Philadelphia dairy restaurants
For an homage to a Philadelphia Mecca of Jewish Soul Food, please check out: Alan Sandler's “Did you eat?” at: http://oneforthetable.com/Food-Family-and-Memory/did-you-eat-sp-18659.html.
On Dave Sandler, a counterman at the Ambassador Vegetarian and Dairy Restaurant
by his son, Alan Sandler
I’ve attached [below] a picture of the Ambassador’s “Cast and Crew,” with my father 3rd from the left, second row. He’s dubbed a “waiter,” but was always behind the counter.
He was born in Lithuania in 1908 in a city (town?) that my grandmother called Zoslau, that I cannot find on a modern map. She was from Vilkomer. His father came to the America just before WWI, leaving my grandmother and 5 children, to wait, I imagine, until he earned enough money to bring them as well.
The War and the Russian Revolution got in they way, however, and she and the children, except for the youngest who died of malnutrition, survived harrowing hunger and deprivation, until they were able to emigrate in 1923.
I do not know what brought my father to the restaurant business. He had no formal education, spoke Yiddish with my mother, English with a Yiddishe accent, and corresponded in Yiddish with his older brother [Philip Sandler] in Manhattan who wrote for the Morgen Freiheit. Philip Sandler was active in the IWO, was a Communist sympathizer and activist and that the FBI had come to their apartment in Brooklyn while investigating my father, and as a result, the two brothers, chose not to meet or speak with each other.My uncle, Philip (perhaps my father as well) was, according to his daughter, sadly disillusioned and grieved all that he had given to the cause when he discovered the truths of Stalin’s Communism. In his anger and grief, my uncle quit the Freiheit, worked in the garment industry, and eventually joined the staff of The Jewish Daily Forward where he worked until his death.
David Sandler was a union man (Restaurant Workers???), a member of the Hebrew Waiters Beneficial Association, and the Workman’s Circle (Der Arbiter Ring), a very left leaning “socialist” labor organization. His activities must have been on someone’s radar (FBI, McCarthy) as I recall seeing while (confession) nosing around in my parent’s night table drawers, a notice from the Congressional Record that the order to deport the following individuals had hereby been rescinded, on the list appeared my father: David Joseph (Josele) Sandler.
Ours was not a Kosher home, and the, perhaps apocryphal, story was told of their partying on Yom Kippur, until they discovered what Stalin was really up to, gave up Communism, and found religion: Conservative Judaism in our case.
He worked hard, rested on his days off, traveled very little if at all, never drove, and when we went out to eat, it was to the China House Restaurant: Egg Rolls, Shrimp in Lobster Sauce, Egg Foo Young, Barbecued Spare Ribs, Wanton Soup, and Chicken Chow Mein.
Were we comfortable? We had enough food, my mother did some seamstress-ing in the home, darned my socks and underwear, and scrimped and saved. I began an eight year career as a Soda Jerk when I was 13. That is the closest I got to the restaurant business and it was on my way to the “ordained” career in medicine that my parents wanted for me. In his, perhaps envious, moments, when he felt I may have crossed him in some way, he would say: “Look at you, Big Professor. I sent you to college but you have no common sense.”
I left Philadelphia in 1970 for my internship in Los Angeles, and the following year, I brought my mother and father to the Coast to meet my new girlfriend, now wife, and to see the sites. It was the longest trip either of them had taken since coming to America, my mother from Ukraine, and they had a wonderful time in LA and in the Bay Area. They returned home, and a month later, November 1971, he died of heart disease with which he had been struggling for sometime.
A simple view of parenting is you give what you got, good and bad, and you can’t give what you didn’t get, and if you owe a debt to your parents, you repay that debt to your children. My father endured and sacrificed and gave me what he had, and would be proud, I expect of how I’ve repaid him. -Alan Sandler
For an homage to a Philadelphia Mecca of Jewish Soul Food, please check out: Alan Sandler's “Did you eat?” at: http://oneforthetable.com/Food-Family-and-Memory/did-you-eat-sp-18659.html.
On Dave Sandler, a counterman at the Ambassador Vegetarian and Dairy Restaurant
by his son, Alan Sandler
I’ve attached [below] a picture of the Ambassador’s “Cast and Crew,” with my father 3rd from the left, second row. He’s dubbed a “waiter,” but was always behind the counter.
He was born in Lithuania in 1908 in a city (town?) that my grandmother called Zoslau, that I cannot find on a modern map. She was from Vilkomer. His father came to the America just before WWI, leaving my grandmother and 5 children, to wait, I imagine, until he earned enough money to bring them as well.
The War and the Russian Revolution got in they way, however, and she and the children, except for the youngest who died of malnutrition, survived harrowing hunger and deprivation, until they were able to emigrate in 1923.
I do not know what brought my father to the restaurant business. He had no formal education, spoke Yiddish with my mother, English with a Yiddishe accent, and corresponded in Yiddish with his older brother [Philip Sandler] in Manhattan who wrote for the Morgen Freiheit. Philip Sandler was active in the IWO, was a Communist sympathizer and activist and that the FBI had come to their apartment in Brooklyn while investigating my father, and as a result, the two brothers, chose not to meet or speak with each other.My uncle, Philip (perhaps my father as well) was, according to his daughter, sadly disillusioned and grieved all that he had given to the cause when he discovered the truths of Stalin’s Communism. In his anger and grief, my uncle quit the Freiheit, worked in the garment industry, and eventually joined the staff of The Jewish Daily Forward where he worked until his death.
David Sandler was a union man (Restaurant Workers???), a member of the Hebrew Waiters Beneficial Association, and the Workman’s Circle (Der Arbiter Ring), a very left leaning “socialist” labor organization. His activities must have been on someone’s radar (FBI, McCarthy) as I recall seeing while (confession) nosing around in my parent’s night table drawers, a notice from the Congressional Record that the order to deport the following individuals had hereby been rescinded, on the list appeared my father: David Joseph (Josele) Sandler.
Ours was not a Kosher home, and the, perhaps apocryphal, story was told of their partying on Yom Kippur, until they discovered what Stalin was really up to, gave up Communism, and found religion: Conservative Judaism in our case.
He worked hard, rested on his days off, traveled very little if at all, never drove, and when we went out to eat, it was to the China House Restaurant: Egg Rolls, Shrimp in Lobster Sauce, Egg Foo Young, Barbecued Spare Ribs, Wanton Soup, and Chicken Chow Mein.
Were we comfortable? We had enough food, my mother did some seamstress-ing in the home, darned my socks and underwear, and scrimped and saved. I began an eight year career as a Soda Jerk when I was 13. That is the closest I got to the restaurant business and it was on my way to the “ordained” career in medicine that my parents wanted for me. In his, perhaps envious, moments, when he felt I may have crossed him in some way, he would say: “Look at you, Big Professor. I sent you to college but you have no common sense.”
I left Philadelphia in 1970 for my internship in Los Angeles, and the following year, I brought my mother and father to the Coast to meet my new girlfriend, now wife, and to see the sites. It was the longest trip either of them had taken since coming to America, my mother from Ukraine, and they had a wonderful time in LA and in the Bay Area. They returned home, and a month later, November 1971, he died of heart disease with which he had been struggling for sometime.
A simple view of parenting is you give what you got, good and bad, and you can’t give what you didn’t get, and if you owe a debt to your parents, you repay that debt to your children. My father endured and sacrificed and gave me what he had, and would be proud, I expect of how I’ve repaid him. -Alan Sandler
photo from The Jewish Community Around North Broad Street by
Allen Meyers