Like most grocery stores, Community Market sells a variety of Passover foods. But late last month, in protest of Israel’s war in Gaza, store managers at its two North Bay locations cleared the shelves of all products imported from Israel.
Once word got out, Sonoma County Jews quickly organized. After an intense 24 hours of their passionate appeals, Community Market reversed course, apologized to the Jewish community and restocked its shelves with the Israeli products.
The uproar began March 28 when a congregant from Santa Rosa’s Congregation Shomrei Torah received an email from Community Market that read in part:
“We ordered several products for Passover we were hoping would help the Jewish community celebrate [the holiday]. Unfortunately, many of the products we had ordered were produced in Israel … before the crisis in Gaza had started. We have made the decision to not have the products that were made in Israel on our grocery shelves in both of our locations.”
The email noted that the products, which included jarred haroset and chocolate-covered halvah, had been ordered months earlier, before the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre in Israel and subsequent war. So the market placed them in the stockroom and offered a 25 percent discount.
“We have already paid for the products and we cannot afford to throw them away or donate them,” the email continued. “We have everything marked down, and are on carts in our backstock areas at both stores.”
For Shomrei Torah President Eli Weinzveg, the email set off alarm bells.
“It was really disappointing,” Weinzveg told J. on April 3. “There were a lot of antisemitic dog whistles in this email, from lecturing us why they’re removing the products to offering us a discount because of their out-of-pocket money. We need more antisemitism education in our world, and this is another example of why that is so apparent.”
Founded in 1975, Community Market is a not-for-profit, worker-run store with locations in Santa Rosa and Sebastopol. The stores offer natural foods, organic produce and holistic health products.
Representatives from the store declined J.’s request for comment.
Because Weinzveg is part of a WhatsApp group of Sonoma County Jewish community leaders, word spread quickly. Within minutes, many went into action. Some showed up at the markets to complain, others wrote emails and made calls.
“People stepped up,” Weinzveg said, “and turned the tide.”
Shomrei Torah member Danielle Feldman said she was left “speechless” when she read of the store’s decision to pull Israeli products. She and her mother decided to check it out for themselves.
“It took us several loops to find the Passover shelves,” she recalled of her visit to the Santa Rosa store. “There was a Passover display that had a few items: matzah meal, coffee cake mix, macaroons and mayonnaise, but no matzah.” The products on display were made outside of Israel.
The two were then directed to the storeroom in the back and found a cart that included Passover items from Israel marked down 25 percent.
“We went in and saw there was this entire trolley filled with stuff, all marked on sale. We asked, ‘Why is this back here and why is [everything] on sale?’ We were given a series of different answers. The employees were really nice and respectful but pretty much completely confused and had no idea why these things were taken off the shelves.”
Feldman said it “was awful to come in the back room to buy things or ask for things,” adding that the experience left her mother, whose grandparents fled antisemitism in Hungary, in tears.
By the afternoon of March 28, in response to the outcry, Community Market decided to donate the Israeli products to Shomrei Torah. In the meantime, Rabbi Mendel Wolvovsky of the Sonoma County Chabad Jewish Center also decided to call Community Market and reached general manager Courtney Williams.
“‘I don’t know what’s so complicated about it,’” he recalled telling her. “I said it’s a very difficult time for [the Jewish community], with a lot of animosity toward Israel. I noticed in the [original email] that it was an oversight that [Israeli products] were even ordered. I said, ‘That’s just salt on the wound that you wish you had never ordered them.’”
According to Wolvovsky, he persuaded Williams to change course. He said she put him on speaker phone with the market’s product policy committee, and he repeated the same appeal.
“Immediately they said that was the information they needed to hear,” he recounted. “Within 10 minutes, [Williams] called back to say, ‘What you said had a very strong effect, and the leadership agreed it was the wrong decision. We’re putting these products back on the shelves. What can we do to make amends?’ I said from my end it’s very commendable.”
Julie Simkovitz, who had also complained to the store, got a reply from Williams that she posted on Sonoma County Zionists, a Facebook group with 60 members. The letter read in part, “I sincerely apologize for this situation and to the entire Jewish Community on behalf of Community Market. We never intended to offend anyone or for this to happen. It was a knee jerk reaction on my part to agree to pull the Israeli products after intense pressure from other people in the community who had expressed their concerns.”
“We understand this [war] is not something that has anything to do with the Israeli people themselves,” Williams continued, “and they should not continue to suffer due to circumstances out of their control. I deeply apologize from the bottom of my heart for this situation.”
Community Market followed up with a statement from its board of directors, which read in part, “We sincerely acknowledge several mis-steps in our response to the recent concerns and demands of our customers and workers regarding the products that we carry that are exported from Israel. We did not act in a well-orchestrated fashion to ensure that we were all on the same page as an organization.”
Bay Area grocery stores have been a locus of anti-Israel activism in the past. In 2002 and 2003, Rainbow Grocery Collective in San Francisco launched multiple boycotts of Israeli products. Over the years, Trader Joe’s stores have been the target of protests because the chain continues to offer products made in Israel. In some cases, protesters have entered the stores and placed stickers on Israeli-made items reading “Boycott Israeli goods: Contaminated with apartheid & Zionism.”
Weinzveg was pleased with the outcome.
“It takes a lot for an organization like Community Market to make that decision [to deshelve], reflect and then go back on what they planned,” the Shomrei Torah leader said. “That’s not easy to do. I commend the board who listened rationally and made the right decision.”