Sol

Our oldest uncle, Sol, short for Solomon, Schloime, in Yiddish, was born in the city of Bialystok in Poland. He arrived on Ellis Island with his mother, our grandmother, at about the age of four.  And although he attended the best public high school in New York City, Townsend Harris, the one you had to take a test to get into, though his English was perfect, there nevertheless remained about him a touch of the immigrant’s singled-mindedness of purpose. He wanted to succeed and he did.

Yet his shape always spoke of the old country: a broad-shouldered rectangle, not fat but giving a wide appearance, like our grandmother. The other uncles, his younger brothers, were built like Americans – above average in height with rangy, restless, modern bodies; they seemed always on the move. Sol was stolid and slow moving, but deliberate like a forceful peasant leader.  When the younger uncles quarreled and our grandparents didn’t know how to make it better, they would have lunch with Sol and talk about the family troubles, as if he were a peer, rather than their first-born son.

As a young man, Uncle Sol opened a kosher restaurant and delicatessen on Rivington Street, directly across from the butcher store. Being so close he could both share in and profit from his father’s public esteem. And, in case you didn’t know that he was the son of Schmulka, a winking neon sign ten feet long advertised BERNSTEIN’S on the side of his building.

The restaurant was long and narrow, paneled in dark wood with deep yellow lighting.     Entering you met on one side a long counter protected by glass.  Dense vines of long, plump and short, dried salamis dangled from hooks near the ceiling.  Of course they were the family brand, every one a Schmulka Bernstein from the smokehouse across the street.  The countermen wore white jackets and white paper garrison caps that were modeled on the dress hats of enlisted men, this made them seem like uniformed soldiers, alert, vigorous, awaiting orders in a landscape of brined meats.

Sol and his wife, our aunt Ruth, remained living on the Lower East Side all their lives. They remained Orthodox in their Jewish observance and synagogue attendance. This set them apart from the rest of our parents who fled as quickly as they could to homes in the outer boroughs and more easy-going Conservative congregations. Being Orthodox, Sol and Aunt Ruth did not travel on the Sabbath, so they did not attend the lavish Bar and Bat Mitzvahs of their many nieces and nephews; we were 15 in all.  Saturday night after sundown, when they might have joined us for further celebration, Uncle Sol’s restaurant was at its busiest, so he had to be there.  A restaurant, like an ocean liner, needs its captain.

In 1959, the delicatessen moved around the corner and was re-born as Bernstein-on-Essex serving kosher Chinese food.  It was the first moment of what we would now call fusion cuisine and it quickly became a destination eatery for Orthodox Jews from all over the world.  Like Schmulka, our grandfather, our oldest uncle became a man of note, an innovator, in the small circle of Jewish observance and then, later, in the somewhat wider circle of those who look with longing toward the Lower East Side as the Plymouth Rock of American Jewish life. 

Bernstein-on-Essex hummed with action and satisfaction. The main room consisted of three rows of formica tables with a large mirror to the left.  The New York Times food critic, John Canaday, who was a fan, described it as “totally unglamorous – a clean, efficiently arranged, brightly lit eating place.”  He described it as “a triumph of culinary ingenuity over dietary laws.”  Chinese waiters tended the tables. They wore black skullcaps with gold tassels that made them look simultaneously like observant Jews, and outtakes from the Mikado.  You could choose from either the Chinese or the delicatessen menu, you could mix and match. In the first: chop suey, moo goo gai pan, egg rolls, wonton soup, sweet and sour veal. In the other, large sandwiches of pastrami, corned beef, salami hard or soft, bologna, with a half-sour pickle and slaw on the side.

At the table tucked behind the cash register, Uncle Sol held court. Those in-the-kosher-know or those who wanted to be, would make sure to say hello or stop to chat. He took care with his clothes. His hats were the finest, white fedoras in spring, jaunty straw boaters in summer. Beneath the white delicatessen jacket, his shirts were immaculate. He always wore a tie.

It was the jacket that Aunt Ruth used to joke about. “I thought I was getting a doctor, but at least I got the white coat.”  

Sometimes she would say, “I wanted an M.D.”

And he would reply, “I am one. A Meat Dealer.” And they would both laugh.

Nowadays, on the Bernstein Cousin’s Club Facebook page a flurry of posts appear whenever something delicatessen makes the news – a new book or movie, the closing of the iconic Carnegie Deli on Seventh Avenue.   The quintessential Jewish food we rarely eat (too much salt, too much fat) has become a touchstone of family togetherness, even for those younger cousins who never actually visited downtown. If you search on the world-wide-web for Bernstein-on-Essex, you will discover it was commonly known as Schmulka Bernstein’s. If you google Schmulka Bernstein, you will find stories of Bernstein-on-Essex. Father and first son are fused in the public imagination. And there, in the Cloud, perhaps for eternity, hangs one thread of our family story.