December 22, 2014 โ Anne Rothstein stared through the counter glass, transfixed, as the knife slid through the fleshy pink salmon.
โAmazing,โ Rothstein said to herself. โYou are amazing.โ
The subject of Rothsteinโs praise, Len Berk, kept his eyes on the knife as it slid through the fish.
Berk, 84, is the last Jewish fish slicer at Zabarโs, the iconic delicatessen on Manhattanโs Upper West Side.
Dressed in a white apron and a beige Zabarโs baseball cap, Berk sliced a broad strip off a side of Nova and cut it lengthwise into two translucent pieces. Then he lowered the glistening fish onto a piece of parchment.
โIt was so thin, you could read through it,โ Rothstein told the Forward.
Before Berk sliced salmon, he crunched numbers.
He was a chartered public accountant his whole working life. He only started working at Zabarโs when he was 65.
Read the full story and watch the video from The Jewish Daily Forward