Morley Safer on Gefilte Fish, Observing the High Holidays, and Visiting Auschwitz
In 2005, Abigail Pogrebin published Stars of David: Prominent Jews Talk About Being Jewish. The following is an excerpt from the chapter about Morley Safer, the Canadian-American broadcast journalist best known for his tenure as a reporter on CBS‘ 60 Minutes, who died on Thursday at the age of 83.
MORLEY SAFER, the seventy-four-year-old, wizened newsman, is reclining on a well-worn leather couch in his handsome carriage house, smoking the cigarettes he’s never quit, and sipping coffee he can’t do without—even on Yom Kippur. “I’m not a total hundred percent faster as I once was,” he says with a smile. “I do have coffee. I need it. Giving up coffee would be cruel and unusual.” Aside from caffeine, fasting is not a hardship. “I never eat breakfast anyway and not much of a lunch,” he explained. “But I remember the agony of it as a kid. I mean, agony.”