Writer Jordana Rothman dropped me a note to share her published response in Time Out to news that a small group of Park Slope Coop members proposed boycotting Israeli products at the Food Coop at a recent Open Forum. They plan to bring it up at the upcoming General Meeting.
Funny that Jordana wrote in because I was already typing my own little story, which was basically a retread of the Jewish Daily Forward story.
Maybe this is developing into a big deal. Looks like I'll be going to the next general meeting, which happens to be at Congregation Beth Elohim.
Here's an excerpt from Jordana's funny post-Jewish response in Time Out ("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," she writes). Jordana, a self-proclaimed "angry Jewess," writes about food for Time Out New York. Browsing a list of her articles, it looks like good stuff.
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.
Other people have clarified this better than I could, but I would like to point something out:
100% none of this would have been an issue if Lana Gersten of “The Jewish Daily Forward” actually did some basic research. Nobody from Time Out NY, nobody from the NY Post, nobody from anywhere would have made this an issue if she didn’t write that piece of junk. As it stands, her article that sparked all of this is 100% factually incorrect and filled with the endless repetition of the same over-reacting paranoid nonsense I as a Jew have heard for decade.
I’m a child of Holocaust survivors, grew up in Brooklyn and am a Park Slope Food Co-op member. I think I know what real anti-Semitism is and to see someone like Lana Gersten write, promote and publish this paranoid nonsense is simply sickening. Past the madness of this incident, every time some idiot claims anti-Semitism when/where it doesn’t exist it simply weakens the cause when real anti-Semitism rears it’s ugly head.
Boy, there have been a lot of bytes busted over this one remark. Even ‘ol Gersh bioviates about it.
http://www.brooklynpaper.com/stories/32/8/32_8_gk_coop.html
Where would we be in PS if we didn’t have some PSFC stuff to laugh about?
Just wanted to offer a point of information: The agenda items for each General Meeting are set in advance of each meeting by a committee who reviews all submitted items. There’s a process for submitting an item for the agenda. The people interested in discussing a boycott haven’t even submitted an agenda item to the committee yet.
I want to clarify this because a lot of blog posts out there have been mentioning that they are going to come to the next GM, when in fact, this is not on the agenda for then next GM at all. I am a paid staff person at the Coop, and just wanted to make an attempt to clarify.
Thanks so much for your usual candor, I do enjoy reading your blog!
Charlene
I am one of the management team at the Park Slope Food Coop. 2 of our members wrote letters in our newsletter expressing anger about Israel’s conflict in Gaza and one member said at our January membership meeting that she planned to propose a boycott. She hasn’t yet actually proposed anything, and this issue is not coming before our next meeting. The coop has 15,000 members and we’ve heard from 3 of them. When Fox News came to interview me at the coop on 2/19, they spent some time talking to members as they shopped and worked. While they were there, they later told me, they were unable to find a single member who favored a boycott. Rothman attributes the words of 3 people to an entire organization.
do you want to chat