Old New York: Stars Dim on the Yiddish Theater Walk of Fame

By Mitch Broder

In a sense, it won’t matter when you finally can’t read the names, because most people already don’t recognize the names. Or at least they wouldn’t recognize the names if they tried to, which, at least for the most part, they don’t.

The names are of stars of New York City’s Yiddish theater. They’re engraved in granite slabs, which are on Second Avenue at 10^th Street. Unfortunately, the granite slabs are embedded in the sidewalk, and the sidewalk is often used by people heading for Ninth or 11^th Street.

So the people walk on the slabs, which is forgivable, and the names get gradually scuffed away, which is regrettable. But the man who got them embedded has been dead for sixteen years, and now the slabs, apparently, are the domain of nobody in the world.

Yiddish theater flourished here from the 1890s through the 1930s. Theaters for its shows clustered on Second Avenue below 14^th Street. The stretch, which was then regarded as part of the Lower East Side, came to be something of a second Broadway, at least if you understood Yiddish.

Many of its stars moved on to the first Broadway, as well as to movies and television. Probably the most famous of them was Paul Muni. He starred in classic films like “I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang.” But even his is no longer a household name, which doesn’t bode well for Maurice Schwartz.

Moved by the stars’ fate, Abe Lebewohl came to their rescue, perhaps because he was in a unique position to do so. In 1954, he had opened the 2nd Ave Deli. In 1985, he installed the Yiddish Theater Walk of Fame in front of it.

It consists of about thirty markers, mostly in two rows, mostly with two names to a marker. Most of the names are inside of stars — not Jewish stars but Hollywood-Walk-of-Fame stars, signifying that the tribute was as much to talent as it was to heritage.

There is David Kessler with Zvi Scooler. There is Leon Liebgold with Lilly Lilyana. There is Boris Thomashevsky with Bessie Thomashevsky. Boris, at 13, helped to bring Yiddish theater to New York. His grandson is the conductor Michael Tilson Thomas.

In 1996, Abe Lebewohl was murdered. His brother, Jack, took over the deli, but ten years later he closed it. The year after that, his sons Josh and Jeremy reopened the 2nd Ave Deli — but on 33^rd Street, between Lexington and Third.

Last year they opened a second branch, on First Avenue at 75^th Street. There they installed an Automat section that had been on display at the original store. I’m sure that they’d like to have the walk of fame  at the new store, too. It’s kind of hard to fault them for not dislodging and moving a city sidewalk.

On the site of the original store there now stands a Chase bank. Neither the bank nor its building manager seems to want much to do with the walk. Nor does the city, which has reportedly said that it never actually approved it. David and Zvi and Leon and Lilly and Boris are on their own.

I’ve never quite gotten the concept of being honored on a sidewalk. I’m too conscious of the substances that are bound to find their way there. Jazz greats were honored with a walk of fame on 52^nd Street. The last time I looked, Thelonious Monk had turned into Niou Mon.

Still, many people have embraced the Yiddish Walk. Some years ago, Jack Lebewohl told me of one. “One Rosh Hashana,” he said, “I actually saw a woman stand out there, drop a rose on the sidewalk and say a Hebrew prayer.”

And just maybe, all those names were meant to fade away, before the day when not a single one is known to pedestrians.

So if you want to go look at the names, don’t put the trip off too long.

This walk isn’t going to be preserved. You can bank on that.

See the stars on the Yiddish Theater Walk of Fame, on Second Avenue at 10^th Street, in New York City.

Strangely New York: At Last, Have Your Martini and Eat It, Too

By Mitch Broder

Last week I brought you the new downtown place that makes food inspired by drinks.

So this week I bring you the new uptown place that makes drinks inspired by food.

The downtown place is Jane’s Sweet Buns, in the East Village, which sells things like raspberry tartlets containing gin. The uptown place is the 2nd Ave Deli, on the Upper East Side, which sells things like gin containing half-sour pickles.

The 2nd Ave Deli just opened on First Avenue, which in itself reveals something of an appetite for the incongruous. And with the incongruous address has come improbable concoctions like the Apple Latke Martini, the Dirty Pickle Martini, and the Lokshen Kugel Cocktail.

The premise was that you don’t see a lot of drinks based on Jewish food. The deli opening seemed as good a time as any to make some seen. Jeremy Lebewohl, who owns the deli with his brother Josh, convened a cocktail caucus, and in a few weeks had a drink list perhaps unprecedented in Judaism.

The Apple Latke is made with potato vodka, apple sauce, and lemon, and is garnished with a potato pancake, also known as a latke. The Dirty Pickle consists of gin, or the vodka of your choice, along with pickle brine, garnished with a half-sour pickle.

The Lokshen Kugel is the most complex, comprising rum with pineapple purée, peach schnapps, vanilla, cinnamon, lemon juice, and non-dairy creamer. It, too, is garnished with its namesake, which is sweet noodle pudding. The deli also serves potato kugel but that is not yet in liquid form.

There are five other original cocktails, like the 2nd Ave Balanced Diet, which is Dr. Brown’s Cel-Ray Soda with gin and plum brandy and a celery stick. But those first three are reportedly the leaders out of the gate, which is not surprising, since between celery and pancake, which would you choose?

Your mixologist Jeremy suggests the Dirty Pickle for pastrami sandwiches and other meat dishes, whereas the Apple Latke and Lokshen Kugel, he says, would pair better with pierogen and blintzes. His co-creator David Teyf concurs, though he adds that the Dirty Pickle also works well with lox, herring, and assorted smoked fish.

I imagine that Jane of Jane’s Sweet Buns will like Jeremy’s food-laced drinks. But I have reason to believe that Jeremy will like Jane’s liquor-laced pastries. Among his own cocktails he is partial to the one made with orange vodka, Dr. Brown’s cream soda, chocolate soda, and orange juice. It’s called the Creamsicle.

Mix it up at the 2nd Ave Deli, 1442 First Avenue, at 75th Street, in Manhattan.

The Automat: A New York City Icon is Slotted for a Comeback!

By Mitch Broder

Your nickels won’t go into the slots, which is best, since they’d buy paper food.

Still, you can’t deny that the Automat is back.

Not the entire Automat, but a twelve-door section of one, complete with windows, slots, knobs, and prices from one to four nickels. It opens, so to speak, at 11 o’clock on Tuesday morning, along with the new First Avenue branch of the 2nd Ave Deli.

It used to be in the Second Avenue branch of the 2nd Ave Deli. There, too, it was just inside the entrance. When that store closed in 2006, the relic was put into storage. I’ve been waiting for it to come out ever since. The owners humored me with an exclusive preview.

It is magnificent. It evokes a beloved tradition of New York City, even if the tradition did get its start in Philadelphia. In keeping with its home, it offers only Jewish deli food, and only pictures of that. But you still want to deposit your coins and turn a knob.

Of course, the opening on Tuesday is actually more for the deli. And that’s fitting, since, unlike the Automat, it has survived. The new deli is also magnificent. (It wasn’t finished, so I couldn’t take pictures.) And it marks a milestone for one of the best-known families in Jewish deli history.

The 2nd Ave Deli opened at the corner of Tenth Street in 1954, which was late in the day for Jewish delis. But Abe Lebewohl didn’t care how late it was. Having worked his way up through the deli world, he turned the tiny former luncheonette into a 130-seat institution officially approved by Jackie Mason.

On March 4, 1996, on his way to make a bank deposit, Abe Lebewohl was shot and killed. His family resolved to keep his life’s work alive. His brother Jack ran the deli till a rent dispute closed it ten years later. But Jack’s sons Josh and Jeremy reopened the next year on 33rd Street — and are now about to open a second branch, for the first time.

As for the real Automat, it predated the 2nd Ave Deli by half a century. Joe Horn and Frank Hardart launched it in Philadelphia in 1902. The first New York City Automat opened in 1912. By mid-century, dozens were dispensing the likes of Salisbury steak, baked beans, and pumpkin pie.

An Automat photograph made in 1942 by J. Baylor Roberts.  From the National Geographic Image Collection.

The mission of the Automat was to sell good food cheap. The appeal of it was such that moguls and movie stars went there anyway. It got poor people through the Depression and got rich people into the papers. It was good for everyone. Especially for Joe Horn and Frank Hardart.

At its height, it appeared in movies, songs, books, and magazines. Its strange marriage of automation and humanity was unique. In a book called “The Automat,” the authors quote a company executive: “New York in those days had only two types: Park Avenue and the workers. But they all came to the Automat.”

New York again has only those two types. But it has no more Automats. They all succumbed to the usual scourges of cities — notably, the suburbs. Plus food has just gotten too serious, and besides, it’s gone up too much. To buy a 2nd Ave Deli pastrami sandwich at the Automat, you’d need 319 nickels.

But it’s a good pastrami sandwich. And the new deli is a great tribute. “We want to make sure that it lives up to what my uncle would have wanted,” Josh Lebewohl told me.

He also assured me that he, too, cherishes the 2nd Ave Deli’s Automat: “We’re serving classic Jewish food, and the Automat is part of classic New York.”

The new deli also has this nice clock.

Drop some coin starting Tuesday at the new 2nd Ave Deli, 1442 First Avenue, at 75th Street, in Manhattan.