You know the old joke about Jewish holidays, how most of them follow the narrative, “They tried to kill us; they failed; let’s eat!” But I’m no longer sure which pillar of Jewish tradition this better describes: The holidays? Or…the deli?

Call the comment tongue-in-cheek –– or pastrami-in-cheek, whatever your taste dictates –– but the rebirth of the Jewish deli is no chopped liver. And, in fact, taste is central to the deli’s revival, according to journalist and author David Sax. He sees Jewish delicatessens not as museums, but places that are preserving both Jewish flavor and culture. Sax is a true evangelist (un-Jewy word as that may be) in the movement to preserve the place of the authentic Jewish deli in modern life. His recently published book, Save The Deli, chronicles the history and role of the deli in the Diaspora. The book grieves purveyors of pastrami past and visits thriving authentic delis –– some new, some old –– across North America.

Having grown up in New York City, but living as an adult in Seattle, the subject is close to my heart. I’m part of a generation Sax describes as growing up enjoying deli food now and then as a treat. Maybe it’s something you got with your parents or grandparents occasionally, but the taste left an imprint on the gustatory Jewish identity part of your brain (somewhere in the orbital frontal cortex, according to my corned-beef-devouring neuroscientist mother). I grew up with proper heavily seeded rye bread made by old world bakeries, with stores where men slice smoked salmon with samurai precision, and with treasured visits to Jewish delis, where pickled meats steamed and waited to be stuffed between mustard-slathered rye.

It’s food I’ve always missed in my 11 years living in Seattle, where Jews once had to resort to “pastrami porn,” e.g. online pictures of hot, moist pastrami sandwiches, dripping with mustard. While working at United Way of King County, I gathered Jewish and East-Coast-originating coworkers and friends into the informal Pastrami Assessment Coalition of King County. Our mission was something along the lines of “to assess the base of pastramic resources in the local region and determine its potential for community impact in a culturally competent way.” Basically, to eat pastrami around town and see if it was any good. The sandwiches often disappointed, but at least we had a funny logo.

The search for good pastrami parallels the search for expression of Jewish identity. What does being Jewish mean for our generation? With food and identity, do we come up with new practices or return to tradition? And what do we eat for lunch?

Sax visited town recently to speak at I Love New York Deli, an event organized by JConnect Seattle, and answered some of these questions. I Love New York Deli is arguably the best Jewish deli in Seattle. Owner Jon Jacobs runs this place with a vision: One part nostalgia for the old country (Brooklyn) to two parts authentic deli nosh your mother would love. The food draws curious Seattleites, Jews, and expatriate New Yorkers alike, including so many cops recruited from New York that the neighbors were starting to worry the owner was having trouble because of all the police cars parked out front. Jacobs laughed, “I’ve got the best security team in the city!” He bakes his own rye bread and a dizzying array of knish varieties, orders meats from New York, and is determined to start adding traditional foods customers request, like kreplach. He’s even working on making kosher sandwiches available, although the challenges he’s faced with this are a microcosm of deli tsuris, influenced by the economy, changing Jewish culture, and a limited landscape of purveyors.

Sax was impressed with the deli’s array of knishes. He sees hope in newer places like this, or like Kenny and Zuke’s in Portland, reviving the deli not just as a theme park or museum, but an authentic preservation of a delicious tradition. It’s a far cry from the worst “deli” experience he’s ever had, a reuben at Arby’s in Leavenworth, Kan. He described that sandwich as “fast food’s take on what Jewish deli food would be. It really demonstrated in such a vivid way why we need to preserve the Jewish deli… The marble rye was like white bread with food coloring. The cole slaw tasted like shredded newspaper.” I’ll spare you the rest.

In contrast, Sax calls the sandwich making at an authentic deli “something that someone’s doing fresh, with love and with care. Each sandwich is built individually. Part of it’s the culture and the history of the Jewish deli, but a lot of the love of it comes from the food.” The key, he says, is food, not schtick.

Like the movement to raise chickens in the backyard, authentic food made traditionally and from scratch speaks to our younger generation. Newer authentic delis, many of them on the West Coast, make rye bread or pastrami or knishes from scratch. Saul’s in Berkeley makes its own sodas and tries to use local, sustainable meats and ingredients whenever possible.

It’s true. My generation (20s and 30s) seems more likely than our parents to want to learn the old ways of making food. When Sax asked the audience, “Who here has ever made matzoh ball soup from scratch?” several hands shot up. Sax was impressed, “Wow. There’s hope for Seattle. Portland is fucked. Nobody raised their hands.”

Not that deli can’t grow and change. Like Jewish corned beef once influenced Irish eating in immigrant America, Sax says places like L.A. are experimenting with, say, pastrami tacos. It’s a fine line. In France, Sax found incredible kosher Jewish deli food. Chopped liver with foie gras. Sausages made of duck and goose. Experimentation has to come from within, he says, rooted in the tradition, rather than, as he put it, “making sushi out of corned beef or bacon-wrapped matzoh balls or chopped liver with bacon… Instead of slaps in the face of tradition, we should go deeper into the tradition and find influences from history. Make the food from scratch and try doing things in the right way. The places I’ve seen doing this have been very successful. It’s very honest, and a very honest interpretation of the food.”

Sax sees the deli as playing two major roles in Jewish culture — one internal and the other external.

“This is a great part of our culture we can share with the world,” he points out. “We can’t really share other parts of our culture with the world as easily.”

Additionally, he notes, even if the only thing you know about being Jewish is that you don’t have a foreskin, you can still go into a deli and eat a knish, and it’s a connection with your own culture. His biggest surprise, however, was that great delis didn’t have to be in major Jewish centers, but have been popping up in places like Portland and Seattle.

The crowd at Sax’s talk reflects the diversity of the deli’s appeal in such cities. Behind me at a table, a few local Jews and people who left New York decades ago finish their sandwiches and chat. In the corner, a young woman chews on a bagel speared delicately on her fork. Two young Jewish women gush about how the matzoh ball soup is just right. Sax is grateful for the diverse audience, explaining, “It’s great to come to a place that isn’t a traditional deli town.” Often in such places, his audience is 90 percent people 90 years or older.

“They don’t even let me talk, they just start shouting,” he says. “I was in Philadelphia last week and a woman in the audience just yelled out, ‘What about FISH?!’ There wasn’t anything else, just that.”

The generational demographics make sense. Older generations remember when places like New York were packed with delis; New York once had about 1,550 kosher delis and probably another 2,000 Jewish delis that were not kosher. Now, Sax says, there are 12.

Sax gives a brief history of the deli. “Like all great Jewish stories,” he quips, “it starts with the destruction of the second temple. Always a happy history.” The Jews go into exile for 2,000 years. “Half of them, the Sephardim, stay in the warm weather; they’re like the Florida Jews.”

Ashkenazi culture spread in Eastern Europe and Jews adapted local goyische dishes, like kishke, to the laws of kashrut: “You can bless that all you want but there’s no way you can make that kosher.” We roasted meats, used schmaltz, and ate foods local to our own regions.

Then, of course, things got worse. Czar Nicholas blamed everything on the Jews and we started to flee, the first wave moving from the 1800s through World War I. Jews from all over Europe were suddenly living in New York, packed in next to each other, sometimes three families to a room. Sax notes that this led to curiosity about each other’s food, as neighbors poked heads around the corner and shouted, “Goldberg, what’s your wife cooking there?” It wasn’t just in the homes, but in the streets. People sold foods from pushcarts, opened kosher meat markets and butchers, then larger places with full counter service. The deli was born.

Deli culture peaked in the 1930s, at the height of immigration, after the worst years of the Depression. It became an accepted American phenomenon, not just exotic immigrant food. Americans of all stripes came to know and love the deli. Jews ate deli food as a staple, rather than a rare treat. But tastes and times changed. We, as Sax puts it, upwardly mobiled ourselves out of the deli business, going off to other professions. The deli seemed destined to die.

According to Sax, to stay alive, the deli needs to be recognized for its value in our culture, not to mention its delicious offerings, and it needs to be economically viable. I was surprised to learn that the lowest moneymakers at a deli are meats like pastrami, tongue, corned beef. Half of a brisket is lost in the trimming and preserving and processing that goes into make a pastrami sandwich. Delis make money off smaller items like soup, pickles and soda. Restaurants profit from alcohol, but delis don’t generally serve cocktails with the corned beef. Sax says that New York’s famous 2nd Ave Deli put in a bar and nobody uses it. He jokes that there’s a sign: “Break glass in case of Gentiles.”

All this trouble begs the question: Why bother? The first reason to preserve the deli is, simply, for the taste. “You go to a Jewish deli because you want to eat the food, you love the flavor of it… If there was no Jewish delicatessen in Seattle, I guarantee you nobody else is going to make it. Subway’s not going to, Starbucks is not going to come out with that breakfast knish – I sure as hell hope they’re not. If you love this food, it’s worth it to be able to save and preserve that taste. It’s keeping the culture alive and it’s keeping that flavor alive.”

The second reason is the culture itself. Sax sees a Jewish delicatessen as a cultural space where anybody can walk in and have a Jewish experience. It smells a certain way, sounds a certain way, looks a certain way. Delis don’t exist in a vacuum, he says; they’re part of a culture. You can come in and make 30 different requests, Sax says. “Complain about the sandwich, do the whole Jewish Goldilocks routine, and it’s expected. You feel as though you’re at home. It’s what sociologists call ‘the third space’ outside of home, work, synagogue, community center, where Jews can get together and have that great experience, recharging on identity.”

Finally, he reminds us, the deli isn’t just for Jews. Indeed, the audience is full of Jews and non-Jews alike.

“Anybody,” Sax emphasizes smiling, “can walk into a Jewish delicatessen a goy, and come out a Jew. Or at least smelling like one. Very garlicky and slightly spiced.”