Print This Post
Dec
6
Hattip to Bad American for this update:
A posh food store in New York’s Greenwich Village has found itself red faced after offering hams for sale with the slogan “Delicious for Hanukkah,” the current Jewish religious holiday. The non-kosher labelling was spotted at the weekend by Manhattan novelist Nancy Kay Shapiro, 46, who decided instead of alerting management to take a picture of the unorthodox sign and post it on the Internet.
“I just thought it was funny,” Shapiro, who described herself as an unobservant Jew, told the New York Post. “I wasn’t offended in any way. I just thought, here’s somebody who knows nothing about what Jews eat.”
By the time Shapiro returned to the store on Tuesday, the first night of Hanukkah, the signs had vanished, the newspaper reported.
A manager at the Balducci’s gourmet grocery store told the newspaper that the sign was a mistake and blamed it on a stock clerk.
Please note the attribution to Shapiro. It doesn’t say, “posted it on her Livejournal.com blog” (you can see the original post here) but still, at least they name her.
This is an innocent faux pas, truly. I wouldn’t get upset with the clerk. The manager shouldn’t even get into the blame game about it. Even though they are in NYC.
This kind of thing happens all the time when you are a religious minority. Just last week, on a Friday, I overheard a non-Jewish person say to a Jewish person – two people who’ve known each other for years, “Do you celebrate Shabbat, like, every Friday??”
I’ve heard that too. You just do. Whatever.
(The answer is yes – we do, like, celebrate Shabbat every Friday.)
Tonight’s the third night of Chanuka, fwiw. I love when the menorahs get filled with candles.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 5:30 pm December 6th, 2007 in Blogging, Business, Culture, Jewish, Judaism, Religion
Comments
6 Responses to “Chanuka Cham update”
Leave a Reply
2010 WE Magazine 101 Women Bloggers to Watch
Category Specific RSS
Pepper Pike Cleveland+ Politics Women Ohio Elections Law Jewish
by Tips and TricksNews Now
The sales pitch wouldn’t work in New York, but would work in California. I remember my shock my first year in the San Francisco area when I went to work during the High Holidays, and there were all the Jewish owners, and everyone else except for one Orthodox bookkeeper. As a midwesterner, I had never realized that people could be that non-observant and stll claim to be Jewish.
I suppose latkes go nicely with ham if your not fussy about what you eat. I’m a shiksa, and even I still have my eating standards below which I won’t let my family sink.
Ckeck out Tony Karon’s interesting Chanuka post at TonyKaron.com for Dec. 6.Lots of historical perspective and all that.
That’s a little unusual but not totally. For Rosh Hashanah, a lot of Jews only observe one day – I did growing up Reform. Now, as a member of a conservative synagogue, my husband and I do two days and we’ve started to have our kids go two days too – probably three or so years ago. Yom Kippur is only one day – I’d be a little weirded out by a mass working movement by Jews on that holiday but there you have it in America. Religious, cultural, ethnic.
Thanks for that link, SAB, I just finished reading it. I am with him all the way until the end. I know that there are Jews who must feel and behave as he says, here in the U.S. and maybe in other places. But I can promise you that I don’t and we don’t teach our kids that way and neither do any of the Jews in my synagogue.
That said, I can tell you that during the three years of teaching primary religious school at a Reform synagogue in Connecticut, I got questions about integrating the two holidays all the time.
Some goyim have a total lack of understanding.
I have a neighbor who has told me “Just because your Jewish, doesn’t mean you can’t be a good Christian.”
One time, a woman saw my wife’s Star of David necklace and asked “Is that a Jewish cross?”
Oy – thanks for that Roland.
I’ve heard similar too. Just heard another story about someone being asked to show their horns. Unbelievable. And of course the thing about whether Shabbat is every Friday.
At law school, I met a woman from the Upper peninsula of Michigan who told me she’d never met a Jew before and I wasn’t anything like what she expected. Okayyyyy…
And then, in college, when the student activities committee scheduled a huge student fair on the lawn onto which the students attending Rosh Hashana services would exit after services, they told me, when I asked about changing the fair’s date or location, “Well, it’s not like it’s a national holiday or anything, like Easter.”
That’s supposed to persuade me?
Anyway – you are right though – most of the time, it really really is a lack of understanding. Nothing more nothing less. Still – can be frustrating.
Thanks for sharing.