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Kosher Dekal aims to stick the landing one year after its Passover product fail
(New York Jewish Week) — Last year, a company that advertised a Passover-friendly counter lining became a household name — but for the wrong reason.
Traditional Jewish law demands that homes be cleaned rigorously for Passover, and that surfaces used for cooking or bearing hot food be made kosher — which can be achieved for some countertops by scalding them with boiling water. Another method of making surfaces fit for Passover is, arguably, easier: covering them completely with material such as plastic or aluminum foil.
So Kosher Dekal, a company based in New Jersey, thought they had a winning product with temporary counter linings they began selling last year, designed to quickly and easily make a surface kosher for Passover with its sleek silver, black, gold and gray faux-marble coverings. But while the peel-and-stick design may have been easy to put on, customers were dismayed that the linings were hardly easy-off.
Last year, Kosher Dekal was promoted by Orthodox Jewish influencers and advertised itself as an “elegant and easy solution” for covering countertops during the holiday. But after Passover ended last year, dozens of customers left comments on the company’s Instagram page complaining about the sticky residue left by the product. The criticism of the company began circulating on the messaging platform WhatsApp.
In the aftermath, the company, citing a “mistake from a production line worker,” owned up to its gaffe and offered $140,000 in refunds to thousands of customers who were charged from $32 to $37 per roll. Then, with the refunds in hand and Passover firmly in the rearview mirror, things fell quiet.
That is, until earlier this month, when Kosher Dekal sent out a press release announcing its return, calling its product “new & improved.”
“After Pesach, the founders were determined to rework the formula and perfect the product,” the press release said. “The Dekal founders searched the globe to find a trustworthy factory.”
In a phone call with the New York Jewish Week, Davidi Crombie, who co-owns the company with his brother, Shraga, said that this year, Kosher Dekal partnered with Continental Manufacturing in Germany to make this year’s product. (Last year’s version was made in China.)
“We searched for a factory that specialized in that kind of product, that has this trustworthy history,” Crombie said. “We had sent people there to visit. They’ll deliver and it won’t be like last time.”
Crombie believes that this year is a course correction for Kosher Dekal, “if not financially, at least morally.”
“The need for the product was always there,” Crombie said. “We just screwed up on our first chance. There is no second chance to make a first impression, but we are working from the ground up to correct the experience for ourselves and for our customers.”
He added that the most important change the company has made is to the glue that sticks to the counter.
“The glue is what it’s all about,” Crombie said. “The glue is our secret formula. I am not an engineer to be able to describe it. We’ve also added new designs and different sizes.”
Crombie added that the company bought three years of advance product from the factory in China which all had to be tossed, though he declined to say how much that cost or how many rolls of material that included.
“Last year, my brother and I were sitting during Pesach, we were literally shivering,” Crombie said. “We were sitting on our computers. We were destroyed. This was the end. We couldn’t see the light at the end of the tunnel.”
Some people, at least, are giving Kosher Dekal a second chance. One such customer is Chanie Apfelbaum, who runs the popular Orthodox Instagram account “Busy In Brooklyn,” which has nearly 100,000 followers.
Apfelbaum told the New York Jewish Week that she tested this year’s product on three different surfaces at her house, leaving it on her countertops for 10 days and placing hot dishes on the coverings. “As an influencer, I was on the hook last year because I promoted it,” Apfelbaum said. “I definitely want to do my due diligence and make sure it’s all good.”
She posted an Instagram story on Monday in which she removed the new lining and said it was “smooth as a baby’s bottom.”
“There is no sticking, nothing,” Apfelbaum said on Instagram. “I’m impressed. There’s nothing on my counter whatsoever.”
And yet, Apfelbaum did not give the product her “official” Busy in Brooklyn stamp of approval because she has “PTSD from last year,” she said.
“Although I did want to give them a chance, and try it, and show you for myself that it does seem to be new and improved, and be completely non-stick,” she said. “I can see a difference. If you had a bad experience and you’re scared, I get it. But it seems to be really great.”
Apfelbaum told the New York Jewish Week that she gives the company credit for “owning up to what they did.”
“They refunded and apologized,” Apfelbaum said. “They could have just shut down, but they went back at it.”
Crombie said that he is expecting at least a 50% return rate, but won’t know for certain until next week — the days leading up to Passover is Kosher Dekal’s busiest time for sales. He added that the company is getting hundreds of returning customers — and that not everyone was displeased the first time around. In an email exchange that Crombie shared with the New York Jewish Week, one customer wrote that “contrary to all the bad publicity you received last year, I was very happy with my kosher Dekal last season, and am looking forward to using the new and improved product this year.”
In another email, a customer wrote that she had difficulties removing Kosher Dekal, but “did not feel right in asking for a refund” and used baking soda and water to remove the residue.
Some customers, however, still felt trepidation over last year’s product. “Some parts of my counter are still sticky today,” one customer wrote in an email to Kosher Dekal.
“It is exactly what I’m looking for but it was a nightmare last year,” another wrote. “The residue was impossible to remove. I still find sticky spots in my counters a year later.”
Crombie understands the hesitation.
“There are a lot of people, we understand, who would never buy it again,” he said. “But the people who do buy it, the people who tested it, are very happy about it. Thank God, the outcome is heartwarming.”
He added that Kosher Dekal has been giving discounts and free orders to many returning customers who have reached out. Dozens of customers, he claimed, sent their refunds back.
“We are excited because we know and are certain that this product is indeed the right formula,” he said. “I have it in my house, on glass, on wood, on the cabinet, I put it everywhere.”
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Looming large over Israel’s 78th Independence Day celebrations: Argentina’s Javier Milei
(JTA) — During his three days in Israel this week, Argentinian President Javier Milei made a strong impression.
There he was, weeping again at the Western Wall. There he was, receiving the Presidential Medal of Honor for his leadership and support for Israel. And there he was, lighting a torch for the Independence Day festivities as the first foreign leader ever to do so.
There Milei was, grabbing a microphone and dancing raucously on stage to the Spanish-language song “Libre” at both the rehearsal for the national ceremony and the live event on Tuesday.
And there he was, ostensibly the reason that the far-right Israeli minister Itamar Ben-Gvir left the ceremony before it began. Ben-Gvir left after being asked to vacate his seat to make way for Milei, in an arrangement that some speculated was meant to prevent Ben-Gvir from being photographed in the same frame as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Milei’s presence in Israel Sunday through Tuesday offering a powerful symbol of his continued support for Israel even as so many other world leaders have distanced themselves. Milei is a longtime philosemite who has said he aims one day to convert to Judaism.
“In life there are partners and there are friends,” Milei said in Spanish during the Independence Day ceremony. “Partners come together for a moment of shared interest. Friends forge unbreakable bonds for life. I am pleased to say that Argentina and Israel are not merely partners, but friendly nations.”
The Independence Day ceremonies projected an image of resilience at a challenging time for Israel, where wars on two fronts are currently in ceasefires announced by U.S. President Donald Trump. Among the others chosen as torch-lighters, seen as one of Israel’s most significant honors, were soldiers who have participated in the years of war that followed Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
Two of the chosen torch-lighters drew sharp criticism. One was Rabbi Avraham Zarbiv, a rabbinical judge who has drawn scrutiny for publicly praising demolition operations in Gaza. In February, the Ombudsman of the Israeli Judiciary ruled that Zarbiv had violated a code of ethics by expressing his views on controversial issues.
“I light this torch in honor of the bulldozer and excavator operators, the trailblazers, destroyers of the enemy and the dismantlers of terrorist infrastructure who protect the lives of our soldiers,” he said at the ceremony.
A cousin of a woman killed in captivity also also denounced the selection of Gal Hirsch, Israel’s coordinator for hostages and missing persons, who faced calls for his resignation in February after telling Haaretz that demonstrations demanding the release of hostages were aiding Hamas. Gil Dickmann, a cousin of Carmel Gat, wrote in a post on Instagram that his selection was “spitting in the faces of families” of the hostages.
Last year, torchlighters for the ceremony included former Israeli hostage Emily Damari, NBA player Deni Avdija and the American Jewish conservative pundit Ben Shapiro, whose appointment was criticized by some Israeli leaders as inappropriately political.
The day’s official programming will end with a ceremony awarding the Israel Prize, the nation’s top civilian honor. Among those receiving the prize this year are the artist Yaacov Agam and Chantal Belzberg, the CEO of a nonprofit that aids the families of fallen soldiers.
Trump was also invited to receive the prize, getting a public invitation in February following an earlier announcement by Netanyahu. He will not be present.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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Marx Brothers fans rejoice: There’s a recording of Harpo speaking
Harpo Marx’s wife, Susan Fleming, once remarked that, when you got him talking, you couldn’t shut him up.
The proof was there for those who chanced to see him in the 1930s and ‘40s, screening clips of the films he made with his brothers. If a crowd was good, he’d deliver what was known as “Red’s Speech,” a reference to the red wig he wore on stage.
The speech grew more verbose with each recitation, with input by Harpo’s friend, the critic Alexander Woollcott, a fount of $5 dollar words. It got so long, in fact, that Harpo would take it out in the form of a long script that spilled off the stage down the aisle.
“There’s always been this fallacy that Harpo never spoke on stage,” said Marx historian Robert S. Bader, author of Four of the Three Musketeers: The Marx Brothers on Stage and Zeppo: The Reluctant Marx Brother. When he did, he would often make a joke about the mute persona he adopted in 1914, opening his remarks with “as I was about to say in 1915.”
In 1964, Harpo was hitting the speaking circuit. He spoke at events for the United Jewish Appeal, having grown more connected to his Jewishness after a 1963 trip to Israel. On these occasions, Bader said, Harpo “might have looked like a local councilman, just wearing a business suit,” and would sneak in a line from his bar mitzvah speech: “For 13 long years, I have toiled and labored for your happiness.”
Advised to retire from performing after a number of heart attacks, Harpo reasoned that, so long as it was for charity and he didn’t get paid, it couldn’t count as work.
That rationale led to Harpo’s appearance at benefits for a number of symphony orchestras. On March 20, 1964, he gave his final performance at a concert for the Riverside Symphony Orchestra in California, playing a suite of songs about the moon, an original composition and conducting a particularly manic take on Haydn’s “Toy Symphony.”
This time, Harpo not only spoke, giving a lively recitation of Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf, he did something unprecedented by allowing himself to be recorded with the understanding the public might someday hear it.
On June 5, 2026 a record of the evening will be released as Harpo Speaks! The Riverside Symphony Concert. It was announced on April 1, but it was no April Fools joke. It’s an outstanding artifact, and it was discovered quite by accident.
John Tefteller, the foremost collector of rare, Marx-related records, was looking for a copy of a 1963 concert with Harpo and comedian-musician Allan Sherman, recorded by Sherman’s son Robert. Looking in the tape box for Pasadena, Sherman instead found the Riverside tape. Oddly enough, Robert Sherman had no memory of recording — or even attending — the Riverside concert.
Bill Marx, Harpo’s son and the arranger of much of his music, says the man on the recording, telling the tale of “Peeduh,” the “boid” and the “huntahs,” is the one he grew up with.
“It was very, very low key,” said Bill Marx, now a celebrated pianist and Juilliard-trained composer, recalling his father’s voice. “I think I would have to say that he was about five or six notes lower than Groucho’s. It was easy to hear him speak. I suppose you could call him soft-spoken. He rarely if ever raised his voice in our house with my two brothers and sisters.”
Instead, he would do something like wake his daughter in the middle of the night to play jacks.
Peter and the Wolf, written for young audiences, was a natural fit for Harpo, and it was his idea to do it. The version of the libretto, co-written by Harpo and Groucho, also features a topical joke for that election year of 1964: “Imagine the triumphant procession. Peeduh at the head, after him the huntahs leading the wolf, then Goldwatuh, Rockefelluh and Nixon.”
That Harpo was a patron of the symphony is no great surprise. He practiced the harp three hours a day and Bill Marx remembers his father’s love of French impressionist composers like Debussy and Ravel and Fauré. When Bill played records in his bedroom, without fail his father would knock on the door, ask what he was listening to, and commit to learning it — which he did.
“He just had a great learning thirst, and I had the privilege of watching this man appear in everybody’s life by doing things that he was compelled to do,” Bill Marx said.
As the narrator of Peter and the Wolf, Harpo is wonderfully expressive, evoking the storytelling of an old-time New York-born Zayde (dressed in his traditional costume at the concert, he donned a new accessory: reading glasses). He sounds quite a lot like Chico, his closest brother in age.
Restoring the tape took major work from audio restorer Joel Tefteller (John’s son) and audio engineer Nick Bergh. At one point, in his closing speech, Harpo walked away from the mic, making the original tape almost inaudible.
“He wasn’t used to looking for a microphone,” said Bader. “He didn’t have a lot of time in front of microphones. I don’t think anybody ever had to say ‘Harpo get closer to the microphone’ ever.”
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UCLA student government condemns campus Hillel for hosting former hostage
A campus event featuring freed Israeli hostage Omer Shem Tov drew the condemnation of UCLA’s student government on Tuesday. In an open letter, the UCLA Students Associated Council said that bringing Tov to speak to students “served to legitimize and normalize” atrocities in Gaza and Lebanon.
Shem Tov, 23, was kidnapped from the Nova music festival in Southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and held hostage in Gaza until his release in a prisoner exchange in February 2025. UCLA hosted him on April 14 for a Yom HaShoah event.
“While we affirm the humanity of all people impacted by violence, we reject the selective platforming of narratives that obscure the broader reality of ongoing state violence,” the student government letter wrote in the letter, which was addressed to the UCLA administration and UCLA Hillel among others. “Israel is currently continuing to carry out what has been widely identified by human rights advocates as a genocide in Gaza, while also expanding its illegal military campaign into Lebanon.
“In this context, elevating a single narrative, absent of critical political and humanitarian framing, serves to legitimize and normalize these ongoing atrocities.”
Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller, UCLA Hillel’s director emeritus, called the statement “completely ridiculous.”
“You can’t present the narrative of your experience without it being called ‘one sided,’” Seidler-Feller said. “There has to be a counter-story to persecution. Is there a counter-story to killing people?”
UCLA Hillel executive director Daniel Gold dismissed the criticism in Tuesday’s letter as antisemitic.
“Hillel at UCLA and Students Supporting Israel UCLA would like to apologize…for absolutely nothing,” he wrote in a statement. “Members of UCLA student government have once again shown they are anti-dialogue, anti-learning, anti-truth, anti-student and antisemitic.”
The USAC did not respond to a request for comment.
As college campuses across the country became a hotspot for pro-Palestinian activism following the Oct. 7 attack, UCLA, with an activist history and a large Jewish population, stood out as a major flashpoint. Its student encampment was the site of a riot in April 2024 and eventually cleared by police in riot gear.
The USAC has sided with pro-Palestinian protesters throughout. In a Feb. 2025 letter titled “We Are All SJP,” the USAC, which is democratically elected by the roughly 30,000-member UCLA student body, condemned Chancellor Julio Frenk’s suspension of Students for Justice in Palestine. The letter referred to Israel only as “the Zionist state” or put the country’s name inside quotation marks.
The University of California has since been sued by the Department of Justice, which said that UCLA created a hostile work environment against Jewish and Israeli faculty in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.
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