In a few weeks I\’ll turn 33 and, sadly, I realize I\’m long past being anything \”for my age.\” I\’m no longer cute for my age, talented for my age, a good reader for my age. All qualifications and special considerations have long passed. There\’s nothing I can get away with now because, \”After all, your honor, he\’s only 33.\”
Five hunks of Hebrew National salami lie side by side in a glass display case at Ben\’s Kosher Delicatessen in midtown Manhattan. When compared with the crispy corn dogs and enormous latkes, they don\’t look like much. But the takeout counter guy is relieved he has any salami to sell at all.\n\nFor the last several months, a shortage of Hebrew National products has hit kosher restaurants and food distributors across North America, forcing some to fill the gap with other meat products — ones that don\’t \”answer to a higher authority,\” as the Hebrew National famous advertisement put it.\n\nThe shortage comes at what should be a time of celebration, as Hebrew National, which was founded on Manhattan\’s Lower East Side, celebrates its 100th birthday.
It took 50 years, but this New Year\’s Day a childhood dream and mother\’s fantasy is about to come true. I was born on Jan. 1, 1953. Dwight D. Eisenhower prepared to assume the presidency, American troops remained in Korea and newspapers heralded mine as Los Angeles County\’s first recorded birth.
I\’ll be 54 this weekend. Not for me the modesty of hidden age. I\’ll take my years, gladly, as I\’m given them.
I have been asked by the Hillel Foundation at Dartmouth College to meet with them on the occasion of Israel\’s 54th birthday. There aren\’t too many of us still around who were there at its birth, and they would like to hear, from the perspective of a participant, what made it possible for the Jewish state to survive while the Palestinian state, also created by the United Nations, crashed in flames.
There\’s nothing like completing chemotherapy to spice up a birthday party. Last weekend, 40 of my dearest friends performed a commemorative Havdalah ceremony to mark a really great CT scan and year 53. My \”re-birthday\” celebration was just the ticket, restorative not only for me but also for the extended community that has seen me through my struggle with lung cancer.
The 60th birthday of Bob Dylan (né Robert Zimmerman) has created a bull market in baby-boomer nostalgia and soul-searching.
Some birthdays are better than others, and number 53 is especially tough for Israel.
\”Ima, how old am I today?\”
My oldest son\’s sixth birthday is coming soon. Recently, he has developed a near obsession with calculating exactly how old he is on a daily basis, practically down to the hour. Of course he is hardly unique. From our earliest years, we humans feel the compulsion to mark the passing of time, to define who we are by counting our years and months and days.
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