The Southern Jewish Weekly

How I Delivered the Soup

BY MILTON FRIEDMAN

(Copyright, 1955, Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Inc.)

WASHINGTON

When the Secret Service recently arrested a visitor who brought a parcel containing a pistol into the White House they had probably forgotten a previous incident involving two cans of kosher kasha soup.

Jeannete Rudellat, White House correspondent for the Voice of America, happens to like kasha soup. Washington has relatively few kosher delicatessens. Miss Rudellat is not Jewish. So she quite properly cornered this correspondent at the White House press room one day and asked about the problem.

Shortly thereafter, I was at Hofberg's replenishing my salami supply. I saw canned kasha soup. The cans bore inscriptions in Hebrew with appropriate rabbinical signatures. A few days later the White House announced that President Eisenhower would hold a press conference. This seemed an opportunity to see my friend and deliver the soup.

When I showed my pass and sought to enter the Presidential conference room, Secret Service officers poked at the paper bag under my arm. They politely asked its contents. "Just some soup," I replied. I remembered too late that "soup" is a slang term for nitroglycerine, a powerful liquid explosive.

To demonstrate the innocence of kasha soup, I pointed to the label. But I am not sure if the Hebrew lettering and "hechsher" helped convince them. They suggested that I leave the parcel outside and attend the conference without it.

Later the soup was safely delivered. Miss Rudellat was last seen talking to United Press correspondent Merriman Smith. She was saying: "It's really delicious."

Not long thereafter I was in Secretary of State John Foster Dulles' outer office.

Mr. Dulles' receptionist, Mrs. Mary Butler, expressed a deep interest in "old-fashioned Jewish rye bread."

Still shaken by the kasha soup incident, I agreed with Mrs. Butler on the merits of Jewish-style rye.

Mrs. Butler then asked if I knew of a delicatessen or bakery where it could be obtained. Since Mrs. Butler, like Miss Rudellat, is a charming personality, I wanted to oblige. But I could not see myself delivering a loaf of "old-fashioned Jewish rye bread" to Secretary Dulles' diplomatic reception room. Consequently, Mrs. Butler received a box of Israeli chocolates.

At a British Embassy reception the subject turned to chopped chicken liver. When and if Sir Roger Makins, the distinguished British Ambassador, asks where he can get a nice kosher-killed plucked chicken, I will resign as Jewish Telegraphic Agency correspondent.