WONKO THE SANE WAS RIGHT…
February 12th, 2010[Update--0802, 12 February. From the Clevelad Jewish News:
Giant Eagle Inc. has launched a line of kosher prepared foods. All of the new kosher products are produced in a Chasidic kosher plant with strict quality control and rabbinic supervision. Customers can visit the prepared food department or call ahead with special orders to participating Giant Eagle stores in Solon, Lyndhurst, Beachwood, Mayfield Heights or Fairlawn.]
Below is one of my posts from The Writing On The Wal. I don’t usually cross-post full text this way, but I feel passionately about this issue and I want to get it read by as wide an audience as possible.
It has taken me more than 12 hours to calm down from an experience last evening that has left me nearly ready to follow the example of Wonko The Sane and just walk away, accept that the World has gone crazy and start building my own asylum.
Last night, I took part in a conversation with a half-dozen or so fellow Jews that were all a twitter about our local Costco stocking kosher meats. As near as I can figure, Costco has been stocking kosher meat for about a year now, but not here in Cleveland.
One of the reasons I converted to Judaism a quarter century ago was that I was drawn to its emphasis on social justice and advocacy as exemplified by great rabbis like Abraham Joshua Heschel and Arthur Lelyveld, among many, many others.
Judaism has a strong central theme of caring for the orphans and widows and strangers at our gates.
Judaism also has a strong commitment for caring for its own, or so I thought. I’m aware of three kosher butchers here in Cleveland. They’re all small, family run business that would easily fit in any urban neighborhood of 50 years ago. Because of their size and hyper-specialized clientele they charge significantly more for their wares than similar, but non-kosher, meat products in any of the area supermarkets.
If a family wants to buy kosher meat, however, that’s where you shop, and by doing so you support the infrastructure that supports you.
All of that means nothing based on my tiny, non-representative sample from last night. All of those gathered were enthusiastic that they could save 50 percent on their kosher meat purchases by shopping at Costco. When I attempted to argue that Costco owed nothing to the Jewish community and was only interested in gaining market share, I was rewarded with looks of are you crazy? I can save 50 percent!
When those three butchers lose enough of their already tiny market — there are only 80,000 Jews in Cleveland and I imagine that perhaps 10 to 20 percent of those buy only Kosher meats — and go out of business and Costco decides that it can make more money by selling something else where it is stocking the kosher meats, Cleveland’s Jews will have only their selves to blame.
Price trumps tradition. Price trumps ethics. Price trumps everything.
It’s a shonda.
And then there is this exchange in the comments.
First from Julie Auerbach, who is head of sales for Colorado Kosher Meat.
What did you think of the Colorado Kosher Meat you purchased?
My response:
Shalom Julie,
First, thank you for stopping in, for reading and, most importantly, for taking the time to enter the discussion. We build our community with our conversations.
I didn”t, so I can”t comment there, but I have no doubt that the products from your company are of first quality. That”s not the issue. That you sell your meats to Costco isn”t even the issue. Colorado Kosher Meat is a company doing its best to turn an acceptable profit and I”m OK with that.
Colorado Kosher Meat is not the problem. Jews who value price over community are the problem.
So let me ask you this: when you sell chicken, how much of a discount for quantity do you offer Costco over the price you might charge a small butcher shop (if you supply small butcher shops)?
If, say, I were to order 100 pounds (or whatever you might consider to be a minimum order) of chicken from Colorado Kosher Meat, at wholesale, how much more per pound, as a percentage of the wholesale cost, would I spend compared to a business that placed an order for 10,000 pounds? If my numbers are inappropriate, please feel free to substitute your own to illustrate the difference between a small and a larger order.
B”shalom,
Jeff
Seriously people, are we OK with this?
so, you were not always a jew?
Shalom Ryan,
That’s correct. I’m the product of a mixed marriage: a Roman Catholic mother and a Protestant Father. I was christened at St. Mary’s i Marietta, raised in my Grandmother’s First Congregationalist Church, also in Marietta, and after some 15 years of wandering, converted to Judaism in 1985.
B’shalom,
Jeff
I wonder a lot about what drives the religious experience. whether it is revival or conversion.
I’ve met a few people who converted to Seventh Day Adventism or Mormonism. then their are the broader trends. African-Americans to Islam. Ethnic Jews to some kind of Buddhism. Hosers to Born Agains. Dixiecrat to Republican. I imagine the main difference between revival and conversion is that converts already know how disappointed or dissatisfied with the religion – or people who remind them of the religion – they grew up with. I’m not saying that is your experience. but it explains all those early babyboomer hippies to me.
Shalom Ryan,
I chock it up to a desire to understand that which frightens us and, by doing so, render it mundane and banal.
Spirituality is our emotional response to our perceived reality. Religion is the attempt to generalize the specific experience in a way that makes it possible to share a preception of reality.
In my case, I was drawn to Juadiasm for two reasons. First, it cares nothing for an afterlife, nor says anything about an afterlife, it is a system that is concerned solely with the here and now. Second, the central tenet of Judaism is the concept of Tikkum Olam, healing the world which posits that we exist to make the world a better place.
There are plenty of good argumets against there being a purpose, but it works for me, even if it may be a legal fiction.
B’shalom,
Jeff
[...] Robert a bit as I attempt to connect Walmart to the larger picture of our economy and how the choices we make every day result in the individual suffering that does come back to bite us in the [...]
[...] Robert a bit as I attempt to connect Walmart to the larger picture of our economy and how the choices we make every day result in the individual suffering that does come back to bite us in the [...]