Olivia

by Judith Rossner

  “Both recipes on the board come from Jewish cookbooks. The first, for spanakopita, from a lovely book called Cookbook of the Jews of Greece by Nicholas Stavroulakis, calls for spinach and feta cheese, among other things, and is to be taken seriously. The second, for lasagna, is a little horror whose origin I won’t reveal, but its ingredients include kosher salami and cottage cheese. The lesson to be learned from these two recipes is that Jewish food—any food—is good when it uses well the ingredients that come to it naturally. And that nobody should try to cook foods that have no virtue except to sound like foods he or she would like to be able to eat.

  “That much is easy. What’s more difficult to understand, at least for me, is what it means to be an American Jew who doesn’t practice Judaism. When I try to identify the spirit of Jewishness, I come first to the humor that became part of American culture more rapidly than anything else, certainly faster than the food. Even the bagel, though the bagel is making up now in volume what it lacked in speed of assimilation.

  “There is virtually nothing forbidden the Jews as a source of humor. Even God, of whom someone said, ‘Of course he has a sense of humor. He created the human race.’ Actually, my favorite in that category is ‘God will provide—but why doesn’t He provide until he provides?’

  “When I began checking out Jewish food jokes, I thought I’d find more about Jewish mothers than anything else. But there were far more about Jewish waiters and stale food. One of my favorites is about the customer who asks, ‘What’s that fly doing in my soup?’ And the waiter looks down and says, ‘I think it’s the breast stroke.’ Then there’s, ‘Are you the waiter? By now I expected a much older man.’ And the customer who asks the waiter the nature of his offense because, he says, ‘I came in here an hour ago and I’ve been living on nothing but bread and water.’ Finally, we have the customer who complains about a piece of fish he’s served and is told, ‘You liked it yesterday, and it’s the same fish.’ And the one who asks room service for a glass of bitter orange juice, some blackened toast, and cold coffee. When they say they can’t fill that order, he replies, ‘Why not? You did yesterday.’ Notice that the customer in these jokes is invariably male; the women are home, cooking good, fresh food, and if the men were a little smarter, they’d be there, too.

  “As I began reading more serious stuff for this program, the first question that engaged me was what it meant to be a Jewish food. If pita, the Arabic bread that’s become so familiar in New York and now throughout the country, is a Hebrew word (pizza comes from the same word), and if falafel is the national dish of Israel and Egypt, then is there anything that really distinguishes Jewish food? Just as the Jews have always picked up dishes from the larger culture and adapted them to fit their own dietary laws, the larger culture has, over the centuries, adapted dishes invented by the Jews to suit those requirements. Cassoulet, that perfect marriage of the earthy and the divine, was introduced to Florence by the Spanish Jews, called Conversos, who’d been forced by the Inquisition to convert to Christianity. It came to represent a sign of faithfulness to Judaism, presumably because it cooked so slowly, and remained hot in its cooking pot for so long, that it required none of the work, like lighting a fire, that was forbidden on the Sabbath. The Spanish boiled dinner called coçida was brought to Spain by Jews, and it was Sephardic Jews who taught the English, as well as the Spanish and Portuguese, to fry fish in oil. On the other hand, if those of us raised in Jewish households think of lox—smoked salmon—as quintessential Jewish, the North American Indians and Scandinavians, who’ve been smoking salmon for centuries, surely never viewed it that way.

  “Which reminds me of the Martian who lands on the Lower East Side and breaks a couple of his landing wheels. He passes a bagel bakery and sees these great little wheels in the window and goes in and asks for two wheels. The saleslady explains they’re not wheels, they’re a kind of bread, and offers him one. The Martian takes a bite, and his face lights up, and he says, ‘Hey, this would be great with cream cheese and lox!’

  “The only food I know of that is indisputably and exclusively Jewish is matzo, the cracker made with flour and water, and then its crumbs, called matzo meal, and the various dishes made with the meal, most particularly the delicious dumplings called matzo balls. Have you heard about the curious Englishman who goes into a Jewish restaurant for his first bowl of chicken soup with matzo balls? Having eaten with great pleasure, he asks the waiter, ‘Tell me, my good man, are there any other parts of the matzo that can be eaten?’

  “In fact, there is no simple way to characterize Jewish food, unless what we’re talking about is food that is kosher. For those of you not familiar with what it means to be kosher, let me state the major rules. It is forbidden to eat any animal that doesn’t chew its cud, that is, whose stomach does not send back the results of the first digestive process for a second chew. Animals must have split, or cloven, hooves. That is, they must not be pigs, horses, or dogs. Of these, pigs, of course, provide the greatest problem for many modern American Jews. It probably goes without saying that the cassoulet of the Conversos did not contain pork sausage. On the other hand, Converso kids didn’t have to pass a stand with pepperoni pizza whenever they went out to lunch.

  “All shellfish are nonkosher, as are fish without fins and scales. And various birds, not including turkey or chicken. But permissible meat and fowl must be slaughtered by trained rabbis in a specific ritual which, for most of history, was faster, cleaner, and kinder than the methods used by other slaughterers. I’m told that in this century the world has caught up.

  “Another basic rule of kosher is that meat is never cooked or served with dairy products. Milk, butter, cheese, cream. Different plates and silverware are used for eating foods in the two categories, they’re cooked in different pans, and everything connected to one is kept separate from the other, even in storage.

  “Finally, there’s the interesting matter of blood. After the list is drawn about which animals can be kosher and how they’re to be slaughtered, there are stringent rules about blood, which is not allowed to reach the dining table. Prior to cooking, raw meat is salted and soaked in cold, running water until all its blood has run out. It’s ironic that crazy anti-Semitic stories told over the centuries have the Jews using the blood of Christian children to make matzo, when the kosher laws forbid eating blood in any form. A blood spot on an egg yolk makes it mandatory to discard the egg. I doubt it’s by chance that early anti-Semites picked matzos to have Jews bake the fantasy blood in. They had to pick something none of them ate. If they started saying the Jews put children’s blood in their meatballs, someone might get the idea that they knew because they used it in their own.

  “Somewhere, in some layer of the human mind, different layers in different groups and times, there seem always to have been a complicated set of permissions and taboos related to the eating or drinking of blood, and, even more—Jews are not alone in this—to the drinking of blood combined with the drinking of milk. And all but the most primitive of societies, perhaps even some of those, have had rules, explicit or so deep and strong as to be taken for granted, governing the eating of their own kind. One of the differences lies in what the collective mind sees as its own kind. Does ‘my kind’ mean my family, my group, my sex, my townsmen, my country, my species, or every living creature? Whether the Jews created the most stringent rules because they had the strongest sense of mankind’s negative potential, or the strongest sense of mankind’s commonality with other animals, few authorities have set down such strict rules for a population that has disregarded them in ever greater numbers.

  “Let’s see. Fruit and vegetables are never forbidden, and we tend increasingly to look to fruit and vegetables as substitutes for less healthy foods. Too, the number of people you might call ‘accidentally kosher’ has increased as everyone’s become more aware of dietary fat and the meat and dairy products in which so much of it is found.

  “But when all is said and done, the people who follow the ko
sher laws today aren’t reacting to their own taste or to health concerns—not bodily health, at any rate—or to any sense that a pig or a shrimp, whatever its habits, can’t be made clean enough to eat. They are following custom for its own sake. Perhaps they’re saying, ‘The messiah has not yet been found who will restrain us, and therefore we must train ourselves in restraint.’

  “In planning for this affair . . . for this program about a Jewish affair . . . wedding . . . Oh, dear, I’m going to interrupt myself because I just remembered the one about two women friends who meet on the street, and the first one says, ‘I’m having an affair,’ and the second one says, ‘Wonderful! Who’s catering?’ Anyway, in planning this, uh, wedding party, I considered adhering to a Jewish menu, even a kosher menu, a greater challenge. I was interested to know whether, at this stage in my life, being kosher could take on, even briefly and in a ceremonial context, some significance for me. The closest it came was in a book called Voices of Wisdom by Francine Klagsbrun. I’m going to read you a paragraph from it now:

  “ ‘The zeal for human life is reflected in the appreciation shown all living things. Although during ancient times conquering and subduing nature was a major concern, early teachers and sages had a deep respect for their environment. A single biblical command prohibiting the destruction of fruit trees during wartime, for example, led to a wide variety of laws forbidding any kind of wanton destruction. Biblical and talmudic rules deal with air pollution and city planning, with the care of animals and the preservation of species. The dietary laws . . . have one core idea throughout. In their prohibitions against eating blood or the flesh of living animals, in their restrictions on the kinds and parts of animals that may be consumed, they set limits on human dominance over the animal world.’

  “So, there it was. The rules were there for their own sake. We need rules to limit our unruly impulses, custom to contain us. I flipped through the book and found some other beauties. The one I recall now is from the Babylonian Talmud and says that when a divorced man marries a divorced woman, there are four minds in bed. I couldn’t believe it. When had the Babylonian Talmud been written, with this breathtaking piece of sophisticated psychological wisdom? It was the first time in my life that I had to feed people, and all I wanted was to curl up with a good book. To some extent, that’s continued.

  “I don’t mean that I’ve lost interest in the care and feeding of myself and other humans. As a matter of fact, I’m reminded of the old man who, when asked if he had any regrets about his life, said he certainly did: ‘I spent so much money on good food, fine wines, lovely women. And I go crazy when I think of how I wasted the rest!’ I love it. But once some idea makes its way to the center of your brain, it becomes a sort of magnet. Other particles stick to it. In the past few years, as sexual obsession has grown increasingly complicated and/or visibly unhealthy, an even larger number of people seem to have become obsessed with food. Sales of cookbooks far exceed the sales of most works of fiction and nonfiction, many of them interesting or important or just pleasurable for our lives away from the table. It’s become a bit much. I need to move on.

  “Which is not to suggest that I’m ordering in chow mein tonight. But I find myself less interested in cooking just now than in establishing custom in a life that’s been unruly. That has had, for one reason and another, little custom to guide it. I need to find customs that are reasonable for an American Jewish mother . . . and grandmother, as I’ll soon be . . . living in New York City at the end of the twentieth century. There’s a Yeats poem in which he asks, ‘How, but in custom and in ceremony, are beauty and innocence born?’ I’m feeling that if beauty and innocence haven’t been left on my doorstep, I’d like to go out and find some.

  “We’ve come, for a while, to the end of ‘Pot Luck.’ Earlier I referred to this last program as my swan song. Now I feel that in a spirit of regard for a set of rules I’d feel unnatural following, I would prefer to call it my farewell.

  “Swans, I have learned only recently, are not kosher.”

  Leon kept saying that I’d been absolutely right, it was much better being married. It would be better yet if I stopped worrying so much.

  I could not stop worrying so much.

  The kids left for camp, the rest of us moved out to Bridge-hampton and the men began working on our apartment. Livvy chose to remain with me during the week when the men went to New York. She had grown attached to me in a way that made me vaguely uneasy even while I enjoyed it. Sometimes she reminded me of Leon when he’d just fallen in love with me, following me from room to room, nodding, mesmerized, when I spoke of the simplest matter. She put on and did not take off again the locket I’d sent for her birthday when she was still in Italy. But there were times when I thought I saw signs of her coming to terms with the baby’s existence. If she still had to be coaxed to return to Manhattan for her doctor appointments, and never wanted to put her hand on her belly when Pablo told her the baby was moving, she was willing, once we were in New York, to shop with me for a crib, a Bathinette and a stroller, as well as the essential items of an infant’s wardrobe.

  On a rainy day in July, as she and I browsed in a Westhampton antique shop, she stopped in front of a very large, old cradle. It was only when I’d been through the store and come back to find her in the same spot that I looked at the cradle carefully. It was very much like the one we’d had for her in Florence. Genevra had lent it to us because there wasn’t room for a full-width crib in the room Angelo and I lived in. Later, we’d moved it to the upstairs apartment, and eventually it had gone back to Genevra’s.

  Livvy was lost.

  “Are you remembering your cradle?” I asked. “It was almost as big as this one.”

  She nodded. “What happened to it?”

  “Anthony and Genevra needed it back. It was theirs. But we had it for a long time in Firenze.”

  She nodded.

  “Do you remember the Firenze apartment?” I asked.

  “Was there a narrow staircase?”

  “Yes.”

  “And one of the rooms was very dark, and the other one was very bright?”

  “Absolutely. The one in the front was light, but the back faced another building.”

  Other browsers had come into the shop and a few crowded past us. Livvy was oblivious to them as she stared at the cradle. It was a shame the crib was already delivered. On the other hand, the cradle was horrendously overpriced, and we didn’t have room for extra furniture yet, with only the downstairs walls done. Leon and Pablo had covered all the furniture and moved it against the far walls as the men prepared to cut through the ceiling and floor.

  But as Livvy stood mesmerized in front of the cradle, I began the process of rationalization that would allow me to buy it. Leon and I could keep it upstairs for when we were baby-sitting. If he didn’t want it there, we could keep it in the big room downstairs. For when I was baby-sitting. When the baby outgrew it, we could use it for magazines and newspapers. Or hats and gloves. Or something.

  I asked the shopkeeper if she’d come down a little on the price.

  Carefully not looking at Livvy’s belly, she said, “Maybe if you wait till the end of the season.”

  “It needs a new mattress,” I pointed out.

  “I’ll find one, Mama,” Olivia said, putting an end to my attempt at negotiation. “And I can make a cover. It’ll be simple.”

  We put it in the back of the wagon. Leon’s reaction, upon seeing it on Friday night, was, “And this is the woman I’ve been trusting with my checkbook.”

  “It seemed to be so important to her,” I said. “I figure anything about the baby that she really—”

  “Sure, sure,” Leon said, kissing my cheek. “But a few more like this and I might want my checkbook back. Or ask for yours.”

  This actually brought up a touchy matter.

  I had, when we got down to the wire, written Sheldon and the producers of “Pot Luck” explaining why I could not sign the contracts. Sheldon had refus
ed to speak to me for a while, but the producers had been kind, assured me that they understood, told me to come back to them when I was ready to do another show.

  I had put aside some of what I’d earned. But now that I wasn’t earning more, I was reluctant to spend much of it. Leon didn’t seem to mind being my virtually sole support (Pablo was paying the rent and utilities downstairs, while I paid for food), but I found it uncomfortable. As the summer progressed, and Livvy seemed happier, I thought more about what I might do when the baby was born if my responsibilities were not so overwhelming as to prevent other activity.

  I could return to giving classes; surely the baby’s being in the apartment wouldn’t prevent that, if Livvy was there and caring for her. Or I could do what everyone else in the world was doing, write a book. I didn’t have enough original recipes to fill a cookbook. This didn’t bother every cookbook writer, but unfortunately, my brain, so delinquent at other tasks, remembered where every dish I’d ever cooked had originated. Then I had begun to play with the notion of a book called My Life in Food. A sort of love story, it wouldn’t deal with difficult husbands, impossible children, or any of life’s elements that were unsusceptible to reasonable control. It would be, rather, a sort of kitchen romance, beginning with my earliest memories of sitting on the housekeeper’s lap to lick batter from the bowl, going on to cooking Italian food with Anna without learning the significance of regional variations until I cooked for Angelo. But there it was already. I couldn’t remove Angelo from the caponata story any more than I could separate Leon, so to speak, from the matzo balls. So much for My Life in Food. It wasn’t what I wanted to do, anyway. What I wanted was to take a couple of history classes. Were there people who’d pay me to do that? Was my Columbia tuition freebie good all these years later, as my parents began to think about retirement? I would have to find out, once we were settled back in the city.