In my backlog of unfinished posts, this one -- started in November 2019 -- seemed the most timely for this pandemic Passover. It's partly elegiac, which fits the current mood, but it's also about finding new family. And about endurance. A deli-denying newscaster plays a part in the narrative too. Fake news! Rolled Beef, Redux In my dual roles of amateur family
Meat
A Meaty Heritage
It's day 16 of the Family History Writing Challenge and I'm feeling grateful that I'm not a vegetarian. It's bad enough to have to face the dire fates of various family members while exploring the past; I'm not sure I could cope with feeling guilty about the fact that they were butchers. My ambivalence --nay, blatant hypocrisy -- when it comes to meat eating is a topic for
A Fowl Business: Another Kornmehl Family Butcher Shop (& Freud’s Likely Aversion to It)
This is Day 11 of the Family History Writing Challenge, 2018 In my last post, I outlined several questions arising from Adolf Schweizer's emigration form that I was hoping to tackle. The first one related to the nature of the butcher shop that Adolf owned--or worked in. It was very easily answered. In the section of the document that asks the person wishing to emigrate
Found in Translation: The Mad Butcher of Berggasse
Happy 2014. So far, this year is looking promising. I woke up on the morning of Jan. 1 to a nice surprise: The notification that the first post of a new blog called Wien um die Jahrhundertwende (Vienna at the Turn of the Century) was devoted to discussing Freud's Butcher. I was pretty sure the writeup was positive. I couldn't be certain at first, however, because
Asser Levy: America’s First Kosher Butcher
Knowing of my interest in the the history of Jewish butchers, the ever-helpful Philip Trauring of the Blood and Frogs Jewish genealogy blog sent me a link to a post from New York's Tenement Museum, "Keeping Kosher in 17th Century New York:" November 15th, 1660 was, by any means, a normal day in the small Dutch-controlled hamlet called Nieuw Amsterdam. People went about their
Rolled Beef: “The Giant Panda of Deli Meats”
I learned a great deal about the late Nathan Kornmehl from the many testimonials that were sent to the memorial page of this blog. By all accounts, he was a generous, kind man, someone who didn't let the tremendous adversity he faced from the Nazis make him angry or bitter. I also learned that his kosher butcher shop was the source of the best rolled beef in Buffalo, New
Nathan Kornmehl (1916 – 2013)
I was saddened by the recent news that Nathan Kornmehl had died, initially in the way you are saddened by the passing of a historical figure -- almost a fictional one. As Linda Chalmers Zemel, who interviewed him for the Buffalo Jewish Review in 2004 -- see Nathan Kornmehl's Story -- said of Nathan, who died last week at the age of 97: His life is the stuff authors draw upon
Freud’s Butcher, Year One: Five Highlights
It's hard to believe that a year has passed since I wrote my first post here, a speculation on whether Freud ate kosher. It's been quite the wild ride since then -- a statement that might surprise those who think that genealogy is boring. But if you use the term family history -- emphasis on family -- and realize that family historians deal with people who are alive and/or who
My Family’s Butcher Shops
When I started this blog, I knew that my mother's uncles in Vienna had butcher shops, plural, and that one of them sold meat -- kosher meat, my mother said -- to Sigmund Freud's wife. It wasn't until I did a lot more research that I was able to put names to the butchers, however, and to learn just how extended the family meat connection was, and how far back it went. The
Foie Gras, Schmaltz & Grammel: The Food of My People
Foie gras has always been a guilty pleasure. It's ridiculously expensive, it's fattening... and then there's the whole animal cruelty question (which I've discussed a bit here). So I'm not sure whether my discovery that it is a traditional Jewish food makes me feel more or less guilty about it. My journey of goose liver discovery started with Jane Ziegelman's excellent 97
Art vs. History: The Butcher Shop in Vienna’s Freud Museum
I have a fantasy, which is not insanely far outside the realm of reality, so maybe I should call it a very ambitious goal: When Freud's Butcher the book is finished and published, I would like to have my book party in Siegmund Kornmehl's former butcher shop. That's not the very ambitious part. The shop has been part of Vienna's Sigmund Freud Museum since 2001, when it was
Rudolph Kornmehl: 3 Butcher Shops & the End of a Jewish Era in Vienna
I named my blog for Siegmund Kornmehl because he had the luck to open one of his three butcher shops in the same building where Sigmund Freud lived and practiced, but I actually know a bit more about Siegmund's brother Rudolph. Like Siegmund, he owned and operated three butcher shops in Vienna. There were other butchers in the family, but I'll leave them for later. One of My
Coming Soon: My Month of (Mostly) Meats
In my last post, I mentioned my corned beef bliss at the Second Avenue Deli, my visit to the Leo Baeck Institute, and my planned excursion to the Tenement Museum. In different ways, all three experiences reminded me that I've been neglecting the meat portion of this blog -- the contemplation of what life might have been like for Viennese butchers and their customers, essential
The Butcher Shop in Freud’s Building: Kosher or Not?
My inspiration for starting this blog was the discovery that my great uncle's butcher shop occupied a storefront in 19 Berggasse, the same building where Sigmund Freud lived and practiced. According to my mother, Freud's wife had bought kosher meat from one of my great uncles. I never knew which one, however, until I saw the announcement on the Freud Museum website that a
Fall from Faith: A Veal Parmigiana Epiphany
For some people, straying from the family faith is a gradual process, a long, slow falling away from religious precepts that no longer make sense. For me, it was like being struck by lightning. Or by a young cow and a hunk of Italian cheese. This is the true story of how a timid, more-or-less-kosher eater was transformed into a food rebel in a single meal. What I