The Mishneh Torah

There is a Jewish renewal in our lives, and two idiosyncratic instances occurred right here in this city in recent days.

The first was a Sotheby’s auction of the 386-item Judaica collection painstakingly assembled over the years by Michael and Judy Steinhardt, probably the most imaginative Jewish philanthropists of the age. Now, a sell-off is not exactly a beginning. But since money is some indication of value, the event was a magnificent happening. It actually started before the first lot went on the block. Somebody or somebodies (perhaps the Steinhardts themselves) acquired the most singular item in the catalog jointly for the Israel Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It was an astonishing manuscript copy of the Mishneh Torah, the first systematic code of Jewish law, assembled and edited by Maimonides (Moses ben Maimon or the Rambam) and breathtakingly illuminated by a painter from 15th-century Italy, one of the plentitude of Jewish figurative artists in history. This particular instance of the Mishneh Torah came in two volumes, the first of which is possessed by the Vatican, and the second is this one, now to be shared between Jerusalem and New York. The Steinhardt edition deals with property law, law courts, injuries, etc. Yes, Jewish law deals with matters of real life.

The New York Times didn’t quite get what the book was about and also missed that it is the literary and scholarly work of Maimonides, whose name appeared nowhere in the article. Maybe the reporter, Carol Vogel, doubtless Jewish, hadn’t heard of Maimonides except in relation to the hospital in Brooklyn. The Times gets most things about the Jews wrong. So why not this? Here were hundreds of pieces of (mostly) exquisite Judaica going through the life cycle and the holy days, ritual objects from the fourth century C.E. through 17 centuries to a gold Torah crown made in Israel 50 years ago, and other historic items of family and the Jewish people. Maybe you can still get the catalog from Sotheby’s.

There were as many as 25 Sotheby’s staffers on the phones, fielding the bids from people who don’t come to auctions in person. (Most of the really big prices at the Sotheby’s Impressionist auction last week came from such bidders.) Before the hammer came down on the first item in the Steinhardt collection, I looked around only to notice a number of snazzy socialites and other ordinarily dressed males and females, some speaking French, others Spanish, still others Hebrew, at least one couple conversing in German. There were no Asians, who had made the weeks before so rich for Christie’s and Sotheby’s. But the crowd was rich enough. There were also perhaps a hundred men with skullcaps and kapotehs (frock coats) and tzitzis (string fringes), usually worn by Hassidim, of whom there were maybe two dozen, an odd lot, but apparently a seasoned lot. They were bidding aggressively, some on the phone, getting their instructions from on high.

But the real sight was the collection itself, which I’d seen twice on exhibit in the week before the auction. The most popular category was

This Italian Torah crown sold for $857,000.

the Hanukkah lamp, of which there were 56, proving once and for all that this was not an insignificant festival in the life of the Jews. All made by craftsmen, whether candelabras or little lamps, grand or finicky, their diversity tells you about economic class, surrounding culture, his toric circumstance, variety of artistic styles, availability of material—all the stuff about which scholars now write. Not surprisingly, there were 42 tzedakah, or charity, boxes, a testament to the deeply rooted Jewish obligation and loyalty to philanthropy.

Whether jewel-bedecked or made of plain wood, the items in this truly diverse collection testify to the flourishing artistic instincts of the Jews. Tin, brass, glass, textiles, silver, gold, enamel, iron, bronze, items both exquisite and plain from all the lands of the dispersion, all of Europe, deep into Asia, the Arab Middle East and also Africa—the places of exile and the place of the Return.

Jerusalem, which is the capital of the Return, provided perhaps the most exciting moment of the auction. On the block was “an elaborate embroidered sabbath tablecloth, Jerusalem, 1821.” It was estimated to sell for anywhere from $20,000 to $30,000. I don’t know what was meant by “elaborate.” I found it rather plain. But it juiced the crowd, on the phone and off. Scholarship tells us that there are only nine of the type and that this is the first of the genre. Moreover, alone among the nine, it was signed by its maker. Back and forth thee bidding went, between I think three people at the end, then two. Then one (in the room) ... at $137,000. The auctioneer said to the winner: “I hope you use this every Friday,” which surely he or she will not.

I, too, bid on some items, one of which (a golden Yemenite woman’s headdress) ran away from my top price. But I succeeded in acquiring three. The first was a kippah that was estimated to sell for between $3,000 and $5,000. I am paying $8,750. Imagine almost $9,000 for a skullcap, even one with gold applique, beads and sequins, lined in leather. Made in Poland nearly two centuries ago, it was on the model of what Jewish men wore at prayer in Spain until the Expusion. I also bought a brilliantly colored talles from Yemen (early 20th century) for $2,000, not bad. Add to this an etching of “David the Harpist” by E.M. Lilien for $4,000. Lilien comes directly out of the pre-Raphaelite tradition of Burne-Jones, Rossetti and Beardsley and the Art Nouveau line of Klimt, Gaudí, Muscha, Whistler, Tiffany, even Josef Hoffmann. Lilien’s androgynous sexuality in imagery was more than once extended to Herzl: Herzl as the young boy David.

“David the Harpist,” by E.M. Lilien, sold for $4,000.

A great collection has been dissolved. It will now go into other collections, big and small. No one takes their art, even the art of the religious life, with them into the grave.

And speaking of the grave brings us to our second instance of religious revival. We had long assumed that Yiddish was already there. Some 75 years ago, Yiddish was the language of 75 percent of the Jewish world. Its literature compares with any other modern literature, and it’s not just Peretz, Sholem Aleichem and Mendele, the three 19th-century masters. My most cherished Yiddish writer is Chaim Grade, who wrote novels (and poetry) of daunting literary imagination, exhausting emotion, taxing logic. His literary estate has now come to YIVO and the Jewish National Library in Israel, a fitting partnership. It will be, I am told, an epiphany. And one thing I already know: in Grade’s lifelong literary struggle with Isaac Bashevis Singer, the little-known figure has already won.

Evgeny Kissin, the miraculous 41-year-old pianist who was born and trained in Russia, had a stint of concertizing in New York. If you can get a ticket to his Carnegie Hall performance (this coming Sunday, with James Levine back at the Met’s baton), you are luckier or richer than I. In any case, I had a Kissin experience that I will never forget. No, he didn’t play Rachmaninoff, Liszt, Beethoven, Chopin or Tchaikovsky, and I have heard him play them before. He was at YIVO, that gem of a Jewish institution, founded in Vilinus (Grade’s hometown; Napoleon called it “the Jerusalem of the North”) in the ’20s to maintain and extend the sobriety and riches of a culture that was always under threat. Hitler almost killed it, and he succeeded in murdering more than half that culture’s lovers and practitioners. But the field is still being plowed, not least by Mr. Kissin himself.

Evgeny Kissin reciting poetry.

He recited nine Yiddish poems, from memory and from the heart, a few of them by Soviet Jewish writers—one of them, Itsik Fefer, who betrayed the rest to the secret police. Yet, Fefer had written, “Even in ashes, Yiddish is fire ...” All the poems were poems about Yiddish, a kaddish, some of them. Each poem that Mr. Kissin intoned is a position in an argument:

Binem Heller:

In the wonderful language of the Jews

The answer is found in the question itself.

Melekh Ravitsh:

I belong to the unlearned

I cannot write the fancy Holy Tongue

I speak the ordinary language

Of the ordinary folk ...

... I am the poet of the unlearned.

And the great Yiddish poet Yankev Glatshteyn, who late in life was an American:

O, let me approach the joy of the Yiddish word.

Give me entire, full days and night

Knot me, weave me

Take all vanities off me

Feed me by crows, give me crumbs

A roof filled with holes and a bad bed.

But give me entire, full days and nights

Do not let forget the Yiddish word

Even for a moment.

Evgeny Kissin’s homage:

My grandparents died

Later, we sold the dacha

But a little Yiddish survived

In my memory and soul

and for me: not mother-, but

grandmother tongue

So why does it resound again and again ...

Obstinate through time, it bursts forth

And a new story begins.

The “not mother-, but grandmother tongue” line is a brilliant and, alas, devastating insight.

The full auditorium was hushed, the audience not knowing whether to clap or to cry. The young American college kids and graduate students, the fancy folk and the people from the boroughs, the Russian émigrés, the old Yiddishists, the people who thought that Mr. Kissin was giving a concert and that the sponsors were providing a good meal. This is YIVO, very much alive and almost fully well. One thing was certain that night: the Jewish past has a future.

Marty Peretz is the former editor in chief of The New Republic.

Jermaine "Jay" Morrison, AKA Mr. Real Estate.

Materially speaking, Jermaine “Jay” Morrison wasn’t born with much. He had brains and personality, and his circumstances gave him drive. “We were really, really, really poor,” the New Jersey real estate broker told The Observer. “Shit was hard. Really, really, really hard.”

Growing up in Somerville, N.J., he could see just two ways out: one was crack, the other was cocaine, and at various times he tried selling both. At age 16, Mr. Morrison started peddling drugs, and soon discovered he had a knack for sales—to the tune of $100,000 a year, he claims.

“I would be on the street all night until 4 a.m.,” he told The Observer. “I remember, it was Christmastime and it was really cold outside. Slowly, every other guy would leave, until it was 3 in the morning and I was the last guy in the corner. I got all the business.” 

That work ethic provided income that enabled Mr. Morrison to pay his family’s bills, buy groceries with cash instead of food stamps and, in a splurge, get himself a Rolex Submariner instead of highwaters from Goodwill. If those things meant going to jail—and they frequently did—so be it. He would leave food on the table for his mother and enough cash tucked away for his release. “You always had to have your money in order,” he said. “You have bail money, lawyer money, just-in-case money and your re-up money, where you re-up your inventory.”

Fifteen years after his first arrest and eight years after retiring from drug sales, Mr. Morrison has patched together a career selling houses for Prominent Properties Sotheby's International Realty and serving as a guest broker on NBC’s Open House NYC. He said that he’s currently in talks with the network about a show of his own. “It’s kind of like a cross between Million Dollar Listing and House of Lies,” said the suavely tailored former dealer.

He’s also a motivational speaker who preaches the virtues of real estate over drugs, but the more complicated reality is that the latter gave him the skills to succeed in the straight business world in a way that no other job or after-school club ever could have.

“You learn supply and demand,” said Mr. Morrison, now 32. “I had people working for me, so I had to learn staffing. You learn organization. You learn to be strategic. You learn about inventory. You learn how to keep the flow of your business going. Although you sell drugs, you still want to be relatable to people. I was nice to my clients. I took them out to lunch.”

There were two other key assets that proved useful, then as now. “I had balls,” he said.

Those also served him well two years ago, when he was trying to figure out how to upgrade from mid-level homes to mansions. One day he Googled “richest towns in N.J.,” and Alpine came up. Soon he was in the office of Mary Lenk, a top broker in the area, trying to convince her to partner with him.

Ms. Lenk referred him to Michael Oppler, a broker at Sotheby’s Prominent Properties. They met for lunch, and Mr. Morrison expressed his desire to start a nonprofit teaching kids about real estate careers. The Sotheby’s name would give him the credibility he needed.

“Where he worked before and all that didn’t mean much to me,” Mr. Oppler said. “Most realtors are just in it to make money, but he talked about his initiative, saying, ‘I’ve come up with a great opportunity for young people to see the positive benefits of approaching life in a different way.’

“He needed to be at Sotheby’s to do this, because aligning yourself with the most prestigious brand out there is imperative.”

“Life is largely about perception,” Mr. Oppler added.

That’s A LESSON Mr. Morrison learned early on.

After reaping a 100 percent markup on the $50 bags of cocaine he purchased from area wholesalers, he heard that he could reduce his supply costs by buying in Harlem instead. At 16, Mr. Morrison made his way to 137th Street, where “hundreds of people were selling drugs openly on the street.”

“Everyone was pandering,” he recalled, “but there was this one guy sitting on a crate with a nice clean outfit on. He looked like a businessman. He handed me his card that said ‘The Professionals’ and said, ‘Next time you come here, don’t go to them, come to me.’”

After Mr. Morrison turned a $300 outlay into $1,400, he returned to Harlem to meet with the natty purveyor. “He brought me into the back of a clothing store. It was more discreet than doing it on the street. I was so impressed by him that I became a loyal customer,” Mr. Morrison said. “What I learned from that was the importance of presentation.”

“I did kind of steal his swagger a bit,” Mr. Morrison said. “I took his approach.”

“Now when you see me, I’m going to be in custom suits,” he said.

Who makes them? “I have a tailor. I would give him a shout-out, but he won’t give me a branding deal. I won’t say your name or tweet you unless you pay me. I don’t do it for free.” (As of press time, he had 98,000 followers.) Another lesson learned.

During the summer of 1998, Mr. Morrison learned to cook crack with his father (also a client) and his stepmother. His father told Mr. Morrison that he could make twice as much money pushing drugs out of Nebraska than he did in New Jersey, thus introducing his young son to the concepts of flipping and scaling up.

With each successive trip, Mr. Morrison brought more cocaine to sell to his father’s associates in Nebraska—the third satellite in an operation that included Baltimore and New Jersey—until he was eventually arrested for trafficking cocaine across the country.

During a stint at Summit Shock Intervention, a minimum-security lockup in Summit, N.J., he befriended a fellow prisoner named White Boy Eddie, a dealer from Staten Island. One day, White Boy Eddie decided to write down the names of all the “fiends” he knew, dealer parlance for users. He explained that when he got out of jail, he planned to distribute free samples to his former fiends to earn back their loyalty.

Mr. Morrison thought that was an excellent idea. “At that point, my plan wasn’t to clean up. It was to be a better drug dealer,” he said. “When I got out, I went around and said ‘Hi, I’m Jay. Here’s a sample of my drugs,’ and gave them my cellphone number. I also told people they didn’t have to go to the corner—they could call me. Within six months, I had $60,000.”

Mr. Morrison said the experiment taught him the value of giving something away (other than plugs for tailors), be it cocaine, real estate advice or his book Hip Hop 2 Homeowners, which he dispenses on his site. “I’ve gotten 15 nationwide referrals just from my website,” he said. “I’ll do something for free to keep you coming back.”

Mr. Morrison gave up selling drugs late in 2004, after what he remembers as a sudden epiphany: this lifestyle could only end in double-digit jail time, or “football” numbers, as his friends in prison called it. With nothing to show for himself—“nothing for my mother to be proud of”—he unloaded the rest of his drugs to his partner, renewed his real estate license and got his criminal record petitioned so he could work in the industry.

From 2005 to 2008, Mr. Morrison worked managing mortgages at both Liberty State Finance and Keller Williams Realty while running his own independent investing and contracting company, “Mr. Real Estate LLC.”

After that came a brief and failed foray into restaurant ownership in Virginia, as well as talent management for R&B artist Brian Gibbs. “It went semi-well until a friend of mine came home from jail,” Mr. Morrison recalled. “He was like, why are you doing parties and nightclubs? You know real estate. You got the look, you know the game.”

His detour into music gave him entertainment industry connections that have proved valuable. Although Mr. Morrison has yet to make any big sales on his own—he said he is about to ink an $8.5 million solo listing—one of his first victories for Sotheby’s Prominent Properties was making sure the agency didn’t lose a contract on a slow-to-move $2 million converted warehouse loft at 331 Newark Avenue in Jersey City. After the property was featured on Open House NYC thanks to Mr. Morrison, the seller renewed with Sotheby’s, he said.

“People are very influenced and impressed by his celebrity clients, and he stands out,” said Ingrid Hart, vice president of sales for the company. Mr. Morrison protects those clients’ anonymity—another business practice learned in a previous life—allowing only that they are “NFL clients, Giants guys, Knicks guys, Jets guys, rappers, R&B singers, execs.”

However, the telegenic young professional has no problem touting his own “it” factor and “aura,” qualities his colleagues don’t deny. “He has very high self-esteem and is incredibly confident. I’ve never seen anybody more comfortable in front of a camera,” said Ms. Hart.

The same magnetism that drew “all the prettiest girls” to the young dealer is now wooing audiences as Mr. Morrison makes the speaking rounds with his nonprofit Project Culture Change, an outreach program that spreads the word about home ownership.

Within the nonprofit is an initiative called YMC, which variously stands for “Young Millionaires Club” or “Young Minds Can,” a series of group discussions covering a blend of self-empowerment, financial literacy and career-building. “I preach three things,” Mr. Morrison explained. “Think like a millionaire, dress like a millionaire, speak like a millionaire.”

Also: work like one. There he was the other night at his desk in the Hoboken office of Sotheby’s, banging away on his partnership agreement with a sales team in Saddle River, hours after his colleagues had cleared out. “You can’t outwork me,” he said. “I’m crazy that way.”

It was 2 a.m.

editorial@observer.com

Bad gas: From 2004 to 2008, Chesapeake Energy CEO Aubrey McClendon ran a private hedge fund that traded the same commodities that Chesapeake produced, according to Reuters. The $200 million fund listed Chesapeake's Oklahoma City HQ as its mailing address, and employed an accountant who was also on staff at the natural gas powerhouse. Marketing the fund, we expect, was a breeze.

McClendon addressed media for the first time since he was stripped of his chairmanship, but wouldn't discuss reported conflicts of interest: "Your mother told you not to believe everything you read or hear for good reason,” he said.

Phoenix falls: Merger discussions between New York law firm Dewey & LeBoeuf and SNR Denton fell through yesterday, raising the chances that Dewey will collapse under the weight of its debt burden and partner exodus. Chances for a deal, which SNR Denton brass nicknamed "A Phoenix Rises from the Ashes," diminished after Dewey announced that the Manhattan's district attorney had opened a criminal investigation into the firm, according to the Journal.

Priced to sell: Carlyle Group closed its IPO at $22 a share, valuing the company at $6.7 billion, after the private equity firm lowered its asking price from the $23 to $25 range it had sought. The lower price reflects skittishness after previous private equity IPOs lost value, but founders Bill Conway, Daniel D'Aniello and David Rubenstein will make out fine: Each retains about 15 percent ownership in the company.

The D.C.-based firm will trade on Nasdaq under the CG ticker.

Class warfare: At a meeting with Obama campaign manager Jim Messina last fall, a wealthy donor asked whether there was anything the president could do to stop attacks on the rich, Nicholas Confessore reports in the forthcoming Times Sunday Magazine:

The president had won plaudits for his speech on race during the last campaign, the guest noted. It was a soaring address that acknowledged white resentment and urged national unity. What if Obama gave a similarly healing speech about class and inequality? What if he urged an end to attacks on the rich?

It's a brilliant anecdote, and a not not alarming bit of self-pity and conflated identification. But there's something about the nakedness of the appeal that disarms: Isn't it our right, the donor seemed to be asking, to be rich?

(H/T Greg Sargent.)

Off again, on again: So much for the hope (in some quarters) that the Volcker rule would be scrapped. Jamie Dimon led a cadre of bank chieftains into a meeting with Fed governor Daniel Tarullo yesterday, presumably to criticize the rule. Nonetheless, the Dealbook reports that regulators are hammering out the final language, and think they're back on track to meet the July deadline set forth in Dodd-Frank.

North rises: Canadian banks have gone on a buying spree as U.S. and European banks shed assets in the wake of impending doom, with the six largest banks from the Great White North dropping a cool $38 billion on acquisitions since 2008. The upshot: Canada is home to four of the world's top 10 strongest banks, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports. (JPMorgan is the strongest U.S. bank, according to Markets, clocking in at 13th worldwide.)

P&Ls: For those who have already gotten over the disturbing story linking the influx of casino cash to dead horses at New York State racetracks, the Journal figured out which Kentucky Derby entrants have been the best investments.

Somebody Screamed: Sotheby's sold Edvard Munch’s The Scream for a record $119.9 million last night, smashing the mark for art-at-auction, set at Christie's in 2010. Gallerist has the action.

If you're into that kind of thing: The blogger who brought you the Anonymous Finance Guy Who Pays for Sex is back, this time with the Anonymous Wall Street Escort Who Wants to Tell Clients They’re Bad in Bed.

[Photo by Hunter Martin/Getty Images]

If that wasn't enough, several pieces from the late financier's art collection are expected to fetch seven-figure prices at Sotheby's impressionist and modern art sale this evening. Some highlights from the auction house:

Pablo Picasso’s portrait of Dora Maar titled Femme assise dans un fauteuil, which exemplifies the artist’s wartime work and his passionate exchange with Dora Maar (pictured right, est. $20/30 million*). Chaïm Soutine’s Le chausseur de chez Maxim’s is a masterwork of Expressionism and arguably the crowning achievement of the artist’s career (est. $10/15 million), and Soutine’s Le Chasseur (est. $4/6 million), both done in Paris in the 1920s will be major highlights, as will be Tête humaine, a prime example of Joan Miró’s formative output of the 1930s (est. $10/15 million).

Gallerist had Christie's impressionist and modern sale last night covered; see the entire catalog for Sotheby's sale here.

Opulent much?

Paul Fribourg is the CEO of Continental Grain and a director of Estee Lauder, Burger King and the Loews Corporation. Clearly, the man has gobs of money sitting around, but that didn't mean he was going to spend $45 million on a co-op at 998 Fifth Avenue.

In fact, it didn't look like anyone was going to spend $45 million, or even $34 million, on the Gold Coast home of Morgan Stanley ex-vice chair Bruce Fiedorek. Just months after rival Lehman Brothers collapses, Mr. Fiedorek was quietly shopping around his sprawling 5-bedroom, 5-bathroom apartment for $45 million, perhaps embarrassed to make such an ostentatious move public. When the home officially came on the market a few months later, in October 2009, the asking price was a more modest $34 million.

In the interim, the home bounced around between two different brokerages over the impossibly long span of three years (it spent a full year off the market, during which Mr. Fiedorek ostensibly re-evaluated the steep asking price before putting it back on the market for exactly the same price).

Mr. Fribourg, who gained notoriety several years ago for an alleged affair with ex-CNN anchor Paula Zahn, just paid a cool $27.2 million for the palatial pad, according to city records. The apartment was listed with Sotheby's brokers Meredyth Smith and Serena Boardman.

Mr. Fribourg clearly has a head for business, so it's not surprising that he was able to knock almost $7 million off the price tag for the place. It's also not surprising that he'd like it—the residence appears to be the kind of uber-luxurious home befitting a captain of industry. It has a marble bath, a dramatic reception room adjoining "an immense living room with beautiful large French windows with balustrades overlooking Fifth Avenue," and a room that could either be used for "staff" or "exercise," the listing helpfully offers.

The building itself is among the more prestigious of Fifth Avenue co-ops, built in 1910 by McKim, Meade and White to ridiculously luxurious specifications with the purpose of attracting the kind of old money that was hesitant to leave their town houses to live in a—pearl clutch—shared building. In the end, they were persuaded, perhaps by features like jewelry safes built into the walls of each apartment.

And the appeal is still there. Real estate scion Jordan Panzer just bought a duplex downstairs for $16 million earlier this year, and Matt Bronfman, the Seagrams heir, bought a second-floor spread for $18 million in 2007. For those still looking for a place in this titanic price range, two units are on the market, one for $20 million, another for $22 million.

kvelsey@observer.com

Richard Chai, Shu Pei, Liu Wen, Phillip Lim (Billy Farrell/BFAnyc.com)

The Observer was about halfway through our black rice and bok choy at the Asia Society’s Asia Week kick-off gala on Monday night when iGavel online auctioneer Lark Mason plucked our dessert spoon off the table and politely asked us to tell him about it.

Mr. Mason, a frequent appraiser on PBS’s Antiques Roadshow, was enlisting us to play along in mock version of the show.

We found the spoon while cleaning out our dead grandmother’s attic, we lied. We have a feeling it’s important.

Mr. Mason turned the spoon slowly in his hand.

“Manufactured in China, in the 1930s, for American export. She probably received it as a wedding gift,” he said matter-of-factly. “But I’m sure it has a lot of sentimental value.” 

With a brief-but-warm hand shake (he’s a two-hander), the Asian arts and antiques expert had demonstrated how he goes about disappointing the thousands of Middle American treasure-hunters he encounters on the beloved program.

But in July, Mr. Mason had the unusual privilege of informing a Vietnam veteran in Tulsa, Okla., that he was in possession of the single most valuable lot in the program’s history: a set of Chinese libation cups carved from Rhinoceros horns.

“Used in China in the 17th and 18th centuries,” he explained to The Observer, adding that men gave them as gifts because they were believed to have magical properties.

The collection happens to be on the block at Sotheby’s tomorrow, just one of a slew of Asian-related auctions happening across the city.

We dared to ask how much.

“Between $800,000 and $1.2 million,” came the answer.

Drums fired off behind our heads, and a Chinese dragon dance began to weave through the room.

These are heady times for the Asian art community, as Chinese collectors topple auction records and Asian and Asian-American artists charm critics. Monday night the Asia Society and its supporters were basking in the glow.

Society president Vishakha Desai told us that in addition to honorary chair Michael Joo, she was proud of Sarah Sze, whose work is on display at the Asia Society until March 25.

“She has just been voted the most important artist by the International Critics Association and she’s going to represent the U.S. Pavillion at the Venice Biennale,” bragged Ms. Desai. “And we have her show!”

The Chinese-American artist happens to be married to an Indian-American Pulitzer winner, Emperor of All Maladies author Siddhartha Mukherjee. And the runner-up for that AICA prize? Chinese artist Ai Weiwei.

Have we, like the headlines say, entered an Asian century?

“The truth is, it’s a U.S.-Asia century,” Ms. Desai, dressed in a deep green sari, said. “The importance is as much to focus on Asia as the partnerships between Asians and Americans.”

And it’s not just about the booming art market.

“What we’re trying to move toward right now is the collaboration between Asian artists,” gala co-chair Stephanie Foster told us. “We have Asian fashion designers here, and Asian designers doing the tables.”

“It’s amazing that New York can encapsulate all that,” added Sotheby’s vice chairman of Asian Art Henry Howard-Sneyd. “This is one of the few places in the world you can do this.”

So we still have the competitive edge in parties, in other words.

By the time Donna D’Cruz donned her blinding, red Swarovski crystal-encrusted headphones and hit the DJ booth, the Asia Society’s young supporters, like Miami boutique owner Laure Heriard-Dubreil and her boyfriend, artist Aaron Young, had ditched the pineapple mousse cake and migrated toward the center table where fashion’s Asian-American all-stars held court.

“We all get clumped together,” said Korean-American designer Richard Chai, wearing a tuxedo and thick, plug earrings. “We’re all individuals doing different things, but with support for each other.”

“We get that a lot,” said Phillip Lim. “Hopefully over time it’s not about being Asian, it’s just the work.”

His date, Liu Wen, wore a white pantsuit with a demure high neckline and latex belt from his fall collection.

“You always have to balance sensuality with elegance and a little bit of fetish,” he explained.

Anna Sui made an early appearance, accompanied by model Jessica Stam. Elsewhere, first-generation supermodel Pat Cleveland pushed a raw, blended version of the salad course around her plate while couturier Maggie Norris, puffed on an electronic cigarette.

Vietnamese-Canadian photo blogger Tommy Ton could hardly believe his luck, that he’d been seated in between occasional subjects, Ms. Wen and Shu Pei, who wore pieces from Mr. Chai’s fall and summer collections, and his occasional boss, Style.com editor Dirk Standen.

“Susan Standen, his wife, invited me at the Lanvin show,” he told us. “I’m their guest.”

For Mr. Standen, the night had just begun. After the party he was headed back to the office, where the second issue of Style.com/print was closing.

Mr. Standen said he thought grouping Asian designers together was somewhat arbitrary, but, he observed, they were all in good company.

“These guys are positioned to take over the world,” he said.

kstoeffel@observer.com

Mr. Ruprecht?

So far the art workers and their supporters have tried pranks, picket lines, an Occupy Wall Street alliance, a legal appeal to the National Labor Relations Board, and traditional negotiations, all to no avail. But perhaps a Christmas card will do the trick.

Sotheby's has yet to let its locked-out workers back in after more than four months off the job due to disagreements over their union contract. So now the workers of the Local 814, the Teamsters union that includes art handlers at Sotheby's high-end auctionhouse, have launched an email campaign comparing Sotheby's CEO William Ruprecht to Scrooge and claiming the Teamsters have no money to care for their Tiny Tims. The catalyst? The locked-out workers are on the verge of losing their health insurance.

The "Sotheby's: Bad for Art" campaign blasted out an email this morning: "How Sotheby's Stole Christmas," directing people to sign an online petition addressed to Mr. Ruprecht:

Sotheby's: Don't be a Scrooge

Dear  Sotheby's CEO William Ruprecht,

Sotheby's just celebrated its most profitable quarter in the company's history, and yet, you have locked out your hardworking, loyal art handlers--some have worked at Sotheby's for more than 40 years.

Not only are your employees now forced to face the holidays without jobs, but they will also be forced to ring in the New Year by losing their health care.

Stop being a Scrooge and end the lockout of your art handlers before January 1, 2012. Every working American deserves job security and health care.

Kermit and his environmentalist, anticapitalist, socialist friends.

What is it about the preholiday season that winds everyone tighter than the postsurgery forehead of a Real Housewife? We’re trying to stay out of the drama as all of New York lets fly a seeming year’s worth of unaired grievances this week. Case in point: Ms. New York Diana Taylor’s ticked-off response to the locked-out union art handlers of Sotheby’s had more than a couple of people up in arms last week, the auction-house board member having replied curtly to a bunch of protesters interrupting a meeting that she would resign if Sotheby’s CEO Bill Ruprecht acquiesced to any of their demands. It wouldn’t have been that big a deal (what happens in board meetings stays in board meetings) except that Ms. Taylor had the misfortune of giving her brusque brush-off to the Teamsters while someone happened to be filming.

Not that you need to be Mayor Bloomberg’s paramour to get attention these days. You can also be part of his so-called “personal army” (those men in blue with “NYPD” etched into their badges). Occupiers on Seventh and Broadway went into a rage after being arrested on National AIDS Day and forced to watch their captors “sadistically” eat the free pizza that Housing Works Bookstore had sent to OWS in solidarity. Hey, whatever happened to the “feed anyone who’s hungry” plan? At least your civil servants know how to multitask: they can hand Occupiers a summons with one hand and eat a slice with the other.

And if the NYPD wanted extra spice on their pies, they wouldn’t have to use their own—they could just go to Banana Kelly High School in the Bronx, where two days ago a student injured 20 people (including the principal) with a can of pepper spray. This is the third New York City school in the past three weeks to report an incident involving the latest weapon du jour. Wonder if Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna feels hip for starting a trend that’s caught on like wildfire (and feels like it, too). Soon administrators are going to have to start carrying milk cartons around in case anyone gets trigger-happy.

But it’s not all bad news. We recently had the opportunity to sit in on TV’s tipsiest talk show, Watch What Happens Live, with Bravo’s signature “power suit,” Andy Cohen. My, does that man have the world’s nicest teeth—even when he’s polling viewers about which housewife of Atlanta has “the biggest donkey booty.” We look forward to WWHL’s becoming a five-night-a-week phenomenon come January, if only because it’s the only talk show in town that gives its audience an open bar tab. (One call-in viewer may have taken the popular theme of “Single Woman Getting Wasted Alone to Bravo” a little too seriously; she proudly announced that she had been dutifully chugging whenever Mr. Cohen said the night’s “secret word” and later revealed she was tossing back shots of Nyquil, not rum and Coke.)

Another fun piece of gossip divulged at Mr. Cohen’s after-hours party den: King of Comedy actress Sandra Bernhard revealed that she had been up for a role in Sex and the City. The brassy, whiskey-voiced comedian wasn’t reading for Samantha, but uptight Miranda. But: “The pilot script was a disaster and they were offering the worst money in the world.” Cue five minutes of bickering over whether or not any of the other women besides Sarah Jessica Parker made money off the show (premovies, of course).

Sadly, the world has bigger problems to discuss than the size of Kim Catrall’s ... paycheck. Like the fact that the Muppets are environmentalist, anticapitalist socialists from President Obama’s secret camp of puppet propaganda. It’s true! We heard it on Fox Business News’s Follow the Money, where Eric Bolling and a roundtable of ostensibly sane people devoted seven minutes to explaining how Jim Henson’s studios were destroying America’s youth with their liberal brainwashing.

“What are we, in socialist China?!” shrieked one guest host outraged at the concept of “sharing” being promoted on programs like Sesame Street. Oh, not yet, Fox Business News. Give it another year. In the meantime, we’re gonna try to unwind with a nice, spicy slice and maybe a shot of Nyquil.

You could hear them a block away; their whistles and chants preceded them. About a hundred protesters stood outside Sotheby's at the beginning of the auction house's contemporary evening sale, the last important art sale of the year. "We're fired up! Won't take it no more!" The crowd outside Sotheby's was made up of N.Y.P.D., the auction house's security, students from Hunter College, union members and Scabby, the oversize balloon rat who never seems to miss a strike, as well as a Scabby-sized balloon fat cat who squeezed a cigar in one paw and a union worker in the other. Picketers hoisted cutouts of the heads of Sotheby's COO and CEO at the ends of long poles.

Most of the well-heeled buyers came from the north side, some shielding their eyes from the flashlights and camera flashes as they walked down a gauntlet of security guards. The women were mostly blond, dressed in black pencil skirts and clunking on tall black heels; the men were nondescript in suits and perhaps a coat. Some clutched the phonebook-sized sale guide; one woman jogged down the line as the protesters shouted "run!" Another woman looked horrified as a protester blocked her path inside; she tried to move around him, but was blocked by another protester who started blowing his whistle in her face. A Sotheby's staffer grabbed her and escorted her to the door, where she was further inconvenienced by being asked to provide ID. Once inside, we watched her recount the trauma to a Sotheby's concierge, who nodded along incredulously.

"Shame on you!" the protesters shouted at the one percent. "Go home!" An older gentleman standing near The Observer gave an enthusiastic thumbs down accompanied by a resounding "booooo!" One man on the other side of The Observer gave the Sotheby's clients the finger, only to have a curly, gray-haired buyer with a checkered scarf rise to the occasion with a French-accented, "Fuck you! Fuck you!"

Once inside, the gray-haired man stood behind the glass like a kid at the zoo, sticking out his tongue, mouthing obscenities, then zealously grasping an imaginary phallus, pumping it a few times into his mouth before he grew bored or realized there were cameras, at which point he walked toward the escalator that lead into the auction. "He's in Sotheby's a lot," said one of the Teamsters who used to be art handlers at Sotheby's before the auction house locked out its workers in August.

The Observer was crowded in behind a wooden police barrier just in front of the door. We prodded the Teamster to tell us who the buyers were. "The Mugrabi family is already in there," he said. "Oh! Larry Gagosian is here." A spectacled man with a bloated face walked brusquely by and slipped into one of the revolving doors. "Steve Cohen!" our guide identified. "That was Steve Cohen, the billionaire art collector."

Most of the auction attendees walked quickly past the scrum, cocking their heads to avoid the cameras and flashlights. One young man in a backpack cheered along with the picketers; another young, dark-haired gentleman walked through the gauntlet with his iPhone in front of his eyes, videotaping the penned-in mob.

The picket line was narrow; the protesters occupied a strip of sidewalk between the police barricades and a line of cars parked bumper-to-bumper along the curb. "They parked all these cars here so no one could get through," one Teamster theorized. We glanced at the outermost auto, a Lexus. It had a ticket tucked under the wiper. Late,r we realized all the cars had tickets. By the end of the night, the windshield wipers also pinned down fliers that said "Sotheby's Plays Fast and Loose with the Truth."

We saw one gentleman accept one of the fliers, whether he realized what it was or not, on the way into the auction house. It read, in part:

Sotheby spokesperson Diana Phillips told the NY Times that the venerable auciton house locked its experienced art handlers during contract negotiations because it was unwilling to accept demands that virtually double the cost of their contract.'

But there are no such demands. In fact Sotheby's is trying to starve the mostly minority workforce into submitting to management's draconian cuts in benefits hours and job security.

In August, Sotheby's reported its most profitable quarer in its 267-year history with profits soaring 48 percent from the previous year.

The protest reached a climax when at least three, possibly four--it was chaotic and hard to see--protesters attempted to get inside Sotheby's. They didn't get very far. The Observer recognized one union organizer, Eli Kent, the director of the LiUNA Local 78--not affiliated with the Teamsters--walking purposefully into the auction house. Once inside, he stood just behind the revolving door, staring intently at his co-conspirators. The protesters attempted to U-lock themselves together but security guards pounced quickly, dragging all of them outside. The protesters went limp as the police slapped handcuffs on. Other officers pushed back the agitated crowd, which had started rocking the barriers back and forth and beating drums with renewed vigor. But the crowd calmed down as the protesters were hauled away; we glimpsed Mr. Kent, with gritted teeth, a U-lock around his neck, his pant leg ripped, being carried away by two officers.

The Observer ran into Jason Ide, the 29-year-old president of the Teamsters Local 814, a union of about 1,000 art handlers, furniture movers and other tradesmen, and the man who led the union negotiations with Christie's auction house earlier this year without a hitch. He echoed the union line--Sotheby's brought in this lawfirm, Jackson Lewis, which is notorious for busting union chops. Sotheby's thinks the union workers will give up after a few months, he said, although he acknowledged it's possible that Sotheby's is trying to move away from union labor altogether.

The Observer wandered back to the south side of the entrance, where students and a few members of a brass band were taking their breaths. We found ourselves next to a UAW worker who shouted "Shame on you!" at two gentlemen who had just hopped out of a cab.

"They don't seem ashamed," we felt compelled to mention.

"No, they don't feel ashamed," she said. "But they do feel fear."

That rang true. Of all the Occupy Wall Street stunts--even the march to the homes of millionaires--this protest was the only one that felt like it had the real rumblings of class war. Even Vikram Pandit threw the OWS protesters a bone; but here were two unpersuadable groups, those with nothing to lose versus those with "fuck you" money. The faces of the buyers we saw trickling into Sotheby's revealed confusion and contempt, and the feeling was mutual. As we made tracks for the bus, we overheard one middle-aged protester crow: "The look on some of those rich motherfuckers' faces was priceless!"

Meanwhile, the sale netted $315.8 million, beating the estimated $270 million.

Watch out, Sotheby's! OWS is coming to your house!

Disclosure: We were sent this video by someone with obvious sympathies and ties to the Occupy Wall Street movement. This video has been edited.

While some of Occupy Wall Street's protests have focused on picketing outside Sotheby's and disrupting art auctions since the establishment locked out its art handlers who were part of local Teamsters Local 814, a new form of occupation involves actually going to Sotheby's parties and trying to get rich people to belittle the movement.

Is anyone surprised that Sotheby's is still throwing "lavish" parties? Isn't that what Sotheby's does? What's almost more surprising about this video was that this particular quote by one woman - which wasn't even particularly harsh - was the very worst thing that they could find someone saying about the protesters.