All ten leading New York mayoral candidates seem to agree on one thing: New York bagels are better than California bagels (no matter what the New York Times says). Eating is an easy way for politicians to gain points and present themselves as relatable. Plus, asking about your bagel order is a softball question versus defending your affordable housing plan. That is, unless you toast your bagel (like Mayor De Blasio) or think salmon and raisins go together (like former gubernatorial candidate Cynthia Nixon). This year’s contestants tweeted pictures of their lunch to prove they are real New Yorkers, but they lack the one-time staple of New York politics: the knish.
From Getty Images
A crack-eating politician: New York Mayor John Lindsay at the St. Patrick’s Day Parade.
“In the last 50 years no New York politician has been elected to office without at least one photo of him on the Lower East Side with a pinch in his face,” wrote Milton Glaser and Jerome Snyder in 1968 in Underground Gourmet.
“It became part of an almost ritual ritual,” said Chris McNickle, author of “Being Mayor of New York: Ethnic Politics in the City”. “Each candidate ate a nibble, ate Italian food, and marched in the St. Patrick’s Day parade,” ticking the boxes for what were once the city’s largest ethnic groups.
“The Knish was symbolic,” said McNickle. “It was an opportunity, especially for a non-Jewish candidate, to recognize the traditions, rituals and importance of the Jewish constituency.”
For the most part, it worked. In the 1940s, the mere prospect of the respected Eleanor Roosevelt throwing herself at a modest trick drew a crowd of curious Jews. At other times, those photo ops backfired and counted as pandering. In 1971 Jewish demonstrators threw stones to Mayor Lindsay and declared: “This year it will not be enough for him to put Yarmulke on his head and eat a snack.”
From iStock
Lucky charm: Yonah Schimmel came to America as a Torah teacher, but turned his attention to knives.
This year’s mayoral candidates Andrew Yang and Scott Stringer don’t have to worry about being stoned when they enter Yonah Schimmel’s Knish Bakery, the city’s pre-eminent knishery, which has been open since 1910. “All candidates are welcome,” said owner Ellen Anistratov. Even vegan Eric Adams, president of the Brooklyn borough, can indulge in a parve knish with a clear conscience. New York mayors, traced back to Jimmy Walker in the 1920s, opted for softball-sized round baked goods. Anistratov believes that the potato pies bring good luck to politicians thanks to their association with Yonah Schimmel. Schimmel came to New York as a Torah teacher in the 1880s. “His desire was to share the energy of the Bible,” she said. “He turned that energy into the Knish.” She believes her kasha or jalapeño cheddar knish is a Jewish talisman. But the main reason Anistratov thinks her bakery should be a campaign freeze is because it represents New York.
She is right. In a way, like the Knish itself, Knish politics is a New York thing as well as a Jewish thing. Knives were invented in Eastern Europe centuries ago. Anyone who thought about wrapping potatoes, kasha, cabbage or even liver in an easy-to-hold dough on the shtetl must have anticipated the street corner in New York. The hot dog had to be clad in a bun, and pizza had to be cut into eighths to be handled by a New Yorker on the go. The Knish arrived on Ellis Island ready for a ballpark or Delancey Street. Later on would be his cousins, the empanada, the samosa, and the Jamaican pate, but there was the knish first. “It was the epitome of 19th century New York food,” Suzanne Wasserman, New York food historian, told the New York Times in 2003.
In the 20th century, the knish was Americanized: square, fried, frozen, and mass-produced. In contrast to the bagel or pizza, however, neither the round nor the square Coney Island style would be adopted by airport food courts or fast food chains. It would remain an almost exclusively New York kitchen. For storm-storming politicians, correctly ordering a knish signaled, “You’re one of us.” Lauren Silver wrote in her book Knish: In Search of Jewish Soul Food: “The knish was so ingrained in New York life that his name also served as a litmus test for authentic New York status. ”Insider tip for every possible carpet bagler: The“ k ”is pronounced.
New Englishman Robert F. Kennedy’s visit to Yonah Schimmel in 1964 not only allowed him to woo Jewish voters. it also earned him street loans. “The knish was everyone’s food,” says Silver. They were sold by knisheries, delis, and hand carts in particular. New York food trucks had to keep moving until 1967. The simple three-wheeled operations mainly offered hot dogs, pretzels, and potato knives. Of the three options, the Knish was the most filling and identifiable in New York. In front of halal carts or dollar slices, the thick potato-filled pastry smothered in mustard was the snack for real New Yorkers in a hurry and on a budget.
The proletariat’s potato sales turned into a political hot potato when Nelson Rockefeller, one of the nation’s richest men, ran for governor. In 1962, the Democrats distributed a cartoon that made fun of the phonicity of a Rockefeller trying to pretend to be a normal crack-eating New Yorker. Rockefeller was still beating Democrat Robert Morgenthau, a Jew. How? McNickle recalls that after the election, “he [Morgenthau] came across the black civil rights activist Bayard Rustin, who was standing on a street corner and eating a crackling. “What do you eat?” Asked Morgenthau. Rustin replied, “I eat the reason you are not a governor.”
The Morgenthau elite had failed to connect with the average Jewish voter. Eight years later, in the governor’s race of 1970, the savory pastry was armed again. Rockefeller’s opponent was Arthur J. Goldberg, the son of a street vendor. From a Knishery in Brighton Beach he asked, “What does Rockefeller know about a Knish?” In the end, Rockefeller won and proved himself by insatiable knocking down knives, pizza, keelbasa and egg rolls on the campaign. Four years later, the New York Times wrote approvingly of his 1974 vice president appointment: “He can work a crowd, eat a nibble.”
From Getty Images
Foiled by a Knish: Robert Morganthau lost a gubernatorial election to Nelson Rockefeller in 1962. Was it a knish to blame?
Being a “crack-eating politician” became a shortcut. It meant advertising in working-class ethnic New York neighborhoods, not just in the halls of a country club. Silver refers to the 1980 novel “Close Relations” by Susan Isaacs. In it, an election governor known as “the ultimate WASP” suffocates with a slight trick at a rally in Queens. The message “Your Beloved Non-Ethnic” couldn’t cut the mustard. Later in 1996, Republican vice-presidential nominee Jack Kemp said, “He’s not your hot dog-eating, gnawing street politician.” In other words, he may have represented New York State in Congress but doesn’t expect it to attract New York City voters.
By then, the potato pastry was in decline – from its greatest beneficiaries: the New York politicians. In his war on street food, Mayor Giuliani, who may have been fed up with potato cake on the campaign, effectively banned knives from the smaller hot dog carts. Previous regulations of the Koch administration had already forced most suppliers to switch from fresh to low-quality frozen knives. The Knish, once on almost every corner, withdrew from public life. Newer street carts can handle knives, but these days it is easier to find a Tibetan momo or taco at a midtown grocer than the old trusty knife.
Through gettyimages
End of the Knish Line: The then mayor Rudy Giuliani speaks in front of an exhibition of knives. But he helped introduce regulations that made the Knish less ubiquitous.
It is tempting to extrapolate the fall of the Knish to the political class, but as many Jews as non-Jews are online at the dosa cart and empanada trucks. A century ago, a knish was the luncheon of aspiring Jewish textile workers. Silver compares it to the tamales of today’s Latino day laborers. As more Jews entered the middle class and moved to the suburbs, the knish became a food of consolation rather than a food of livelihood.
Nostalgia alone cannot keep the Knish industry afloat. Knives can still be found in delis, the occasional street cart, and in the religious Jewish strongholds of the outskirts, but the pillow-shaped filled pastry has become rarer and more expensive. No New York City politician is committed to the dying sidewalk cause. They went on to show their New York credibility by expertly folding pizza slices, not toasting a bagel, or visiting a bodega. Still, I have to ask, “What do you know about a Knish?”
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