Tasting the American Dream
![Pastrami on rye by ted merwin](/images/pastrami_on_rye2.jpg")
New book by Ted Merwin serves up the cultural history of the Jewish Deli
by MaryAlice Bitts-Jackson
The sandwich-maker slices the meat and piles it high atop a hunk of seeded bread. There鈥檚 an 鈥渋ntricate, elegant choreography鈥� to it, writes Ted Merwin, associate professor of Judaic studies and director of the Milton B. Asbell Center for Jewish Life, and it peaks when the artist sails his creation across the countertop 鈥渓ike a pitcher delivering a fastball to home plate.鈥�
That's the mouth-watering kickoff to Merwin鈥檚 Pastrami on Rye: An Overstuffed History of the Jewish Deli. Published by NYU Press, dishes up the deli鈥檚 role in Jewish-American life and pop culture, from Broadway to When Harry Met Sally to Saturday Night Live, and it鈥檚 earning national and international praise鈥攊ncluding recent pieces in T and . It also was recently awarded the Education and Jewish Identity category.
Dishing up identity
As Merwin describes it, Eastern European-style delis popped up in Manhattan鈥檚 Lower East Side at the turn of the 20th century, dishing up Old World flavor in a space where Jewish immigrants could relax, network, conduct business and stump at a time when they were not yet fully accepted by mainstream American society.
The delis were places to discover and express what it means to be Jewish in America, and in the '20s and '30s in particular, they became powerful expressions of the American Dream. There, the children of Jewish immigrants could celebrate American abundance by consuming sandwiches stuffed with more meat than their parents could afford back in Europe. They also could dream big while rubbing elbows with the stars during an after-show nosh (memorably, Al Jolson invited audiences to join him for a post-show sandwich, and gangster Arnold Rothstein was such a fixture at Lindy鈥檚 that many assumed he owned the joint).
The stardust faded in the postwar era, as Americans flooded the suburbs and many delis Americanized their menus (one in Merwin鈥檚 hometown offered a turkey-sandwich takeout for a Jewish-flavored Thanksgiving). Jewish-Americans, meanwhile, began to seek out more exotic-seeming food, like Chinese, and healthier fare.
鈥楲ike a plague of locusts 鈥︹��
That rise and fall makes for a delicious culinary tour, packed with flavorful anecdotes from Merwin, the author of In Their Own Image: New York Jews in Jazz Age Popular Culture, who writes about Jewish theater, dance and food for The Jewish Week and has delivered more than 100 public lectures on Jewish culture. It鈥檚 exhaustively researched, but it鈥檚 also a personal gastronomical romance, tapping a love affair with the Jewish deli that began decades ago, when Merwin was growing up in Great Neck, New York.
As Merwin relates, his family didn鈥檛 go to temple, and they didn鈥檛 send their son to Hebrew school. But they did send him out to the local deli every Sunday to pick up a meal for the extended family (a pound each of roast beef and turkey, with seeded rye, baked beans and gravy). There, Merwin experienced a larger Jewish-American community, one bonded through food.
Once home, the food was quickly devoured by Merwin and his extended family, he writes, 鈥渁s if a Biblical plague of locusts had devoured everything in sight. I was always left wanting more.鈥�
Learn more
- (The New York Times)
- (The New York Times)
- (New York Post)
- (WHYY Radio Times)
- Ted Merwin: Focus on Faculty
- Milton B. Asbell Center for Jewish Life
- 鈥淭he Unrevised Life鈥� by Ted Merwin (Dickinson Magazine)
- 鈥淭error on Rye鈥�
- Latest News
Published October 13, 2015