By Oliver B. Pollak
RICHMOND, California — Salute, an Italian restaurant in Marina Bay, lost its lease under parlous circumstances and closed. On the last two days they prepared hundreds of free last suppers. It was crowded. The valet parking area was overwhelmed. Our table seated five Jews and one son of a Nazi. All of us were sort of retired, but actively pursuing our passions. The six of us had about 430 years of stories.
We got acquainted at our house. I had prepared chilled prosecco with flutes in the freezer, but they preferred pinot noir and bourbon with cheese, hummus, crackers, and cherries bursting with sweetness. We discussed family history and our widely different Jewish paths to the Bay Area. And of course there was fulmination, vehemence and expletives bemoaning the current administration. One said things change after 4 years, I suggested the Supreme Court will not change in my lifetime, we are not Poland where we can lower the mandatory retirement age.
Ilana Brody, nee Kallus, an Israeli, has been living in Montana, just outside Helena, for 14 years. Her grandparents from Prague were murdered in Theresienstadt and Auschwitz. Franz Kafka was her 4th cousin on her mother’s side. The family did not like him too much, he was too religious. Her parents moved illegally to British controlled Palestine in 1939. Ilana was born in Haifa. She earned her MA in Political Science at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. She has been a chicken farmer, video producer and technical recruiter. She had shpielkes and moved to America in 1994.
Ilana met Julie Freestone, the linchpin in this story, a former journalist and social worker, through a mutual friend, now deceased, several years ago. Julie’s partner, Rudi, a former Berkeley police officer, and Ilana like to go hunting in Montana and Wyoming for pesky antelope. Ilana convinced us to go see the Rube Goldberg exhibition at the Contemporary Jewish Museum three days before it closed. We convinced a friend to see the show on the penultimate day. That’s how the Jewish grapevine works.
Julie and Rudi met and shared their extraordinary courtship and their Jewish and German heritages in Stumbling Stone. Although a novel it reflects aspect of their real lives. It is a study how two children born in the mid-1940s, off springs of the Second World War, come together despite their incongruous but intertwined pasts. It is the burgeoning genre of the second generation dealing with family memory and trauma. Julie was born in 1944. Her parents were Jewish immigrants living in the Bronx. Her father worked in Germany in the late 1940s for the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service helping to relocate Jews. Rudi was born in 1945, six days after the war ended, in Hamburg, Germany. His father served the Nazi regime. Rudi emigrated to liberal America and became a Berkeley policeman. Julie, a free lance writer, moved to the Bay Area. They are life partners. Stumbling Stone was recently translated into German Stolperstein. They visited several cities on their German book tour doing readings in bookstores, libraries, churches and synagogues. Rudi is now translating their blog into German.
Elinor Blake is an enthusiastic gardener from Hollywood. She graduated from Fairfax high school, my wife’s alma mater. Her career has been mostly in environmental and occupational health at the State and Contra Costa County Health Departments. She met Julie in a long-ago 1990s women’s group in Richmond. They both worked at the CCC health at the same time for about 7 years.
Karen and I have traveled the world looking at the human condition through optimistic Jewish eyes. When you move to a new area we tend to search out other Jews with similar interests. Julie and I met when the Richmond Museum of History was preparing a Holocaust program. In this case Julie Freestone is once again the linchpin. Rudi said he had been to Salute 50 times, Julie said, more passionately, 500 times.
The restaurant was a five-minute walk from our front door. It was a watering hole, with a wonderful bayside view. Menbere “Menbe” Aklilu, an Ethiopian immigrant, an Orthodox Christian, worked at Salute for over two decades and owned it for 15 years. By odd historical irony, Italy had invaded Ethiopia in 1895 and 1935.
The pri fixe dinner was free. We enjoyed bread with olive oil and Modena vinegar, salad, chicken breast with carrots, mushroom sauce, green beans, rosemary roasted potatoes (they were mashed), and chocolate mousse cake. The meal, valued at $55 was a gift to diners for years of patronage. Menbe hoped diners would give the equivalent amount as a tip to ease the financial transition of her many cooks, kitchen staff, servers, and bar tenders. Cocktails were extra, corkage for my Merlot was $20. They served hundreds of meals.
Menbe’s social ethic is extraordinary. On Mother’s Day and Thanksgiving her foundation Menbe’s Way provides free food to those in need including the homeless. Regular diners would come in to help around the restaurant. But mountain size good will alone is not enough to modify a lease. Her effusiveness and hugging is not a marketing ploy, it is genuine.
We returned to the house, I made three decaf lattes, no more food, and continued ruminating about our Jewish past, and when we would meet again.
When you go to a restaurant you put your appetite for life in the hands of strangers who work in rooms you do not visit. They always have to smile, and we do not know their lives. This restaurant closing is significant because it was run by an Ethiopian immigrant who was an active community organizer, and the final meals were acts of tzadakah, reflecting much of what we like about America. We wish Menbe and her crew smooth sailing to a new berth, though it won’t be within walking distance. Salute! Cheers.
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Pollak, a professor emeritus of history at the University of Nebraska Omaha, and a lawyer, is a freelance writer now based in Richmond, California. He may be contacted via oliver.pollak@sdjewishworld.com