Has Assimilation Ruined the Knish?David Katz, a writer given to elegiac moods, just published a column on knishes in the Jewish Quarterly. He decries the decay of the knish, which under the pressure of assimilation went from a delicate mashed-potato pastry to a tough square of deep-fried dough. “There’s a word for these street knishes, which are still sold today, and that word is vile,” Katz pronounces. The column concludes with a paragraph of praise for Yonah Schimmel’s old-time knishery, noted by us recently in our pre-obituary for Gertel’s last week.