Pastrami on Rye: An Overstuffed History of the Jewish Deli (24 page)

1
. Personal collection of the author.

2
. Interview with the author, 2/3/2010.

3
. William Oldys and John Malham,
The Harleian Miscellany: or, A Collection of Scarce, Curious, and Entertaining Pamphlets and Tracts, as Well in Manuscript as in Print, Found in the Late Earl of Oxford’s Library, Interspersed with Historical, Political and Critical Notes
, vol. 2 (London: Robert Dutton, 1809), 182.

4
. Henry Finck,
Food and Flavor: A Gastronomic Guide to Health and Good Living
(London: John Lane, 1914), 99.

5
. Interview with the author, 2/3/2010.

6
. Jean-Paul Aron,
Art of Eating in France: Manners and Menus in the 19th Century
(Chester Springs, PA: Dufour, 1975), 24–25.

7
. Abba Kanter, “Fun Der Kolbasa Biz Der Delicatessen Store” (From the Sausage to the Delicatessen Store),
Mogen Dovid Delicatessen Magazine
(11/1930), 19.

8
. Harry Gene Levine, “Pastrami Land: The Jewish Deli in New York,”
Contexts
(Summer 2007), 67, http://qcpages.qc.cuny.edu/~hlevine/Pastrami-Land.pdf. Rabbi Gil Marks speculates that the word
pastirma
was ultimately changed to
pastrami
in order to rhyme with
salami
. Gil Marks,
Encyclopedia of Jewish Food
(New York: Wiley, 2010), 450.

9
. John Cooper,
Eat and Be Satisfied
:
A Social History of Jewish Food
(New York: Jason Aronson, 1993), 77.

10
. David L. Gold, “When Chauvinism Interferes in Etymological Research: A Few Derivations on the Supposed Vulgar Latin Derivation of Rumanian
Pastrama
—
Pastrama
, a Noun of Immediate Turkish Origin (With Preliminary Remarks on
Related Words in Albanian, Arabic, Armenian, English, French, Greek, Hebrew, Judezmo, Polish, Russian, SerboCroatian, Spanish, Turkish, Ukrainian and Yiddish),” in
Studies in Etymology and Etiology
, ed. F. Rodríguez González and A. Lillo Buades (Alicante, Spain: University of Alicante, 2009), 271–375.

11
. Cooper,
Eat and Be Satisfied
, 169.

12
. Diner,
Hungering for America
, 164–165.

13
. Sholem Aleichem,
Tevye the Dairyman and the Railroad Stories
, trans. Hillel Halkin (New York: Schocken, 1987), 14.

14
. Molly Pulver Ungar, “From Zetz! to Zeitgeist: Translating ‘Rumenye, Rumenye,’” in Pierre Anctil, Norman Ravvin, and Sherry Simon, eds.,
New Readings of Yiddish Montreal / Traduire le Montreal Yiddish
(Ottawa, Canada: University of Ottawa Press, 2007), 118.

15
. Mayer Kirshenblatt and Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett,
They Called Me Mayer July
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), 115.

16
. Phyllis Glazer and Miriyam Glazer,
The Essential Book of Jewish Festival Cooking
(New York: HarperCollins, 2004), 243.

17
. Yeskheskl Kotik,
Mayn Zikroynes
(My Memories) (Warsaw, 1913).

18
. See Glenn Dynner,
Yankel’s Tavern: Jews, Liquor, and Life in the Kingdom of Poland
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2013). See also Marni Davis,
Jews and Booze: Becoming American in the Age of Prohibition
(New York: NYU Press, 2012), 6.

19
. Aharon Rosenbaum, “Memories of the Past,” trans. Jerrold Landau, in M. Yari-Wold, ed.,
Rzeszow Community Memorial Book
(Kehilat Raysha sefer zikaron) (Tel Aviv, 1967), available online at http://www.jewishgen.org/yizkor/rzeszow/rzeszow.html.

20
. Phyllis Kramer, ed.,
1891 Galician Business Directory
(New York: JewishGen, 2000), http://www.jewishgen.org/databases/Poland/galicia1891.htm.

21
. Gavriel Lindenberg, “Our Town as I Remember It,” trans. Yehudis Fishman, in Sh. Meltzer, ed.,
The Book of Horodenka
(trans. of
Sefer Horodenka
) (Tel Aviv, 1963), available online at http://www.jewishgen.org/yizkor/gorodenka/gor117.html.

22
. David Shtokfish,
Jewish Mlawa: Its History, Development, Destruction
(trans. of
Mlawa Ha-Yehudit; Koroteha, HitpatKhuta, Kilyona Di Yidishe Mlawe; Geshikte, Oyfshtand, Unkum
) (Tel Aviv, 1984), available online at http://www.jewishgen.org/yizkor/mlawa/mla429.html/.

23
. Ida Marcus-Kerbelnik and Bat-Sheva Levitan Kerbelnik, eds.,
Kelme—An Uprooted Tree
(trans. of
Kelm—‘Ets Karut
) (Tel Aviv, 1993), available online at http://www.jewishgen.org/yizkor/kelme/Kelme.html.

24
. Referenced in Condon,
And Then We Moved
, 115.

25
. Edwin Brooks, “The Romantic Origin of the Delicatessen Foods,”
Chicago Jewish Food Merchant
(4/1936), 32.

26
. “Love, Sausages, and Law,”
New York Times
(3/27/1875), 3.

27
. “Christmas Dainties: The German-American Must Have the Old Familiar Things That Come from the Fatherland,”
New York Tribune
(12/16/1900), 3.

28
. L. H. Robbins, “Rest for the Delicatessen Man?,”
New York Times
(8/15/1937), 117.

29
. “Klein Deutchland: Glimpses of Daily Life in the Recognized Little Germany of This Metropolis,”
New York Herald
(11/11/1894), 2.

30
. Edward Eggleston, “Wild Flowers of English Speech in America,”
Century
47.6 (1894): 853.

31
. H. L. Mencken,
The American Language: An Inquiry into the Development of English in the United States
(New York: Knopf, 1921), 103n36. Among other English words that derived from German, Mencken listed
pumpernickel
,
lager-beer
,
wienerwurst
,
bock-beer
, and
schnitzel
. Mencken idealized German culture and was known, in other books, for making virulently anti-Semitic statements, such as that “the case against the Jews is long and damning; it would justify ten thousand times as many pogroms as now go in the world.” H. L. Mencken, introduction to
The Anti-Christ
, by Friedrich Nietzsche (New York: Sharp, 1999), 14.

32
. H. T. Webster, “They Don’t Speak Our Language,”
Forum and Century
90.6 (1933), 62. For a list of contemporary deli terms, including
pistol
for pastrami,
CB
for corned beef, and
Coney
for hot dog, see Milton Parker and Allyn Freeman,
How to Feed Friends and Influence People: The Carnegie Deli
(Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2005), 59.

33
.
Brooklyn Daily Eagle
(3/29/1885), 12.

34
. Wong Chin Foo, “A Chinese Delicatessen Store,” reprinted in
Bismarck (ND) Daily Tribune
(8/7/1891), 3.

35
. “Queer Dishes in Shops,”
New York Tribune
, illustrated supplement (12/12/1897),12.

36
. Donna Gabaccia,
We Are What We Eat
:
Ethnic Foods and the Making of Americans
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000), 95.

37
. Gabaccia,
We Are What We Eat
, 10–35.

38
. George E. Walsh, “Queer Foreign Foods in America,”
American Kitchen Magazine
16 (11/1901): 65.

39
. Walsh made an exception for German sausages, which he insisted “have no meaning whatever except to German-born people,” since he averred that each type of sausage—such as
schinkenwurst
,
zugenwurst
,
blutwurst
, and
lieberwurst
—came from a particular German district and appealed mainly to those who hailed from that region. Walsh, “Queer Foreign Foods,” 66.

40
. Walsh, “Queer Foreign Foods,” 67.

41
. Forrest Chrissey,
The Story of Foods
(New York: Rand McNally, 1917), 463–472.

42
. Moses Rischin,
The Promised City: New York’s Jews, 1870–1914
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962), 56.

43
. By 1917, according to a Jewish communal survey, it was estimated that one million Jews in the city were buying meat from kosher butchers and that the average consumption of meat was 156 pounds per capita. See
The Jewish
Communal Register of New York City, 1917–1918
(New York: RareBooksClub, 2012), 319.

44
. In 1886, baked beans also first became popular in London, after Henry John Heinz sold five cases of samples to Fortnum & Mason, the gourmet food store famous for its wide selection of canned goods.

45
. Patricia Volk, “Deli,”
American Heritage Magazine
53.1 (2002), http://www.americanheritage.com/content/deli. See also Patricia Volk,
Stuffed: Adventures of a Restaurant Family
(New York: Vintage Books, 2002). Volk’s descendants also went on to become inventors in their own right; his son developed the wrecking ball, while his equally entrepreneurial grandson, also named Sussman, concocted double-ended cigarette lighters and trash-can cleaners.

46
. Marcus Ravage,
An American in the Making
(New York: Harper and Brothers, 1917), 88. D. H. Hermalin, writing at the turn of the twentieth century, estimated that throughout the city, Rumanian Jews—who numbered twenty-four thousand in New York—owned 150 restaurants, 200 wine cellars, and 30 coffeehouses. Hermalin described the fashion by which the Rumanians, “over a cup of black coffee and through the blue smoke curling up from their cigarettes . . . indulge in a game of cards or chess.” D. H. Hermalin, “The Roumanian Jews in America,”
American Jewish Yearbook
3 (1901–1902): 101–102.

47
. Esther Levy,
Jewish Cookery Book
(Philadelphia: W. S. Turner, 1871), 40. The first Jewish cookbook ever auctioned, it sold at Swann Auction Galleries in 2010 for $11,000. Gabriela Geselowitz, “Jewish Cooking, 19th Century Style,”
New York Jewish Week
(3/24/2010). The first Yiddish cookbook in the United States was not published until the turn of the twentieth century; it was Hinde Amchanitzki’s
Lehr-bukh vi azoy tsu kokhen un baken
(Cooking and Baking Textbook), first printed in New York in 1901. African and Middle Eastern Division, Library of Congress.

48
. Levy,
Jewish Cookery Book
, 39.

49
. See Paula Hyman, “Immigrant Women and Consumer Protest: The New York Kosher Meat Boycott of 1902,”
American Jewish History
70 (1980): 91–105.

50
. See Jonathan Rees,
Refrigeration Nation: A History of Ice, Appliances, and Enterprise in America
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013).

51
. Sammy Aaronson and Albert Hirshberg,
As High as My Heart
(New York: Coward-McCann, 1957), 18–19.

52
. Rischin,
Promised City
, 80.

53
. Andrew Heinze,
Adapting to Abundance
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1992), 16.

54
. Anzia Yezierska,
Bread Givers
(New York: Persea Books, 1999), 165.

55
. Alfred Kazin,
A Walker in the City
(New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1951), 34.

56
. The sociologist Shlomo Katz was reminded, he wrote, of the “distasteful and indelicate superabundance of Jewish restaurants, the staggering mounds of
food in delicatessen stores in Jewish neighborhoods, the endearing diminutives applied to a
gut shtickele
(‘fine piece of’) something or another.” Katz suggested that the parents, by making their children fat, could make them “sufficiently buttressed against the hostile world.” Shlomo Katz, “Heritage,” in Elliot Cohen, ed.,
Commentary on the American Scene
(New York: Knopf, 1953), 5–6.

57
. David Nasaw,
Going Out: The Rise and Fall of Public Amusements
(New York: Basic Books, 1993), 13.

58
. Sabine Haenni,
The Immigrant Scene: Ethnic Amusements in New York, 1880–1920
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008), 5.

59
. Maurice Hindus,
Green Worlds
(New York: Doubleday, Doran, 1938), 94–95.

60
. Susan J. Matt, “A Hunger for Home: Homesickness and Food in a Global Consumer Society,”
Journal of American Culture
30.1 (2007): 13.

61
. Quoted in Matt, “A Hunger for Home,” 13.

62
. Irving Howe,
World of Our Fathers
(New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976), 209.

63
. Benjamin Reich, “A New Social Center: The Candy Store as a Social Influence,”
Year Book of the University Settlement Society of New York
, 1899.

64
. Bella Spewack,
Streets: A Memoir of the Lower East Side
(New York: Feminist Press of the City University of New York, 1995), 43.

65
. Jillian Gould, “Candy Stores and Egg Creams,” in Ilana Abramovitch and Seán Galvin, eds.,
Jews of Brooklyn
(Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2001), 204.

66
. Howe,
World of Our Fathers
, 237.

67
. David Freedman,
Mendel Marantz
(New York: Langdon, 1925), 80.

68
. Jewish refugees from Spain and Portugal had imported their way of deep frying fish—
pescado frito
—to England, prompting Thomas Jefferson to mention in a letter that he had eaten “fish fried in the Jewish fashion.” See Claudia Roden,
The Book of Jewish Food: An Odyssey from Samarkand to New York
(New York: Knopf, 1996), 113. See also Alan Davidson,
The Penguin Companion to Food
(New York: Penguin, 2002), 359.