Futz

Futz- to waste time or busy oneself aimlessly; to fiddle with

Ex: “Stop futzing around and make yourself useful, Samuel!” My grandfather screamed at me on my first day working at his pickled herring factory. I definitely was futzing around, that’s for sure. Can you blame me? I wanted nothing to do with the slimy, vinegary fish filets that slid past me on the conveyor belt like mutant carcasses drifting down the Vistula river in Warsaw following a toxic chemical spill by the city’s horseradish refinery.

“You must fill up each jar with exactly eight fish. No more, no less.” My grandfather instructed me with the vigor typical of an older Jewish man who was particularly particular about his food.

“One for each night of Hanukkah, Grampy?” I asked him.

“Close, but no cigar. The number eight is derived from a similar miracle to that of the oil in the Hanukkah story. When the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto were resisting the Nazi forces, they found their rations dwindling. Their pickled herring was running low, as was their morale, for the two were quite intertwined, you see. One night when the coast was clear, Nudnik Schpeizackman took to the river under the cover of darkness to see if he could fish out a herring to feed himself and his fellow rebels. Nudnik managed to not just snag one fish that night, but eight! The sustenance that these fish provided kept the rebels fed as they made their final stand against the Germans. Without herring, there may have been no story of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising at all!”

“Wow, Grampy! That’s amazing! I just have one question. Why did they have to pickle it?”

“Because we are Jews, my boy! Pickling is in our nature! Pickling is the essence of what it means to be a member of The Tribe!”

“Did Abraham ever pickle anything?”

“Abraham invented pickling! When he was commanded by God to kill Isaac up on that mountain and instead he chose to spare his sons’ life, going against the word of God, that day ended in a pickling! This part is midrash, a textual interpretation- a reading between the lines- if you will, but it is surmised by the great Rabbis that when Abraham circumcised Isaac, he kept his foreskin in a jar of vinegar and put it on a shelf in his kitchen. Now you see, Abraham was a bit of a weirdo. When nomadic dessert wanderers would arrive at his great tent, he would often invite them in to see this pickled oddity. The text literally reads that ‘he was a very hospitable guy’, but we take that to mean that he probably showed people his sons’ pickled foreskin.”

“Why did he do that?”

“They say he was very welcoming, but I think he had different motives. I think he kept the jar there as a warning. Like, ‘you better not overstay your welcome, or this could happen to you!’”

“Woah, that’s quite the warning!”

“And it worked too. And you wonder why we never have visitors at our home. Those radishes above the cabinets, those aren’t radishes, my boy! Think about it. Four grandchildren, all boys, four jars containing a single ‘radish’ each.”

“Three jars, Grampy.”

“What do you mean, three jars?”

“Reuben had taco Tuesday at school the other day and…”

“No…”

“Yes”

“Oy vey”