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What Lenny Wong did to me, my family and future generations.

"There are two things Jews know," started a line from an old movie. "Suffering and good Chinese food."

Growing up in New York, I certainly experienced the latter. As a child, we spent many nights sitting by the hearth, warmed by a roaring fire while sitting cross-legged on cushions and enjoying Chinese food from the one place in town that would deliver, during the dark and frightening days of the Cuban Missile Crisis and incredibly pointy bras. Perhaps it was the warm, family friendly feelings and emotions that provide such comfort while sampling the cuisine of the mysterious orient or just the MSG rush it provided me as a small child that gives me the love I feel when eating something named after a general or province in Asia.

As a young teenager, my cousin was dating a Chinese man who introduced my family to many wonders that would shape the way we lived until this day, and certainly beyond. He taught me Kung Fu, years before David Carradine would introduce us to the peace loving monk who would walk into a western saloon and order water, never once expecting some unwashed cowpie to pull a six-shooter on him and shout, "go drink water from the horse trough, Chinam'n!" before having his spine crushed by the "two-fingered poke of death."

He taught us how cool Chinese people really were and that clean laundry was not an "ancient Chinese secret." But most of all, he introduced us to a little dim sum place on Doyer Street in Chinatown that I would revisit until my very last day in New York.

We walked into the dimly lit "tea parlor" type place, whose patrons were exclusively Chinese. I'm sure, if it were not for his presence in our company, we would have received enough cold stares to convince us to leave before service could be refused. Waiters would wheel carts of assorted food by each table and patrons would point to a dish of exotic dumplings, meat-filled buns and unidentifiable meat pieces and the dishes would be placed on their tables. Eventually, the empty dishes would be counted and the tally would be added up to the final bill.

While enjoying our feast with a play-by-play from our host as to what we were ingesting, I noticed a family at the next table. A Chinese family consisting of a mother, father, grandmother and a four year-old boy were chatting and eating. The grandmother fussed over the little boy, stroking his bangs from his forehead, fixing his sweater and pinching his cheeks while talking to

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