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A Manhattan synagogue explores the rich, surprising history of Jews and chocolate
(New York Jewish Week) — In 2006, Rabbi Deborah Prinz was on a trip to Europe with her husband, Rabbi Mark Hurvitz, when they wandered into a chocolate shop in Paris. While meandering about the store, Prinz picked up a brochure and read a line that, given her rudimentary French, she was sure she misunderstood: It claimed that Jews had brought the art of chocolate-making to France.
Prinz, who at the time was the congregational rabbi at Temple Adat Shalom in Poway, California, was stunned. That little morsel of information stayed with her throughout her 10-week sabbatical — and ended up being a defining moment of her life: For the next several years, Prinz followed the zigzagging trail of chocolate, from the rainforests of the New World to the cities of the Old World and, from there, to the American colonies, hoping to clarify the role that Jews played in the making, marketing and trading of chocolate.
Prinz, who now lives in New York, was fascinated by the connection between Jews and chocolate, and the overlap between the dispersion of the Jews and the expansion of the chocolate market across the globe. Her research culminated in a book, “On the Chocolate Trail: A Delicious Adventure Connecting Jews, Religions, History, Travel, Rituals and Recipes to the Magic of Cacao,” which she published a decade ago.
A second edition came out in 2018, with a new chapter about the controversies over chocolate likenesses of deities, as well as updated information about chocolate museums and factory tours around the world.
Now, an exhibit detailing the rich history of Jews and chocolate in this country, “Sweet Treat: Chocolate and the Making of American Jews,” is on view at Manhattan’s Central Synagogue, where Prinz began her career as the Reform congregation’s first female rabbi. The exhibit is a pared-down, American-specific version of an exhibit Prinz co-created in 2017 with the Bernard Museum at Temple Emanu-El on the Upper East Side, ““Semi[te] Sweet: On Jews and Chocolate.”
Chocolate, and humankind’s love affair with it, dates to pre-Columbian peoples in Mesoamerica who used chocolate in their religious rituals. Jewish involvement in chocolate parallels the movement of the Jewish people, beginning with Sephardic Jews of Iberian descent in the 16th and 17th centuries, Prinz said by email. Sephardic Jews, she said, probably engaged with chocolate soon after the first European contact with it, which is said to have occurred during Columbus’ fourth voyage (1502-1504).
“Jews jumped onto the chocolate trail in the early phases of European interaction with the New World and they introduced the drink [of hot chocolate] in diasporic places such as New Spain (now Mexico), Oxford (England), Martinique, Amsterdam, Bayonne (France), Brabant (Belgium), New York and Newport (Rhode Island),” Prinz told the New York Jewish Week by email, adding that their action “created a path of business interests and appetites that continues in our time. These included chocolate entrepreneurs who fostered, perpetuated, and fed an appetite for the drinking chocolate of the day.”
Based upon Prinz’s years of research, the exhibit sheds light on some of the key Jewish players in the Colonial-era chocolate trade, including Aaron Lopez, a Sephardi immigrant, merchant and slave trader who became one of the wealthiest men in Newport, Rhode Island. Lopez, an observant Jew, gave chocolate as part of his tzedakah food packages to poor members of the Jewish community. He also helped build the historic Touro Synagogue, which today is owned and overseen by New York’s Congregation Shearith Israel, the oldest Jewish congregation in the United States, also known as the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue.
The chocolate exhibit is a “micro history,” according to Rabbi Sarah Berman, Central Synagogue’s director of adult education. By examining the surprising role the Jews played in the chocolate trade in this country, the exhibit, which is on display at the Sanctuary Building, across the street from the synagogue, is “one way of understanding how Jews and Jewish culture came together in this country and began to define itself from the colonial period forward.”
As for the decision to mount an exhibit about chocolate at the Midtown synagogue, Prinz wrote in an email that Jews’ involvement with chocolate is “a sweet, yet little-known aspect of the Jewish experience. Also, a number of the stories are New York based. And finally, it offers up important themes of sustenance, resilience, opportunity and hope.”
On display is a facsimile of a map of 15th-17th century dispersions of Sephardi Jews and their relationship to historic chocolate centers. (Courtesy Rabbi Mark Hurvitz)
Among the items on display in the small exhibit is a map of the dispersions of Sephardi Jews in the 15th to 17th centuries, which shows how the areas where Jews settled correspond with early centers of the chocolate trade, as well as an image of Albert Einstein’s personal hot chocolate cup, which he brought with him when he left Germany for the United States in1933.
“In Jewish life and tradition, we often look to rabbinic texts to understand who we are and how we move through the world over time. Texts are wonderful, but they preserve the reality, the lived experience and the scholarship of a certain class of men in certain times and places,” Berman said, adding, “Objects in art tell a different story, maybe a fuller story about who we are.”
Also featured in the exhibit are Lopez’s cousins, the Gomez family, who were leaders of New York’s Jewish community and major donors to Congregation Shearith Israel. They, too, were involved in the chocolate trade: Rebecca Gomez, widow of Mordecay Gomez, may have been the only Jewish woman in the chocolate business in the late 1700s. On display is a facsimile of an ad for her chocolate business at 57 Nassau St. in Lower Manhattan that ran in The Royal American Gazette, a New York newspaper, on Dec. 3, 1782.
The exhibit also touches on more recent Jewish chocolate entrepreneurs in this country, including Stephen Klein, who launched Barton’s Bonbonniere in New York in 1940. Just before the outbreak of World War II, Klein, whose family members were candymakers in Austria, fled to this country and soon thereafter began selling chocolates door-to-door. From there, he eventually expanded to 3,000 shops across the country, creating iconic candies such as almond kisses and the chocolate lollipops known as lollycones. For many Jewish families in the 1950s and 1960s, Barton’s candy was the hostess gift for the Jewish holidays.
What’s more, as an Orthodox Jew, Klein used his candy business to further educate Jews and non-Jews alike about Judaism. Klein, said Prinz, was an “immigrant who helped other immigrants come over. He ran full page ads [in newspapers] with information about Judaism, holidays and Israel. Barton’s candy boxes included inserts about Judaism and Jewish holidays. Like the Maxwell House coffee company, Barton’s designed a Passover haggadah, too.”
Jewish chocolate products also influenced the most American of all beverages: fountain drinks. The story of the egg cream, which most people believe was created at the start of the 20th century by a Jewish immigrant, is detailed in the third part of the exhibit, “Ooey, Gooey, Chocolatey Treats.” The exhibit details how a Jewish family also created Fox’s U-Bet chocolate syrup which many consider essential to a proper egg cream. In the 1920s and ‘30s, Louis Auster, who is credited with creating this poor man’s soda drink, reportedly sold 3,000 egg creams a day 3 cents a glass — and up to 12,000 on sweltering summer days, according to Barry Joseph, author of “Seltzertopia.”
As a whole, the exhibit, which is on view until Feb. 9, 2024 and is open to the public on Wednesdays from 12:30-2 p.m. and Fridays after Shabbat services, presents a comprehensive look at the long history of both Jews and chocolate in this country. “Integration [of Jews] into wider society, the acculturation, the influence going back and forth from Jewish to American and back to Jewish cultures can all be traced through those early days,” said Berman, “and chocolate is an example.”
According to Prinz, looking at American Jewish life through the lens of chocolate helps us “understand the resiliency of Jews exiled from Spain and then immigrants from the Holocaust as they sought freedom, acclimated to new settings, and found new business ventures in America,” she wrote in an email to the New York Jewish Week. “Our ancestors overcame persecution and oppression, in part through chocolate. Their chocolate endeavors in America from its earliest days reminds us that Jews were part of the founding of our country.”
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The post A Manhattan synagogue explores the rich, surprising history of Jews and chocolate appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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What It’s Like to Be a Non-Jewish, Zionist Student at the University of Minnesota
Smith Hall at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. Photo: AlexiusHoratius.
“The vast majority of Israelis are bad people,” claimed my pro-Palestinian classmate during a discussion a few weeks ago.
The discussion was about the legitimacy of Zionism — the right of the Jewish people to self-determination in their ancestral homeland. According to my classmate’s repugnant belief, most Israelis are inherently bad people because they are both “settlers” and racists. Another one of my pro-Palestinian classmates subsequently chimed in, asserting that Jews don’t have the right to self-determination in the Land of Israel, and that Israel should never have been created.
While these are two fairly insignificant instances of hate perpetuated by pro-Palestinian activists, they are representative of the widespread bigotry and ignorance plaguing the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities campus.
Although I’m not Jewish (I was raised as a Greek Orthodox Christian), I have always identified as a liberal Zionist. I’ve always believed that the Jewish people have the right to self-determination in their ancestral homeland. I’ve always believed that Israel’s right to exist is incontestable. Since the Palestinians have lived in the Land of Israel (which they call Palestine) for generations, I have always believed that Palestinians also have a right to live on the land. In my ideal world, the two peoples would figure out how to both overcome the trauma that they have experienced, and live in peace with one another. I don’t think any rational person would argue that these beliefs are radical or unreasonable.
Certainly, every activist advocating on behalf of Israel that I’ve encountered has understood and welcomed my views. The same can’t be said for the pro-Palestinian demonstrators that I’ve conversed with at the University of Minnesota.
Every time that I mention my Zionist convictions, pro-Palestinian activists become outraged. When pro-Palestinian demonstrators hear the word “Zionism,” many of them wrongly assume that it inherently equates to the oppression of Palestinians. When I remind pro-Palestinian activists that Zionism is simply the right of the Jewish people to self-determination in the Land of Israel, many of them never cease to tell me that I’m wrong.
Whenever pro-Palestinian activists are confronted by the horrors that took place on October 7, 2023, I always hear them argue some variation of “history didn’t begin on October 7.” Yes, that’s definitely correct. However, whenever I talk about the atrocities committed by Palestinians on the Jewish people throughout history, it’s always dismissed as “misleading” or “irrelevant.” Apparently, it’s “misleading” or “irrelevant” when I mention the massacres of Jews that took place in Hebron and Safed in 1929, or the assassination of 127 Jews in Kfar Etzion one day before the State of Israel was declared, or the suicide bombings that took place during the Second Intifada. While pro-Palestinian activists rightly decry the killing of innocent Palestinians, many of them curiously turn a blind eye when confronted with the killing of innocent Israelis.
Moreover, elementary facts about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that I often mention are constantly ignored. For example, when I mention that so many families from the Palestinian elite sold land to the Jews before the establishment of Israel, it’s invariably labelled as “misleading” or “irrelevant” by the Palestinian propagandists that I come in contact with. It’s definitely understandable to be critical of certain Israeli policies (I am myself), but it’s wholly unproductive to ignore basic historical facts that illustrate that both peoples have possessed a role in creating and perpetuating the conflict. I’ve been talked down to and ridiculed many times for simply recounting history and defending the Jewish people’s right to self-determination.
Unfortunately, I’m not alone in my experiences. Radical pro-Palestinian activity and propaganda has a history of being pervasive at the University of Minnesota.
Last year, pro-Palestinian groups continuously denied or justified the massacre of 1,200 Israelis on October 7, 2023. For instance, “VICTORY TO THE AL-AQSA FLOOD” was previously written on the campus quad. During the fall of 2024, pro-Palestinian demonstrators belonging to UMN Students for a Democratic Society “barricaded doors and windows,” “spray-painted security cameras,” and occupied a university building. Earlier this year, “REST IN MARTYRDOM HASSAN NASRALLAH!! GLORY TO HEZBOLLAH! GLORY TO HAMAS!” was written inside of a tunnel on campus.
Earlier this month, pro-Palestinian demonstrators protested a private speech by Yinam Cohen, even going as far to label him a “war criminal” for simply being the Consul General of Israel to the Midwest. Free speech should never be suppressed, but wouldn’t it be more reasonable for pro-Palestinian activists to listen to Cohen and subsequently set up alternative forums to discuss the issue without hating and intimidating others? Recently, I spoke with Michael Oren (a former Israeli ambassador to the US), and I disagreed with him on certain issues. Nevertheless, I still learned a lot from his perspective. If pro-Palestinian activists truly cared about resolving the conflict, wouldn’t they listen to and attempt to understand the other side?
While pro-Palestinian demonstrators at the University of Minnesota incessantly object to actions taken by the United States and Israel, they are dramatically silent on the damage Hamas inflicts upon Gazan civilians. Never have I witnessed pro-Palestinian college demonstrators utter a single word about either the oppression Hamas perpetuates on Gazan civilians, or the recent protests in Gaza, some of which are explicitly against Hamas rule.
Instead, many pro-Palestinian demonstrators at the University of Minnesota are committed to utilizing the Gazan population as a statistic in order to delegitimize Israel. At the University of Minnesota, bigotry and ignorance about Zionism and the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict remain prevalent. As someone who isn’t Jewish, I can’t imagine how my Jewish peers are feeling in reaction to the omnipresence of anti-Zionism (and antisemitism), but I will always be there to defend them.
Richard McDaniel is an undergraduate political science student at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.
The post What It’s Like to Be a Non-Jewish, Zionist Student at the University of Minnesota first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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The UK Media Attacked Israel for Refusing Entry to BDS-Backing Politicians; But Israel Was Right
A London bus outside the Houses of Parliament. Photo: public domain.
Border security and a visa policy. There isn’t a single sovereign state in the world that doesn’t have both.
The United Kingdom certainly does — a robust one, no less. For Palestinians, a visa is mandatory to enter the UK, whether for tourism, family visits, business, or study — short stay or long.
In addition to a visa, Palestinians must present a valid passport, proof of accommodation (hotel booking or invitation from a local host), evidence of financial means (bank statements, employer letter, etc.), and a return or onward travel ticket. Processing is time-consuming, often expensive, and far from guaranteed.
The irony of this, however, has been lost on British Labour MPs Abtisam Mohamed and Yuan Yang, who apparently believed their parliamentary status placed them above the entry requirements enforced on ordinary visitors when they arrived in Israel earlier this month.
Upon landing at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport and telling border authorities they were on a “parliamentary delegation to visit humanitarian aid projects in the West Bank,” they were found to have misrepresented the nature of their visit, denied entry, and promptly deported — just like anyone else who flouts standard entry procedures.
The two MPs were, in fact, on a trip arranged by Caabu — the Council for Arab-British Understanding — a lobby group that specializes in escorting British parliamentarians on carefully choreographed “fact-finding” tours of the West Bank.
According to NGO Monitor, Caabu’s stated aim is to “counter the Israel lobby” in British politics — a mission it advances by promoting inflammatory, evidence-free accusations of “ethnic cleansing” and “apartheid,” under the guise of educational outreach.
In the aftermath of Hamas’ October 7 massacre, Caabu’s director, Chris Doyle, stopped just short of defending the atrocities outright, instead casting them as the inevitable “reaction” to decades of Israeli policy. “Hell in Gaza,” he warned, “will never equal heaven in Israel.” A grimly revealing insight into Caabu’s wider agenda.
For Mohamed, though, this wasn’t a matter of border policy, as she told the House of Commons, but an act of “control and censorship” — part of a broader effort, she claimed, to suppress those trying to “expose” Israel.
She went further still, casting her routine deportation as political repression and invoking the familiar antisemitic dog whistle: “No state, however powerful, should be beyond criticism.”
One must assume, then, that Mohamed also views the UK’s visa system — which requires Palestinians to navigate layers of bureaucracy and reserves the right to deny them entry — as an example of a state’s unrestrained power.
Mohamed and Yang landed in Israel at 2:30 p.m. on Saturday, April 5, on a flight from Luton, accompanied by two aides. During questioning, the two MPs — both vocal supporters of BDS — claimed they were part of an official parliamentary delegation. That claim was reportedly untrue: no Israeli authority had received notification of such a delegation, nor had any approval been granted, according to Israel’s Interior Ministry.
Interior Minister Moshe Arbel denied entry to all four individuals “in accordance with the law,” noting their intent to cause harm to the state.
The Israeli embassy in London issued a statement explaining: “These individuals had accused Israel of false claims, were actively involved in promoting sanctions against Israeli ministers, and supported campaigns aimed at boycotting the State of Israel.”
The UK’s own Foreign Office, it’s worth noting, explicitly states that foreign nationals can legally be denied entry to Israel if they’ve publicly called for a boycott or belong to an organization that has. It’s right there on the government’s website — advice Mohamed and Yang might have reviewed before confirming their airline tickets.
But their apparent disbelief that Israel would actually enforce its own laws has been matched, headline for headline, by the British media’s hyperventilation over the supposed diplomatic scandal.
Sky News has breathlessly tracked every twist of the saga, with headlines about the “furious row” over the Labour MPs’ denied entry and helpful explainers outlining “what the MPs said about the war in Gaza” — just in case anyone was still wondering why they might not be welcomed with open arms.
The Guardian is doing its best to amplify the manufactured indignation, leading its coverage with Foreign Secretary David Lammy’s condemnation of Israel’s decision as “unacceptable, counterproductive, and deeply concerning.”
Curiously, it failed to mention Lammy’s own support, back in 2008, for banning Israeli MPs from entering the UK — a rather pertinent omission, as noted by journalist Stephen Pollard in The Spectator.
Labour MP Emily Thornberry weighed in with her characteristic self-importance, declaring that the deportation was particularly egregious because Mohamed and Yang were, in her words, “potential leaders” of the UK.
“They are highly respected parliamentarians,” she told the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg, “and Israel is badly advised to try to alienate them, to humiliate them, and to treat them in this way, because people listen to what these two young women say — and they will do for decades to come.”
This would be the same Emily Thornberry, chair of the UK Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee, who once told Sky News that, if Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited the UK, she’d have no problem arresting him. Apparently, arresting a current leader is fine — but deporting two “potential” ones is beyond the pale.
So while the BBC blares about how “astounded” these MPs are, and The Independent frets about the “escalat[ing] diplomatic row,” let’s take a moment to remind the media — and our stunned British lawmakers — of a basic principle:
It’s called the law, and it applies to everyone. And as the Brits themselves might put it, this is nothing more than a storm in a teacup.
The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.
The post The UK Media Attacked Israel for Refusing Entry to BDS-Backing Politicians; But Israel Was Right first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Despite False Promises, Palestinian Authority Proudly Continues ‘Pay-for-Slay’ Program
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas addresses the 79th United Nations General Assembly at United Nations headquarters in New York, US, Sept. 26, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Brendan McDermid
Just as it did last month, the Palestinian Authority (PA) announced last week that it is paying February’s monthly “allowances” to Palestinian prisoners, terrorists, and their families.
One announcement was made laconically by the Postal Service, while the “PA employees’ salaries” Telegram channel mentioned in two separate statements that these payments were particularly for “Martyrs, prisoners, and the wounded,” as can be seen in the chart below:
| Palestine Post, Facebook page, April 8, 2025 | PA Employees’ Salaries, Telegram, April 8, 2025 | PA Employees’ Salaries, Telegram, April 8, 2025 |
| “Palestine Post announces the start of the payment of monetary allowances tomorrow morning, Wednesday, April 9, 2025, at the main post offices and through the ATMs. Payment will start at 11:00 AM.
We also wish to draw attention to the fact that the allowance payments in the Jenin district will be made through the nearest payment center in the other nearby districts due to the security situation and the [Israeli] raids in these areas. #Palestine_Post” |
“Urgent | Palestine Post announces the start of the distribution of the salaries of the families of the Martyrs, prisoners, and the wounded for the month of February 2025, tomorrow morning, Wednesday, April 9, 2025, at the main post offices and via ATMs.
Note that the distribution will begin at 11:00 AM. We would also like to note that the distribution in the Jenin district will be made through the nearest payment center in other nearby districts, due to the security conditions and the raids observed in those areas.” |
“Urgent | Palestine Post | The distribution of the salaries of the families of the Martyrs, prisoners, and wounded in the West Bank for February, 2025 will begin on Wednesday morning, April 9, 2025, at the main offices and through ATMs at 11:00 AM.” |
While the Palestine Post announcement again did not specify to whom the payments were going to, the employees’ channel said explicitly (twice) that they were meant for terrorists.
Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) has no doubt that these are terror salaries, since the PA postal service only began facilitating them after the PA banks closed 35,000 terrorist bank accounts. The reason the bank accounts were closed was because PMW warned the banks that if they continued facilitating those accounts, they would be violating Israeli law and therefore subject to civil and criminal liability.
It is noteworthy that the payments being made are for February 2025 — a month’s delay. PMW has reported that the PA had skipped the payment of a full month’s salary to its employees in 2023 and has not made it up. This is due to the PA being mired in financial crisis because of its high expenditures on payments to terrorists and the resulting losses in international support. Since then, all salaries are for two months prior rather than for the previous month, as would be standard.
PMW has been closely monitoring these payments and will continue doing so, as nothing has changed despite Mahmoud Abbas’ presidential decree, where he lied to Western audiences and said he would end “pay-for-slay.” He indeed seems to be making good on his previous promise to Palestinians that even if the PA would be “left with one penny, it will be paid to the families of the Martyrs and the prisoners.”
Ephraim D. Tepler is a contributor to Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), where a version of this article first appeared.
The post Despite False Promises, Palestinian Authority Proudly Continues ‘Pay-for-Slay’ Program first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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