Nu, can't vee all just git along?
We were kibbitzing with our local usurer earlier today, just toasting a diamond sale over a brimming chalice of Catholic baby blood when—with a click of his tongue—he drew our attention to yesterday’s edition of The Jewish Daily Forward. The story in question: a fracas among Park Slope Co-op members, a few of whom have moved to ban Israeli products from their shelves. Despite the wisdom and composure brought on by 2,000 years of scholarly thought, we could feel our horns glinting in the sun. Where’s an angry Jewess to turn in times of strife? Why, the media of course!
The irony that the place is essentially a neo–urban kibbutz (members pledge to work shifts at the grocery, making the desert that is the Slope’s affordable, responsible grocery options bloom…as it were) has not escaped us, being neighborhood residents ourselves. But the motion feels born from the very stiff and self-righteous soapbox awareness that many naysayers feel makes the Co-op unpalatable under normal circumstances.
The Forward quotes Rabbi Andy Bachman, whose synagogue plays host to Co-op meetings: “It will remain an irrelevant gesture to 5 million Israelis and 2 million Palestinians, but it will make someone in Park Slope feel really good about themselves. That’s what this is about; it’s about the political purity, which is part of Park Slope’s unique self-absorption.”
We’re inclined to agree. And while we support the Co-op’s open forum for this kind of divisive dialogue, we’re also comforted by the seeming smallness of the gesture—the Forward reports about ten members (a minyan, in Heeb parlance) looking to discuss the boycott at a future meeting.
So until the next members’ summit, we’re putting our hooked noses back to the grindstone. Though clashing politics may simmer in the produce aisle at your local Co-op, for now anyway, your persimmons are safe.
It’s a shonde!!!
Rabbi Bachman makes me want to convert. I can handle a Bris and Hebrew, but co-opers frighten me.
It’s almost enough to make you want to move to the Upper West Side. Almost.
IT’s too bad they don’t want us Jews. Our noses are perfect for smelling the cantaloupes.
This is an outrage! Everyone knows we don’t drink baby blood out of chalices — it’s hollowed out unicorn horns, duh!
I disagree with the artwork and this general post. It implies that antisemitism is involved in the decision to ban Israeli products, which is obviously untrue considering that this place is a “neo-urban kibbutz” . And in fact, I find banning Israeli products totally legitimate. Israel is becoming more and more of a rogue state–their occupation of the Palestinian territories and the treatment of the its people, nauseating. Any gesture–no matter how small–is more meaningful than doing nothing. Similarly, I would hope as well that no American stores carried products fabricated in apartheid South Africa or Nazi Germany–if only to make the point that in our progressive community, what’s going on in these places is absolutely unacceptable.
Is the last commenter comparing Israel to Nazi Germany? does anyone else smell a douchebag?
I’d drop my membership if that went through.
All this support for Israel right now is pure blind nationalism. I’m a Jew too and I think American Jews need to speak up–unless, of course, we want to be associated with another occupying aggressor.
The Park Slope Food Coop has 15, 000 members, 3 of whom have expressed their opposition to the Israel conflict in Gaza. The issue of a boycott was raised by a single member at our January membership meeting during our open microphone period, and no one else spoke on this at all. That is the entire extent of this issue so far. I am part of the management team at the coop. When Fox News came to interview me on 2/19, they roamed the store, interviewing members. Later, I asked them how it went. They told me that they were unable to find a coop member who favored a boycott of Israel. They were disappointed, because like me, they couldn’t find the tempest in our teapot
The Brooklyn Paper’s columnist had an interesting take on this (but then, doesn’t he always?):
http://www.brooklynpaper.com/stories/32/8/32_8_gk_coop.html
“unless, of course, we want to be associated with another occupying aggressor.”
Then don’t buy American. Or British. Or Chinese. Or Russian. Or Turkish. Or…
Funny how these non-Jewish “imperialist” nations are never considered for boycott by those who claim that antisemitism has nothing do with their very particular decision to ban only Israeli products.
I demand a boycott of that terrible place that like South Africa used to be a Dutch colony, stole the land of the colored natives, exterminated them and banished them to reservations and whose white settlers continue to live in occupied territory, filling it with strollers, mommy and me groups and cooperative food stores.
Rabbi Andy Bachman is particularly well-qualified to lecture Park Slope about symbolic gestures, having until recently hung a huge sign about Darfur on the side of his building.
Well, it’s a good point to say “who are we to talk” being that America just invaded Afghanistan and Iraq (though most of us did not support the latter). The United Nations Human Rights Council is investigating Israeli war crimes and there has been widespread condemnation of Israeli actions around the world. Its disappointing that so many commenters above have hid behind the “anti-semitic” veil. There is a good case for boycotting Israeli products to force change in that country - read Naomi Klien’s articles - http://tinyurl.com/8u2fyo
Great idea, but will this work over the long run?
Great idea, but will this work over the long run?