Finding comfort in online kaddish
As soon as New York State began recognizing same-sex marriages in 2011, Judith Trachtenberg married her partner of decades. They were the first such couple to be wed by a rabbi from their beloved synagogue, B’nai Jeshurun, on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.
It was also around that time that Trachtenberg’s partner, Renie Rutchick, showed signs of what would later be diagnosed as Alzheimer’s disease. Rutchick grew sicker, eventually developed cancer, and died in June, a few months into the pandemic.
Becoming one of the few people to board a plane in those days, the 80-year-old Trachtenberg flew to St. Paul, Minnesota, Rutchick’s hometown, for the burial. She was far away from home, sanctuary doors were closed and social distancing rules were in place, but Trachtenberg was not bereft of spiritual support.
B’nai Jeshurun’s Rabbi Felicia Sol, who had officiated the couple’s wedding in New York, appeared on video to preside over the funeral, and at least 250 people tuned in.
“It was so moving that we could have Felicia there,” Trachtenberg said. “The use of Zoom turned out to be very warming and meaningful, and it allowed the funeral to be taped.”
Since then, the bereaved professor of social work has been logging on to the synagogue’s virtual services every morning without fail. The required quorum of 10 Jews is always there, and Trachtenberg proceeds to recite the Jewish prayer for the dead, the mourner’s kaddish.
In person, worshipers recite the kaddish in unison. Due to the variable speeds of Internet connections, however, it’s nearly impossible to produce the same effect online. What arises instead is a cacophony, voices popping in and out seemingly at random. The unusual sound, however, is easily recognizable as a recitation of the age-old prayer, and many have found equal comfort in this discordant rendition.
“I don’t know if I would have gone to BJ every day,” Trachtenberg said, referring to her synagogue by its acronym. “But with Zoom, you don’t have the excuse to miss a day.”
Typically, she said, it would have been hard to make a minyan, a prayer quorum, but now as many as 80 people show up.
Millennia in the making, Jewish mourning rituals are among the most foundational aspects of the religion. Grieving Jews can expect to be comforted in their homes during the shiva mourning period by a stream of visiting family members and friends who come bearing food and uplifting tales of the deceased. The memory of the dead is kept alive for the next 11 months through the kaddish, which is recited in physical proximity to at least nine other Jews.
The coronavirus, however, which has killed more than half a million people in the United States alone, has demanded a pause on traditional rituals.
Initially it seemed like the only option was to grieve in isolation. The crisis engendered new rules to accommodate public health directives, but communities adapted to the temporary culture of quarantine and devised new modes of gathering and engagement.
A particularly public example is what happened following the September death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the Jewish
Supreme Court justice and cultural icon. Hundreds of mourners gathered online to perform a virtual shmira, the Jewish tradition of watching over a person’s body for the period between death and burial.
The initiative came from Kavod v’Nichum, a group that helps Jews engage with burial rituals.
“In all that sadness [of the pandemic], we got even more sadness when Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, and there was this spontaneous request for something that people could do,” David Zinner, the group’s executive director, said in a Zoom event marking the anniversary of the pandemic.
KAVOD V’NICHUM gathered online comments from some 600 people during the virtual shmira and put them into a word cloud.
“The word cloud sort of gives you a little snapshot of what people were thinking and how they were feeling,” Zinner said. “It’s just an image of communal grief, but also communal support at the same time.”
Most who have died during the past
year were not celebrities like Ginsburg, of course, but the mourning of ordinary people has also taken new shapes.
The website My Jewish Learning responded to the pandemic by establishing a daily kaddish minyan. (The site is part of 70 Faces Media, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency’s parent company.) For almost a year now, 60 people or more from around the world participate by listening to a few minutes of spiritual guidance by a rotating set of rabbis and then reciting the prayer.
One of those rabbis is Sari Laufer of Stephen Wise Temple in Los Angeles, a Reform congregation.
“You can’t actually go to your local synagogue and pack in that same way,” she said. “And so we have been learning how to virtually pack the room and having an address to do it. For a lot of people it became a community. People see each other day after day.”
That’s been the case for David Aronson, a 61-year-old software developer who lives in suburban Chicago and lost his father at the start of the pandemic to an unrelated illness. Aronson was apprehensive at first about doing the mourning ritual online, as rabbis in the Conservative movement, his denomination, did not all agree that a virtual gathering could count for the quorum required to say kaddish, a question most were answering for the first time.
But that feeling disappeared once Aronson made sure he could see and hear the required number of people on screen at the same time.
“We are able to enter into a holy space via the Zoom minyan,” Aronson said. “We have made a minyan out of what we had. It is incredibly meaningful.”
Keeping his father’s memory at the front of his mind has helped Aronson become the kind of person he wants to be.
“My father was the most outgoing person I have ever seen. He would open up to complete strangers. For the longest time I was the complete opposite of that,” he said.
But Aronson realized something that helped him emulate this trait.
“I saw that being outgoing was not just for my benefit,” he said. “It was also for the other person.”
Dvora Rotenberg, a Canadian, has continued bearing witness to Aronson’s grief and that of other online mourners long after the formal period of bereavement for her own deceased father has ended.
“I don’t say kaddish anymore, but I am there every day just because it’s like a family and a home,” said Rotenberg, who logs in from Ottawa. “This is where I found my comfort and it’s always on my calendar now. I especially love how Rabbi Menachem Creditor sings on Wednesdays. Powerful and gentle.”
The many positive experiences raises the question of what will happen once the pandemic subsides. Laufer said many rabbis are talking about returning to physical rituals while continuing to incorporate some virtual elements.
“There is the reality that I can sign on for about 15 minutes a day. I don’t have to get in my car. I don’t have to sort of plan it out. I can block out that time and connect with the community,” the Los Angeles rabbi said.
“I love synagogue, I work in a synagogue. But we have to figure out ways to balance the need to be in person with the reality that we have these tools and this ability to create community in a different way.” (JTA)
NEW YORK – Just because there is a pandemic is no reason to lose faith in getting your favorite Jewish deli treats, at least not in New York City. Here delis and appetizer shops have gone from pushcart to posh in a century, with nationwide shipping and new delivery platforms more de rigueur than a knish.
For sure, deli masters, mistresses and owners are all kvetching about New York City pandemic policies: openings, closings, outdoor eating in plastic igloos, curbside pickups or limits of 25% occupancy that do not even yield enough dough to pay for the electric bills. But these deli mavens know how to survive, thrive and adapt to a multitude of shifting restrictions with a borscht-belt sense of humor.
About to celebrate its 50th anniversary, Ben’s Kosher Delicatessen Restaurant & Caterers distinguishes itself by its kosher kitchen and its seven locations: in Midtown on West 38th Street (once known as the garment district), with its trusty headquarters in Bayside, Queens, and on Long Island in Carle Place, Greenvale, and Woodbury, in Scarsdale in Westchester and further afield in Boca Raton, Florida.
“We have revamped everything: our takeout and delivery orders have spiked to 75%80% of our business compared to 40% in the past,” said Ben’s COO Tom Silverstein, adding that holiday packages and catering for special events have been downsized for small groups.
Curbside and front-door pickups prevail; Ben’s retrained its servers to become drivers and added phone staff. The pandemic, Silverstein said, forced the Ben’s team to be innovative. So rather than use a third-party online system, it created its own – I-360 Menu – which is about to be rolled out.
Ben’s partnered with United Way to donate food to 5,000 frontline workers; and when the governor of Florida suggested opening restaurants to 100% capacity, Ben’s held fast to 50% seating for the safety of all.
You can still order the “I’ll have what she’s having...” pastrami in the 1989 rom-com When Harry Met Sally at New York’s oldest deli: the iconic Katz’s Delicatessen, open since 1888, but you may be noshing
on that sandwich in the comfort of your own home – at least for now.
Katz’s doors never closed during the crisis, doing what it has been doing for over a century: shipping, catering and delivering its famous pastrami and corned beef to shuttered and in-place customers across the country.
Before Hollywood, Katz’s World War II slogan was “Send a salami to your boy in the Army,” a prescient marketing line since “shipping across the country is way up and is now one of the primary pieces of business that we’d like to keep post-pandemic,” said marketing director Peter Carter.
Carter admits to trimming a bit of the fat by launching the deli’s own delivery platform rather than rely totally on third-party channels that have served well in good times also take a bite of the slim receipts this year.
Like Ben’s, Katz’s reached out to communities, suggesting to customers: “Buy a meal for a frontline worker or buy a soup for a senior.”
“From bagels to borsch to bialys to babka, we are a click away,” reads the marketing line for Barney Greengrass. It is self-described as “a small business with a big reputation,” so don’t expect to be bombarded with ads, pitches, texts, YouTube livestreams or banner ads crowding your Facebook page. All transactions are by phone or on-site shopping, with a minimum of outdoor seating.
This is the place where fish want to be smoked. Housed in its current location on the Upper West Side since 1929,
the faded wallpaper and worn linoleum scream old-school Jewish eatery, even as the crowds change, and elderly regulars are joined by carefully cultivated blondes pushing thousand-dollar strollers.
Affectionately known as the Sturgeon King, Barney Greengrass has been sustaining itself on mail order: getting its products to where you get a craving – from vacation homes on Martha’s Vineyard to Hawaii, Alaska and the Hamptons.
The only strategy it has initiated during the pandemic is to beef up its website to welcome more commerce without any third-party applications in between.
Recently a customer called in: “I want four Nova Scotia sandwiches with cream cheese, tomato and extra, extra, extra onions .... ” Gary Greengrass, who was purportedly hatched from a salmon egg, replied, “Is that your version of social distancing”?
In the mood for the mountains of meat served on grainy rye? Run, don’t walk, to one of the only Jewish delis open 24/7: Sarge’s motto is “You’re hungry and we never close,” featuring the one and only Monster sandwich.
Okay, so you won’t be seeing the classic booths stuffed with suits or hipsters and clubby types who clamor for a repast way past midnight; you can still order The Monster, which shows you are a serious consumer.
Steve Thali, executive vice president at Sarge’s, said the dining room once composed half the business, and even when it was reopened at 25%
capacity, the staff had to focus on boosting its online deals, presence, discounts and deliveries above 14th Street, below 14th Street, Long Island and, yes, nationwide.
Sarge’s has taken two unusual strategies: It set up a ghost kitchen on Vandam Street in Manhattan just for deliveries and pickup to capture the lower Manhattan market, and it set up its kitchens to prepare virtual multiple brands under one roof... without brick-andmortar rents.
When the late Anthony Bourdain was out of the US away from home, the food he craved the most was Pastrami Queen’s pastrami on rye. You don’t get much bigger endorsements than that.
You could say Pastrami Queen is one of the upstarts at just 65 brazen years young, as, of all things, it opened a second location in the middle of a pandemic. And why is this? Because it can.
If its menu ushers in memories of simpler times like being a kid on the boardwalk and enjoying a hot Coney Island square knish, well, there is a reason for that: this was Pastrami King before it moved to Manhattan in 1998 from Queens and, before that, from Roebling Street in Williamsburg in 1956. It became Pastrami Queen in homage to the borough where it thrived for so long.
“The restaurant business is like Broadway. You are only as good as your last performance,” said David Zilenziger, general manager. Maybe not the best analogy right now, but this did not deter Pastrami Queen from opening its doors to its second location on 72nd Street & Broadway in the former Fine & Shapiro store.
Pastrami Queen has big plans: With the second venue, it has more kitchen and storage space, which allows it to create a commissary to feed other locations in the future.
To boost its revenue, Pastrami Queen has partnered with Gold Belly, which has introduced it and many other restaurants to a whole new type of delivery business model.
Call it a pastrami sandwich kit, and you have a new concept from Carnegie Deli, said CEO Sarri Harper. About to reopen this month at its new Madison Square Garden location, its wholesale and retail businesses, coupled with nationwide shipping directly to customers, have sustained this classic.
The key at Carnegie is collaboration: its deli menus are featured in restaurants throughout the country. Said Harper, “...One of our deli partners actually had an increase of 30% in deli with carrying our corned beef! We all wanted a slice of comfort food, and we were happy to deliver with our restaurant partners.”
The baby on the block is Gertie, set in hip Williamsburg, Brooklyn. It opened just before all hell broke loose, and it is sticking to its mission: to rewrite and redesign the restaurant business model.
Self-described as a Jewish-American luncheonette, it operates as a nonprofit community kitchen in partnership with Rethink Food and City Harvest.
Said co-owner Nate Adler, “Gertie believes in finding solutions that support the community, employees, and have an impact beyond the restaurant’s four walls.”
It is open four days a week. Brunch is a bustling event, so arrive early.
Think Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee with Jerry Seinfeld when you bite into your next or your first pastrami at 2nd Ave Deli. Now with two locations, in Midtown and on the Upper East Side, it has been operating a kosher kitchen since 1954, and now features curbside pickup and in-store browsing and buying.
The short story behind the 2nd Ave Deli is that its patriarch, Abe Lebewohl, was murdered en route to the bank to make a deposit – that was the first mourning. The deli continued at its original Second
Avenue location until 2006 when it closed due to a landlord dispute – that was the second mourning.
Abe’s nephews Josh and Jeremy, who grew up washing dishes, busing tables and making deliveries all their lives, took over. If you cannot get there, consider The 2nd Ave Deli Cookbook with hundreds of recipes for traditional Jewish meals.
A Bronx landmark, Liebman’s Deli is doing what it has done best since 1953 when there were about 100 Jewish delis in the borough: keeping a kosher kitchen, beefing up its catering and now adding a collaboration with Gold Belly.
Active on all social media platforms, young Yuval Dekel is now at the helm and could not stop sharing all the details for the Passover Packages built for small gatherings of four to six.
“Little did we realize that three years ago, when we started nationwide shipping, it would become such a critical part of our business,” said Dekel.