Uncategorized
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.”
—
The post Citing industry changes, Kosherfest, oldest kosher food fair, announces its end appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
Hezbollah Chief: Disarmament Would Be ‘Death Sentence’ for Lebanon
Lebanon’s Hezbollah Chief Naim Qassem gives a televised speech from an unknown location, July 30, 2025, in this screen grab from video. Photo: Al Manar TV/REUTERS TV/via REUTERS
i24 News – Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem said on Saturday that it was not the responsibility of the Shiite terror group “to prevent aggression,” but rather the Lebanese state’s, and it is the responsibility of Hezbollah to engage “when the state and army fail to do so.”
In a recorded televised statement, Qassem sarcastically posed the question whether it was not Hezbollah that should be demanding the Lebanese Army’s disarmament if the latter fails to stop “Israel’s ongoing aggression.”
On the issue of disarming Hezbollah, Qassem said that disarming it in the manner currently proposed is a death sentence for Lebanon.
“Even if the sky falls, we will not be disarmed, not even if the entire world unites against Lebanon. We will not allow this and it will not happen,” Qassem said.
Uncategorized
High schoolers’ ‘human swastika’ on football field shakes San Jose Jewish community
(JTA) — The photo spread swiftly after a student posted it on social media: Eight California high schoolers were lying on their school’s football field, their bodies arrayed in the shape of a swastika.
Alongside the picture was a quote from Adolf Hitler, threatening the “annihilation of the Jewish race.”
The incident at Branham High School in San Jose began on Dec. 3 and has roiled the local Jewish community in the days since, as the wrenching saga has ignited suspensions, recriminations and alarm from around the world.
The photograph and the response to it were first reported by J. Jewish News of Northern California.
“We don’t want to see hatred,” Cormac Nolan, a Jewish Branham senior, told the local Jewish newspaper. “We don’t want to see the idolization of one of the most evil men to ever walk the face of the Earth. We don’t want someone who spews out hatred like this on our campus.”
The school’s student newspaper reported that the students involved had been suspended, and that dozens of other students walked out to protest the incident.
The San Jose Police Department told J. that it is investigating the incident, and the school’s principal, Beth Silbergeld, who is Jewish, said the school was working with the Anti-Defamation League and the Bay Area Jewish Coalition, a local antisemitism advocacy group, “to ensure that we receive appropriate support and guidance as we work to repair the harm that’s been done to our community.”
Silbergeld told J. that she felt pressure to learn from the incident.
“I’ve been in education for a long time and have seen, sadly, lots of incidences of oppression and hate toward many groups,” she said. “I think that we always have a responsibility as schools to do what’s right and to take action and learn from the experiences of other other schools and other incidents as a way to hopefully eliminate actions like what we’ve experienced.”
The incident is not the first time Branham High School has faced controversy over antisemitism on its campus. In April, the California Department of Education ruled that the school had discriminated against its Jewish students by presenting “biased” content about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in a 12th-grade ethnic literature curriculum.
It is also not the first instance of a “human swastika” roiling a school community. In 2019, nine middle schoolers in Ojai, California, also arranged themselves in a “human swastika” and faced disciplinary measures from the school.
Exactly what possessed the Branham students to do what they did is not clear. But psychologists told the J. that the teen years are a peak moment for transgressive behaviors that may or may not reflect deep-seated biases.
“It’s a developmental time where you’re doing new things, you’re trying new things, you’re making mistakes, you’re trying to fit in, you’re trying to get laughs and likes,” Ellie Pelc, director of clinical services at the Bay Area’s Jewish Family and Children’s Services, told the newspaper. “And you often do so in some hurtful or harmful ways that you don’t always have the capacity to think through in advance.”
The photo was met by condemnation by California State Sens. Scott Wiener, who wrote that antisemitism was “pervasive & growing” in a post on Facebook, and Dave Cortese, who said he was “deeply disturbed” by the incident in a statement.
“What happened at Branham High School was not a joke, not a prank, and not self-expression — it was an act of hatred,” wrote San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan in a post on X. “The fact that this was planned and posted publicly makes it even more disturbing.”
By Tuesday, the uproar had sparked a response from district leaders. In a post on Facebook, Robert Bravo, the superintendent for the Campbell Union High School District, wrote that the district “will respond firmly, thoughtfully, and within the full scope allowed by Board Policy and California law.” (Displaying a Nazi swastika on the property of a school is illegal in California.)
He added that the school district considered the incident an instance of “hate violence” based on California state education code, which allows for suspension or expulsion in such cases.
“Our response cannot be limited to discipline alone,” continued Bravo. “We are committed to using this incident as an opportunity to deepen education around antisemitism, hate symbols and the historical atrocities associated with them.”
The antisemitic post comes two months after California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill creating a statewide office assigned to combatting antisemitism in California public schools. The office, which is the first of its kind in the country, was met with praise from local Jewish advocacy groups while some critics warned it could chill academic freedoms.
Marc Levine, the regional director of the Anti-Defamation League in the Central Pacific region, called the incident “repulsive and unacceptable” in a statement on X. The incident was also condemned by the Jewish Community Relations Council of the Bay Area, which wrote in a statement that it had been working with the school about “how to ensure an effective response.”
The Bay Area Jewish Coalition also issued a statement on Tuesday, writing that the antisemitic act had “shaken Jewish families across Northern California and beyond.”
“We hope that what happened at Branham serves as a wake-up call for California and for the rest of the country to take the antisemitism crisis seriously and reverse the trend through real, meaningful action and long-term change,” the statement continued.
The post High schoolers’ ‘human swastika’ on football field shakes San Jose Jewish community appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Nashville Jewish community center sues Goyim Defense League over alleged campaign of intimidation
(JTA) —
A Jewish community center in Nashville has filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the neo-Nazi group Goyim Defense League and several of its leaders and affiliates, accusing them of orchestrating a campaign of antisemitic intimidation, harassment and trespass aimed at terrorizing the city’s Jewish community.
The lawsuit was filed Tuesday by the Southern Poverty Law Center on behalf of the Gordon Jewish Community Center, a 120-year-old nonprofit that serves as a major hub for Jewish life in Nashville. The complaint names the Goyim Defense League, its founder and leader Jon Minadeo II, extremist streamer Paul Miller, who is also known as GypsyCrusader, and several associates.
At the center of the case is a January 2025 incident in which Travis Garland, a Tennessee man affiliated with the Goyim Defense League, allegedly disguised himself as an Orthodox Jewish man and infiltrated the Jewish center’s secured campus. According to the lawsuit, Garland livestreamed the intrusion, mocked Jewish customs and the Holocaust, and refused repeated requests to leave before being forcibly escorted off the property by a security guard.
Garland was later arrested and pleaded guilty in state court to trespassing at the Jewish center, receiving a sentence of nearly a year in jail, according to Nashville television station WTVF.
The complaint alleges Garland acted as part of a coordinated effort, receiving guidance and encouragement from Miller and others who followed the incident in real time via video chat and later promoted it online as a “stunt.”
“Using fear and harassment to threaten and intimidate groups is a despicable act that cannot be tolerated in a multicultural society,” Scott McCoy, the Southern Poverty Law Center’s deputy legal director, said in a statement. “This is the second lawsuit the SPLC has brought against the Goyim Defense League for their actions targeting Nashville’s Black and Jewish communities.”
The lawsuit also ties the January incident to a broader campaign by the Goyim Defense League during a 10-day visit to Nashville in the summer of 2024, when members of the group allegedly harassed Jewish and Black residents, assaulted a Jewish man and a biracial man, and intimidated Black children downtown while waving swastika flags. The SPLC previously filed a separate lawsuit on behalf of a biracial man who was assaulted during that tour.
According to the lawsuit, the Jewish center has spent roughly $75,000 on additional security in the wake of the incidents and says staff and members have altered how they use the campus because of heightened fear.
The lawsuit comes as the Goyim Defense League has faced mounting pressure online and in court. Following a recent investigation by Nashville television station WTVF, websites operated by Minadeo were taken offline by their domain registrar, and several of his accounts were suspended from X. Other Goyim Defense League members have been convicted or indicted in connection with violent incidents during the group’s 2024 visit to Nashville, according to local reporting.
The suit invokes the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 and other federal civil rights statutes and seeks court protection as well as financial compensation and punitive damages.
“This lawsuit demonstrates the Nashville Jewish community’s resolve to stand firm in the face of antisemitic intimidation and to hold accountable those who perpetrate it,” said Ben Raybin, an attorney for the Jewish center.
For a time, the Goyim Defense League was among the most prolific distributors of antisemitic propaganda in the United States, with members spreading flyers in Jewish neighborhoods and other public spaces. While the group’s online reach appears to have diminished more recently, Nashville has remained a focal point of its activity.
The post Nashville Jewish community center sues Goyim Defense League over alleged campaign of intimidation appeared first on The Forward.