Re: sophisticated dining

[music <music...>]

Judith Cohen wrote:

   Anyway, at the Alan Lomax Tribute conference and concert last week,
   Irwin Silber, the founder and long-time editor of Sing Out! Magazine
   was Master of Ceremonies at one session. He told the audience that the
   first time he was invited to Alan Lomax's apartment for supper
   (decades ago), he was really excited, very young, and thrilled at this
   entry to the inner circle of the folk world. Well, Alan Lomax was
   preparing dinner - and carefully brushing all the steaks with butter
   before grilling them. Irwin Silber told the audience, "well, I've
   never been religious, but even so, as a Jewish kid, this was pretty
   shocking. But then I told myself I was obviously entering the world of
   sophisticated dining."

   The audience cracked up. But the interesting thing was, it wasn't even
   a Jewish audience!


I was, of course, at the Lomax conference as well and remember the incident
Judith describes very well.

Folks did indeed laugh at Irwin Silber's steaks-and-butter line, but I
think we should bear in mind that:  a) *Plenty* of people at a folk music
conference are Jewish, even if it's not a, quote "Jewish audience": and b)
As Lenny Bruce so immortally put it, if you're from New York (or *in* New
York?) you're Jewish even if you're not.  I doubt that line would have
gotten much of a laugh in a lot of places in the country--even in benighted
Boston, wherefrom I'm writing, and where virtually everything's closed on
account of Easter.

I noticed the laughter (in my case, ruefully) as Judith did, but did not
share much in it.  Irwin Silber's anecdote (he was an important figure in
especially politically conscious folk music in the 40s and 50s and 60s,
btw, for those who don't know the name) brought home to me that the
frummies may well be right in exalting the importance of kashrut above its
(obviously important, but) seemingly not central status in terms of Jewish
law.  (Not eating hametz on Passover, otoh, *is* *very* important in the
Jewish scheme of things; so Jews who kasher their home for Passover even
though they don't have a kosher home year-round are not, really, being
entirely illogical--that was an aside.)

Frummies argue, among other things, that keeping kosher (on, presumably, a
range of levels; mine would be construed as liberal by some [others']
standards) keeps one Jewish--in the sense, at least, of connected to the
Jewish people and our history and destiny.  I think the experiences and
personal choices of many Jewish writers and other artists as well as
folkies would tend to bear that out, at least to some significant degree--
and esp. in the absence of other Jewishly reinforcing commitments.

Just a thought--one that occurred to me at the time that the Irwin Silber
thing happened.

And btw, Judith's singing *was* lovely.

--Robert Cohen




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