Pastrami on Rye: An Overstuffed History of the Jewish Deli (25 page)

69
. “Stalls for Fried Fish,”
New York Times
(11/12/1899), 12.

70
. John A. Jakle and Keith A. Sculle,
Fast Food: Roadside Restaurants in the Automobile Age
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), 29.

71
. Darra Goldstein, “Will Matzoh Go Mainstream? Jewish Food in America,” in
The Jewish Role in American Life: An Annual Review
, vol. 4 (Los Angeles: Casden Institute, 2005).

72
. See Harold P. Gastwirt,
Fraud, Corruption, and Holiness: The Controversy over the Supervision of Jewish Dietary Practice in NYC, 1881–1940
(Port Washington, NY: Kennikat, 1974).

73
. See Maria Diemling, “As the Jews like to Eat Garlick: Garlic in Christian-Jewish Polemical Discourse in Early Modern Germany,” in Leonard J. Greenspoon,
Ronald A. Simkins, and Gerald Shapiro, eds.,
Food and Judaism
(Omaha, NE: Creighton University Press, 2004), 218.

74
. Sara Evans,
Born for Liberty
(New York: Free Press, 1997), 163.

75
. Samuel Chotzinoff,
A Lost Paradise: Early Reminiscences
(New York: Arno, 1975), 184.

76
. Isaac Reiss (Moishe Nadir), “Ruined by Success,” translated from the Yiddish by Nathan Ausubel, in Ausubel,
Treasury of Jewish Humor
(New York: Doubleday, 1951), 36–39.

77
. Classified section,
New York Herald
(2/19/1888), 19.

78
. Annie Polland,
Landmark of the Spirit: The Eldridge Street Synagogue
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 96–97. Kosher meat is produced from biblically permitted animals (those that have cloven hoofs and that chew their cud), which are slaughtered with a single stroke of a sharp blade across the carotid artery, cut into pieces with a knife that has had no contact with dairy products, and then soaked and salted to remove any traces of blood.

79
. Sholem Aleichem,
Motl Peyse dem Khazns Zun
(Motl Peyse, the Cantor’s Son) (Jerusalem: Hebrew University Magnes Press, 1997). The translation is mine.

80
. Ad for Barnet Brodie Genuine Kosher Meat Products,
Mogen Dovid Delicatessen Magazine
(8/1931), 18.

81
. “Court Is Mystified by Delicatessen,”
New York Times
(4/29/10), 3.

82
.
Hyman Lipman v. Max Parker, et al
., in M. E. McDonald, ed.,
Lackawanna Jurist
16 (1/29/1915–1/21/1916): 82–86.

83
. Batya Miller, “Enforcement of the Sunday Closing Laws on the Lower East Side, 1882–1903,”
American Jewish History
91.2 (2003): 269–286.

84
.
Soon v. Crowley
, 113 U.S. 703, 710.

85
. Miller, “Enforcement of the Sunday Closing Laws,” 278.

86
. “Will Obey the Law,”
New York Herald
(7/7/1895), 6. One wonders how many of the delicatessen owners were Jewish and likely closed their stores on Saturdays.

87
. “Grew Eloquent on Delicatessen,”
New York Herald
(7/30/95), 4.

88
. “Overzealous on Excise,”
New York Times
(8/27/1895), 8.

89
. “‘Delikatessen’ on Sunday,”
New York Times
(2/8/1899), 6.

90
. “Sunday Delicatessen,”
New York Times
(3/28/1899), 6.

91
. May Ellis Nichols, “Exit the Maid,”
Outlook
125 (5/12/1920): 79.

92
. “Raines Law Delicatessen,”
New York Times
(2/7/1899), 5.

93
. “Delicatessen Men’s Festival,”
New York Times
(7/31/1899), 7.

94
. “Then and Now,”
Life
(11/18/20), 921.

95
. Chotzinoff,
Lost Paradise
, 182.

96
. Kazin,
Walker in the City
, 34.

97
. Ella Eaton Kellogg,
Science in the Kitchen
(Chicago: Modern Medicine, 1893), 29–31.

98
. See Harvey Levenstein,
Fear of Food: A History of Why We Worry about What We Eat
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), 32.

99
. Sonia Kochman Davis, “A Dietician Looks at the Kosher Delicatessen Store and its Customers,”
Jewish Criterion
(Pittsburgh, PA) (3/30/28), 59–62. For more on the perceived link between kosher food and poor health during the 1920s, see Kochman Davis, “The Kosher Diet—What It Is,”
Jewish Criterion
(11/18/27), 41–42.

100
. “To the White Coat and Apron Brigade,”
Mogen Dovid Delicatessen Magazine
(6/1931), 7.

101
. Barnett Brodie ad,
Mogen Dovid Delicatessen Magazine
(8/1931), 18.

102
. Theodore Krainin, “‘Kosher’ and the Jewish Dietary Laws,”
Jewish Forum
(1/23), 79.

103
. Chelsea Delicatessen advertising card, collection of the author.

104
. Diane Janowski,
Our Own Book—A Victorian Guide to Life—Homespun Cuisine, Health, Romance, Etiquette, Raising Children and Farm Animals
(Elmira, NY: New York History Review Press, 2008), 46; originally published by
Weekly Gazette and Press
(Elmira, NY), 1888. Delicatessen customer Bernard Cooper, who grew up in Los Angeles, recalled, “the glass bottles gave no clue as to the identity of Dr. Brown,” but “I pictured him as a kindly white-coated man not unlike my dentist. In a pristine laboratory filled with bubbling test tubes and beakers, Dr. Brown concocted the amber elixir that washed away the saltiness of corned beef, cut the peppery after-burn of pastrami or kept me from choking on a throatful of brisket.” Every swig of the beverage, he noted, was a “toast to the future, each bottle a triumph of science.” Bernard Cooper, letter to the
New York Times
(3/10/1996).

105
. Leah Koenig, “Cel-Ray Soda Grabs New Fans,”
Forward
(7/18/2012).

106
. LeRoy Kaser, “In the Delicatessen Shop, a Jewish Monologue,” in
Dialect Monologues: Readings and Plays
(Dayton, OH: Paine, 1928), 146–147.

107
. For more on Hebrew comics, see Ted Merwin,
In Their Own Image: New York Jews in Jazz Age Popular Culture
(New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2006). The Yiddish accent sounds more German than Yiddish—very few non-Jewish comics strove to reproduce a bona fide Yiddish accent. Most of their audiences couldn’t tell the difference anyway.

108
. See Matthew Frye Jacobson,
Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999).

109
. Quoted in Ronald T. Takaki,
Double Victory: A Multicultural History of America in World War II
(Boston: Back Bay, 2001), 188.

110
. See Gastwirt,
Fraud, Corruption, and Holiness
.

111
. Gastwirt,
Fraud, Corruption, and Holiness
, 122–123.

112
. “Kosher Meat Man Held in High Bail,”
New York Times
(4/20/1933), 25.

113
.
People v. Jacob Branfman & Son
, 263 NYS 629, 147 Misc. 290 (City Court, 1933).

114
. “The New Kosher Law,”
Mogen Dovid Delicatessen Magazine
(6/1936), 1.

115
. Gastwirt,
Fraud, Corruption, and Holiness
, 78–79.

116
. “Ending a Scandal,”
Yiddishes Tageblatt
/
Jewish Daily News
(4/5/1922), 8.

117
. “75 Years Ago in the Forward,”
Jewish Daily Forward
(3/9/2007).

1
. There are three published versions of this scene; the only one that contains the delicatessen references is the one that Groucho printed in his scrapbook,
The Groucho Phile
. But improvisation was an integral part of vaudeville, and since Groucho performed this scene for years, ad-libbing all the while, there is no way to know when the delicatessen references were introduced. Groucho Marx,
The Groucho Phile: An Illustrated Life
(New York: Galahad Books, 1979), 41.

2
. See Samuel Zanvel Pipe, “Napoleon in Jewish Folklore,” in
YIVO Annual of Jewish Social Science
, vol. 1 (New York: YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, 1946), 294; and Ronald Schechter,
Obstinate Hebrews: Representations of Jews in France, 1715–1815
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 226.

3
. Deborah Dash Moore,
At Home in America: Second Generation New York Jews
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1981).

4
. George Jean Nathan, “Clinical Notes: The Sandwich,”
American Mercury
8 (5–8/1926): 237–238.

5
. Despite the popularity of competitive eating, its dangers are coming to public attention, especially after a man choked to death while competing in a hot-dog-eating contest in South Dakota on July 4, 2014. “Man Dies at South Dakota Hot Dog Eating Contest,”
New York Times
(from the Associated Press) (7/8/2014).

6
. Roger Abrahams, “The Language of Festivals: Celebrating the Economy,” in Victor Turner, ed.,
Celebration: Studies in Festivity and Ritual
(Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1982), 161–177.

7
. Allan Sherman and Bud Burtson,
The Golden Touch
, unpublished ms., Du 27189 (registered on 4/2/51), Library of Congress, act 1, scene 1, p. 3. Thanks to Mark Cohen for sharing a copy of the manuscript with me. For a discussion of the musical, see Mark Cohen,
Overweight Sensation: The Life and Comedy of Allan Sherman
(Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2013), 58–66.

8
. See Ted Merwin, “The American Dream, on Rye,”
New York Jewish Week
(12/11/2012).

9
. Jack Waldron, “Max’s Delicatessen,” undated ms., *T-Mss 2008–001, Smith and Dale Papers, Additions (1898–1987), Billy Rose Theater Collection, New York Public Library.

10
. Marx,
Harpo Speaks
, 166.

11
. Nathan, “Clinical Notes,” 237–238.

12
. Jim Heimann,
Make I Take Your Order? American Menu Design, 1920–1960
(San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1998), 16.

13
. Earl Wilson, “Famous Lindy’s Waiters,”
Beaver County (PA) Times
(9/19/1969).

14
. Jerome Charyn,
Gangsters and Gold Diggers: Old New York, the Jazz Age, and the Birth of Broadway
(New York: Thunder’s Mouth, 2003), 9.

15
. Curled, tinted strips of paper—or cellophane—were emblematic of the delicatessen; the humorist George S. Kaufman, satirizing
Life
magazine’s “Calendar” for October 17, 1922, joked that it was that date when the “last New York delicatessen store [stopped] using colored paper sauerkraut for window decoration.” Quoted in Simon Louvish,
Monkey Business: The Lives and Legends of the Marx Brothers
(New York: Macmillan, 2000), 166.

16
. Montague Glass, “Kosher Restaurants,”
Saturday Evening Post
(8/3/1929).

17
. Arnold Manoff, “Reuben and His Restaurant—The Lore of a Sandwich,” interview with Arnold Reuben, conducted on December 18, 1938,
American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers’ Project, 1936–1940
, MSS55715: Box A722, Folklore Project, Life Histories, 1936–39, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.

18
. Nowadays, by contrast, fewer than two dozen shows open on Broadway each year.

19
. For the Jewish involvement in Hollywood, see Neal Gabler,
An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood
(New York: Anchor Books, 1989). For the Jewish involvement in Broadway, see Merwin,
In Their Own Image
.

20
. Rian James,
Dining in New York
(New York: John Day, 1930), 29.

21
. Michael Alexander,
Jazz Age Jews
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), 63.

22
. Manoff, “Reuben and His Restaurant.”

23
. Max Asnas,
Corned Beef Confucius
(Kimberly 11006, n.d.), LP.

24
. Gutterman reported on plans, which did not come to fruition, to make a biopic about Asnas, with Edward G. Robinson considered for the lead. Gutterman quoted the sportswriter Murray Robinson to the effect that Asnas “moves serenely through a maze of comical woes which would unhorse a lesser spirit. Max has troubles with customers, partners, comedians, mustard pots, waiters, chefs, panhandlers, countermen, horse players and grammar. He beats them all down without drawing a deep breath.” Leon Gutterman, “Our Film Folk,”
Canadian Jewish Chronicle
(7/23/1954), 8.

25
. Martin Kalmanoff (pseud. Marty Kenwood), Aaron Schroeder (pseud. Matt Kingsley), and Eddie White, “When Mighty Maxie Makes with the Delicatessen,” undated ms., Martin Kalmanoff Papers, 1928–2002, Box 100, Folder 47, Billy Rose Theater Collection, New York Public Library.

26
. Others claim that the iconic sandwich was invented by a cook in Reuben’s Delicatessen, who named it after his boss. But the sandwich is also attributed to Reuben Kulakofsky, a wholesale grocer in Omaha, Nebraska, who played a weekly poker game with a group of men who fixed their own sandwiches to eat while they played. The Reuben eventually appeared on the menu of The Blackstone, a local hotel that was owned by Kulakofsky’s poker buddy Charles
Schimmel. The story about Annette Seelos is almost certainly fabricated, since Chaplin was making a film in Hollywood at the time, and in any event there is no record of an Annette (whom Reuben also referred to as “Anna”) Selos appearing in any of Chaplin’s films. Furthermore, just as there are a number of competing stories about how the Reuben came to be, there are many variations on the Reuben. The 1920s menu lists a number of “Reuben” sandwiches, including Club a la Reuben Special, Reuben’s Special, Reuben’s Paradise, Reuben’s Tongue Delite, and Reuben’s Turkey Sandwich with Russian Dressing.

27
.
Program for Ziegfeld Follies of 1931
, 17, Ziegfeld Follies File, Billy Rose Theater Collection, New York Public Library.

28
. Quoted in Jane Stern and Michael Stern,
Roadfood Sandwiches: Recipes and Lore from Our Favorite Shops Coast to Coast
(New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2007), 227.

29
. Damon Runyon,
Guys and Dolls: The Stories of Damon Runyon
(New York: Penguin, 1992), 93. Oddly, Runyon seems to have associated delis with fish more than with meat; instead of writing that a character “ate” in a deli, he coined the expression “tore a herring.” Woody Allen employs this expression in one of his novels. When Allen’s narrator serves his nanny—who is writing a vituperative tell-all book about her employers—poisoned tea, she exclaims, “Gee, this is something new. We never tore a herring at eleven-thirty in the A.M.” Woody Allen,
Mere Anarchy
(New York: Random House, 2008), 62.

30
. Irving Berlin, “Puttin’ on the Ritz,” copyrighted 8/21/1929; introduced by Harry Richman and Joan Bennett in the film
Puttin’ on the Ritz
, directed by Edward Sloman (United Artists Productions, 1930).

31
. See Ralph Keyes,
I Love It When You Talk Retro: Hoochie Coochie, Double Whammy, Drop a Dime, and the Forgotten Origins of American Speech
(New York: Macmillan, 2009), 246.

32
. See Merwin,
In Their Own Image
.

33
. Leon de Costa, typescript of
Kosher Kitty Kelly
, Library of Congress, act 2, p. 11. For a longer discussion of the play, see Merwin,
In Their Own Image
, 105–109.

34
.
Private Izzy Murphy
, directed by Lloyd Bacon (Warner Brothers, 1926).

35
. See Ted Merwin, “The Performance of Jewish Ethnicity in Anne Nichols’
Abie’s Irish Rose
,”
Journal of American Ethnic History
20.2 (2001): 3–37.

36
.
The Delicatessen Kid
, directed by Walter Fabian (Universal, 1929).

37
. See Ted Merwin, “Serving Up Food with Attitude,”
New York Jewish Week
(4/3/2009).

38
. The writer Sharon Rudnick has recalled that it was a “mixed blessing to get her because she was so incredibly slow. But she was so entertaining it made up for the service.” Quoted in Sue Fishkoff,
Kosher Nation
:
Why More and More of America’s Food Answers to a Higher Authority
(New York: Schocken, 2010), 91. When Kassner was encouraged to retire, she sued the deli for age discrimination; she won the suit, but only after she had already passed away at the age of
eighty-three. Thomas Zambito, “Dead Waitress Wins Harass Suit,”
New York Daily News
(4/30/2009).

39
. Earl Wilson, “Famous Lindy’s Waiters,”
Beaver County (PA) Times
(9/19/1969).

40
. Alan Richman, “Oldest Living,”
GQ
(10/2000), http://www.gq.com/food-travel/alan-richman/200602/professonial-jewish-waiter. Spelling error in original.

41
. Robert Sylvester, “The Broadway Gang Eats Here,”
Saturday Evening Post
(7/15/1961), 51.

42
. Dorothy Sue Cobble,
Dishing It Out: Waitresses and Their Unions in the Twentieth Century
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992), 34.

43
. “No Hashers: Waitresses Must Have Tact and Charm,”
Literary Digest
(5/1/1937), 26–27.

44
. Levine, “Pastrami Land,” 67.

45
. “Pesach Burstein, Vol. 1,” Pesach Burstein, Judaica Sound Archives, Florida Atlantic University, http://www.faujsa.fau.edu/burstein. Special thanks to Mike Burstyn (son of Pesach Burstein) and to Mark Altman for help in translating the song. Burstein’s five albums of recordings for Columbia can be accessed through the Judaica Sound Archives on the website of the Florida Atlantic University. See also Eric Byron, “English Acquisition by Immigrants (1880–1940): The Confrontation as Reflected in Early Sound Recordings,”
Columbia Journal of American Studies
, http://www.columbia.edu/cu/cjas/byron1.html (accessed 2/2/2009).

46
. Ethel Somers, “Glorifying the Home Dinner,”
Liberty
(1/29/1927), 67.

47
. Untitled article,
Life
(11/1/1929), 16.

48
. Daniel Fuchs,
Homage to Blenholt
(London: Constable, 1936), 242.

49
. “With the Procession,”
Everybody’s Magazine
10.1 (1904): 709.

50
. L. H. Robins, “Rest for the Delicatessen Man?,”
New York Times
(8/15/1937), 117.

51
. Bertram Beinitz, “Our Town and Its Folk: A Delicatessen and Some Others,”
New York Times
(3/29/1925), XX2.

52
. “Says ‘Delicatessen Wife’ Is Grounds for a Divorce,”
New York Times
(5/2/1925), 17.

53
. “Poor Meals Break Homes,”
New York Times
(9/16/1920), 8.

54
. Florence Guy Seabury, “The Delicatessen Husband,” in
The Delicatessen Husband: And Other Essays
(New York: Harcourt Brace, 1926), 31.

55
. Seabury, “The Delicatessen Husband,” 29.

56
. Seabury, “The Delicatessen Husband,” 42.

57
. Silas Bent,
Machine Made Man
(New York: Farrar and Rinehart, 1930), 33.

58
. Arthur Kober, “Nobody Can Beat Friedkin’s Meats,” in Harold U. Ribalow, ed.,
A Treasury of American Jewish Stories
(New York: Thomas Yoseloff, 1958), 223.

59
. Jo Sinclair,
Wasteland
(New York: Harper and Brothers, 1946), 105.

60
. “News Plan,”
Printer’s Ink
114 (3/24/1921), 79.

61
. Montague Glass, “Welcome to New York: Fishbein and Blintz Discuss New York versus the Rest of the U.S.,”
Life
80 (8/31/1922), 20.

62
. “Standard Meals? Enter the Delicatessen,”
Baltimore Sun
(11/7/1926), E23.

63
. “Standard Meals?,” E23.

64
. Robins, “Rest for the Delicatessen Man?”

65
. Louise Gertner, “What New York Eats in the Hot Summer Days,”
Yiddish Daily Forward
(7/27/1937), 4.

66
. S. J. Wilson,
Hurray for Me
(New York: Crown, 1964), 98. In a review of the novel in the
Chicago Tribune
, the critic Digby Whitman wrote, “[It] glows with the unique warmth of what I can only call the tribal life of the underprivileged Jew.” Digby B. Whitman, “Luminous Novel Re-creates Small Child’s World,”
Chicago Tribune
(2/23/1964), L1.

67
. Thomas F. Dwyer to Benjamin Koenigsberg (6/16/1931), Benjamin Koenigsberg Collection, Box 11, Folder 1, Yeshiva University Archives. Reported numbers of kosher delicatessens fluctuated widely. Two years earlier, according to a report by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, there were approximately two thousand nominally kosher delicatessens in New York City, along with ten thousand kosher butchers, although half of all these were found to be in noncompliance with strict kosher regulations. “Seek Greater Enforcement of Kashruth Laws in New York,”
Jewish Criterion
(Pittsburgh, PA) (6/7/1929), 4.