The schmoozer in chief with Niki and Josh, the fourth-generation
owners of Russ & Daughters. Grandpa Russ is kvelling.
(Copyright © Belathée Photography)
There is, however, the perennial problem of those customers who took a number, waited for a while, then got hungry and went down the block to Katz’s for a hot dog or a pastrami sandwich, or walked three blocks to put more money in the meter. They missed their number when it was called and they look to me for dispensation. This always creates a dilemma in my mind: Who is the customer? Where did he go? Is she one of our regulars? Will taking them out of turn because they missed their number cause a riot? I usually just say, “I’m sorry, you need to take a new number.” No rachmonis (sympathy), not even on erev Yom Kippur.
This time I am approached by one of our regulars. Roy is a jazz musician, a longtime but now former resident of the Lower East Side. Roy was once part of the local artists/writers/musicians scene, but he felt compelled to move to Brooklyn when he got married and had a child. He misses the old neighborhood and is not very comfortable with the new, trendy Lower East Side. Roy also found it necessary to get a steady day job, teaching music at a Brooklyn school. He tells me that his next class is in one hour and I have to bump him up in the line. I tell him I’m sorry but I can’t, and he paces back and forth nervously. Here is a serious moral dilemma. Roy decides that it is better for the teacher to cut his class than to miss his number at Russ & Daughters.
Don’t Hand Me a Line. Get on It.
I have to admit it, our customers are a creative bunch. Especially when it comes to devising excuses for jumping the line during the holidays. I’ve heard everything. Many require me to exercise the wisdom of a Solomon to resolve, but since I’m no Solomon, I usually just say no. I’ve been offered everything from money to—well, use your imagination. The bottom line is: If you come to Russ & Daughters to shop before a major holiday, be prepared to wait in line. Here are some of my favorite excuses offered up by people who just don’t want to:
1. My mother just died. It was true, but what does that have to do with buying herring?
2. I have a patient waiting on the operating table. A favorite of many doctors past and present. Nice try, but it doesn’t work.
3. I was in Europe all summer. You can’t expect me to put in my order from overseas? Why not? We have a customer who places his Yom Kippur order every year from wherever he is on his travels. One year he called me from the Great Wall in China.
4. I was in the Hamptons all summer. See number 3.
5. I was at the hospital with my daughter, who broke her leg. Okay, I let him jump the line because he showed up in the store with his daughter in a cast and a wheelchair.
Sometimes mothers or fathers bring their young children to the store and get them to scream on command, expecting that I will immediately want the family waited on to get them out of the store. Instead, I offer the child a piece of candy, which calms down the kid but agitates the parent.
Some regular customers, unhappy that they must wait their turn with the “once-a-year types,” suggest, as directly and abruptly as pre-fasting Jews can, that I “put on a white coat, get behind the counter, and move the line faster.” Or, short of that, just “cut me a pound of lox and give me some herring fillets in cream sauce so I don’t have to stand on my feet.” I politely refuse. They can’t believe it. They’re not used to seeing me on their side of the counter. They are confused.
“What are you doing over here?” they ask.
“I’m retired,” I say. They don’t believe me.
“What are you gonna do in retirement?”
“I’m gonna write a book about this place,” I reply.
There is another line within the store before the holidays. This line leads from the retail space in front to the prep area at the rear of the store, an area usually restricted to employees. But on these pre-holiday days the line overflows into the kitchen and consists of people waiting to pick up orders they placed in advance by telephone. Since Russ & Daughters sells mostly perishable products, we can take only a certain number of advance orders. It is well known throughout New York and its greater metropolitan area that those who have made it onto the Russ & Daughters Yom Kippur Order List have achieved a certain status. While this symbol of success is not assignable, it is inheritable. If your grandmother was on the list but is no longer alive or capable of ordering and the mantle of “keeping the holidays” has been passed to you, you get on the list. You do not get on the list if you are a Russ relative or a personal friend. Not even if you used to play pinochle with my father and uncles.
The people on the order pickup line wait about half an hour—not the two hours it would take to get waited on with a number at the counter—but it shouldn’t even take this long. The slowness of this line directly relates to what the Jews of the greater New York area feel is the basic problem with ordering takeout, which is the assumption that there will always be something missing from your order.
“Show me where you put the two pounds of sable” is a common refrain. This may require unpacking and repacking several cartons filled with merchandise. Or, if nothing is missing, there is, on reflection, “not enough.” Our religion has eleven commandments, and the eleventh is: “Thou shalt not run out of food.” A typical dialogue goes as follows:
“I have seven people coming for the break-fast. How much lox do I need?”
“One pound.”
“How much lox did I order?”
“Three pounds.”
“Good. Cut me another quarter of a pound.”
Since it’s mostly the same people waiting on line every year, they often take the opportunity to catch up on the previous year’s events. “Did your son finish law school?”
“Is your daughter still married to the orthopedic surgeon? I have a terrible pain in my hip [or knee, or shoulder].”
“Did your husband have his prostate operation?”
“Did your granddaughter get into Dalton [or Harvard, or Yale]?”
I have observed two politicians working out some piece of legislation as they waited on line. And I wish I had a buck for every business transaction that was consummated while our customers waited to be served. Lots of business cards are exchanged, and sometimes even telephone numbers. Who knows how many marriages can be chalked up to the pre–Yom Kippur line at Russ & Daughters?
On one occasion a well-known New York theatrical producer and regular customer came to pick up his order. It was checked and handed to him by Noah, who was on temporary forced leave from medical school to work the pre-holiday rush. The producer emerged from the back of the store with his carton and came over to me.
“Mark,” he said, “we have to do something about this.”
“Something about what?”
“Your son and my daughter. I just spent time with Noah, and he would be perfect for my daughter.”
I didn’t know whether this was because Noah was going to be a doctor or because our family was in the food business.
“She’s a pastry chef at Bouley,” he said.
Now I knew. “Listen,” I replied. “I learned the hard way to stay out of my kids’ lives, especially their social lives.”
“We’re two Jewish fathers. This is what we’re supposed to do.”
“Sorry, I’m out of this one.”
Undaunted, the producer put down his order and returned to the back of the store. He emerged within minutes with a big smile.
“I did it,” he said.
“What did you do?”
“I got your son’s telephone number.” I had no idea why he thought this was a victory until late that night after work, when I got a call from Noah.
“Dad, what should I do?”
“About what?”
“There is a message on my answering machine from that producer. He left his daughter’s telephone number and said that I should call her.”
“Well, Noah, it’s entirely up to you. He’s a very
nice guy and a good customer. Someday I may need him for house seats to some show, but I will not get involved in this. Look at it this way: Remember the chocolate soufflé at Bouley that you love? Well, he says that his daughter is a pastry chef there. Even if this doesn’t work out, you can come away with the recipe.”
They went out. It didn’t work. And Noah didn’t even get the recipe. He also never went out with a customer’s daughter after that—though many tried.
We Pray at the Store
We’re not a religious family—never have been since Grandpa Russ came to America. In the Old Country, the Russes followed the teachings and dictates of Hasidic Judaism. But Grandpa Russ felt that religion had not served him, his family, or his people particularly well, and to him this new land meant a new life unencumbered by its strictures. He wasn’t deliberately irreligious or anti-religious; he just didn’t have time for religion. He was too busy simply trying to survive, and he refused to submit his business to the constraints and limitations of religion. He kept his store open on Shabbos (for which Grandma Russ branded him a shtick goy, a Jew who ignores his religion) because many Jews living on the Lower East Side were secular and bought smoked fish, bagels, and cream cheese on Saturdays to eat on Sunday mornings with their families. And he did not want to restrict himself to selling only kosher varieties of fish. On the other hand, he always went to shul during the High Holy Days and could recite all of the prayers in perfect Hebrew—one of the few feats in his repertoire that did impress his daughters.
Nowadays, all Russ family members happily identify ourselves as cultural Jews, and we do little bits here and there to keep that sense of identity alive. My wife and I attend services at the Reform temple in our Brooklyn neighborhood, where we have been longtime members.
Each year I looked forward to attending the service on the eve of Yom Kippur, just to hear the Kol Nidrei prayer. Ever since I first heard it as a child in synagogue, it has always had special meaning for me. When it’s properly sung or performed, this beautiful prayer gives me a spiritual connection, a sense of transcendence about Judaism. My favorite version, a composition for cello and orchestra, was written by Max Bruch, a nineteenth-century gentile composer. For years I searched for someone who could play Bruch’s version the way I first heard it as a kid.
One Saturday morning shortly after Yom Kippur, I arrived to find the store buzzing with activity—lots of customers being served and waiting to be served. I stood in front of the counter, schmoozing, and noticed a young man in his thirties carrying a cello case and looking around. It was clearly his first time in the store. I asked him if he could play the cello.
“I’m only minding it for someone else,” he responded.
“Too bad. I would have traded you a sandwich for a song,” I said.
He quickly changed his mind. “I can play,” he said.
“But can you play Kol Nidrei?”
He had an Australian accent and didn’t look Jewish, so I figured I’d call his bluff and avoid a free sandwich.
“How does it go?” he asked. I hummed a few bars from memory.
“Oh,” he said. “That’s the Max Bruch piece. I haven’t played it since I was ten years old, but I can give it a try if you have a chair.”
He seemed determined to get that free sandwich. A chair was brought from the back, and he readied himself as the regular noises of commerce continued, oblivious to a musician with a cello seated alongside the herring showcase. But once he started to play, all the background noise stopped immediately; in fact, all business stopped. Everyone—countermen, kitchen men, and customers—was focused on the cellist. His notes were clear, precise, rich, and deep. The melody was true. There wasn’t a dry eye in the store. My own heart stopped, and my eyes filled with tears. I was there, but I also felt as though I’d been transported somewhere else. It was a transcendent experience. When he finished there was great applause, and then, without a moment’s transition, the noise of commerce resumed:
“Give me a chub from underneath; it should be a nice one.”
“I need extra onions with my herring.”
I stepped behind the counter and personally made the cellist my own favorite sandwich: a thin schmear of cream cheese on a bagel, heaps of Scottish salmon, a slice of sturgeon, and a slice of tomato. He and I acknowledged that this had been a very New York, very Russ & Daughters moment that could never be repeated, anywhere.
Some months later Niki was at a party where she was introduced to a woman who said she was a longtime customer of the store. When told that Niki was a member of the Russ family, the woman smiled and said, “I was at Russ & Daughters on that Saturday back in October, for Kol Nidrei.”
The Great Jewish Divide
Two days before Rosh Hashanah in 2010 I was standing in front of the counter, holding court in the middle of the holiday crowd and providing some entertainment for the waiting customers. I had just begun my regular shpiel (“My grandfather, Joel Russ, came to this country, to the Lower East Side, in 1907 and sold herrings from a pushcart on—”) when I heard a woman’s voice from somewhere in the crowd.
“My family came to this country in 1654,” she said.
I looked up to see a woman who appeared to be somewhere between sixty and seventy years old (I later found out that she was eighty), sporting a bicycle helmet.
“Jewish?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Sephardic?” I guessed.
“Yes.”
This lady’s story would be more interesting than mine, so I made my way through the crowd to her. Everyone gathered around both of us.
“Have you been here before?” I asked.
“Oh, my, yes. I’ve been coming here since I was a young girl.”
I did not expect to hear this from a Sephardic Jew, and I asked if she’d share her family’s story. As it turned out, she was a direct descendant of Jews who were advisers in the court of the king of Spain, but who were expelled from Spain in 1492 and from Portugal in 1497 when they refused to convert to Catholicism. They traveled to Holland, which was known for its religious tolerance, but found the weather too cold and the language too difficult, and so they immigrated to the formerly Portuguese colony of Recife, Brazil, where both the weather and the language were more in sync with their Iberian roots. But the Inquisition followed them to Recife, when what had become a Dutch colony was reconquered by the Portuguese in 1654. So her family fled once again, intending to return to Holland. The next part of the story had something to do with pirates on the high seas, and her family, part of a group of twenty-three Recife Jews, found themselves heading for New Amsterdam, as New York was then called, back when it was a Dutch colony. There was some initial hope of religious freedom and a good life in this new land, but the Dutch governor, Peter Stuyvesant, turned out to be an anti-Semite and refused to allow the Recife Jews to settle permanently in Manhattan. (It’s pretty ironic that so many Jews now live in a famous housing development on Manhattan’s East Side that bears his name.) This necessitated the intervention of the Dutch West India Company, which had Jews on its board of directors, and since the board was paying Stuyvesant’s salary, he saw the light and let the Recife Jews stay. These Sephardim then set up businesses; established the first synagogue in America, Shearith Israel; and became members of New York’s elite, fully involved in the public life of colonial America.
The Sephardim I was used to seeing in the store were Jews who came to America in the 1950s and ’60s, when they were expelled from Muslim countries in North Africa and the Middle East. Our smokedfish products, traditional Ashkenazi fare, were not what they had been raised on, and it took them a generation or two to develop a taste for them. As far as I knew, this woman was unique in being a descendant of New York’s seventeenth-century Sephardic community who was also a regular Russ & Daughters customer. When she finished relating her family’s history, I asked her how her family, “uptown” tenth-generation Sephardic Jews, came to shop at an appetizing store on the Lower East Side run by
Eastern European Jewish immigrants.
“My grandmother lived on the Upper East Side,” she said, “on Park Avenue and Seventy-fourth Street. She was part of a very prominent family, and there was a room in Shearith Israel named after my grandfather, Louis Napoleon Levy. [Who ever heard of a Jew named Napoleon? I said to myself.] Occasionally she had me join her on trips to the Lower East Side, to places like Itzkowitz, the father-and-son pillow stuffers on Allen Street. We traveled in her chauffeur-driven limousine. There were no car heaters in those days, so she covered our legs with a mink lap robe. When we got to Itzkowitz, she gave them precise instructions on how the pillows were to be refilled. They promised to do the job within the hour, so then Granny took me to Russ & Daughters on Houston Street. Everybody knew about them. We picked out various kinds of smoked fish from the gleaming showcases. The counterman always gave us a taste [That would have been my father, I thought, or one of my uncles; maybe even my grandfather], and Granny bought a lot of fish. She said that she didn’t come to the Lower East Side very often and that smoked fish kept well because of the smoke and the salt. I treasured those trips with Granny. I still come here, but now by bike from my house in Greenwich Village.”
I was fascinated by her story. And how nice it was to find someone from a culture that was so very different from mine, for whom Russ & Daughters was also part of a treasured family memory.
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