Fish

On what is controversially called Columbus Day weekend, which this year fell uncontroversially at the end of Sukkot, my wife, daughter and I found ourselves in our native habitat: New York. Naturally, this meant a trip to Zabar’s, though because our daughter is a toddler who travels by stroller when she is not toddling, I decided to make this Saturday different from all other Saturdays: “to” Zabar’s meant this time “up to but, alas, not inside.” After all, weekends are always a madhouse in the country’s most famous “appetizing” store, founded in 1934, but especially so four days after patriarch Saul Zabar’s death on October 7 (of all days) at the age of 97. An awful lot of pilgrims journeyed last week to the mecca of this self-described “lox-smith.

In the apocryphal Book of Tobit, Tobias is sent by his father to retrieve some silver that is owed to him. On the way Tobias is attacked by a large fish on the banks of the river Tigris. He cries out to his companion, a man named Azarias (he’s the angel Raphael in disguise), who tells him to grab it and bring it ashore. “Take out the entrails of the fish,” Raphael tells him, “and lay up his head, and his gall, and his liver for thee; for these are necessary for useful medicines.” Tobias seems skeptical. How, exactly, can the liver and gall of a fish be helpful? According to Raphael, “If a demon or evil spirit gives trouble to anyone, you make a smoke from these before the man or woman, and that person will never be troubled again.” And so it proves to be.