More than Jews have kept delis, the deli has kept the Jews.

Yes, that’s a direct ripoff of Abraham Joshua Heschel’s famous dictum about the Sabbath.

I didn’t know Heschel, but I bet if I could have gotten him alone over a cup of cold beet borscht at Rattner’s, he would have thought it over, wiped the sour cream from the corner of his mouth, and said, “You know, you may have a point.”

The deli is where we eat, meet, laugh, commiserate, celebrate, feast, deal, cry. Take pulpit and prayer out of a synagogue, add corned beef, and you’d end up with something like a deli.  God is, of course, in both.

Read more at jewishjournal.com/foodaism.