Thanks for the personal "slice of life" story. At my kids' school, they have food served up by Parents' Association volunteers on different days: pizza, hot dogs, soup and salad, pasta, ice cream...and SUSHI. WHen you were a kid, Robert, or Karen, would you have ever looked at something called sushi? N.E.V.E.R. Amazing how kids learn to adapt with the times.
Sorry about your having to attend a levaya. May you only go to simchas.
Shabbat Shalom.

One more comment: I guess a gefilte fish sandwich is a forerunner to sushi...

Haha...

I love the way she graciously rubs it in.

Sushi?
How times have changed....

When I attended high school in L.A.; before I went to YULA...The LA Unified School District use to think a balanced meal was pizza bread with a helping of greasy fries....washed down with a sugary coke.

It's funny what we remember from our school days...

To echo Pearl...May you and Karen only go to simchas..

Shabbat Shalom!!

You've made me hungry, and I've eaten plenty of pizza, especially in law school - more than I ever thought possible. But the pizza we had in high school (and hot lunches in general), was just so horrible that I had a headache just from looking at it. And the stuff they ordered fore "pizza parties" was hardly any better. Ugh. I was actually more envious of the kids who took Lunchables and stuff like that from home. It looked so much better than what they served up at the cafeteria. Why did cafeteria food in public schools have to be so gross?

My yeshiva's pizza was just awful.

You've inspired me to post!

How weird. I went to visit a Rabbi at a local school today and bought a slice of pizza while I was there.

Have a great Shabbos!

Irina--Because school lunch ladies haven't changed in 50 years. There are so many good tasting, healthy things to eat now a days and yet public schools never serve it. Would it really have killed them to cut up some fresh fruit? Canned pineapples is not my idea of healthy. Same thing with the veggies. Why did they have to boil them to death? Would it have really killed them to get their hands on a steamer?

“Y'see, sometimes it pays to be a good girl,” Karen teases.

Mata Hari.

ROFLMTO!!
You deserve a pulitzer for those lines alone, let alone this whole post. You are the greatest.

Sounds better than some of those pizza places on Avenue J

It's hard to believe there was something you still didn't know about Karen.

mata hari you say?

Boy - you guys DID go to a rich school! Here in Cincinnati, what passed for pizza at school was stale bread with a bit of USDA tomato paste and a slice of USDA American cheese. And no one was allowed to bring lunch from home. (Only 2/3 of the school was seriously shomer Shabbos in those days.)

Pearl:

Gefilte fish as a prelude to sushi. Huh, never occurred to us. Nice slice of culinary theory.

PD:

Karen is always very gracious when she twists the blade between my shoulder blades. It's one of the reasons I so adore and lover her.

Lance:

It is funny what we remember from our school days. As I said to Karen during Shabbos dinner: I sure hope I don't lie on my death bed thinking about Yeshiva of Flatbush pizza.

Irina:

I made you hungry? Sorry. Confession: I made me hungry and obsessed... at the funeral.

Kishke:

I'll bet your yeshiva's pizza was better than my soggy peanut butter and jelly on soggy white bread.

Or maybe not.

Psychotoddler:

Inspired that we have inspired you and wow, what a great post. Do you now write an inspired song in our honor, because, y'know, you are inspired by our inspiration.

Fern:

This is getting all pizza slash Kabbalistic. I am totally spooked, reaching for my Zohar.

Yehupitz:

The Pulitzer, huh? That's so nice of you. But last I heard they only hand the award to writers who are card carrying leftists who hate America, hate Republicans, and scrawl jihad enabling tracts.

Otherwise, I'm a perfect candidate for the prize.

Steg:

I wouldn't know. I never got to taste the YoF pizza. In 8 years of grade school it never even occurred to me to even ask another kid to give me a bite of his slice.

BTW, the first kosher pizza shop on Ave J was called Chaim's. It was owned by a friendly Yemenite Israeli. A slice was 25 cents and we thought the moshiach was just around the corner.

Cruisn' Mom:

To me, Karen is as radiant and mysterious as Garbo. We can never, nor should we expect to know everything about our spouses. And you know what, I love discovering new corners of Karen's life.

There are worlds wrapped within worlds.

Mata Hari:

Welcome to our little family scenario:)

Alter:

Yeshiva of Flatbush students ran the economic gamut. There were the really rich kids, mostly Syrian, then there were Flatbush middle class, and then there were the peasants, like Karen and I, who lived in Bensonhurst, Italian, mob-controlled territory. Karen was aware of her inferior status because the rich girls changed outfits every day. Karen repeated outfits during the week.

"...Yeshiva of Flatbush students ran the economic gamut. There were the really rich kids, mostly Syrian, then there were Flatbush middle class, and then there were the peasants ..."

i went to a Chassidic Yeshiva, where they would have been *Horrified* at the concept of better lunches for those who paid more, while other kids had to be envious ...

There was one Rebbe, a Chofetz Chaim type, who admonished the kids, that if they brought candy, they should eat it privately, so that other kids who couldn't afford it, would feel bad,

This Rebbe made the rounds of the lunchroom,
(there was only one, completely free, with no option of buying 'extras') and made sure kids would eat, so that they could be 'healthy and strong', and learn and daven with energy...

The pizza places on Ave. J in my time at YOF high were "Netanya" and "Jerusalem 2." I actually liked Netanya better, which made me an anomaly among the Ashkenazim, who usually favored J2. So, by the time I was at YOF, the pizza wars moved from being financial to being cultural/geographical.

One thing no one disputed: Netanya had the best, most Israeli-authentic falafel in all of Brooklyn. Absolutely great.

In the older grades, we never bothered with school lunch any more. It was just too horrible for words. We either brought our own, or, for fifty cents, you could get a slice and a small coke. The only problem was sneaking out at recess to the pizza shop, but we usually managed.

Yeshiva breakfast wasn't bad, though, except for the time that one poor guy found something truly awful in his farina.

Gee. I thought the wealthy Syrians back then also lived in Bensonhurst - and went to Magen David! (They certainly did by the time I arrived in Brooklyn.)

Syrians in Bensonhurst? Not in my day. Almost all Italians with a few Litvisher Jews.

Alter:

Our Syrian classmates lived in Flatbush, and Midwood, mostly along Ocean Parkway. Bensonhurst was Sicilian mob territory and we few hapless Jews who learned to fight the Italian bullies who used to inform us that we had killed their G-d. And smart asses that we were we'd reply: "Not much of a G-d if we could kill him."

Ouch!

Robert:

My friends and I would sneak into the kitchen off the gym a couple of hours before lunch.
If Mr. Newhouse(head chef) was around we waited for him to leave and then Zelig(asst. Chef) would give us some slices of that infamous pizza.

Zelig a loving wonderful man never denied us that special treat on Friday mornings.

Gregg

Gregg:

It never even occurred to me to resort to clandestine methods in order to get a slice of the pizza. We didn't pay for it, so I wasn't entitled to it.

Plus: with my luck Braverman would find out and nail my butt to the wall!

So Gregg, tell me, was the pizza that good? As good as Karen, grinning like a Black Widow before she eats her young, keeps telling me? Huh, huh, huh?

Gregg, Thank you so much for contacting us. Who thought these gremlins in the kitchen had names? You give validation to our story as well as heretofore unknown information. In my childish thought processes the pizza appeared like manna from heaven-untouched by human hands.

You don't even want to know about the gourmet (literally) lunches that YoF kids get these days.

It wasn't Natanya's pizza??? Right under the train tracks on Ave J. That pizza place has been there forever. I think it has always been owned by a Romanian family. The mom wore a sheitel that was always tilting around. And I was just there this summer, after many years, to see the son in charge--what, he's not 16 anymore? Netanya's always was my all time favortie pizza. I miss it...

And as for you poor Y of F kids, just remember there are those of us whose parents would never dream of even applying to the school because they said they couldn't afford it....

Baila, I think you are correct as far as the name of the first pizza place on Ave J. We used to go there originally after elementary school, get this, on Sundays, which let out at about noon. Yes in those days, 6th through 8th grade had Sunday school for Hebrew for half a day. Even for the girls! It was horrific to get up on cold winter mornings and take the city bus on deserted streets. You could wait a half an hour for a bus. No carpools!

As a kid, I loved the whole thing with city buses b/c you could make it take forever to get to school, by deliberately missing a few crucial buses. What could they say? Everyone knew that the bus schedule was unreliable.

Holy Molly, I can't believe I accidentally came across this site. My wife and I attended YoF in the 70s and 80s (I was incarcerated there from K through 12th grade). Zelig's Friday lunch pizza was just the best - when he and Toni (his wife/ colleague in the kitchen) passed away the recipe went with them. Unless, of course, someone can locate David Dugan, their black side kick. The only thing better than the pizza was the knishes with that thick golden crust. What I wouldn't give to get a taste of that again, with a heap full of that industrial strength, govt subsidized, sour cream.

Listen, other than that the lunches were pretty vile - Chow Mein, chicken wings swimming in grease, inedible fish cakes - you didn't miss much.

Cole Slaw:

Zelig's Friday lunch pizza was just the best...

Great, I feel sooooo much better.

Seriously, glad you stumbled across our site, we usually don't spend time kvetching about anything, much less food, but listen Y of Flatbush Pizza is like another category.

I just wish somebody would drop in and write: Robert, you dind't miss a thing, it was greasy, it was icky, it was lousy.

Does this happen?

No, it does not.

Sorry to dissappoint you Robert/Karen but the pizza was amazing.
You know the kind of home made pizza with tangy delicious sauce and globs of melted yellow cheese. The crust was perfect not to hard not to soft.
Pure heaven for a kid.

PS to all:
The first Netanya pizza place was located on Coney Island Ave next to the Jewish Bakery(between J& K) Later on it moved to Ave J under the train station.
The kids name who now runs the place is called Sammy (he was an abnoxious little kid!!)

(Robert can you believe my memory for insignificant facts?)

Gregg:

I actually remember that you could see a fine white layer of flour on the crust of the pizza when it came out of the kitchen on some of the slices...

I am dying here.

Just dying.

I can't believe so many people remember that pizza!

Hannah:

1. It must have been delicious. Of course, I wouldn't know.

2. It's better than remembering some of the certifiably loony teachers we had: Weinstein, Zilber, Katz. Not to mention the quite violent principal: Mr. Joel Braverman.

KAREN:

"Yes in those days, 6th through 8th grade had Sunday school for Hebrew for half a day."

they abolished sunday school the year after i graduated. boy was i mad.

ROBERT:

did you ever have aryeh carmel? (or was he only in the high school?)

Lion:

Carmel was in the high school.

Hmm, I never realized how egalitarian Ramaz was. Everyone got hot lunches every day. And they were served by very ordinary looking lunch ladies.

My school pizza memory: A friend in my class who ate the pizza with tuna and russian dressing ON TOP. Yes, she was definitely one of the weird ones (as was I- I also repeated outfits and was thus banned from the cool group.)

My other favorite institutional lunch memory: The breaded veggie scallops at Stern served with penne, cheese and broccoli. THAT was good. My friend and I would be first on line for that lunch, and I believe we always had seconds. Rubbery, fried chewy goodness.

Abbi:

Sounds like Ramaz was Woodstock compare to really scary and oppressive Flatbush.

In JHS 74, they had great tuna hero sandwiches. I can't believe that you made me think of it. Decades and decades ago.

Batya:

Childhood memories and food are strongly intertwined. I'm not surprised this post has elicited so many responses from so many Y of F alumni.