Deli Aliyah

The purpose of this blog has always been to share interesting or entertaining tidbits of my life working in the mountains, skiing year-round, and I try to keep it from getting terribly personal. One aspect of my life which is a constant presence for me and is largely unbeknownst to my friends and colleagues in Vermont and New Zealand, however, is that there simply are not a lot of Jews in the snowsports business. There aren’t a lot of us around generally, and Ludlow and Wanaka are certainly a very far cry from the Upper West Side or Lower East Side of Manhattan (or Jerusalem, or Great Neck … you get the idea). I refer to this as ‘my life among the gentiles’. I often wind up behaving like Alistair Cooke, explaining the world of Judaism to gentiles who are too embarrassed to ask anyone else for fear they might seem unworldly or worse. In any event, there definitely are times when I crave a little Jewish culture and company. For that, I have my parents, and Zingerman’s.

One universal truth about Jews is that we love to eat. We’re not so different from most cultures in this respect, but the food definitely is. I suspect that every Jew born and raised in a town or city with a reasonably sized Jewish community could tell you, in great detail and with strong opinions about the best Reuben sandwich they’ve ever had. Reubens are important and, when done properly, are one of the great joys in life. Plain and simple. The delis that serve the great Reubens are legendary, and I’m not talking about Carnegie Deli, Stage Deli, or one of those “famous New York delis” that I equate to eating chowder at Legal Seafoods, to put a little New England perspective on the point. Their chowder may be pretty good, but it doesn’t count if you can buy it on the Mass Pike.

There are a few variations on the Reuben, but a couple of ingredients are absolutely essential, without which a sandwich simply is not a Reuben. First is the corned beef, served warm (insert Homer Simpson noises here). The difference between great corned beef and merely good corned beef is like the difference between a great bottle of Petrus and jug wine from the beer store. My aunt Dottie has a deli in her home town with corned beef so good that in order to digest it, one merely must place a thinly sliced piece of it on the tongue. It disappears and leaves behind only rolling eyes and moaning mouth. Words fail me. The second essential ingredient is the Russian dressing. Great Russian dressing is not simply catsup and mayonnaise – there’s so much more to it than that. It’s like heaven when schmeared liberally on fresh bread, and the creaminess of it perfectly complements the salty corned beef. As for bread, traditionalists prefer a Jewish rye while German Jews (read: West Coast-raised, never-set-foot-in-Brooklyn, eat bacon sandwiches on Yom Kippur) will use pumpernickel. Either way, the bread must be warm. Rarely is a Reuben made without cole slaw. And then there’s the cheese. Despite my needling of my brethren from L.A., I do not keep kosher and I do put Swiss cheese on my Reubens. We can debate the ethical implications of having a traditional Jewish sandwich constructed in a way that cannot be served in a kosher deli some other time. Some people choose to grill each side of the sandwich in a skillet to put a little crunch on the bread and to melt the cheese a bit, some don’t. Pastrami, turkey, roast beef, tongue, or soy in any form, have no place in a Reuben and simply render it a different sandwich altogether. The Reuben comes with a pickle, whole, un-sliced to keep the juices in after biting it. The pickle is like an aperitif to follow a Reuben.

There are numerous small delis in New York City, in the suburbs surrounding the city, and in isolated pockets around the United States which reliably serve great Reubens. In Montreal, Schwartz’s is a famous, old Jewish deli renowned for the quality of its sandwiches. There probably are a couple of Jewish delis in Los Angeles and Chicago that have good enough corned beef, but I won’t readily admit it. Zabars in Manhattan is far too fancy schmancy to serve a proper Reuben (I recognize that these are purely sociological comments and don’t result from any actual knowledge of the corned beef served in these places, but I’m sticking to them). And then there is Zingerman’s in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

In the pantheon of great sandwiches, I’m not really sure where the Zingerman’s Reuben stands; but after a long winter explaining to everyone at Okemo why I can’t work on Yom Kippur but am perfectly happy to work on Easter or Christmas, why my not eating the cafeteria food during Passover is not intended to insult the cooks, and why having kids in your ski group during Hanukah named Yitzi, Schmuli and Milky is not strange, Zingerman’s is, literally, a slice of heaven. Zingerman’s is basically a big, successful deli and bakery in Ann Arbor that has developed a mail order business that includes an extensive array of gourmet items and fresh baked goods, all described in a clever and really quite funny catalog. So what? Don’t Zabars and Barney Greengrass do mail order? Well, yes they do. But Zingerman’s will send you, via express courier only, a specifically packaged Reuben kit. It includes their outstanding corned beef, fresh baked traditional Jewish rye bread, homemade Russian dressing, cole slaw, potato salad and pickles, all with detailed instructions for how to prepare the ingredients and, for the uninitiated, how to build the sandwich that exceeds the sum of its parts and enters the realm of The Great Sandwiches. Anything that can get my New England liberal arts educated, bow tie and grosgrain watchband wearing father to fondly remember the smell of the bread his grandmother made in their shared house in Queens for the Sabbath when he was a kid must be in that special class.

I leave for New Zealand and another winter in a couple of days. I am genuinely looking forward both to the journey and to the life I’ll lead there. Nevertheless, I will once again be the only Jewish person around and the little slice (or not so little slices) of Jewishness I shared with my family last night, the olfactory and other reminders of the community to which I belong without hesitation or qualification was a most welcome parting gift. I live an expatriate’s life, from an ethnic perspective, and sometimes it is nice to come home.