Scandinavia-More Exploration

August 11, 2006-New York

Our day started with an attempt to get theater tickets at the TKTS booth in the Fulton Market area. The problem was that it being Friday, there were noseats available for any show we wanted to see. We enjoyed the pedestrianized area of the wharf and took off for lunch at, you guessed it, Katz’s. As we arrived we saw an ambulance out front. That’s not a good sign at a restaurant. It turned out that the EMTs had stopped for lunch. In short order (no pun intended) the ambulance was joined by a full hook and ladder fire engine. The entire crew piled into Katz’s in full battle regalia and dug into their lunches too. We couldn’t resist taking photos.

On the subway headed to Chinatown Syd proposed that it would be less money to share a cab than to pay $2 per person per subway ride. As it turned out that wasn’t true, but our cab rides were more exciting than the subway. We had drivers from Sierra-Leone, Pakistan, and Egypt. They all learned to drive in their home countries. Enough said.

Janet was intent on buying knock-off handbags in Chinatown. She and Syd ventured into a tiny stall and disappeared. We thought they’d moved on down the street but couldn’t find them. Eventually they emerged having bought three purses. They told us about the saleslady whispering to them about a secret room. Before they knew it the back wall opened and they were whisked into an even tinier space crammed with more authentic counterfeits. NYC has cracked down on the vendors so in the stores the items are labeled with NYC tags. The back room had the same merchandise with Prada, Louis Vuitton, or whatever labels were appropriate to the style.

Shabbat

We went to 5:15pm services at Temple Emanuel. It’s the premier reform congregation in the world. Services were held in the chapel where only 80-90 of the 500+ seats were occupied. A police car with lights flashing sat outside the entire time and security guards searched bags before people entered. The senior of five rabbis led uninspired worship using Ashkenazic Hebrew pronunciation and the old Union Prayer Book. It was Syd’s and Janet’s first encounter with classical Reform Judaism. It was too bad the glorious voices of the choir and cantor chose dirge-like tunes. In fact, we felt as if the entire service and participants were performing the perfectly choreographed presentation under water. Music, movements, and speech were painfully slow. The congregation didn’t participate in singing as is typical of classical Reform. The entire event was a spectator sport. We could have phoned it in there was that much emotion. Afterwards, the rabbi asked David to do Kiddush and introduced him as a colleague he remembered from when they lived together in the dorm at Hebrew Union College. My David never lived in the dorm. We were married when he started HUC and had our own apartment.

We cabbed it back to Chinatown for dinner and took our time searching the streets until we were satisfied with the Chinese/Caucasian ratio in the restaurant. We chose. Mr. Tang’s. The food was divine even if the service was not. We only ordered three bowls of rice and from then on we got three of everything including wine glasses and fortune cookies.

We got back to the hotel on the early side and said our sad good-byes to the Bruces. They head for Japan for a few days before returning to Australia.

Toby