Don't talk to me about loose fish balls - it's Schaverin chopped liver I crave

Worse things have happened to the Jewish people. You don't need me to enumerate. But the sudden disappearance from supermarkets and delicatessen shops of Schaverin chopped liver, Schaverin chopped herring, Schaverin egg and onion, and Schaverin just about everything else necessary to sustain life, is a severe blow.

Worse things have happened to the Jewish people. You don't need me to enumerate. But the sudden disappearance from supermarkets and delicatessen shops of Schaverin chopped liver, Schaverin chopped herring, Schaverin egg and onion, and Schaverin just about everything else necessary to sustain life, is a severe blow.

I'm not sure what's happened. I'm not even sure I've got the name right - is it Schaverin? - but as there's none to be found anywhere I'm not in a position to check. When I try getting a number from directory enquiries they stumble over the 'sch' sound, which of course you'd expect them to do. 'Sch' is the original shibboleth, the ability (or not) to pronounce which separated the Gileadites from the Ephraimites. Directory enquiries, as everyone knows, is staffed entirely by Ephraimites. Hence the phrase, "How would you be spelling that?"

No one's picking up the phone at anything that remotely resembles Schaverin. There's such panic in the community that your phone lines are jammed if you've got a "sch" anywhere in your name. Try getting through to John Schlesinger or Maria Schneider at the moment. Try finding anyone to answer at Schweppes or Grolsch. I'm told that Alan Sugar's phone is permanently engaged.

No one's answering and no one's talking. In the grocery business all lips are sealed. The Yiddish word for bankrupt is mechuleh, variously spelt - another word Ephraimites can't get their tonsils round. But where bankrupt is morally neutral, meaning simply insolvency, mechuleh implies social and psychological ruination, a personal and metaphysical catastrophe of such cataclysmic proportions that the person to whom it happens is never again not seen klopping his head, striking his temples, opening his arms to the Almighty and demanding an answer to the question, "Why me?" So you don't go around lightly asking whether Schaverin has gone mechuleh.

As far as the absence of Schaverin products from the cold counters of the nation is concerned, every retailer I speak to is calm. Sainsbury's, for one, has assured me that all kosher needs will be met by alternative suppliers. "Even the laaahtkehs," a PR lady tells me. When the Ephraimites failed to say "sch" they were decapitated - schwish, schwish - some 42,000 of them on the orders of Judge Jephthah. A bit extreme that. But barbarisms are barbarisms. Listening to the lady at Sainsbury's trebling the a in latke has me reaching for my sword, and I'm not an Old Testament judge.

In the kosher delis, too, they are putting a brave face on it. "Crisis... crisis... what crisis?" Adversity always does bring out the best in Jews. "Come on," I say, when I get someone from Panzer's in St John's Wood to speak to me. "How are you ever going to cope without Schaverin?"

Laughter. "Schaverin? We didn't ever buy their loose fish balls anyway."

"I'm not talking about loose fish balls," I say. "In drerd" (that means to hell) "with loose fish balls. I'm talking egg and onion here. I'm talking old style herring. I'm talking chopped liver."

"Have you tried Leslie Manne's liver?"

"Are you saying it's better?"

"I'm asking if you've tried it."

I'll try it. What choice do I have? At my time of life you cannot go without the food that joins you to your people. There's a phrase for the sort of Jew you might think this makes me. "A stomach Jew." I hate that. I hate the imputation that my sentimentality about chopped liver renders me a species of tourist, a fair-weather relation happy to be Jewish only when the board creaks. The truth is we define ourselves by food, bond with it, love through it, make ourselves distinct by it. At a midnight mass on Christmas Eve I beheld Christians eating the body and swallowing the blood of Christ. Jews don't do that. But we have our own symbolism. At Passover we dip our fingers in wine, remembering the plagues which were visited on the Egyptians as an inducement to letting us go. And we mix bitter herbs so that we shouldn't forget the taste of slavery. And we place a shankbone on the table, to remind us of the mighty arm of God. Whoever we are, we relive our history and commemorate our meaning in food.

No sooner than I've written which sentence than my phone rings. The kosher food buyer from Sainsbury's. Not the PR lady with her laaahtkehs, but the man on whom my kosher well-being, as a sometime Sainsbury's shopper, now depends. They are ahead of the game. Even before Schaverin's demise, Sainsbury's had been talking to "customer listening groups", noting that kosher wasn't keeping up with other foods, wasn't sufficiently synonymous, in other words, with convenient. Come Passover, the buyer tells me, there'll be a whole new range of kosher ready-meals. Who can wait until Passover? "What about now?" I ask. "What about immediate replacements for Schaverin?" Yes, they have them. And if I want to make my own assessment, he'll bike me some chopped liver over right away.

Biked chopped liver! All my Chanukahs come at once. I'm about to give him my address when I realise that's not how I want it. Exiled to central London, I love going out to search for the food of my people in a blizzard, head bowed, great coat down to my knees, holy books under my arm, wolves howling, vay iz mir - then, gevalt! - a tub of chopped liver!

Like a miracle sent by God.

Hardship and then deliverance, that's what you want food to suggest. That's why I'm so ener-gised by Schaverin's maybe having gone mechuleh.