 

Shining an Inside Light on Antisemitism

 As Gilda and I stood in chilly Times Square Monday evening at a rally to “Shine a Light on Antisemitism” coordinated by UJA Federation of New York, the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, American Jewish Committee of New York, Anti-Defamation League New York/New Jersey and the New York Board of Rabbis, my mind kept mulling past and present discriminatory acts against Jews. 

I don’t mean by Kanye West or the Proud Boys.  Or Donald Trump. By Nazis, tsars or Communists. By a Greco-Syrian king (it is, after all, Hanukkah), by churches, by the Ku Klux Klan. By schools and businesses practicing restrictive admission policies. By landlords and real estate holders locking out housing opportunities. By the individual who has no moral compunction to attack a Jew simply because the opportunity presented itself on the street. 

They and many more antisemites are easily identified. No, what I couldn’t get out of my mind is the question, Can a Jew act antisemitically to another Jew? Was it happening even as I stood at a rally with placards proclaiming “We stand together” and “Fight Jew Hatred”?

Let’s not dodge the issue any longer—policies being proposed in Israel by a new government coalition, some already in effect from prior coalitions, are patently discriminatory against Conservative and Reform Jews, against secular Jews, against women, against Jews that do not practice Judaism in the same manner as the Haredi, the ultra Orthodox, do. 

Jewish sages taught that the Second Temple was destroyed in 70 CE, and the Judeans conquered and exiled, because of internecine conflict among Jewish sects, the Pharisees, the Sadducees and the Essenes. 

Such a teaching should instruct greater understanding of differences today, but discrimination and restrictions exist. Sadly, not every Jew is willing to openly discuss this topic. 

The other day a high school classmate from the Hebrew day school I attended—it was called a yeshiva but shouldn’t be confused with the extreme Orthodox establishments of today that barely touch on secular studies; back in the 1960s my school was a bastion of liberal democratic principles and profoundly Zionistic—my classmate wished all of our classmates a happy “Chanukah” along with the hope “that we experience the true meaning of the Chag [holiday] and continue to be a shining light to the entire world.”

Never one to pass up an opportunity to express my viewpoint, I commented back to the group, “Let us all hope that we Jews continue to be a shining light to the world though news from Israel continues to display a diminishing light in terms of religious tolerance, civil tolerance and democratic principles.”

 

He avoided entering a dialogue “because we differ quite a bit regarding religion and politics.” Sadly, no one else among my hundred or so classmates on the email exchange voiced an opinion. How chilling that basic human and religious rights were being ignored or were thought to be too sensitive a subject to discuss. 

My wife and I, practicing Conservative Jews, as well as those who follow Reform and Reconstruction Judaism, are not accorded the same religious rights and benefits as endowed on Orthodox Jews in Israel. Indeed, all Orthodox Jews are not equal in the eyes of the new Israeli government’s ultra Orthodox ministers. The rites of conversion, circumcision, marriage and divorce are not universally recognized and respected by the Haredi across all Jewish sects, including those practiced by many Orthodox believers. Access to the Western Wall and prayer there by women are restricted by the Haredi. 

What we are witnessing is a theocracy in the making in Israel. 

Classic forms of antisemitism encompass acts of discrimination—physical, verbal, regulatory—against a person or group identified as Jewish in religious practice, physical appearance, in name or heritage. The Haredi are going one step further—they are not recognizing the inherent Jewishness of those who do not believe as they do. 

So, can a Jew act antisemitically to another Jew?  Apparently, if they don’t consider that person to be Jewish. 

What they do not realize is that the act of dehumanizing your opponent, in this case dismissing their Jewishness, ultimately dehumanizes oneself. 

I have been admittedly harsh in my analysis. But not alone. With the announcement of a new government by Benjamin Netanyahu with extreme religious and right wing members holding key ministerial positions, AJC issued a deeply reflective and hopeful congratulatory statement:

“Due to AJC’s long-standing working relationships with Israeli government officials on shared priorities, as well as our profound admiration and respect for Israel’s vibrant democracy and civil society, we trust that Israel will continue to uphold the values that have allowed it to stand out as a beacon of freedom in the Middle East, and as a source of pride and spiritual sustenance for the Jewish people as a whole.

“AJC will continue to work closely with the Prime Minister and Israeli policy-makers to help ensure that the inflammatory rhetoric that has been employed by some members of the governing coalition—rhetoric unrepresentative of Israel’s democratic values, its role as a homeland for all Jews, and its unwavering quest for peace—will not define the domestic and foreign policies of the new government.

“We firmly believe that the Jewish and democratic State of Israel will continue to embrace all Jews regardless of their beliefs or practice; that it will strive to live up to its promise of equality for all its citizens, regardless of religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or gender identity; and that it will continue to pursue prospects for peace.”

My Kind of Town—Chicago, Even in My Dreams

Chicago was always one of my favorite places to visit, a city I travelled to about half a dozen times a year when I covered retailing, the Windy City and its environs being home to some of our most notable merchants including Sears, Montgomery Ward, McDonalds, Crate & Barrel, Marshall Field, Carson Pirie Scott and Walgreens as well as several retail industry trade shows. 

I hadn’t been back since I retired more than 13 years ago. Until I went there in my dreams last night, or more precisely, early in the morning. 

I found myself attending a citizens meeting contesting a problem with city water. It was burning children’s eyes. Always a battle to get kids to wash their faces properly, parents were vocally letting city officials know they did not appreciate the added burden imposed on their efforts. 

They were less than enthusiastic about the solution offered—free bottles with clean water laced with and an anti-stinging solution. Sorta reminded me of the “Look Ma, no tears” ad campaign Johnson & Johnson baby shampoo ran on television when I was a kid back in the 1950s. 

Now, why this imagined civic dilemma invaded my slumber is beyond me. I could easily have reminisced about interviews with retail executives, or some of the great meals I enjoyed in what is considered to be one of America’s best restaurant towns. Or my trips to Wrigley Field or Comiskey Park to watch, respectively, the Cubs and White Sox play. Or maybe I might have meandered in my dream along Michigan Avenue’s Miracle Mile of world class retailing. After all, the Chain Store Age-Lebhar-Friedman office at 444 N. Michigan Avenue was at the southern tip of the retail mecca. 

I’ve always disliked water in my eyes. To this day I keep my eyelids tightly shut while shampooing my hair. In summer camp when learning to swim as a child I wore big, round, green rubber goggles that made me look like a frog. I never learned to swim, even after goggles became more sleek, trim and plastic. 

Every Friday at summer camp the camp “mother” would be a dreaded visitor to our bunk. We weren’t trusted to wash our own hair before shabbat began later that evening. She would squeeze and knead our locks between her strong fingers as we bent over a sink. It wasn’t until a few decades or so ago that I finally realized she was checking us out for head lice. Happily, she never found any among my bunkmates and me. 

Back to my dream. It finally ended in the back seat of a taxi cab. Chicago taxis never impressed me with their cleanliness or comfort. And the one in my dream was true to my experience. Black plastic interior with no padding. No shock absorbers to cushion the impact of the choppy roadway. 

As we chugged slowly along the Kennedy Expressway in bumper to bumper traffic on the way in to the city from O’Hare Airport, I was reminded of the description one cabbie told me about Chicago’s perennial road conditions. 

“Chicago has two seasons,” he said. “Winter and construction.”    

Connecting to A Painful Point of History

News that the suspected Libyan bombmaker responsible for blowing up Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, on December 21, 1988, is now in American custody is another example of why I write a blog that ties historical, personal and current events to incidents and people in my life. 

Among the 259 passengers who perished aboard that fateful airplane was one of my cousins, Mark Alan Rein (another 11 Scottish innocents died on the ground).

Alan, as he was commonly known, was the treasurer of Salomon Bros., a Wall Street firm. A 1965 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, my cousin was just 44 years old, married, the father of two children, Nicole, 12, and Alexander, 9. He was returning from a trip to England before going on a vacation with his wife, Denice, to celebrate their 15th wedding anniversary.

In truth, though Alan was just five years older, I have few memories of him. His father, Moe, was my father’s first cousin. I vaguely recall going to Alan’s bar mitzvah, but our families rarely socialized. One memory I have is visiting their apartment. Alan’s mother suffered from multiple sclerosis. I also remember being proud I had a cousin attending Annapolis.

Alan’s funeral was held at Temple Emanu-El in Manhattan. It was the first and only time I have been inside this edifice, considered the largest and one of the most beautiful synagogues in the world. Almost all of its 2,500 seats were occupied. Alan’s older brother, Bert, delivered a eulogy. Bert is a well-connected Washington lawyer who has frequently appeared before the U.S. Supreme Court representing conservative and business interests.

I am forever amazed at the single degree of separation I have to many events and people in the news.  

A Night at the Opera and Singing Along with Mitch

Many of my blogs relate my experiences to current newsworthy happenings. Today’s entry is different. It focuses on the experience of someone I worked with for nearly 20 years. 

John Donoghue was a bear of a man. Irish in demeanor and character. In other words, lots of blarney and grand storytelling. Almost always with a smile on his cherubic, fleshy face, except when he contemplated where exactly he had left the keys to his rental car (usually on the roof of the sedan), or exactly how to get the wax out of his ears (usually with one of the keys retrieved from the top of the car).  

John sold advertising for Chain Store Age so successfully that he became its national sales manager and then the regional manager of the parent company’s Los Angeles office. His family relocated to Agoura Hills, a suburb of LA.  

This reverie about John was prompted by an article in the Thursday Arts section of The New York Times. Joshua  Barone provided a first person account of what it was like as a non singing extra during a performance at the Metropolitan Opera. Specifically, being an Egyptian soldier in Act II’s Triumphal Scene of “Aida” (https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/07/arts/music/met-opera-aida-actors.html?smid=em-share).

During his early adult years in New York, John engaged his larger than life persona with stints as an extra at the Met. Until he served as an extra for Aida. 

Unlike many current performances of Aida, back then the Triumphal Scene was filled not just with human extras but also with creatures, some exotic, including camels. 

Standing stage right (that’s the left side viewed by the audience), John stood in full Egyptian soldier attire, his hand holding a spear. He was silent as instructed until a camel stepped on his foot. Excruciating pain sent him scurrying across the stage. 

His devotion to opera notwithstanding, his cross-stage jaunt made him persona non grata for any future stints as an extra at the Met. 

OK, Now a Story About Me: Bob McGrath died this week. 

If you ever watched “Sesame Street” before 2016 you would recognize his face. He was Bob, “reliably smiling, easygoing and polite” in the neighborhood since the inception of Sesame Street in November 1969 (https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/04/arts/television/bob-mcgrath-dead.html?smid=em-share).

My exposure to Bob McGrath predates Sesame Street. It goes back to his time as a lead singer on “Sing Along with Mitch,” a favorite television show of my father and brother.

I, on the other hand, preferred “The Untouchables.” Problem was, both shows aired at the same time. In those pre-VCR/DVR days, with only one TV set in our household, fights were bound to break out. 

“Sing Along with Mitch” aired on NBC between 1961 and 1964. “The Untouchables” ran on ABC from 1959 to 1963. 

One particular week I was not to be denied. I screamed and yelled and cried. I made enough noise to drown out any hopes Bernie and our father had to enjoy the gang singing along with Mitch. 

Of course, by the time they finally gave in, Eliot Ness was already deep into his crime-fighting episode. Mobster Frank Nitti could have already been arrested, or better yet, machine gunned, by the time I was able to switch the TV to Channel 7.

Our confrontations lasted through “The Untouchables’” last season in 1963. After that, for the next year we all watched the bouncing ball above the words on the screen, singing along with Mitch and Bob.