Shiksa Noshing

Caravan of Dreams

405 E. 6th St. (betw. 1st Ave. & Ave A), 212-254-1613

I've been de-assimilating a bit lately, if that's a word. Hipster anti-Semitism makes me want to be around Jews more than ever, so I met Dan Friedman, the co-editor of Zeek, a Jew-ish online and print journal, at Caravan of Dreams, during Passover. I'd tried calling a couple of places with Seder dinners first, and got a generally cranky response. "A free paper? That's for homeless people, and they're not coming in here!" one fellow actually said when I told him I was from New York Press.

Dan is British, and used to write for Sacha Baron Cohen, who struggled on the comedy circuit before crafting brief prerecorded segments on the 11 O'clock Show featuring himself as Ali G, the colorfully stupid character who eventually came to America to humiliate our most important figures on HBO.

The Jewish community in England is small and largely disempowered, as opposed to New York, which has a tradition of being culturally Jewish, as Dan points out in his latest Zeek article, "Jews on Stage." I always found my own New York Jewish relatives to be much more glamorous than anything the goyim in Rhode Island had to offer. I'd cling to my Great Uncle Jack at rare family gatherings, unwilling to let go and return to New England.

My Russian grandmother, Ethel, lived in the West Village and had a pretty good take on humanity and chopped liver. I was never introduced to the Jewish religion, but find myself, after all these years, to be temperamentally Jewish, a phrase Dan introduced me to. I go to the Sol Goldman Y twice a week just to attend aqua aerobics with women who remind me vaguely of home.

Caravan of Dreams specializes in vegan organic live food, meaning organic ingredients that are close to a raw form. It's also under orthodox rabbinical supervision by Rabbi Harry Cohen, which means that Dan can eat there.

"Kosher literally means fit," Dan explained. "The belief that there's a way you should live in a fitting, proper way on the earth, and the sustainable food movement reflects a certain side of the ideology of kosher."

The waitress recommended a mushroom quesadilla, but Dan can't eat grain during Passover, so we ordered the live tapas platter ($15), with a rich walnut pate, flax-seed chips and a mild, pleasant pesto, as well as the Santa Maria Stir Fry ($17), replacing seitan (which contains grain) with tempeh. Dan took one bite of the Byzantine-looking stir fry and felt a sharp pain in his tongue, but sat politely listening to me as his head and ears swelled up, and his throat began to close.

I talked about myself for a few more minutes as he suffered his hideous allergic reaction, but finally caught on, allowing him to dash over to the Rite Aid for some Benadryl. I got the food bagged up and met him outside.

"It seemed like a nice place," he said, weakly. Being a guy, he went off to play soccer anyway, and I ran into Danny Oxenberg, a Jew from L.A. in town for Seder with his mom. We went to counter on 1st Avenue for a sugar-free sundae, and he patiently explained Passover to me:

"Seder is about the freeing of the Jewish slaves from Egypt; rent The Ten Commandments-that explains it pretty well. God put a plague on the Egyptian people so the Jews could escape. The last plague was something about killing their first-born child, so the Jewish people had to put something on their door, so the angel of death would pass over their houses. That's why it's called Pass Over!" he summed up tidily.

"Then there's this angel Elijah and you put a glass of wine in the center of the table for him, but he can only take a tiny sip, cuz he has to go to a lot of houses."

"You know the story about the unleavened bread, don't you?" he continued. "When they were fleeing the Egyptians, at the last minute the Pharaoh decided not to let them go, even though he promised, so he sent the army to kill them-they were baking bread for the trip, but didn't have time for it to rise, so they had unleavened bread. During Passover, you have to eat it for eight days, just flour and water, no yeast."

Are the Jews happy in Los Angeles? I asked him.

"Well, they control the media out there, so it's a pretty good situation," he explained, jokingly, of course. "I don't know if they're happy, though," he added, thoughtfully.