Inspired by the following: Senator Lindsey Graham to Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan in July 2010, in reference to a Christmas Day terrorist threat: “Where were you last Christmas?” Kagan: “Like all Jews, I was probably at a Chinese restaurant.”
When I turned five I asked
My grandpa why we spent
Each Christmas at the Golden Palace.
He answered as the steam
Rose up from his Peking duck,
His face shining with
Crispy skin (the duck’s):
It has always been so,
Grandpa answered.
There’s the “open” sign
On Christmas Day.
But when I grew older
And wiser and studied Torah
I learned to question:
How can a people (including a
Supreme Court Justice), who:
Cannot eat pork or shrimp
(The Torah says)
Or hare or camel
(All right, a stretch on the camel —)
How can we (and she — Justice Kagan)
Eat at a place with moo-shu pork and
Kung Pao shrimp
On Christmas Day?
Picture your ancestor Esther, he said,
Living on the Lower East Side.
A pious woman, she prayed every day,
Even in a corner at the cigar factory
Where she worked.
But Esther, along with her neighbors,
Ate out at the immigrants’
Next door, the Chinese
Who came east from California
You see, Esther made pennies at the factory
The meat was hidden among
The rice or noodles.
No dairy to worry about!
A bowl of steaming food cost 25 cents.
So Jews eat Chinese on
Christmas Day because
The sign says “open.”
And even Esther and her family,
Way back when,
“Oysessen,” Grandpa said in Yiddish.
They ate out.
Arlene Silverman is a San Francisco writer. “Oysessen” appears in her first collection of poems, titled “Windows.” [email protected]