Back on the Road

Within the last week or so I was sitting right here in the chair by my desk feeling stale and like that was reflected in my blog. Then my friend Eric messaged me Monday and told me his brother David's shiva was to be in Manhattan on Wednesday. Obviously I needed to be there. Eric was one of my closest buddies in college and has now lived outside of Rome for north of three decades. I used to see him pretty often when I was in Larchmont and he was at his parents place on the Upper West Side. We'd coincide more or less annually in December and/or August, so oddly I've seen him perhaps more than any other friend since we graduated.

But now Mary's family has been passing on, as has his. We both still have family in the city, but less of it. So I had to be there.

As a goy, I had never been to a shiva, so I read up on it a little. I learned that it is considered proper to bring some sweets, preferably kosher ones. I knew that there were a couple of old-school bakeries near Beth and Kevin's place in Ditmars, Queens, so I figured I would be in good shape. However, when I checked out the bakeries, I discovered that they were both Italian, not kosher. In fact, when I spoke to the proprietress at La Guli Pastry Shop on Ditmars Avenue, she told me that they had rugelach but they were: "The furthest thing from kosher". I did not probe for details of what she meant by that and I went ahead and got some because the Dennis family is not really all that observant. What they actually care more about is old New York stuff, and as the picture below of the place (opened in 1937) shows, this place is nothing if not old school New York. The rugelach was delish.

On the way to LaGuardia this morning my Lyft was driven by a guy from Uzbekistan who was not, like so many of people hailing from there in NYC and the surrounding area, a Bukharan Jew. He had been here 20 years and had three kids, the oldest one is at Hunter College plus a high schooler and a fourth grader. Nice guy.