Knish: In Search of the Jewish Soul Food

Au Revoir, Mrs. Stahl’s: Brighton Beach to the Lower East Side

The knish situation in Brooklyn is not what it once was. I can say that because I’m third-generation Brooklyn, once removed. Queens, where I was born, had knishes, too, tons of them. I took them for granted, then they were gone. More than latkes, matzoh, or the apple-and-walnut charoset that crowned the seder plate, knishes were my family’s religion. For knishes, we went on pilgrimages. For knishes, we traversed Au Revoir, Mrs. Stahl’s ‰ ‰ ‰ Brighton Beach to the Lower East Side 1 Silver_Knish_Book.indb 1 1/31/2014 11:51:29 AM Knish 2 Long Island, top to bottom, from northern Queens to southern Brooklyn. For knishes, we drove Northern Boulevard to the Grand Central, past LaGuardia to the Bqe, through to the Prospect Expressway , which deposited us on Ocean Parkway amid old trees and religious Jews, a straight shot to Mrs. Stahl’s. A knish is a pillow of filling tucked into a skin of dough. The ones at Mrs. Stahl’s were baked round mounds, each plump with a stuffing, savory or sweet. Each piece—the size of a fist or just bigger—revealed a hint of filling on the top, a bald spot, as if for a yarmulke. But the real secret to the construction of a Mrs. Stahl’s knish remained hidden: Yet if you cut the knish in half, the crosssection revealed a membrane of dough that split the innards into chambers, like those of the human heart. We harbored them in our freezer. We ushered them to the toaster oven and moved magazines and newspapers to welcome them to the Saturday afternoon table. In the 1980s, my native Flushing, Queens, was a haven for grandmother- and grandfathertypes who had survived pogroms or the Holocaust. Like them, we frequented bakeries and delis of the Jewish persuasion. But to visit our own forebears, we had to go elsewhere. Brooklyn was the Old Country, where kids once played in the street, flicked nickels onto corner-store counters, and maintained an allegiance to “the block.” To hear my father, a native of Flatbush , tell it, in those days five cents could get you a hollow pink rubber ball called a Spaldeen—or a knish thick with liver. When there was traffic, we abandoned the highway in favor of so-called shortcuts. We locked every door, turned up the jazz on Silver_Knish_Book.indb 2 1/31/2014 11:51:29 AM 3 the car radio, and zigzagged through hollowed-out neighborhoods that made his old neighborhood look luxurious. After decades in a dark apartment on Rugby Road, my grandmother landed a spot in senior housing, left Flatbush, and moved to Brighton Beach. As a young woman she’d had a bungalow there, but this was better. Her place overlooked the ocean and sunsets and provided incredible proximity to Mrs. Stahl’s. The mythic knish maker and Gramma Fritzie were nearly synonymous . After college, I moved to Brooklyn, five miles from both of A customer makes a knish pilgrimage to the famed shop beneath the elevated train, circa 1980. Silver_Knish_Book.indb 3 1/31/2014 11:51:29 AM Knish 4 them. Every other week I delivered: a piping-hot kasha and a halfdozen frozens. Anyone who entered apartment 12A—visitors, and, eventually, home health aides—was offered a knish, split, heated, and served with extra grainy mustard, homemade by my dad. The day she died, we didn’t eat knishes—or anything. It was the tenth of Tishrei in the year 5758 on the Hebrew calendar, in other words, October 11, 1997, which coincided with Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement and fasting. Her body was still in the bedroom . As per New York City protocol, a cop came to the house. “Yes, of course I was here at the time of death,” I lied, to appease the policeman—and myself—and avoid further inquiry. It never occurred to me that my grandmother could die without me. Angie, the home health aide, had summoned us in the morning. But since—wink, wink—a family member had been on the premises , there was no need to invite further investigation. We divvied up adult diapers, sorted books, and used newspaper to cradle dishes. I’d like to say knishes were stashed in her freezer, but the truth is, I can’t remember. After that, I swore off the neighborhood. On the first anniversary of...