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Updated Sept. 5 with new information.

Informal reports have been trickling in over the past few days that Israeli feta is no longer missing from Bay Area Trader Joe’s shelves. Our readers and others have begun finding the feta spot on the shelf filled once again with the familiar blue boxes.

“They are magically back after many months,” one person wrote this week on a Facebook page for Jewish families in the East Bay.

Israeli feta has also been spotted in Mountain View, Corte Madera and Oakland so far, but hopes are high that it will soon return to all Trader Joe’s stores across the Bay Area.

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It started as a rumor, then the talk began to curdle. 

Through the East Bay and the South Bay Jewish communities, the information spread. Soon it was confirmed in person — there was no more Israeli feta on the shelves at many Trader Joe’s in the Bay Area.

The grocery chain is known for suddenly withdrawing products either temporarily or permanently, sometimes leading to consumer outcry. There are even petitions to bring items back, from chocolate covered sunflower seeds to lemon pepper seasoning. A manager at the store on College Avenue in Oakland told J. this week that the absence of Israeli feta was a supply issue.

And yet, a number of loyal Trader Joe’s customers believe there is more to it. 

“People in the Trader Joe’s group are saying that the Israeli feta is well stocked in other states,” said Danielle Katz, who has been on a hunt for the feta, referring to a private Facebook group called “Trader Joe’s meal ideas for busy moms” that has more than 700,000 members.

The Israeli feta is a sheep’s-milk cheese beloved for its “subtle acidity and fine brininess,” as the grocery chain describes it, and is made by a fourth-generation cheesemaking family in Israel. Trader Joe’s branding appears on the package, which is blue and white.

In the post-Oct. 7 world, anything having to do with Israel can quickly generate controversy and stir intense emotions. It is also true that certain perceived slights of Israel turn out to be little more than misunderstandings. However, with tensions at a fever pitch and antisemitism at historic highs, some Bay Area Jews are feeling more sensitive and attuned than ever.

Katz, of Oakland, said that a supply-chain issue was one of the various explanations she’s heard from staff in at least three stores in the East Bay. But she’s also been given other, more dismaying explanations.

She told J. she’d been informed by a manager at the College Avenue store that people have been pulling off the shelf label or even tossing the product on the floor.

“They reported having trouble with customers coming in and destroying the product by throwing them on the ground, which made them explode, and it was a real hassle for them,” she said. “That was their explanation for why they aren’t carrying them.”

At an Alameda store, she said, “I was told that the person in charge of ordering the feta has refused to order any more for that particular store, as far as that employee knew.”

J.’s calls to Trader Joe’s corporate headquarters in Monrovia, California, were not returned as of publication.

Olga Rosen of San Francisco is another who has been searching for the feta for a primary reason. “It’s really good!” she said. 

She told J. a store manager had indicated a supply issue, but she was convinced it was politics at play.

In 2019, Hatem Bazian, a UC Berkeley lecturer in the ethnic studies department and a prominent pro-Palestinian activist who founded the anti-Zionist group Students for Justice in Palestine, called for a boycott of Trader Joe’s on social media, sharing a photo of Israeli feta boxes. “Trader Joe’s is having Israeli Feta on its shelves!” he wrote. “One more reason to stop shopping at the store.”

There are additional clues that anti-Israel activism may be at play in the disappearing feta. On Nov. 18, weeks after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel and start of the war in Gaza, a woman launched a Change.org petition urging Trader Joe’s to discontinue its Israeli feta in protest. The petition is still active and has 1,249 signatures. Posts on social media recently decried what they said was Israel’s appropriation of feta from the Greeks.

Soft white cheeses are in fact found not only in Greece, but in all countries around the Mediterranean, many Middle Eastern countries, and nations like Bulgaria, Georgia and Armenia.

pay attention, greek comrades. this is how it begins. before you know it feta is israeli cheese, always has been, since the days of agamemnon. pic.twitter.com/X5HjLGpxSw

— mazen labban (@mazen_labban) August 19, 2024

Those who say Israeli cuisine doesn’t exist are “delusional,” according to Ari Ariel, a professor at the University of Iowa and an expert on Middle Eastern Jewish foodways. He spoke to J. earlier this year when San Francisco restaurants associated with Israel, including Oren’s Hummus and Sababa, were boycotted for “colonizing” Palestinian food.

Ariel said Israeli food is a mixture of European and Middle Eastern influences and, like all national cuisines, is in a constant state of flux.

“Israel is in the Middle East,” he said. “So it’s not surprising that so many of the foods in modern Israel are Middle Eastern.”

Meanwhile, the hunt for the Israeli feta goes on. Members of a Bay Area Jewish family Facebook group have reported it missing from Trader Joe’s shelves in Danville, San Francisco, Lafayette, Walnut Creek and El Cerrito, and for various reasons. Some said they were told a restock is imminent.

One reason the feta might be targeted is its labeling. Unlike another popular Trader Joe’s product made in Israel — the crispy peanut butter snack Bamba — the feta is specifically and clearly marked “Israeli” and its package is decorated with what looks like Mediterranean tile in the colors of the Israeli flag. Trader Joe’s also sources Dorot frozen garlic and ginger and sometimes wine from Israel, but it’s not as obviously labeled.

While missing from some stores in the Bay Area, the feta is still listed on the Trader Joe’s website. The feta “speaks for itself,” the description reads, “creamy, crumbly, and toothsome, with a wonderfully soft texture and a mild, tart tang – exactly how a feta ought to be.”

Trader Joe’s also carries Greek feta in brine made from sheep’s cheese, which is similar to the Israeli feta but has a different texture. It also contains rennet, an animal enzyme, so unlike the Israeli feta it is not vegetarian, nor kosher.

For Katz, getting her hands on Israeli feta is important. Her husband is an Iraqi Jew whose family fled to Israel, she said, and to him the Israeli feta tastes like home. She also buys it to show her support for Israel in tense times, she said.

“We wanted to make sure that it was still known that it was loved,” she said.