Before dying of starvation in a concentration camp, Mina carefully recorded…
Egg Cream
- Description
- Reviews
- Citation
- Cataloging
- Transcript
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EGG CREAM is a short film about the enduring meaning of a beloved chocolate soda drink born on the Jewish Lower East Side. The egg cream contained neither eggs nor cream – it was a product of necessity and hardship, but a source of joy and sweetness. Through a tour of egg cream establishments led by a filmmaker and his young daughter, exhaustively researched archival imagery, and even a song by Lou Reed, the film examines the Jewish experience in America and the mythology of a simpler time.
“A warm-hearted plunge into the alchemical swirl of chocolate syrup, milk, and seltzer that is the egg cream. It's a remarkable family saga that includes a daughter's dozen-year egg cream quest from child to adult; and it is a broad cultural story as well, suggesting that the enduring charisma of the iconic corner-store beverage says a lot about the history of Jews in America. Who knew that such a simple drink has such a fantastic personality?” —Michael Stern, Roadfood
“What began as an engaging documentary project between a father and daughter emerges as a powerful story of culture and history tied together with the thread of the popular drink, the egg cream. Watching, and wanting to taste, the different versions of the famous egg cream as they were shared on-screen was only the beginning of the fun of this documentary. ‘Egg Cream’ brings a human touch to a delicious part of Jewish history.” —Joyce Forum Jewish Short Film Festival, San Diego, Special Juror’s Award winner
Citation
Main credits
Miller, Nora Claire (film director)
Miller, Nora Claire (screenwriter)
Miller, Peter (film producer)
Miller, Peter (film director)
Miller, Peter (screenwriter)
Miller, Peter (director of photography)
Other credits
Edited and co-produced by Amy Linton.
Distributor subjects
No distributor subjects provided.Keywords
WEBVTT
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[upbeat guitar music]
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I decided to make a documentary.
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My dad was a filmmaker and it was going to be
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our first collaboration.
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We chose as our subject, the chocolate egg cream.
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My father thought the film
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would be a chance to explore deep questions
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of history, memory, and Jewish tradition.
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I thought it would get me
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some delicious chocolate soda drinks.
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We filmed a bunch, but then got distracted
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and put the project on hold.
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About 10 years later, we found the old videotapes
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in the closet.
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[waltz guitar music]
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And now I\'m wondering what this ancient story
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of a forgotten drink, of an immigrant past,
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that I never really knew, and of my 11 year old self
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trying to make sense of it all,
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might tell us about what it means to be a part of history.
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[waltz violin music]
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[fizzing]
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To start our journey, my dad and I visited
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with Andy Coe, a food historian who had written
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the first scholarly article
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about the history of the egg cream.
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The story he told us, began
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on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.
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in the tenements districts of New York City
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was a short, blissful moment of relief from the heat,
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and it was also a relief from hunger.
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A hunger for richness, because egg creams,
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if they were anything, were something which
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gave you a taste of richness.
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Chocolate and milk mixed together.
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a fundamental paradox.
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Why would you call a drink that has neither eggs,
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nor cream, and egg cream?
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No one really knows why there\'s no egg
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and there\'s no cream in an egg cream.
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And my theory is, it\'s because it\'s a kind of cheap copy
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of soda fountain drinks in the fancier districts.
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And so, what they were trying to do,
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was give people the sense that they were
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having a fancy, uptown kind of drink,
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for a very downtown kind of price.
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[klezmer music]
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who could tell me the secrets
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of how to make an authentic egg cream,
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and I didn\'t have to look too far.
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my sister\'s friend\'s grandfather
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talking about the egg cream.
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[laughs]
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We used to serve drinks, ice cream.
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They must have liked the egg creams
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because they used to come back for more.
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We take the syrup, chocolate syrup.
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Put it in a glass.
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Take the milk and add to it.
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You put the spoon in the drink.
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Then you put the seltzer in.
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[bottle hisses]
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[seltzer sprays]
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[laughing]
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Does it taste good?
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I\'m glad you like it.
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made from three simple ingredients
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seem to tap into something deeper in Jewish history.
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Jerry, who every winter,
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told a completely preposterous story
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of the origins of the egg cream, that sounded a great deal
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like the Hanukkah story.
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this small band of soldiers
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and their leader, the great Judah Maccabee,
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fought one of the first wars
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of one country getting liberated from another country.
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the Maccabee soldiers, led by Malka, a woman warrior,
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confronted the enemy inspired by a battle cry,
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echoing in ancient metaphor, about how the Torah
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was said to have been written.
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With white fire on black fire.
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She raised her dagger in the air and she shouted out,
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\"White fire on black fire!\"
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And they ran down the hill.
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And a great battle was fought
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and Antiochus\' army was smashed.
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But Malka\'s band stopped.
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She took off her helmet and she took the bucket of milk
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and poured a little bit into the bottom of the helmet.
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And then she held the helmet
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under that bubbling brook coming up from the ground.
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And then she took something that she had made
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from little dark beans, and she poured it
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straight down into the middle.
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And then, she took her dagger and she stirred it around.
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And she raised it up and showed it to her friends
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and she said, \"White fire on black fire!\"
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At that moment, they drank the very first egg cream
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in the history of the world.
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And there you see, white fire on black fire.
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A perfect egg cream.
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to the impoverished neighborhoods of Jewish immigrants
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in the early 20th century.
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of the Lower East Side in Manhattan.
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You need relief.
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So you go into a soda parlor
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and you have to muscle your way up to the counter.
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The soda jerk is rinsing the glasses in dirty water,
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so you order an egg cream, and no matter how dirty
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the glass is, and no matter how uncomfortable you are,
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you take that little moment of drinking the egg cream.
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And that\'s like the little moment which you treasure
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for the rest of the day,
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because that\'s the only moment where you really
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have something good in your life.
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it had been decades since Jews were crowded
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into the tenements of the Lower East Side.
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Most have moved to fancier neighborhoods.
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And over the years, the egg cream got more upscale, too.
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[klezmer music]
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We drove to Brooklyn to Tom\'s, and old-fashioned diner,
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known for an especially indulgent version
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of the chocolate egg cream.
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how to make the perfect egg cream.
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You start off with ice cold milk.
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Then put a dash of seltzer.
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You put some nice, chocolate syrup.
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U-Bet chocolate syrup.
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And you stir it.
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[spoon clinking]
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A classic egg cream doesn\'t have whipped cream,
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but I make it with whipped cream.
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And that gets on that.
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And, I top that up with a straw, and you have an egg cream.
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[Anna And Nora] Delicious!
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They\'re so good.
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And so fun to watch him make it.
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the first time ever, my little sister, Anna agreed with me.
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it was the best egg cream I\'ve ever had in my life.
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It had whipped cream, but I think
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that\'s just a great addition,
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that makes it taste really good.
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It actually was the part that made it taste better
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than all the other egg creams that I ever had.
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with an egg cream topped with whipped cream
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and extra chocolate syrup.
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But, my dad thought that it was inauthentic
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and insisted that we looked for places
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that better represented the austere egg creams
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of our immigrant past.
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And we found Eisenberg\'s.
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It\'s been here since 1929.
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Eisenberg\'s was now owned by a young Jewish guy named Josh.
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But he wasn\'t the one who prepared the egg creams.
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who was originally from Mexico.
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since I bought this place.
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He\'s gotta do 200 a day and I watch it,
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and then I come over, \'cause they\'re busy
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and I make an egg cream that\'s terrible.
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It\'s three simple ingredients
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and I still can\'t get it right.
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And you just mix it up and that\'s it.
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[klezmer music]
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and far from the squalor of the Lower East Side,
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my parents ordered seltzer through an old-fashioned
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delivery service, run by a man named Walter.
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So naturally, I had to ask Walter\'s advice
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on how to make the perfect egg cream.
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which most people who make egg creams,
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they swear this is the quintessential ingredient
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in making a good egg cream.
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[seltzer sprays]
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Of course, you need my seltzer to actually
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bring it over the edge and bring it up a notch,
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but you gotta start with this.
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[soft piano music]
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by a guy named Herman Fox.
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And he was one of the big syrup manufacturers
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who ganged-up to kick these little mom and pop
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syrup operations out of business.
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to any egg cream, has a troubling back story?
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Who knew?
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Maybe the egg cream isn\'t such a happy subject after all.
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So, I turned to my grandpa, who grew up
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in the Jewish ghetto in Boston, to see what he thought.
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I think of Rebbie\'s Grocery Store on Intervale Street.
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And they had a fountain that even at that time,
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was sort of a run-down, decrepit fountain.
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He had a glass that was under the seltzer spigot.
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I think he just rinsed it by what they call, schwenken.
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I think they used the same glass for everybody.
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And don\'t get mad, but as the honest to God\'s truth,
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I\'m not that impressed with egg creams!
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[laughs]
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the historian of egg creams,
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didn\'t really like them that much.
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are the best soda fountain drink ever invented.
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If it\'s a hot day, and you want something really refreshing,
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I go for a lime rickey.
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that he associated the egg creams that he had as a child,
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with the darkest time in Jewish history.
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who had a place across the street
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from my apartment building.
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And his name was Yankel.
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And it was a dingy old place,
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but he made a terrific egg cream.
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The fascinating thing about Yankel,
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whatever he was wearing, he would have one sleeve down
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and like this, he\'d have one sleeve up.
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Always rolled up, which would reveal
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his concentration camp number,
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which he wanted people to see.
266
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And he never changed his expression and he never spoke.
267
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And that\'s my memory of egg creams.
268
00:11:18.400 --> 00:11:21.910
269
00:11:21.910 --> 00:11:25.197
And I think it\'s because people realize in drinking them,
270
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people of a certain age, who were born
271
00:11:28.210 --> 00:11:30.747
in a certain neighborhood, realize
272
00:11:30.747 --> 00:11:32.510
that they\'ve lost something.
273
00:11:32.510 --> 00:11:34.950
And they can remember it for the few moments
274
00:11:34.950 --> 00:11:36.740
in which they\'re downing an egg cream,
275
00:11:36.740 --> 00:11:38.194
but they never can gain it back.
276
00:11:38.194 --> 00:11:39.810
[violin music]
277
00:11:39.810 --> 00:11:41.460
278
00:11:41.460 --> 00:11:43.730
I began to realize, was not in its flavor,
279
00:11:43.730 --> 00:11:45.160
but in what it evoked.
280
00:11:45.160 --> 00:11:47.343
A hazy memory of simpler times.
281
00:11:48.545 --> 00:11:50.100
[klezmer music]
282
00:11:50.100 --> 00:11:53.260
We talked to Ron and John, who used to live in New York,
283
00:11:53.260 --> 00:11:55.100
and now live in Atlanta.
284
00:11:55.100 --> 00:11:57.260 line:15%
285
00:11:57.260 --> 00:11:58.110 line:15%
What do you miss?
286
00:11:58.990 --> 00:11:59.823 line:15%
287
00:11:59.823 --> 00:12:00.656
288
00:12:00.656 --> 00:12:01.570
289
00:12:01.570 --> 00:12:02.403
But, the egg creams...
290
00:12:02.403 --> 00:12:04.200
291
00:12:04.200 --> 00:12:06.870
I remember being four years old and my brothers
292
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were much older than me and they used to make egg creams.
293
00:12:09.710 --> 00:12:11.506
And I would hear the spoon,
294
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[imitating spoon clinking the glass]
295
00:12:12.473 --> 00:12:13.506
I would be like, \"Oh, please make me one!\"
296
00:12:13.506 --> 00:12:15.040
Oh, God!
297
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298
00:12:16.570 --> 00:12:17.403
299
00:12:17.403 --> 00:12:19.660
I can make \'em, but why, if Ron\'s gonna make it?
300
00:12:19.660 --> 00:12:21.690
301
00:12:21.690 --> 00:12:23.380
Keep these basic three ingredients.
302
00:12:23.380 --> 00:12:25.240
We don\'t have U-Bet\'s, but we\'re gonna go with
303
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Hershey\'s here, then we add our milk,
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00:12:27.620 --> 00:12:29.560
one-third half the way up the cup.
305
00:12:29.560 --> 00:12:30.393
Stir.
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00:12:30.393 --> 00:12:31.940
You wanna get all the chocolate off the bottom.
307
00:12:31.940 --> 00:12:33.760
Make sure it\'s evenly distributed.
308
00:12:33.760 --> 00:12:36.690
And seltzer out of this beautiful machine over here.
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For me, it\'s the magic moment.
310
00:12:38.360 --> 00:12:39.193
Here we go.
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Stir, stir, stir, stir, stir, stir.
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00:12:43.290 --> 00:12:44.583
We got our lovely froth.
313
00:12:45.857 --> 00:12:46.690
Look at that.
314
00:12:46.690 --> 00:12:48.215
Like an egg.
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00:12:48.215 --> 00:12:49.048
Mm.
316
00:12:51.070 --> 00:12:52.490
Delicious.
317
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Brings back my childhood.
318
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Ah.
319
00:12:55.967 --> 00:12:59.570
[waltz guitar music]
320
00:12:59.570 --> 00:13:00.710
321
00:13:00.710 --> 00:13:03.110
as a young kid, I felt like egg creams connected me
322
00:13:03.110 --> 00:13:05.450
to a past I may not have known or understood,
323
00:13:05.450 --> 00:13:07.140
but that somehow resonated within me
324
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as a part of my heritage.
325
00:13:09.540 --> 00:13:11.890
So, we served them at my bat mitzvah.
326
00:13:11.890 --> 00:13:14.129
327
00:13:14.129 --> 00:13:16.033
328
00:13:16.920 --> 00:13:19.167
329
00:13:19.167 --> 00:13:21.840
[waltz guitar music]
330
00:13:21.840 --> 00:13:23.650
331
00:13:23.650 --> 00:13:26.670
the more it feels like a midrash, a wise commentary
332
00:13:26.670 --> 00:13:29.420
that helps explain difficult parts of Jewish scripture.
333
00:13:30.590 --> 00:13:33.420
Was the egg cream a story that immigrant Jews in America
334
00:13:33.420 --> 00:13:36.210
told themselves to make sense of their poverty?
335
00:13:36.210 --> 00:13:38.640
A made-up potion with no eggs or cream,
336
00:13:38.640 --> 00:13:40.653
that gave them a mythology to live by?
337
00:13:41.990 --> 00:13:44.290
I still don\'t fully know what it all means,
338
00:13:44.290 --> 00:13:46.370
but I do know that there\'s a lot to be learned
339
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from three simple ingredients
340
00:13:48.120 --> 00:13:50.236
and thousands of years of history.
341
00:13:50.236 --> 00:13:53.153
[waltz music ends]
342
00:13:56.256 --> 00:13:57.089
343
00:13:57.089 --> 00:13:58.085
Look at that!
344
00:13:58.085 --> 00:14:00.746
[laughing]
345
00:14:00.746 --> 00:14:04.246
[\"Egg Cream\" by Lou Reed]
346
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♪ When I was a young man ♪
347
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♪ No bigger than this ♪
348
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♪ A chocolate egg cream was not to be missed ♪
349
00:14:15.197 --> 00:14:17.597
♪ Some U-Bet\'s Chocolate Syrup ♪
350
00:14:17.597 --> 00:14:19.905
♪ Seltzer water mixed with milk ♪
351
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♪ You stir it up into a heady fro ♪
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00:14:22.186 --> 00:14:24.777
♪ Tasted just like silk ♪
353
00:14:24.777 --> 00:14:29.777
♪ You scream, I steam, we all want egg cream ♪
354
00:14:38.490 --> 00:14:39.834
[song ends]
355
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[klezmer music]
Distributor: Icarus Films
Length: 15 minutes
Date: 2020
Genre: Expository
Language: English
Color/BW:
Closed Captioning: Available
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