Kitchen kudos for Koppell

Everybody knows the old joke summarizing the stories behind Jewish holidays: “They tried to kill us, they didn’t succeed, let’s eat!” But for more than a year — after generations of Seders, bar mitzvah and wedding meals and Sisterhood suppers — if you wanted to celebrate at Riverdale Temple, you had to bring the food with you.

The Bronx office of the New York City Department of Buildings — reviewing a routine application for restoration of gas service after a leak was repaired — simply couldn’t be convinced that the 60-year-old kitchen at the Reform Jewish synagogue at 4545 Independence Avenue had been there all along. Its minions ordered that the gas remain off until proper plans were submitted for the “new” facility.

Oy, the literary references baked into this recipe for frustration! 

Councilman Oliver Koppell, a Temple member offered to help. He couldn’t stop thinking of the labyrinthine bureaucracy oppressing the hero of Franz Kafka’s The Trial. 

Riverdale Temple’s Rabbi Judith Lewis may have been reminded of the Hannukah story in the Maccabee books, recounting the desperation of purifying the Temple in Jerusalem without the requisite oil. 

Joseph Heller’s World War II airmen struggling against the military’s Catch 22 came to my mind. And, oh yes, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, but more about them later. 

Throw in a little of Cervantes’ Don Quixote, Camus’s Myth of Sisyphus, even Uncle Remus’s Tar Baby and you’ll get the flavor of the impenetrable corn maze through which Rabbi Lewis, Riverdale Temple president Rachel Radna and their allies wandered month after month as they attempted to deal with a 60-year-old clerical error at the Bronx office of the New York City Department of Buildings.

The story begins in 1953, when architect Simon B. Zelnick submitted plans for Riverdale’s first Jewish religious institution to the plan examiners in the — then as now — grime encrusted DOB offices on Arthur Avenue.