Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Time for a Jewish `Guardian Angels'

by Raanan Geberer From Brooklyn Daily Eagle BROOKLYN — Back in the late 1960s, as thousands upon thousands of Jews were moving to the suburbs or into co-op apartments and private houses in “newer” neighborhoods, most of those who were left behind in older Jewish neighborhoods, such as East Flatbush and Brownsville, were elderly. Often, these isolated, elderly Jewish men and women were repeatedly attacked and robbed by young thugs and gang members. At that time, a Brooklyn-born rabbi named Rabbi Meir Kahane (although, as it turned out, he was known by several other names) had the idea for an organization known as the Jewish Defense League that would patrol these “changing neighborhoods,” protect these elderly Jews and learn self defense. Unfortunately, Kahane soon linked his Jewish advocacy with a specific, ultra-religious, right-wing philosophy. Among other things, Kahane maintained that Orthodoxy was the only denomination of Judaism worth anyone’s respect; that the only real solution for anti-Semitism was for all Jews to move to Israel and that those who weren’t were basically sitting ducks; and that Israel should be governed by a theocracy and expel all Arabs within its midst. Based on these ideas, which were at variance with those of the majority of American Jews, it’s no surprise that the Jewish Defense League became a magnet for extremists and unstable personalities of all types. It eventually faded away. The recent anti-Semitic attacks in Midwood, however, in which cars in a Jewish area were set afire and benches and builders were defaced with swastikas and “KKK” graffiti, tell me that something like the original Jewish Defense League concept is needed. The difference is, however, that this should be a REAL “Jewish Defense League” without Kahane’s extremism. It should include Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, unaffiliated and atheists; Zionists and non-Zionists, those for whom Judaism is a central function of their lives and Jews who haven’t set foot in a synagogue in five years, Democrats and Republicans. The sole criteria would be a desire to fight virulent, violent anti-Semitism. No one with a felony record would be admitted. This group would learn karate and judo and patrol areas that are at risk. Their main priority would be to inform the police about any incidents and to hand any perps they find “in the act” over to the cops. However, they should be willing to use martial-arts techniques if necessary. Maybe what I’m thinking of is more like the early Guardian Angels than anything else. At any rate, these are my ideas, and I hope someone will carry them out.

Sunday, November 6, 2011

A food autobiography--Part one

My first entry concerns the lowly knish. At the local delis when I was growing up, you did see the proletarian square potato knish that was also sold from hot-dog carts, but you also had meat knishes and kasha knishes. And once you had one of those, you knew that you were through with the square potato knish forever. Later, in the 1970s and ‘80s, you began to see a great variety of knishes in the city – cheese knishes, pineapple cheese knishes, cherry cheese knishes, spinach knishes, sweet potato knishes – and I loved them all. Many of these originated with the famous Mrs. Stahl’s Knishes in Brighton Beach but could also be found elsewhere – even at a “Coney Island Knishes” eatery in Penn Station. Well, food fads come and go, and today it’s once again hard to find knishes except for the square kind, although I recently found a spinach knish and a kasha knish at Murray’s Bagels on Eighth Avenue in Chelsea. Hopefully, knishes, in all their glory and variety, will become popular again someday!

Saturday, November 5, 2011

An All-Digital World: A Fool's Paradise?

By Raanan Geberer Brooklyn Daily Eagle In the beginning, there was the LP, or long-playing record. You also had the lower-budget cassette. This was replaced in the late 1980s and early 1990s by the digital CD. Now, according to some recent reports, the CD is being phased out with the assumption that anyone who wants music will do it through online downloading services like iTunes and Amazon. Indeed, within the past decade the unthinkable happened: Virgin Records and Tower Records, both powerhouses in their day, both hit the dust. Devices like the Kindle are also all the rage, and in January, news reports indicated that sales of Kindle books have outpaced those of hardcovers (apparently, paperback books are still convenient enough to carry around). With Kindle, of course, you also download the books over the internet. And e-mail replacing written letters is an old story. So few people write actual letters, aside from New Year’s cards and such, that your mail is now likely to consist mainly of advertisements. No wonder the Postal Service is considering ending Saturday service. But before your clap you hands in delight and say, “How neat! Far out!” (or whatever exclamation that people say nowadays), consider this. After 9/11 there were thousands of government subpoenas for e-mail records and/or phone records, and in very many of these cases, the requests were granted. The government last year lost a court case about a request to access e-mails without a search warrant, but the issue hasn’t gone away. What happens if or when, in the distant or not-so-distant future, a totalitarian dictatorship comes to power in the United States and declares martial law? Then all of you hip, with-it, digital people will find that the government will know who you write to, what you write, what you buy online, what books you read, what you listen to. Already, many employers are spying on people’s ostensibly private Facebook accounts to find out more about prospective employees. I don’t pretend to have the answer, but maybe an all-digital, all-online world is a fool’s paradise.

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Class Conflict

By Raanan Geberer “Where too,” asked the heavy-set, plaid shirt-wearing, fifty-ish cab driver. “The Accord Conference Center,” we answered. Like many New Yorkers, we didn’t own a car. This time we decided to try to save some money by not renting a car. Instead, we took the bus up to New Paltz, then called a cab. “Yep,” the driver said, “two people came up here today.” As we turned onto a mountain road, I asked, politely as I could, “What other kind of work do you do?” I couldn’t imagine that there were full-time jobs for cab drivers in a town where everybody drove. “Driving my cab is it for me,” the guy said, laughing. “But is there enough business for a cab company here?” He pointed to a roadhouse coming up on the left side of the road. “You see that bar?” he asked. “Plenty of guys go there on Saturday night, get drunk, then call me or one of the other guys to drive them home. Then, the next morning, they get sober, they call us to drive them back there to get their cars. We make lots of money that way!” “Is that the only bar in town?” my wife asked. “The only one around here, that is,” he said, passing a fishing equipment and guns store. “And tonight, they’re gonna have a band, so it’s really gonna be busy!” I didn’t even have to ask—I knew it would be a country and western band. “By the way,” the guy asked, “do you mind if I smoke?” “That’s OK,” my wife answered. He guy lit a cigarette. “Yep, I’ve done everything—I didn’t have the education a lot of you city people have. I’ve worked construction, drove a school bus, been a salesman selling stuff from the trunk of my car, now a cab driver. So we’ll see how long that lasts. Yep, since I’ve been divorced I moved around all over the country. Find a few rooms above a store, buy a few sticks of used furniture and it’s home!” Trying to change the subject, I asked, “I heard about the stock-car races around here. Isn’t it true that the chief of police himself takes part in the race?” “Yeah, he races every year! He’s got a great car, too … Here we are! Let me help you get your bags out.” • * After three days, we headed back to the city. The same guy drove me back. In New Paltz, we got onto a shiny new Trailways bus. Little by little, I began hearing a conversation behind me. I turned around and sneaked a look. An extremely well-dressed older man and woman were talking. Both of them spoke in the precise, well-modulated tones of Ivy League graduates. “Yes,” the woman said, “this is an experiment that turned out well. It saves us some driving, for a change, and the bus is very pleasant and roomy.” Something about them interested me. They didn’t seem like typical bus riders. He continued to listen. “Where do you plan to go after we get off? I was thinking of a little place in the Village….” “I don’t like Greenwich Village. There’s a wonderful little place in the East 80s where we can go, it’s a marvelous French brasserie. Their Salade Nicoise is to die for!” “What about the food I’m carrying in this container?” “We can have it tomorrow.” “Such wonderful food I made. Beet-flavored pasta with goat cheese, fennel and peppercorns in truffle oil!” “So, Angela, I’m curious about your deal.” “It’s terrible that it fell through – a wonderful country house, a smaller house behind it and a large amount of land. And, you know, it was a million-dollar deal.” “You know,” the man said, “the thing to do is to buy some property, rent it out, then use the proceeds to buy more property. That’s what my son did in the south of Spain. He bought a condo, rented it out to tourists, then used the proceeds to buy another one. He owns five condos now.” “Is that your son who went to Princeton?” “No, that’s the other one. This is my son who went to Yale.” I contrasted their conversation with what I heard from the cab driver who drove me from the bus station to the conference center last week. Here was living proof that there were at least three Americas – the upper-crust world of this couple, our middle-class existence, and the world of marginal people like the cabbie. The only way he would ever meet these two is if he was working as a handyman in their house. I looked out the window and fell asleep. My wife jabbed me gently to wake me when we reached the Port Authority bus terminal. People were standing up, getting their bags. And then, through the din, I heard a loud shriek: “Oh, dear! I must have put the lid on too loose! This is a catastrophe!” And there, on the floor, were the remnants of some beet-flavored pasta with goat cheese, fennel and fresh herbs in truffle oil. Carefully stepping over it, we moved on.

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Wal's Not Well That Ends Well

By Raanan Geberer Published in Brooklyn Daily Eagle 10/28/11 BROOKLYN — Included in the recent New York Times story about Borough President Marty Markowitz’s recruiting large businesses to contribute to his charities (not a bad idea as such, I believe, since the charities do good work and the city gives the Borough President’s Office so little money) was an item about Walmart. The article pointed out that Markowitz had once made statements opposing Walmart’s coming to Brooklyn based on its labor record. But after Walmart gave a donation to the Markowitz-sponsored charity that puts on his free summer concerts, according to both the Times and an earlier article in the Post, Markowitz said he was “not philosophically opposed” to Walmart, although he said he would continue to demand that the huge retail chain pay fair wages and health benefits and use union workers on any construction job. He also was quoted as saying that “you can’t keep Walmart out of Brooklyn.” This is entirely correct. Walmart is a private entity, and if another private company, the owner of the planned Gateway II Mall in East New York (the most-mentioned site for a possible Brooklyn Walmart) wants to rent to the store, it has every right to do so. However, people like myself also have every right to object to such a deal. Not only has Walmart not softened its harsh behavior toward its employees, it has only gotten worse. Recently the huge retail chain announced that it would severely scale back the health benefits it pays to its employees, ending benefits for part-time workers and cutting the amount it contributes to workers’ health savings accounts. The company only started to offer health benefits to part-time workers after constant criticisms that it deliberately kept “associates” working on a part-time basis just to avoid paying these benefits. Cutbacks in benefits may be appropriate for a company that is suffering huge losses and is on the verge of collapse. But, according to Forbes, the chain posted a reported a 5.7 percent increase in second-quarter earnings this year. Not as well publicized, but as important, as Walmart’s behavior toward its employees is its behavior toward smaller businesses and its suppliers. The company often demands that its suppliers accept extremely low prices for their products, and the companies have no choice, given that Walmart makes up such a large part of their market. The Fast Company website points out how Walmart caused substantial hardship to Vlasic Pickles by selling its jars of pickles at such low prices that Vlasic was practically taking a loss. As a result, the pickle maker had to lay off employees. Yes, Walmart has every right to come to Brooklyn, but the city’s citizens and officials also have every right to oppose it.