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Citing industry changes, Kosherfest, oldest kosher food fair, announces its end
(JTA) — After more than three decades, an annual trade show of kosher foods that saw the evolution of the cuisine in America grow from gefilte fish and pastrami to “facon,” gluten-free cookies and CBD gum is no more.
“Exhibitors feel Kosherfest has run its course,” the company that organized the two-day event, Diversified Business Communications, announced on Wednesday.
The company’s statement attributed the decision to shifts in the supermarket industry and in how stores display and purchase kosher products. Buyers for supermarkets, it said, are increasingly likely to buy kosher products at general trade shows rather than events specific to kosher food.
“As this buyer is responsible for sourcing and purchasing a wide array of products, they are more likely to attend food events displaying items not just exclusive to kosher,” the company said. “A certified kosher only food show such as Kosherfest is too niche for their attendance.”
The decision to cancel Kosherfest — which has included more than 325 exhibitors displaying their products and has drawn as many as 6,000 attendees each fall — comes as kosher food has gone mainstream. As of 2018, according to the Boston Globe, some 40% of packaged food and drink sold in the United States was certified kosher. Last year, Rabbi Eli Lando, the executive manager of OK Kosher, a certification agency, said Jews make up just 20% of kosher products’ consumer base, according to the publication Food Dive.
At the same time, supermarkets and other pillars of the kosher marketplace have been joined by social media influencers in promoting new food products to Jews who keep kosher. That shift was accelerated during the pandemic, when Kosherfest was suspended for a year before returning to muted crowds in 2021. Recently, it had been showing signs of strain. Last year, the fair was still recruiting vendors just days before its opening. Vendors who had reserved booths for this year will have their payments refunded, the company said.
Some longstanding Kosherfest attendees thought the show had shifted to cater too much to influencers, while some influencers said the show never felt totally accessible to them.
“The food industry has evolved and social media influencers definitely have a voice and a presence and they get products in front of consumers,” said Chanie Apfelbaum, a kosher cookbook author and social media personality under the moniker “Busy in Brooklyn.” “So, it’s definitely something that was necessary that they weren’t really ready to bring to the table.”
Apfelbaum, who said she had been introduced to Korean cuisine after meeting a chef at Kosherfest, will be hosting a cooking competition at Kosher-Palooza, a new event that will take place later this month at the same New Jersey convention center that previously hosted Kosherfest.
Kosher-Palooza is geared to individual consumers, according to its website, with wine tastings, blind taste tests and cooking demonstrations taking place alongside displays of new products.
“You (and your appetite) are invited to a massive celebration of all things kosher with hundreds of food brands, cookbook authors, influencers, and experts, all under one roof,” announced a press release for the event distributed last month.
Among the companies highlighted on Kosher-Palooza’s website is KosherCatch, a New England-based fresh fish company. Its founder, Jeffrey Ingber, said he had been a longtime Kosherfest attendee but thought the show had waned recently.
“Over the past 10 years there was nothing new to see, which is a surprise because there are emerging products and new products and creative products coming out every year by manufacturers,” he said.
Apfelbaum said she had seen the same thing. “Definitely Kosherfest in the last couple of years has been very disappointing for anyone that’s in the industry,” she said. “I just found there weren’t that many vendors anymore. It really had slowed down.”
The demise coincided with a rapid explosion of accessible kosher products — in some ways making the show a victim of the success of its field.
“This year we’re celebrating the centennial of American kosher certification, and efforts by certifiers during that century have left the kosher industry in an excellent position,” said David Zvi Kalman, a scholar at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America who studies trends in Jewish life.
“The fact that there are kosher products up and down the supply chain means that manufacturers can easily source kosher ingredients, and ingredient manufacturers have an incentive to certify to stay competitive,” Kalman added. “While effective marketing has been important to the industry’s growth — it saved the [Orthodox Union] from a period of stagnation in the 1950s — there are now strong network effects that encourage companies to certify even without the help of events like Kosherfest.”
In a statement commenting on the end of Kosherfest, its founder, Menachem Lubinsky, said he was proud of the show’s 33-year run. Lubinsky sold the show to Diversified Business Communications in 2004 but remained involved in its production.
“Looking back, I can proudly say that the show was an amazing run and the impetus for a glorious chapter in the growth of kosher and the Jewish community,” Lubinsky wrote.
“The last three plus decades of the show was a period when tens of thousands of products became kosher, dozens of huge modern kosher independent supermarkets were launched, there was an explosion of kosher restaurants of diverse themes, dozens of new kosher cookbooks published, and we witnessed the advent of a new era in social media and the Internet to name but a few of these gigantic accomplishments,” he added. Kosher became popular in every area of life.”
With kosher products readily available in many places, observers said kosher-keeping consumers are increasingly looking for unique or boundary-pushing food experiences — a niche promoted by Fleishigs Magazine, a lead sponsor of Kosher-Palooza. “More than just the authority on kosher cooking, Fleishigs serves up kosher like never before,” the magazine, whose name is a Jewish term for meat dishes, promises.
“Kosher consumers are demanding fresh, new products that we want to see on the market and that’s what we want,” Apfelbaum said. “That’s what we’re looking for.”
One convener of discussion about new frontiers in kosher dining is Elan Kornblum, publisher and president of the Great Kosher Restaurants Magazine and the creator of the Great Kosher Restaurant Foodies Facebook group, which boasts more than 82,000 members. Kornblum will be hosting a meet-and-greet at Kosher-Palooza but this week took a moment to lament Kosherfest’s end in his Facebook group.
“In the 20 years I went, I certainly have had great memories, met some great people from all over the world and did a lot of business here,” he posted about Kosherfest. “Sad to see it end.”
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The post Citing industry changes, Kosherfest, oldest kosher food fair, announces its end appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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The Yeshiva issue that won’t go away
A backroom deal to gut oversight of private schools – specifically to bail out yeshivas that fail to teach basic subjects, condemning tens of thousands of Hasidic students to illiteracy and choking off the chance to participate in broader society – is coming back to haunt its architects. New York’s Governor and the Legislature likely assumed they secured a political win that would quickly fade from public attention.
They were wrong.
The state was forced to justify its actions before a judge in a pair of hearings in April as part of a lawsuit challenging the rollback that was filed last September. As a longtime attorney, I can tell you that the language of small-minded politics translates poorly to the courtroom. The state’s lawyers were forced to advance arguments that legitimize educational denial and forced insularity. And in doing so, they mar our state’s tradition of protecting individual rights.
Renowned education attorney Michael Rebell was leading the suit on behalf of Hasidic and Haredi students who have been harmed by the dismantling of standards. The plaintiffs argue that the state abandoned its obligation to ensure all children receive a “sound basic education,” a constitutional floor for schooling recognized by the Court of Appeals.
To justify the evisceration of standards, the state claims our guarantee of a sound basic education does not apply to students of nonpublic schools. It strikes at the foundation of New York’s educational system, which was codified in the State Constitution’s Education Article through a Constitutional Convention more than 130 years ago.
The Article’s framers made their intention clear: to ensure all children are prepared for engagement in civic life, whether they attended a public or nonpublic school. As one delegate of the Convention avowed, “there can be found no man in this Convention who will say that there are children of the State that ought not to be educated.”
The principle is simple: While parents may choose religious or private education, the state still bears responsibility for ensuring all children receive the basic tools necessary to function as citizens. But to defend last year’s rollback, state lawyers argued that parents are “free to opt out” of public schools, even if the alternative schools deny students the tools to understand the world around them. The state’s position, taken to its logical conclusion, permits nonpublic schools to teach children anything, or nothing at all.
This becomes even more troubling as New York expands support for nonpublic education. Through its recent opt-in to the nonprofit scholarship tax credit program, New York will see billions more dollars in donations toward private school tuition. Establishing baseline standards for curriculum is essential for producing an informed citizenry — that becomes significantly more difficult when our tax system props up institutions without meaningful oversight.
The state’s arguments also undermine New York’s reputation as a national leader in protecting individual rights.
State officials have aggressively defended voting rights protections, reproductive freedom, and anti-discrimination laws against legal attack. As a rogue White House tramples upon our rights, our Governor, Legislature, and Attorney General have gone to great lengths to fortify our protections.
Yet in this case, the state was effectively arguing that tens of thousands of children can be carved out both from the guarantee of a right and the opportunity to participate in society. State lawyers even contended that students denied a basic education possess no actionable deprivation of liberty or property rights.
This is a glaring departure from the contentions our state makes for the preservation of individual liberties against violation from the government. How could we credibly argue, for example, that immigrants should be able to sue ICE agents over due process rights if students can’t sue the state over their constitutional guarantee to an education? It’s a slippery slope: Deny one group legal protection against harm from the state, and you imperil the sanctity of all those protections.
The lawsuit over last year’s budget deal is still ongoing. A decision may come down any time now, but certainly is likely before the end of the year. An appeal by the losing party is all but certain. That means New York’s lawyers may continue to be forced into defending arguments that sanction students’ educational deprivation and societal isolation, and, in the process, irreparably damage our status as a bulwark for individual liberty.
The political architects of this deal may have hoped the issue would quietly disappear. Instead, the consequences are only becoming harder to defend.
The post The Yeshiva issue that won’t go away appeared first on The Forward.
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The Netherlands will return to Eurovision after boycott over Israel
(JTA) — The Netherlands will return to the Eurovision Song Contest, overriding a broadcaster that withdrew over Israel’s actions in Gaza.
The Dutch organization that oversees public broadcasting, the Nederlandse Publieke Omroep, said on Wednesday that it will take over the country’s entry to Eurovision after Avrotros, the broadcaster that usually takes part in Eurovision for the Netherlands, pulled out of the 2027 event in Burgas, Bulgaria.
Avrotros said last month that it withdrew because the event “can no longer be considered neutral,” citing Israel’s inclusion amid “the severe humanitarian suffering in Gaza and the ongoing restrictions on press freedom.”
Avrotros dropped out of the most recent contest in May 2026, and the Netherlands did not participate after the NPO ruled out identifying another broadcaster. Spain, Ireland, Iceland and Slovenia also boycotted this year’s Eurovision. Israel’s participation in the world’s largest music contest has become a source of intense controversy, sparking mass protests. The contest drew 35 million fewer viewers this year.
For the next Eurovision, NPO is assigning the broadcaster NOS to provide coverage of the event and an “independent team of experts” to select the Dutch act.
“We understand that participation in the Eurovision Song Contest evokes mixed feelings in the Netherlands,” said Jet de Ranitz, the chairman of the NPO’s executive board. “We have explicitly asked the [European Broadcasting Union] to once again make the unifying character of the festival an important part of the event, in recognition of a time of geopolitical unrest, war, and polarization.”
The NPO added that the EBU, which owns the contest, has “taken significant steps regarding the rules of the Eurovision Song Contest.” The EBU introduced changes in August that included barring countries involved in armed conflict from hosting the competition. It also made adjustments to the voting process after accusations of politically motivated voting.
Avrotros said the new rules were not sufficient to ensure that Eurovision remains “independent and neutral.”
Martin Green, the director of Eurovision, said in a statement that the contest was “delighted to welcome the Netherlands back” in 2027.
Ireland is set to boycott Eurovision again in 2027 after RTÉ, the national broadcaster, said last week that its position “remains unchanged.”
RTÉ cited “the appalling and ongoing loss of lives in Gaza and the humanitarian crisis there which continues to put the lives of so many civilians at risk,” adding that it was “deeply concerned by the continued denial of independent access to international journalists to the territory.”
Spain could also stay out of Eurovision next year. José Pablo López, the president of Spanish broadcaster RTVE, announced at a Senate hearing on Tuesday that he supported a continued boycott, saying it was “painful that Israel continues to participate.”
Meanwhile, Belgium confirmed its participation despite calls for a boycott by its public media unions.
“Participation is in no way an endorsement or normalization of what is happening in Gaza and the rest of the world,” said Frederik Delaplace, the CEO of the Flemish broadcaster VRT. “We do note, however, that the EBU is no longer shying away from these difficult societal and geopolitical issues.”
The post The Netherlands will return to Eurovision after boycott over Israel appeared first on The Forward.
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Police label shooting in Belleville, Ontario, a hate-motivated attack against the Jewish community
(JTA) — TORONTO – The shooter who opened fire on a Belleville, Ontario, synagogue Sunday evening committed an anti-Jewish hate-motivated offense, according to the city’s police chief.
“This was a deliberate attack directed at members of the Jewish community during one of the holiest observances of the year,” Belleville police chief Murray Rodd said at a press conference on Thursday, adding that the shooter had combustible materials, including gasoline, in his truck.
He said the threat posed to Jewish communities required increased alertness on the part of Canadian law enforcement. Police stationed outside the Sons of Jacob synagogue had engaged in a shootout with the assailant, Sean Ward, that prevented him from entering the building as members of the congregation were about to begin Yom Kippur services.
Rodd noted that the force had a long-time relationship with the Jewish community that involved “our proactive pre-positioning of on-duty staff” to ensure the safety of Jewish worshippers. “One of the messages to my colleagues around the province and the country is: It is clearly time that we all be proactive.”
Rodd said the efforts of Constables Jeff Smith and Michael McCurdy prevented the attacker from using the explosive materials he had with him, as well as a “significant” amount of ammunition.
Smith, who was stationed outside of Sons of Jacob to provide security, remains in critical condition but is making progress, according to Rodd. Ward later died of his wounds from the exchange with police.
“[The shooter] had the means, the mechanism, and the motive to perpetrate a greater act. The only thing that stopped entry into the synagogue to execute the intent were the two officers,” said Rodd. “He was equipped with other weapons and the means to carry on a gun battle for a long period of time.”
The CBC reported that police obtained a video of the attack in Belleville, a town over 100 miles east of Toronto on the north shore of Lake Ontario. On the video, Ward is heard shouting. Police report he is saying, “You are going to die for the Jews.”
Rodd confirmed that before Ward targeted the Sons of Jacob, he scoped out the synagogue grounds. “We know that there was a reconnaissance in the presence of our officer, but nothing that would have alarmed him or would have triggered him to be on the defensive,” Rodd said.
Ward was a former member of the Canadian Armed Forces. Rodd noted.
“He was shot multiple times in multiple places,” Rodd said. “He has everything extending from fractures to wounds, and is still bearing shrapnel.”
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