The real story at the Park Slope Food Co-op

I love a good lets-boycott-Israel story as much as the next guy — in fact I wrote one just this week — but the Forward seems to have jumped the gun a wee bit with this story about a Brooklyn food co-op that is "mull[ing]" a ban on Israeli produce.

According to the Forward’s overheated account, the Park Slope Food Co-op’s "unusual Jewish character is being tested by a proposal to ban products bought from Israel." The economic significance is likely nil — the co-op stocks only a few items of Israeli produce as well as the Sabra hummus brand (yummm, and so cheap!) — but "the debate is taking place in a rare hotbed of diverse Jewish life." And while the Forward acknowledges that "many members are unaware of the proposal,” it reports that “Jewish groups and synagogues have been sending e-mails and making phone calls."

Umm, no.

The “proposal” that supposedly has the Jews so worked up was mentioned during the open forum portion of a general membership meeting on Jan. 27. It then had the bad luck – depending on your perspective of course – to be noted on the front page of the co-op’s newspaper, The Linewaiters’ Gazette. Had it not, it would probably have gotten much less attention. Such is the interest most co-op members, myself included, pay to the goings on at these monthly meetings.

Regardless, the member who raised the issue, identified by the co-op paper only as Hima, did in fact “propose” that the store no longer carry Israeli items. But as anybody who knows the co-op can attest, proposals don’t work that way. There’s a process, and at the co-op process is king. This is a place that has laminated plastic cards that tell you how to clean the toilets, where hours-long disciplinary hearings are convened to determine if a member "uncooperatively" removed the organic labels from peppers so as to pay the non-organic (and lower) price. As of this writing, the "proposal" hadn’t even been placed on the agenda for a membership meeting.

As for the claim about the co-op’s Jewish character being tested, one gets the sense of an idyllic cross-denominational community about to be torn asunder. The co-op is a hotbed of many things, but Jewish life is hardly one of them. Sure, if the ban gains traction some members might bolt. But I suspect that many of the Hasidic families that shop there are drawn by the co-op’s cheap prices, which allow them to feed their large broods for less, and don’t get particularly exercised by some granola crunchers and their pet causes.

Think that’s too harsh? Here’s what Rabbi Andy Bachman had to say about the denizens of Park Slope (the most illuminating and astute lines in the article, I hasten to add):

“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,” he said. "That’s what this is about; it’s about the political purity, which is part of Park Slope’s unique self-absorption.”