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This Jewish family is betting the farm on Thanksgiving turkeys like bubbe cooked
NARVON, PA – A thick, rolling gobble fills the barn in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania as several hundred turkeys stand shoulder to shoulder, shifting in waves like a loud, feathered mob.
They don’t know it, but they’re part of a gamble — one that could reshape the kosher poultry business in America. The question is: Will enough people want a Thanksgiving turkey, at a price between $140 and $400, that tastes like bubbe’s did?
Supermarket poultry has become a fixture of the Jewish kitchen — easy to find, easy to cook, easy to forget. As organic and ethically raised meats gain traction across the country, many kosher families are still left with factory-farmed options that claim tradition but taste like compromise.
This flock belongs to Chosen Farms, a kosher heritage poultry startup run by Yadidya and Miriam Greenberg, a husband-and-wife team who split their work between two states: turkeys here in Lancaster County with help from an Amish farmer, and chickens on 30 acres in Pemberton, New Jersey.
Once the turkeys reach market weight, they begin a Thanksgiving relay — first to a kosher processor in upstate New York, then to Pemberton to be frozen and packed. Labels come off the printer like boarding passes, rattling out destinations: California. Colorado. Florida. Nevada. New York. Orders pile up like suitcases in an airport the day before the holiday.
These are heritage birds — the kind that existed before industrial farming redesigned poultry around speed and uniformity. They come from older bloodlines that could walk, flap their wings and develop muscle over time. Today’s supermarket birds are bred to grow fat fast, their skin stretched thin over rapidly expanding bodies. They arrive like something delivered by algorithm. Heritage birds arrive with history.
The turkeys live twice as long as their grocery store counterparts. They keep the genetics, and much of the flavor, of the past. If you want your chicken soup to taste like your bubbe’s version, you start with one of these.
As a teenager, Miriam volunteered on farms in Maryland and later trained as a classical chef in New York. She speaks about modern poultry with the bluntness of someone who has tasted too much of it. “They neutered all the flavors. It just tastes like mush,” she said.
Heritage birds, she insists, give you something more flavorful. “It’s like tasting butter after a lifetime of margarine.”
Heritage breeds and Hanukkah goose
Miriam isn’t the only one making the case for flavor. Gidon van Emden, CEO of Kol Foods, which specializes in kosher grass-fed beef, lamb and pasture-raised chicken, has seen growing curiosity about heritage breeds in the kosher market. Consumers tell him the difference is noticeable immediately.
Van Emden believes the kosher market is hungry — not just for cleaner food, but for food that feels intentional. “If you mistreat the animal — bad feed, bad genetics — it’ll taste more watery,” he said.
He and Yadidya go back years. Greenberg taught him how to be a shochet, a butcher. Now, Kol Foods and Chosen Farms are among the few companies trying to expand what kosher poultry can be.
Yadidya bought the Pemberton property in 2022, and soon after married Miriam. The pasture is in the same swath of South Jersey where Holocaust survivors resettled and rebuilt their lives running chicken farms.
These day, in the kitchen, Yadidya boxes frozen turkeys — lining cardboard with insulated wrap, dropping in ice packs and sealing each shipment with a strip of tape. Their sukkah from last month’s holiday still stands in the yard, a reminder that the Jewish calendar doesn’t always make room for farm schedules. Their two-year-old brown herding dog, Peanut Butter, zigzagged between the chickens, nipping at their heels.
Chosen Farms sold its first batch of kosher heritage turkeys last year. It was a modest 20 birds. This year, they tripled that to 60. There’s no marketing budget, no social media campaign. Orders came in online by word of mouth, passed between butchers, rabbis, chefs and families looking for something better than the standard frozen brick with a pop-up timer.
Not all of their orders are for November. Yadidya pried open a freezer and revealed rows of heritage geese. The traditional Ashkenazi “Hanukkah goose” was once a staple dish in Eastern Europe, especially for Jews who couldn’t afford beef. Its rendered fat, known as schmaltz, became the secret weapon for frying latkes.
“We’re one of the only places in the country raising and selling kosher geese,” Yadidya said. Goose requires specialized equipment to pluck, and at $30 a pound, it’s not exactly an impulse buy. But Greenberg said demand returns every winter, a culinary echo of an older Jewish kitchen.
Farm life, Jewish life
Living on a farm doesn’t mean leaving Jewish life behind. The Greenbergs chose Pemberton precisely because it keeps them connected. They’re 30 minutes from Cherry Hill and Lakewood, both home to large Orthodox communities and kosher restaurants. There’s a mikvah nearby, and a daily minyan within a 20-minute drive. “There are farmers who move two hours away from Jewish life and then struggle,” he said. “I didn’t want that life. We paid more to be close.”
Friends drive in to spend Shabbat with them. In the summer, Jewish camping groups pitch tents by the trees. “We’re far enough to have space,” Yadidya said, “but close enough to still feel part of something.”
Chosen Farms isn’t an anomaly. It’s part of a small but growing movement of Jews choosing to make their living in agriculture. The Jewish Farmers Network, which began in 2017, now counts 1,800 farmers across 46 states. Some run educational farms for school trips, but others simply farm. No workshops. No signage. Just soil, livestock and spreadsheets.
“When Jewish people enter agriculture, it often feels like they’re departing from Judaism,” said Shani Mink, the group’s co-founder and executive director. “But we try to show that it can actually be a deeper encounter with it — because at its core, Judaism is agrarian.”
The Greenbergs’ farm still feels young — part vision, part construction site. They’re hoping to add heritage ducks next year, starting with the Silver Appleyard breed, which currently has no kosher supplier. A small curbside farm stand is in the works, where they could sell eggs, meat and Miriam’s sourdough bread.
The Greenbergs, as is their tradition, are hosting Thanksgiving on the farm with visiting family and friends. The turkeys will be their own, of course. Peanut Butter will make his rounds.
In a few days, ovens will preheat. Football games will hum in the background. Parade balloons will float past Macy’s like oversized guests. And somewhere between the gobbling and the grace after meals, one Jewish farm will find out whether a taste from the past still belongs to the future.
The post This Jewish family is betting the farm on Thanksgiving turkeys like bubbe cooked appeared first on The Forward.
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Jewish Democrats back Michigan AG Dana Nessel’s decision to skip state party convention
(JTA) — Local and national Jewish Democrats say they are sympathetic after Michigan’s Jewish attorney general, Dana Nessel, said she would skip the state Democratic Party’s nominating convention over concerns about antisemitism and harassment.
“I don’t blame AG Nessel for not wanting to go and basically put herself in situations that feel untenable in this moment of time and don’t add any value politically, personally,” Jessica “Decky” Alexander, the Michigan Jewish Democratic caucus chair, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on Friday.
Alexander’s comment came a day after Nessel announced during a televised antisemitism roundtable that she would be skipping the convention next month, where party leaders will finalize the state’s Democratic candidate for Senate following a divisive primary that has focused in part on Israel and antisemitism.
“I don’t feel safe going. I feel like my presence isn’t going to be welcome. I don’t want to get chased around. I don’t want to get harassed. I don’t want to get yelled and screamed at. I don’t want to get booed off the stage, irrespective of what I’m saying,” Nessel said during the roundtable. “And I believe that if I go, that is what will happen because it’s been happening to me.”
She said she had filed a formal complaint within the party about a party official who had called her a neo-Nazi because of her beliefs. “Why is this person more accepted in our party than me?” she asked without naming the official. Her office responded to a request for comment by referring to the recorded livestream of the antisemitism roundtable.
Nessel’s declaration comes in the final days of the primary between Rep. Haley Stevens, a pro-Israel stalwart, and Abdul El-Sayed, a democratic socialist who is deeply critical of Israel. El-Sayed is surging in polls despite a reported $30 million spent against him by AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby, and its supporters, whom he has made a target of criticism from the campaign trail.
Nessel’s comments also follow turmoil at the Michigan Democratic Party’s endorsement convention in April, where Stevens was booed by attendees. A third primary candidate who later dropped out of the race, state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, said a convention attendee had targeted her Jewish husband with an antisemitic slur.
The incident has fueled alarm among Jewish Democrats, according to Halie Soifer, CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America.
“She’s not alone,” Soifer told JTA about Nessel on Friday. “We’ve heard from other Jewish Democrats who attended the Democratic Party convention earlier this year in Michigan, and there was a sense of discomfort amid what felt like a pro-Palestinian protest [that] may have even blurred the line for some into antisemitic sentiment — and it’s really concerning.”
Nessel has raised the alarm about antisemitism within the party for years, alleging in 2024 that Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib, a prominent pro-Palestinian voice, had been antisemitic when criticizing charges Nessel filed against pro-Palestinian protesters at the University of Michigan.
For her part, Alexander said she would be participating in the nominating convention and said she believed the chair of the state Democratic Party, Curtis Hertel, had been “very accessible and very open to making sure that we, including our Jewish elected officials, feel safe in that space.” But she said she understood why Nessel was staying away.
“It would never even occur to me, but I’m not an elected official,” Alexander said. “It’s a different stake for me than it is for Dana. I understand her completely.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Jewish Democrats back Michigan AG Dana Nessel’s decision to skip state party convention appeared first on The Forward.
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Maine rabbis call for peace, urge politicians to stop calling Gaza war a ‘genocide’
(JTA) — Every congregational rabbi in Maine has signed onto a statement calling for peace and urging the state’s political leaders to stop using the term “genocide” to describe Israel’s war in Gaza, following a Democratic primary in which several candidates used the label for the first time.
But the rabbis also indicated that they, too, were unsatisfied with conditions in the Middle East and called on Israeli and Palestinian leaders to work toward a peaceful future.
“We call upon Maine’s leaders, and particularly its political leaders, to reject the irresponsible usage of the term in describing the Israel-Hamas War,” said the statement released on Friday. “We also call upon Israeli and Palestinian leaders to end the cycle of violence and to create a better world for both Palestinian and Israeli children.”
The statement, titled “A Call for Peace and Responsible Rhetoric,” argues that using the term as a “political slogan does not advance peace in the Middle East.” The term “erases essential moral and legal distinctions, diminishes the meaning of genocide, and inflames hatred for the local Jewish community,” the rabbis say.
“Compassion for Palestinians does not require the adoption of hateful and misleading language,” they continue. “Advocating for peace does not require participation in a ‘Holocaust inversion’ against the Jewish community. And political leadership does not require demonizing one community in the service of another.”
The statement comes days after Troy Jackson, a former logger and state Senate president, secured the Maine Democratic U.S. Senate nomination Saturday at the party’s nominating convention to replace Graham Platner, a staunch Israel critic who dropped out of the race earlier this month. Platner faced a sexual assault allegation, which he denies. Jackson now faces Republican incumbent Sen. Susan Collins in November’s general election.
Platner’s romp to the primary victory featured routine use of “genocide” to describe Israel’s actions. And ahead of the convention to replace him, Jackson and several other Democratic hopefuls who later exited the race began using the term “genocide” to describe Israel’s war in Gaza for the first time, a shift that drew scrutiny from some Jewish leaders and voters in the state.
The use of the term has become a “currency for acquiring power and position in Maine’s Democratic party,” Rabbi Rachel Isaacs, the leader of Beth Israel Congregation in Waterville, who also signed the statement, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
“Too many Maine Democrats are cynically willing to trade in that currency at the expense of our safety and dignity,” she said in an emailed statement. “We decided we needed to say something collectively, both about the specious and dangerous nature of the claim, and about how much damage has been done to our families and congregants.”
The statement Friday was spearheaded by the Jewish Community Alliance of Southern Maine and signed by every congregational rabbi in the state, including Rabbi Bill Siemers of the Conservative Congregation Beth Israel in Bangor and Rabbi Erica Asch of the Reform Temple Beth El in Augusta. (Rabbis affiliated with the Chabad movement in Maine did not appear on the signatory list.)
Zach Schwartz, the director of the Jewish Community Relations Council at the Jewish Community Alliance of Southern Maine, said the federation hoped the “unity displayed here in Maine can inspire Jewish communities across the US to also unite against the extremist rhetoric harming our community and our children.”
Rabbi Josh Stanton, the associate vice president of interfaith and intergroup initiatives for Jewish Federations of North America, also hailed the joint statement.
“Maine’s Jewish clergy are setting an important example with their call to put aside inflammatory rhetoric and look to the common good,” Stanton said in an emailed statement. “At a time of rising polarization and declining civil discourse, the Jewish Community Alliance of Southern Maine’s efforts to unify the community around this important message are a mark of true leadership.”
Isaacs told JTA that she hoped Jackson would “support, understand, and advocate for all of Maine’s citizens, including the totality of Maine’s diverse Jewish community.”
“Work with us to figure out how to express outrage and legitimate critique of Israel’s government without succumbing to language that you might not know is an ancient antisemitic trope, or dismissing the security needs of Israel’s citizens,” Isaacs said of her message to Jackson. “Please have the courage to forge your own path, and not follow in the footsteps of Graham Platner, a man who should have never been normalized, endorsed, or empowered.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Maine rabbis call for peace, urge politicians to stop calling Gaza war a ‘genocide’ appeared first on The Forward.
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Boy George cedes role of King Herod in ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ production after releasing pro-Israel song
(JTA) — Boy George has withdrawn from his run as King Herod in London’s West End revival of “Jesus Christ Superstar,” days before he was due to take the stage and 24 hours after releasing “We Will Dance Again,” dedicated to the victims of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on the Nova music festival in Israel.
The 80’s pop star was scheduled to appear at London’s Palladium starting Monday as part of the production’s rotating cast playing King Herod, the Judean king who is best known by Jews for his expansion of the Second Temple and to Christians for his efforts to stave off the arrival of a challenger — the story of which is reflected in the rock opera by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice.
Boy George will be replaced by actor Richard Armitage in the London production.
In announcing the cast change, Paul Kelmsley, the singer’s manager, did not directly mention the blowback the former Culture Club frontman was receiving for releasing a pro-Israel song but alluded to it.
“George has never been afraid to stand by his personal convictions, and I have always respected him for that,” he said. ”In this instance, I felt it was right to step aside, allowing the production to remain the focus, while ensuring everyone involved can move forward with mutual respect and goodwill.”
Boy George is defending his decision to release the song, saying he believes artists should be free to express their views even when they are unpopular. In “We Will Dance Again,” the singer rejects claims of genocide against Israel and proclaims, “If you’re ever confused, I stand with the Jews.”
Earlier Friday, Boy George lashed back at the vitriol he was getting online. “What is most shocking is the amount of gay folk attacking me, ” he posted on X. “If you support terrorism you can in the words of Divine ‘Take your toolkit and go f—_ a garage,’” he said, referring to a quote attributed to the taboo-breaking transgender artist.
“When I say ‘they want to kill every last one of us’ I am also talking about us queers, not just the Jewish community,” Boy George said. “When will you wake up?”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Boy George cedes role of King Herod in ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ production after releasing pro-Israel song appeared first on The Forward.
