New York Sandwiches

New York City was once famous for its Jewish deli food, notably its corned beef and pastrami sandwiches. The number of places where you can get these authentic sandwiches are now less than the fingers on your hands.

Katz's deli is still around, and as famous for its sandwiches as it is for the scene in movie the Harry Met Sally. Unfamiliar? Look it up.

The Stage Deli is gone, as is Wolf's. The 2nd Avenue deli is in two locations, and not on 2nd Avenue's Lower East side. One is on 33rd Street off Lexington Avenue,. The other at 1442 1st Avenue, at 75th, on Manhattan's Upper East Side. The name means more than the locations.

The Carnegie Deli is also gone, but the name must be licensed, because last year at Saratoga I ordered a Carnegie Deli pastrami sandwich to have at my table in the Fourstardave Sports Bar. You can of course still get pastrami sandwiches at diners, and there is a Pastrami Queen place in Moynihan Train Hall (so far unsampled).

In a way a pastrami sandwich was in the news recently, but since something always reminds me of something else, we'll start with New York's Chief Judge of the Court of Appeals—the state's highest—Sol Wachtler who famously said, "a grand jury would indict a ham sandwich."

This was an obvious pejorative remark about how grand juries rubber stamp the presentation by prosecutors and nearly always return the asked for indictment.

I Googled Judge Sol Wachtler and found he is still with us at 95. You need a long memory and have to be near my age to know that when the good jurist passes away and has a New York Times tribute written about him—because he will definitely have a NYT tribute written about him composed by Robert McFadden or Sam Roberts that will float from the morgue in the cellar to the upstairs newsroom on Eighth Avenue—that the ham sandwich quote will appear.

But more prominently, the fallout from his affair with Joy Silverman, a good looking Republican society fundraiser, and the off-the-rails behavior of the good jurist that got him in Federal prison will feature more prominently in the obituary. 

Sol's tale is out there to be researched. Ah yes, I remember it well. A recap via Google goes:

"Wachtler was accused of harassing and threatening his former lover Joy Silverman and her family after the affair ended." If there was an Internet then it would have been blown up. This was the early 90s, and was the story of the day. Lots of days.

Sol was so smitten that his heart and mind somehow weren't working properly. "He sent anonymous letters (no email then) and made calls under pseudonyms threatening to expose details of the relationship and demanding money and personal humiliation from Silverman." Whatta guy. 

"He pleaded guilty in 1993 to a single count of threatening to kidnap Silverman's daughter [His screws obviously didn't just become loose, they fell on the floor.] as part of  a plea deal that dropped other charges [like extortion]. He was sentenced to 15 months in federal prison, served about 13 months and was disbarred." Sol obviously became the ham sandwich.

Entrance to Otisville Prison

I don't know which federal prison Sol served his time in. It might have been Otisville, New York where many of the Jewish felons are housed. The low security prison allows them to attend religious services and have Kosher meals served to the observant. It's considered the "yeshiva" of prisons.

Whether Sol got any pastrami or corned beef sandwiches from his favorite delis is completely unknown.

What is known is how a pastrami sandwich came to be part of a tribute obituary and a hostage story. Stay tuned.

Rabbi Alvin Kass, N.Y.P.D. Chaplin for nearly Six Decades, Dies at 89. The NYT obit by Sam Roberts the other day tells us a lot.

Rabbi Kass lived a long life, and he was good at his job to hold it for almost 60 years. The six-column, 19-gun salute includes three photos and one incomparable kicker at the end.

Police provided beer and sandwiches ( kind not known) to the robbers who were holding hostages at a Chase Manhattan bank in Brooklyn on August 22, 1972. The hope was that the beer would make the robbers groggy, but that didn't happen. The standoff ended at JFK airport when one of the robbers was shot dead and John Wojtowicz gave himself up.  The incident was the basis for the movie Dog Day Afternoon starring Al Pacino.

Sandwiches always figured during transit negotiations in New York City in the efforts to prevent crippling subway strikes. Sometimes the roast beef sandwiches that were reported as being ordered as the negotiations dragged on with Theodore Kheel as the mediator weren't enough, and a strike was called. Food can only accomplish so much.

Rabbi Kass gets a 19-gun salute obit spanning six column with three photos. His exemplary life can make you feel you've accomplished nothing in yours, but face it, there are people who approach sainthood. (Can you be a saint if you're Jewish?)

Of all the accomplishments in the Rabbi's life, the hostage situation tested his faith and his abilities. In 1981 he was called to the scene of a Jewish man threatening to kill his former girlfriend. A rabbi was thought to be the answer to get the man to give up.

Rabbi Kass told The Wall Street Journal in 2012, "I talked to him all night to give up his gun. I was an utter failure. But by morning he was hungry."

Mr. Roberts takes us through the sequence of events:

"Hostage negotiators ordered two pastrami sandwiches from the Carnegie Deli, one for the hostage taker, the other for the rabbi. Rabbi Kass persuaded the man to swap his sandwich for his gun. But it turned out that he had a second gun. Fortunately the Carnegie Deli didn't keep kosher, so the rabbi hadn't eaten the second sandwich. Instead, he traded it for the second gun and the police grabbed the unarmed kidnapper."

The Rabbi's funeral services were well attended by outgoing Mayor Adams, a phalanx of police officers, and the police commissioner, Jessica Tisch.

Jessica Tisch is an anomaly as a police commissioner. Forget she isn't the first woman to head the department. She is a civilian, who was the former Sanitation Commissioner, one of Mayor Adams's best appointments.

After a series of police commissioners that didn't gain traction, Mayor Adams, has, in what has proved to be perhaps his single best appointment, tapped Ms. Tisch, a Harvard-trained lawyer to become the police commissioner. 

The police department has been headed before by a civilian, Robert J. McGuire, a Wall Street lawyer, was commissioner in the Koch administration in 1977. Mr. Tisch is part of the Tisch family that owns a portion of the football New York Giants.

She proved to be a very effective sanitation commissioner, and so far an effective police commissioner. Whether she stays on as commissioner under mayor-elect Mamdani will be a story that will unfold over time. But for now, she gave the eulogy for Rabbi Kass. You can almost anticipate the sendup.

Ms. Tisch told the assembled: "To paraphrase 'The Godfather,' "Leave the gun. Take the pastrami."

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