Knish by Silver Laura

Author:Silver, Laura [Silver, Laura]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Brandeis University Press
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

David Wise whips up some dough before showtime in a Connecticut kitchen.

“Things in a time capsule are supposed to last for five thousand years, and in my kitchen, knishes don’t last for more than five minutes.”24

At each performance, Wise generated two trays of knishes, but not solo. Audience members plunged their hands into dough and premashed potatoes, part of their role as thirteen-year-olds of 1938, learning the art of knish making from the mother of a classmate.

Snafus found their way into the action. “Dough changes so much,” said Wise, “and cooking it in a different kitchen every single time is a challenge.” Once he set a potholder on fire. “Luckily, the kitchen was in another room.”25

Wise, who last performed Momma’s Knishes in 2005, had not partaken in many of the pastries since then. “It’s interesting to think that multiple times a week I was doing a ‘Time to make the donuts’ kind of thing,” he said, seven years after throwing in the dish towel.

As for the possibility of a knish comeback, he’d told himself that he would consider reviving the show when he reached the age at which he had portrayed his great-grandmother, his mid-thirties.

“That’s where I am now,” he said. “I’m thinking about it.”

Either way, David Wise has already secured a spot in the pantheon of knish-inspired entertainers. The lineage goes back to musician and parodist Mickey Katz, known for his irreverent Yiddish-and-English parodies of songs of the 1950s. Katz (the father of Joel Grey) packed his ditties with references to Yiddish and Jewish culture, expressed in sayings that defied obvious translation. He melded Jewish identity with American identity and did not hesitate to poke fun at his own traditions. Inspired while “trudging along with lox and bagel through darkest Delancey,” Katz converted the 1958 hit “The Witch Doctor” into “The Knish Doctor” and gave those with Lower East Side roots a chance to consider the exoticism of their own ways.

Way down in Africa

a dortn [over there] in the jungle,

you’ll find a Knish Doctor

who looks just like your uncle

the natives know him by the name of Jungle Yankl.26

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