A kosher Chinese restaurant in Borough Park had a perfectly normal lunch service. Fans watched the Knicks game. And the mayor served sweet potatoes.
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On Christmas Day, a Brooklyn street was bustling. Couples carrying grocery bags ran into friends on street corners, double-parked cars lined the avenue and one man complained that he’d been circling the block for half an hour, looking for a parking spot.
But there were no Christmas carols, no spruce trees lining the sidewalk outside of delis and nary a twinkling light in sight.
In Borough Park, home to one of the largest communities of Orthodox Jews outside of Israel, it was not Christmas. It was just Tuesday.
In most of New York City, tourists and locals did what they usually do to celebrate: They attended Christmas Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral or spent the afternoon in pajamas watching “A Christmas Story.” ( Or “Die Hard.” Please argue among yourselves.)
But there were also other rituals to be followed: Thousands of oft-disappointed but resolute Knicks fans steeled themselves for the team’s almost-annual Christmas Day game, this year against the Milwaukee Bucks. Some families flocked to homeless shelters and soup kitchens, including local politicians, who donned plastic aprons and spooned out yellow rice and collard greens at a must-stop event in Harlem.
And of course, Chinese restaurants in every corner of the city were preparing for one of their busiest days of the year, when people stand in line for hours in the cold for soup dumplings and Peking duck after a trip to the movies.
There were no lines at China Glatt, Borough Park’s main Chinese restaurant.
Around noon, orders started to roll in for chicken and broccoli with brown rice. It was a perfectly unremarkable lunch service.
A man came out of the kitchen, sipping egg drop soup. Efraim P., who declined to give his last name because he did not have his boss’s permission, is a mashgiach, or an inspector of food in kosher restaurants. He had just finished his morning routine of picking over the restaurant’s new deliveries of potatoes, carrots and frozen french fries.
“We appreciate the American holiday, we acknowledge that it’s there, but for us life goes on,” he said.
Max Lieberman, who works in the buying department at B & H, the Midtown electronics store, had the day off. So he spent his morning studying Talmud and Torah; he was working his way through the Book of Exodus. He was off to get fitted for a suit, because he doesn’t have time during the week.
“It’s the best things you can do, study, write, spend a little money,” he said.
