This past week is my Bubbeleh’s yahrzeit. Grandma Lu Osney never made it to Japan, but I know what she would have told me if she did.
“With all of the wonderful cookies, cakes and tarts how in the world can these people stay so SVELT???”
I know how she feels. It’s not unusual to spot a whispy woman sauntering out of a bakery towards Komazawa Park only to realize upon closer inspection that it’s a middle-aged man clad in capris pants and espadrilles (only in Tokyo, yo!).
Indeed, The City of the Thin is somehow heaven for the noshing set. On every street corner there’s a patisserie or schokoladenladen that one-ups the last one you visited. This week, as part of our step-by-step introduction back into public life my wife and I ventured into Maison Romi Unie, home of the world’s best lemon tart and Sablé Breton. This is not to be confused with Johann, the world’s best cheesecake nor with Glaciel, the world’s second best ice cream cake (Carvel by a nose!.)
Grandma Lu would have felt right at home in Meguro, given her own propensity for sweets. This is a woman who, along with the requisite bowls of hard sucking candies (Brach’s butterscotch and Nips Chocolate Mint Parfait), strewn around her North Miami Beach apartment, also kept a ready supply of homemade mandelbrot in the fridge.
“Mondelbrot NEEDS to be in the refrigerator, Adam, my love,” she used to quip. “Otherwise the Florida heat will melt the chocolate and sabotage the crunch.”
She even stashed a few bags in the freezer (“ . . . for emergencies”).
My Bubbeleh attributed her whip-smart sense of humor to her sweet tooth. It was a comic skill that got her pretty far with me and in life. In the 50’s she was hailed as real-life Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, delivering yiddishkeit schtick to Hadassah luncheons around Chicagoland and further afield around the Great Lakes.
She once told the sad tale from back in the day:
One day on Devant Avenue a down-and-out man went knocking on the doors of tenement houses looking for a handout.
A mother of four clad in schmatas and kneading almond cookies on her oilcloth table gave succor to the man and asked, “Would you mind eating yesterday’s soup?”
“Lady, I’m so hungry I could eat a horse,” extolled the famished man.
“Good!” responded the woman. “So you’ll come back tomorrow!”
She had a lot of jokes like that one in her hallowed set book of schtick. But not all that she taught me was funny.
After graduating from college I made regular pilgrimages down to North Miami Beach to spend time with her. On one occasion, while trying to enjoy my Rascal House Trifecta (pastrami sandwich, matzo ball soup, black and white cookie) in peace she interrogated me. The fodder of her attack was what I had actually learned in college.
“What was ONE thing that mattered with all of your fancy-schmancy education?” she demanded, pointing her rice pudding spoon at me.
I decided to take a chance, sharing one of the most impactful seminars I had attended at Penn. It was a course simply titled “Blacks and Jews,” and it was masterfully guided by Professor Ralph Smith, a doyen of the Law School who took an interest in supporting the growth of lowly undergrads. The syllabus tracked the shared struggle from Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner and into the cultural schism of the early 1990’s. Dr. Smith encouraged us to look out into the future about relations between our cultures. My classmates and I (all of whom were either Black or Jewish . . . guess no one else cared about the topic?), developed a hypothesis; things would ebb and flow through the arc of time. From post-race Obama progress on into the wrenching racist tropes of the present age, we were kind of right.
“That’s the most important course you’ll ever need,” quipped Grandma Lu stirring creamer into the intentionally weak Rascal House coffee. “And pursuing justice, for better or worse, never really ends. Our people are obligated to pursue social justice, Adam. It’s not an optional course.”
Given the sobering and tragic events unfolding today, I hear her voice calling to me to do the right thing and hold our elected leaders to do likewise.
The Tokyo Yenta 