Of the piles of emails, text messages and calls I’ve earned since I revealed that I had been diagnosed with COVID-19, dozens have advised a problem that turned out to have eluded medical experts.
Judging by the redundant suggestion, the most productive way to repel this nasty virus is not with cocktails of antibodies, steroids or experimental drugs like some other COVID patient whose insurance policy is greater than mine, but rather this:
Chicken soup. And any bird soup. Your bird soup.
“My mother swore she saved three lives with her bird soup,” wrote an unwavering reader who introduced me as president of my non-existent fan club. “He even used to get out of his in a precarious health bed to move on. I don’t know if you’re in a bad mood to sit down and feed yourself
“As soon as your nausea subsides, I’ll give you homemade Jewish penicillin, through me, and leave it on your porch,” said another.
“Can I make a jar of bird soup?” When you can tolerate the concept of food: bird’s soup. “”If you give me your address, I’ll leave you a delicious bird soup. “Have you recommended a bird’s soup from Whole Foods or Morton’s?”My bird soup is known to resurrect the sick, disabled and disturbed. “
He even gave me a batch of simulated broth from an out-of-town reader: “I’m sitting here in New Jersey reading that it fights this terrible virus and sends virtual bird soup. “
Given the genesis of the councils (and my surname), these exchanges raise questions about my ethnic and devoted heritage.
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“I don’t forget that Gerry Ford’s doctor said he had healing powers,” wrote a reader who knew I was from Michigan and that my father would possibly have worked with the former president. “I think he must have referred to the schmaltz, but I’m sure he didn’t know what it was.
The answer is yes. (In case you don’t, it’s made with chicken fats, a substance that I even mention, in my current state, leaves me uncomfortable. )But even though I am of Jewish origin, because of the possible options made before my birth. , it’s never my faith.
When I was young, my father’s father came to America from eastern Russia as a practicing Jew (but not an Orthodox), but when he married Lithuanian Esther Lubetsky, he gave up his devout practice and she became convinced that his children they would suffer too much discrimination as Jews. in America and, after tragically losing a young son to acute rheumatoid arthritis, he absolutely rejected religion.
So I didn’t grow up with bird soup as a repairman, my mother, with strong New England roots, learned to cook an ox tongue (to the dismay of her children). Over the years, I’ve learned to make reputable bird soup with matza balls and bread pull smart enough to fool other people into believing I’m a member of the tribe. And whether I’m an editor with abundant vocabulary or because words have infiltrated my DNA, I know the meaning of masses of Yiddish words, with schmaltz being one of them.
I also know that bird soup as a cure is not just a schmgegge (yiddish for “nonsense”). A handful of studies have shown that it has medicinal benefits. The most productive known of these clinical studies was published in 2000 through Dr. Stephen Rennard of the University of Nebraska Medical Center who used his wife’s prescription, transmitted through his Lithuanian grandmother, to show that soup inhibited the movement of a type of white blood cell that opposes infection, helping to decrease symptoms of the upper respiratory tract.
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Which would be wonderful if I really had upper respiratory symptoms. Interestingly, my viral evolution has not been typical; I have no cough, congestion, shortness of breath or runny nose, and my first week of nausea has subsided, I have no taste or smell left, which makes the soup as satisfying as swallowing hot water and eating a ball of matza, which is like swallowing a rainy sponge.
But I don’t want to. Although I was very tempted to have contracted the coronavirus in the first place, I am grateful to my tuchas that my symptoms were, though unpleasant, relatively mild and un propagating, and the cascade of responses I got from readers was quite unforeseen and humiliating.
When I took the decision to reveal my positive test, I expected some of my top frank critics to write to say, “This may not have happened to a more deserving person. “Instead, I was filled with intelligent “vibrations,” included in prayer circles and flooded with aids, even those who also let me know that they don’t like anything I stand for.
“I only read his column to hear what ‘the other side’ says,” one man wrote, “but I wish him the most productive thing for a full and rapid recovery. “
It has been comforting, at this moment of greater anger, anxiety and turmoil in the opposition camps component, to know that we are still capable of compassion and humanity over politics and anger.
This led me to a new Jewish word I didn’t know before: mishpucha. There are a variety of spellings, but they all have the same meaning: “Family” My readers have this for me, and I may not be. more grateful for all their support.