Heavily Jewish Brooklyn food co-op mulls ban on Israel produce

[ensho]

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1066355.html


Located in the heart of Brooklyn, near Prospect Park, the Park Slope Food Coop is at the nexus of the borough's many diverse Jewish populations. From the liberal Jews of Park Slope to the Hasidic Jews of Crown Heights, the coop is one of the few places in Brooklyn where Jews of all denominations converge in a shared mission: to buy natural foods at reasonable prices.

But the co-op's unusual Jewish character is being tested by a proposal to ban products bought from Israel, such as the persimmons and red peppers that are currently in the produce aisle.

Since the Gaza operation, there has been a rash of campaigns around the world to divest from Israel and to boycott its products. At Hampshire College this month, a spat ensued when a pro-Palestinian student group erroneously announced that the school was the first American college to divest from Israel. Israeli tennis star Shahar Peer was denied a visa to play at a major tournament in Dubai, and Britain has experienced ongoing efforts to boycott Israeli academic institutions.
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The proposal at the co-op is not likely to be economically meaningful; perhaps a few shipments of vegetables are at stake. But the debate is taking place in a rare hotbed of diverse Jewish life.
-snip-
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talking, debating, is good

[baldguy]

1. Well, they're obviously anti-Semites who love terrorists.

[aranthus]

3. No. Just foolish.

The article doesn't say if the woman who started this is Jewish or not. She could be either (not that that is dispositive). This sort of thing crosses all lines. By the way, the only person who has so far raised a false charge regarding the use of the word "anti-semite," is you.

[baldguy]

4. Its sad that you think the prospect of a small co-op taking a stand for justice is foolish.

[aranthus]

48. They aren't taking a stand for justice.

They may think that they are, but that is their foolishness. Based on further reports, "they," is apparently one woman who's idea went nowhere.

[Ken Burch]

6. Why foolish. This food co-op is honoring the truest Jewish values of all

Values which require those who hold them to ALWAYS be on the side of the oppressed rather than the oppressors.

The co-op is Jewish. It's the Israeli government and the IDF who aren't.

[aranthus]

47. No they're not.

First of all, the co-op is not Jewish. It's a community co-op in an area with a Jewish community, which according to at least some of the posters here who claim to be from the neighborhood, is only about 10% of the population.

Second, we don't know if the person who first suggested the boycott to the co-op is Jewish or not.

Third, Jewish civilization values truth and justice, which is why we support the oppressed. Truth and justice suggest that the situation in Gaza is not nearly what the pro-boycott folks claim it is. In other words, they are acting on false information. There is no justice without truth.

Fourth, the boycott is motivated much more by Leftist ideology than Jewish ideology. It is Leftist ideology which finds goodness in mere weakness. Jewish ideology, instead, finds goodness in goodness, not in power or lack of power. The people supporting the boycott may be Jewish, but, if they are, they are acting on their Leftism, not their Jewishness. There is no wisdom there.

[Ken Burch]

49. Opposing Operation Cast Lead is NOT "mere weakness"

Supporting Israeli security policy has nothing to do with "goodness". It can never be goodness for one people to dispossess another, especially if the group that's been dispossessed bears no responsibility whatsoever for the historic suffering of the group in whose name the dispossession is being done. The only people that ever deserved to suffer for historic antisemitism were the Europeans. What happened in the Arab world had no connection to the Christian sin of antisemitism, and it was never fair to imply that Palestinians or other Arabs were the successors in evil to the Romans, the Inquisition, the tsars and the Nazis. The Palestinian reaction to Zionism would have been just the same had any other group, even any other ARAB group, suddenly swooped in from another continent and proclaimed that it had the right to drive Palestinians out of the homes they'd lived in and the land they'd worked on for hundreds if not thousands of years. This never had anything to do with the fact that the people sweeping in were Jewish. The fact that Palestinian Arabs had always, prior to 1929, lived in peace and cooperation with the indigenous Jewish community in Palestine proves this.

And there's been virtually no correlation between the use of the Israeli military and anything even vaguely resembling justice since at least 1967. None of the wars since then have been about defending the persecuted or the powerless, since Israelis(especially the settlers)are not remotely either.

The State of Israel, as it currently acts, has nothing whatsoever to do with Jewish, democratic or humanist values. It has degenerated into just another right-wing state obsessed with the meaningless goal of taking land for the sake of taking land. It can't be worthy of your support unless it radically changes its policies. Why do you bother with defending a political project that no longer has any redeeming values?

[Jefferson23]

2. Perhaps only symbolic for now but hopefully a growing trend.

[HamdenRice]

5. Heavily Jewish? More like heavily lesbian, heavily Mommy, heavily "stroller nazi"

This sounds like it was written by someone who has never been to Park Slope. I never thought of it as a "heavily Jewish" neighborhood. During the 80s, the group it was most known for being a haven to was lesbians. Then it became yuppies, particularly yuppies leaving the city to have kids. So it ceased being known as lesbian and became known as heavily "mommy" because of all the young moms, and more particularly known for "stroller Nazis," the aggressive upscale thirty-something mothers with enormous strollers who take over the sidewalk. While NYC's white population is disproportionately Jewish, I wouldn't call Park Slope "heavily Jewish," but more like heavily yuppie of all races, ethnicities and religions.

If the Park Slope Food Co-op voted to ban Israeli produce it's because that kind of action is representative of "politically correct" yuppiedom.

[Ken Burch]

7. You just insulted lesbians, mothers and mothers with kids in strollers.

You now categorize ALL those groups as antisemitic?

May we assume that you think no one in those groups is Jewish?

Misdirected anger much, my friend.

What the Israeli government is doing to Palestinians is a betrayal of Jewish values, which are humane and universalist, not militarist and nationalist.

You should feel a moral obligation to protest what's been done in Gaza, not to parrot right-wing applause lines about "political correctness". People who hate "political correctness" also universally despise Jews. They back Israel because they want a Judenrein United States.

[Dorian Gray]

10. I didn't think he was doing that...

more like stating the demographics of the neighborhood. It is yuppie (some of whom may be Jewish), but Park Slope doesn't identify as a Jewish neighborhood.

[Ken Burch]

45. He was setting those groups up as if they automatically wouldn't be Jewish.

And it seems pretty clear that the whole point of his post was to deny that what was happening here was a store with a heavily Jewish clientele standing up to the oppressive acts of the Israeli security apparatus.

[HamdenRice]

11. That's the silliest post I've read in a really long time!

As Dorian Gray, a Park Slope resident is trying to tell you, I'm stating what Park Slope's demographics actually are. How on earth do you get that I'm calling them anti-Semitic? The point is that some reporter did not do his/her homework.

Park Slope has never been "heavily Jewish." It was for a long time, working class/lower middle class Irish (when Dog Day Afternoon was shot there). Then it had waves of gentrification, and the first wave was gays and lesbians -- but especially lesbians -- in the 80s. It had several of New York's most important lesbian institutions, clubs, coffee houses and bookstores. Then as real estate prices skyrocketed, it became dominated by yuppie families with young children. Those are facts, and you can twist them in your demented imagination to make that sound "anti-Semitic" all you want, but that would reveal your reasoning to be :silly: :crazy: :silly: .

[oberliner]

13. Park Slope is heavily Jewish and has been so for some time

The author of the piece is also a Park Slope resident incidentally.

[LeftishBrit]

14. Who said they were antisemitic???

HamdenRice just said that they probably weren't predominantly Jewish.

As a Brit, I obviously have no idea whether his characterization of the neighbourhood is accurate or not; but certainly he didn't make any accusations of antisemitism.

[Dorian Gray]

9. It's not heavily Jewish

I live here (in Park Slope), and though there are a decent number of Jewish people here, it is more of a mommy/lesbian/Gorilla Coffee neighborhood.

Crown Heights, on the other hand, is heavily Orthodox Jewish.

[oberliner]

12. Wow - you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about

You claim that Crown Heights is "heavily Orthodox Jewish" when, in fact, it is not.

Crown Heights is about 90 percent African-American.

Park Slope, on the other hand, which you claim is "not heavily Jewish" is home to a much higher percentage of Jewish residents than Crown Heights.

I don't know why you think that being a mom or a lesbian or a Gorilla Coffee goer precludes a person from being Jewish.

[HamdenRice]

15. Yeah, what do we New Yorkers know about Park Slope & Crown Heights? We only LIVE there

I lived in Crown Heights for 13 years, and it is "heavily Jewish" because it is the world headquarters of the Lubavitcher Hasidic community. On Friday nights, Eastern Parkway is often closed down as thousands of ultra-orthodox Jews dance ecstatically in the streets. That is, in front of the many Yeshivas, temples, and other institutions that line the Parkway.

Crown Heights is a much bigger neighborhood than the ultra orthodox community which, for religious and social reasons, is tightly clustered from the middle of Crown Heights along Eastern Parkway, south to about Empire Boulevard, and the rest of Crown Heights is African American, West Indian and Haitian.

No one is saying that there aren't Jews in Park Slope or that lesbians can't be Jews, etc., a bizarre talking point that keeps coming up. It's that Park Slope is a very diverse neighborhood that is now distinguished mostly for being upper middle class and wealthy, and full of young families, regardless of ethnicity. Are you saying that there aren't many African Americans, Irish Americans, Latinos, and other non-Jewish people in Park Slope? Have you ever been there? Few New Yorkers would call Park Slope, "heavily Jewish," although of course there is a substantial number of Jewish people in the neighborhood.

Dorian Gray lives in Park Slope. I lived in Crown Heights for over a decade. But hey, thanks for telling us, from your perch in Los Angeles, that we are wrong about the demographics of Brooklyn neighborhoods.

[oberliner]

16. Crown Heights is less than 10 percent Jewish, Park Slope is more than 10 percent Jewish

Thus, anyone who claims that Crown Heights is heavily Jewish but that Park Slope is not heavily Jewish is in error, regardless of where they might live.

While the ways and customs of the Hasidim may have given you the impression that Crown Heights was "heavily Jewish", the Hasidic population represents less than ten percent of the neighborhood. If that is the threshold for defining heavily Jewish, then Park Slope more than qualifies.

Of course Park Slope is a diverse neighborhood. No one is claiming otherwise. Clearly, heavily Jewish does not mean that only Jewish people live there. You found Crown Heights to be heavily Jewish even though 90 percent of the residents are not Jewish.

I would note that the author of the piece also lives in the area and she was the one who you initially accused of being incorrect in her characterization of the Park Slope neighborhood.

[HamdenRice]

17. You continue to demonstrate that you know nothing about Brooklyn neighborhoods

You simply don't know Brooklyn neighborhoods, but what the hell, please continue to tell us all about them from Los Angeles.

Now, read carefully this time: The name, "Crown Heights," encompasses several different mini neighborhoods as do most Brooklyn neighborhoods. In the center, from Eastern Parkway to Empire Boulevard, is the world center of the Lubavitcher community. For religious reasons (having to do with what you can and cannot do on the sabbath), the ultra-orthodox have a need to live closely together, and in the "heavily Jewish" part of Crown Heights, there are almost no non-Jews. Therefore, any New Yorker would tell you that part of Crown Heights is "heavily Jewish," even if the rest of Crown Heights isn't. The rest is working class African American and West Indian, with a middle/upper middle class African American and West Indian brownstone neighborhood to the north around the Brooklyn Children's Museum, and a part to the west that is so rapidly gentrifying with mixed race hipsters that the real estate industry has tried to rename it as "Prospect Heights."

Park Slope also has a variety of mini neighborhoods: the ultra rich live along Prospect Park West, and the merely rich and upper middle class live along the "name streets" and lower numbered streets that run east-west from Prospect Park to Seventh Avenue. From Seventh down to Fourth Avenues there are still some remaining hipsters/artists/lower middle class types, and the last remnants of the Latino neighborhood that stretches to the harbor in housing that was built for longshoremen and dockworkers in the late 1800s.

But hey, don't take my word or Dorian's word just because we live(d) there. Also, no reason to accept the characterization of the New York Times or the brownstone.com website, both of which discussed the "stroller Nazi" controversy when it erupted a few years ago -- because you know more than them from your perch in Los Angeles.

The point about Park Slope and the Gaza issue, which seems to have gone over many heads, is that although it is a very liberal neighborhood politically on issues that don't affect Park Slope, the dominant "liberal" upper class there has become extremely intolerant when it comes to anything having to do with their "quality of life," which means closing down the hipster venues that made the neighborhood in the first place, pushing out other groups and even physically dominating the public spaces with their huge ostentatious strollers:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/18/fashion/18slope.html

Park Slope: Where Is the Love?

POOR Union Hall. First, there was the tempest in a sippy cup stirred up in Brooklyn last February by this bar-brunch-boccie spot’s ban on children in strollers. And just last week, a subcommittee of the Park Slope community board — swayed by an army of pitchfork-wielding locals — dealt the joint a harsh, if symbolic blow: no liquor license renewal until you do something about the noise. Though the full board overruled the committee within days, the blogosphere’s critics and conspiracy theorists had already drawn their conclusions: “It’s the revenge of the Stroller Moms.”

But it’s not just the moms; it’s where they live. “Park Slope isn’t even part of Brooklyn anymore,” wrote one commenter on Gothamist. “It’s seriously a lower rung of hell, filled with hateful English teachers.” And on Eater.com, one posted comment said: “Park Slope and its ilk are why NYC is becoming more and more pathetic by the day.”

Yep: community fussbudgets, whiny parents, taverns crawling with toddlers, hip watering holes edging out old-man bars. It’s everything New Yorkers love to hate about Park Slope.

Well, not everything. Check the comments on real estate blogs like Brownstoner and Curbed, or ask around. To its detractors, Park Slope is both haunt and hatchery of New York’s smuggest limousine-liberal yuppies.

It is, if I may further summarize the bad publicity, overrated and hypocritical. Its glorious brownstone blocks and jaunty cafes are awash in carpetbagger entitlement, ruled by snarling “Stroller Nazis.” The neighborhood is a ground zero of all that is twee and lame. It is, God forbid, the suburbs.
...
“Park Slope is a perfect storm of stereotypes that provoke derision,” said Steven Johnson, a local writer and a father of three. “Since Park Slope is the neighborhood most explicitly associated with urban parenting, it attracts the wrath of people who think parents have gone way overboard. I imagine there’s some horror fantasy fusion: the well-off Park Sloper and co-op member who is obsessed with his kids. Oh, wait, I just described myself.”

<end quote>

http://www.brownstoner.com/brownstoner/archives/2007/07/stroller_nazis.php

Park Slope Stroller Nazi Story Getting a Little Stale

We're not exactly sure why this was a front-page article the the NY Times Sunday Real Estate section—seems more like City section material to us—but, there it was, another article making light of the number of strollers (and implicit bourgeois existence of their pushers) in Park Slope. The fact that there are a lot of young families (some of whose matriarchs aren't averse to a little public nursing) in Park Slope just ain't news anymore, so let's just settle the fight for the soul of the slope once and for all in the hopes that another article never has to be written on the subject. In the words of The Times article, is Park Slope "Hipster Hell" or "Parent Heaven"?
...
Comments
...
Neither hipster hell (anymore) OR is it Parent haven. I for one am sick of PS. I have lived here for a while and now I want out. I will be moving shortly because I can't take the kids yelling running around and proving that they have not been taught courtesy or manors. I don't care if you have to breast feed, I'm talking about the inconsiderate parents who let their kids scream and run around restaurants and even block the sidewalks with your strollers and bodies while you stand around talking. Others live here...you act like you own the world and you certainly behave like you are about to take over. All I see are future Paris Hiltons in the making.
The dads have less control over their kids because they spend less time with them so when they are with them they want them to express themselves and they think it's cute. Please move to Montclair and put up your picket fences. Stop trying to raise a family like you were raised on LI here in Park Slope. It's not the same.
...
PS is NOT hipster anything (that would be Williamsburg or Greenpoint) and definitely NOT parent heaven. Never was.

As with all stereotypes, there's a kernel of truth here. I hate going to PS and having to navigate all the strollers blocking everything and hearing all the self-righteous comments from the parents there, as if THEY ALONE know the BEST way to raise a kid.

Why the hell do all these moms (and dads, but mostly moms) have to drive around their $800 bugaboos (or whatever the latest trendy overpriced stroller is)?

[oberliner]

18. Can we stick to actual facts?

Crown Heights and Park Slope each have mini-neighborhoods within them. That is all well and good. It doesn't change the actual statistical fact that the entire neighborhood of Crown Heights has a population that is less than 10 percent Jewish and that the entire neighborhood of Park Slope has a population that is more than 10 percent Jewish.

These articles about moms and strollers and yuppies and liberals do not really have anything to do with anything.

Park Slope is a neighborhood with a large Jewish population which is primarily made up of Reform and Conservative Jews who are quite well-integrated into the community.

Crown Heights, on the other hand, is a neighborhood which is predominately African-American/West Indian with a sizable minority population of Hasidic Jews who are not at all integrated into the rest of the community.

As to your comment about my writing about New York from Los Angeles, I would point out that you've written a number of posts about Israel even though you do not live there and apparently have never visited.

[HamdenRice]

19. Actual facts: You are wrong.

You keep saying that Park Slope is over 10% Jewish. But if "heavily Jewish" means anything, it means disproportionately Jewish. But the proportion of the population of Brooklyn that is Jewish is around 25%, and of New York is around 12%, so "over 10%" is average for New York and below average for Brooklyn. How is that "heavily Jewish"?

Meanwhile, the Hasidic part of Crown Heights is virtually 100% Jewish. That qualifies as "heavily Jewish," no matter what the rest of Crown Heights is like.

The point of this thread has gone completely over your head at any rate; it's that Park Slope is not "heavily Jewish" but it is full of nominally liberal, affluent people who are nevertheless not progressive when it comes to Park Slope, which makes their concern for Gaza seem hypocritical, which in general is what Park Slopers get lampooned for all the time.

Incidentally, when you google New York neighborhoods, one of the sites that comes up describes each neighborhood by its defining characteristic and says:

http://www.walkingaround.com/

Crown Heights Brooklyn Chassidic Jews
...
Park Slope Brooklyn Lesbian

<end quote>

As for my comparisons of South Africa and Israel, it's based on having lived in South Africa during apartheid, 1988-89, and having traveled there from 1986 to 2000. It's based on experience, and what South Africans themselves say, and it is a irrefutable fact that apartheid South Africa never did to Black South Africans some of the horrible things that Israel is doing in the Palestinian areas. You don't have to have traveled to Israel to state as an irrefutable fact that South Africa never restricted movement within or outside of the homelands the way Israel has restricted movement within and outside West Bank and Gaza.

Now, have you ever been to Park Slope? Crown Heights? No? Go figure.

[oberliner]

20. The statement was that Crown Heights is heavily Jewish and Park Slope is not

That is the statement that is demonstratively false, since Park Slope has a higher percentage of Jewish people living there than does Crown Heights. The Jewish people who do live in Crown Heights are primarily Hasidic, easily identifiable as Jewish, and concentrated in one area whereas the Jewish people who live in Park Slope are primarily Reform/Conservative/Secular, not easily identifiable as Jewish, and are spread out throughout the neighborhood.

I am not sure why you are unable to concede the simple factual statement that Park Slope has a larger Jewish population than Crown Heights. That information is easily verifiable.

[HamdenRice]

22. Demonstrable fact:--->

You live in Bizarro World.

So, I'll concede that in your world, Crown Heights is not "heavily Jewish." Bed-Stuy is not "heavily African American." Flushing, Queens is not "heavily Asian." Bensonhurst is not "heavily Italian-American." Williamsburg is not "heavily hipster." Chelsea is not "heavily gay." The Upper East Side is not "heavily rich." Harlem is not "heavily Black."

But Park Slope is the shtetl. :silly: :crazy: :silly:

And these facts of course would not be visible to long time New Yorkers who live in these neighborhoods, but only from the objective distance that living in Los Angeles provides.

:rofl:

Btw, you didn't answer: have you ever been to Park Slope? Crown Heights? Brooklyn? No?

[oberliner]

25. No one is claiming that Park Slope is a "shtetl"

And no one is claiming anything of the ridiculous things that you jokingly reference in your post.

The Jewish population of Crown Heights is 9 percent. This is a simple fact. Do you deny or dispute this?

Park Slope is not a Shtetl and most of the Jewish population there are very different from the Jewish population of Crown Heights.

Do you know what a Reform Jew is? Park Slope is home to the largest Reform synagogue in all of Brooklyn.

Do you know what a Reconstructionist Jew is? Park Slope is also home to one of the largest Reconstructionist synagogues in Brooklyn.

I'm not understanding why you are unable or unwilling to accept basic verifiable facts about these two neighborhoods.

[HamdenRice]

26. You're hopeless. If you can't grasp that the world headquarters of the Lubavitcher Hasidim ...

is a heavily Jewish neighborhood in Crown Heights, there is no reaching you. But we've been through this before. Once you put your helmet on, no ideas and facts can get inside.

[oberliner]

28. It is quite obvious that the area around the Lubavitcher HQ is heavily Jewish

However, as you point out, that represents just one small part of the entire neighborhood of Crown Heights, whose population is 90 percent African-American/West Indian.

I do feel like your helmet is on as well and you are unable to let any outside ideas or facts get inside - I like that imagery!

[Dorian Gray]

36. Yes...

but it's a big part of Crown Height's identity. As are the pockets of racial issues that pop up between the Afro-American/Carribbean population and the Jewish population.

Park Slope may have a proportionally larger number of Jewish residents, but it does not identify as a Jewish neighborhood. The area of Crown Heights surrounding the Lubavitch headquarters does.

[oberliner]

23. Co-op members react: Ban? What ban?

Talk of the Park Slope Food Co-op’s supposed plan to ban Israeli products has gone all over the world — everywhere except the Co-op itself, it turns out.

Interviews at the famously liberal, members-only supermarket on Friday revealed that few had heard anything about the call for barring the sale of products from the Jewish state, and fewer still would be in favor of such a ban.

http://www.brooklynpaper.com/stories/32/8/32_8_ag_coop_main.html

[HamdenRice]

24. So you acknowledge the reporter got the story completely WRONG, but is not WRONG about

Park Slope being "heavily Jewish"? Isn't that a little inconsistent, and isn't it inconsistent with the last line of the story you, yourself, link to:

And there are others, of course, who think the Co-op is a supermarket that should focus on what it does best: selling low-cost, organic produce to a diverse collection of Brooklynites, from Muslims to orthodox Jews to atheists to vegans.

<end quote>

So the basic factual content of the story proves to be as valuable as a piece of used toilet paper, but you insist the reporter got it right that Park Slope and the co-op are "heavily Jewish"? :silly: :crazy: :silly:

[oberliner]

27. The basic factual content of the story is not disputed in this account

Just that it was blown out of proportion and that a small incident involving one comment has exploded into something much larger than it was ever meant to be. Sort of creating a manufactured incident that never really was.

I do not understand why you think that "diverse" and "heavily Jewish" are mutually incompatible.

[HamdenRice]

30. WTF are you talking about? The entire story was a fabrication, top to bottom

written by a young woman who just got out of journalism school, and who therefore was not a long time Park Slope resident, although as a struggling recent graduate, I suspect there was some hoi polloi envy of the Park Slope burgher-meisters involved in framing this non-story.

Again, and this seems to go over your head every time, this was simply typical New Yorker Park Slope stereotype bashing that got out of control. It was a perfect, if make believe, story. Create a completely fictional account of ultra liberal, self-hating, Park Slope Jews voting to ban Israeli produce from their ultra left wing, politically correct organic food co-op. That make believe image fits perfectly with the past kerfufels over Park Slope stroller Nazi Moms getting "revenge" for the banning of strollers from a bar.

The problem is it never happened. Almost nothing in the story was true. There was no "heavily Jewish" food co-op. There was no "heavily Jewish" Park Slope. There was no "mulling" of banning Israeli imports, just a single question raised at a single meeting.

Maybe she thought it would be a funny trifle that might get a snicker out of a few readers, but because it went viral, she'll be lucky if this doesn't damage her career.

It was bullshit from beginning to end. Your defense of this preposterous story against all evidence to the contrary is bizarre, but kind of typical for your "contributions" to this forum.

[oberliner]

31. One wonders if you actually read the article

A fabrication from top to bottom?

All the quotes are made up? Rabbi Bachman wasn't actually interviewed? Didn't say the things attributed to him?

Carol Wald did not send a letter to the Co-op's newsletter encouraging a discussion about boycotting Israeli products?

That's funny because here it is:

http://foodcoop.com/files_lwg/lwg_2009_02_12_vDDn4.pdf?PHPSESSID=ab309319a60dfa224dae661ee05aa94c

The remarks from Alan Zimmerman, general coordinator and produce buyer at the co-op also made up?

Where do you get off making these bizarre claims that the article was "bullshit from beginning to end"?

I'm sure this "young woman who just got out of journalism school" did not invent quotes and sources as you seem to be suggesting.

Incidentally, the journalism school she went to was Columbia. That's in New York - pretty well-respected school from what I understand.

[Dorian Gray]

37. My friend

who is a member there... and I... were talking about this yesterday. She said she hadn't heard about it, and it would take ages for it to go through the process of becoming official store policy. And by that time, the outrage would probably be over and it would all be retracted.

[Dorian Gray]

34. Thank you Hamden

777 Eastern Parkway, Oberliner. Look it up.

[oberliner]

42. I know that area very well

But the whole of Crown Heights is predominately African-American/West Indian.

[Dorian Gray]

33. Crown Heights IS heavily Orthodox Jewish

Moreso than Park Slope. (I live at Grand Army Plaza... I know the area quite well!) The main Lubavitch Headquarters is located on Eastern Parkway, and it is a highly Orthodox Jewish area. Perhaps you are the one who doesn't know the area that well.

None of those things preclude the person from being Jewish. That's stupid and NOT what I said. What I said is that the neighborhood is known through particular stereotypes, none of which excludes the Jewish. The neighborhood does not identify as Jewish, though. It's a yuppified mommy-and-me neighborhood. Nobody's ethnicity or religion seems to matter here.

[HamdenRice]

35. What do you think of that huge glass apartment tower they built at Grand A.P.

I think it is on the lot that used to be the parking lot of the Synagogue/Eastern Athletic Club? I hadn't been in the area in a while and didn't know it had been built.

It doesn't seem to fit into the area -- except for maybe with the post modern renovations of the Brooklyn Museum.

Looks 3/4 empty also, given the real estate crisis.

Btw, it's just amazing that we're being "told" by an Angeleno that Park Slope is heavily Jewish and Crown Heights isn't. It's the height of absurdity, sort of like being told by someone from Cleveland that Brighton Beach isn't Russian, but Bed Stuy is.

[Dorian Gray]

38. I hate it.

"Richard Meyer's" building. It totally doesn't fit in the neighborhood at all! My friend says that's what you get when you allow Capitalism to run amok. (I find that funny.) The only good thing about it is that I will be able to work out on Friday evenings or Saturday mornings now that Eastern Athletic's entrance will be through that building and not in the synagogue. (Due to services, the club is closed from 6 pm Friday until 1 pm Saturday.)

There are currently 5 apartments occupied but the building isn't finished yet. One is on the second floor, and you can see the family quite clearly, especially if standing across the street at the library. Their curtain/blinder free windows allow full access to their lives.

I had no idea you lived in the neighborhood at one point. (I technically live in Prospect Heights... I'm a block down Plaza Street from the new building! But I say Park Slope because it's only across Flatbush and nobody has ever heard about Prospect Heights unless they are from Brooklyn!)

[HamdenRice]

40. I didn't want to say anything bad in case you lived there! What a monstrosity!

I was there at night and also amazed that this family was living in what looked like a store window although several stories up. Given the credit freeze, I suspect those few families are going to be alone there for a while. I was at Moe's that same evening (do you know that bar in Fort Green?) and had a conversation with a real estate agent, and she was saying she didn't think they would be able to rent the ground floor commercial space just because the foot traffic from Flatbush Avenue simply won't extend psychologically past the Plaza to that building. It seems it was a bad idea all around born of the real estate frenzy. How they got it past zoning is a miracle, but then again given the Brooklyn train yards controversy, under the Bloomberg administration, any neighborhood-destroying real estate development could get approval.

I used to be a member of Eastern Athletic Club also.

[Dorian Gray]

41. The rant is pretty much

how everyone in our neighborhood feels about that building. I can't believe Richard Meyer put his name to it, to be honest.

There was a rumor swirling around that Jay Z and Beyonce bought in that building, though I doubt it's true. It would be pretty funny, as it doesn't afford any privacy with FLOOR TO CEILING windows!

The Brooklyn Train Yards and the Atlantic Center are all disasters.

[oberliner]

46. Ugh

I don't know why you have to put in a little dig like that in this post, but please allow me to reiterate that the demographic reality is what it is regardless of where you live.

Park Slope has a higher percentage of Jewish residents than does Crown Heights. That is simply a fact.

I am sure that there are things that you know to be facts about, say, Israel, that someone living there might not know to be true.

Now I would respectfully ask you to let the matter rest.

Peace be unto you.

[oberliner]

43. Thanks for clarifying

I appreciate your perspective.

[Dorian Gray]

8. This is around the corner from my house...

I am not a member, but I do know members.

[oberliner]

21. The Food Co-op is NOT — repeat not — considering a ban on Israeli products

For the record: The Park Slope Food Co-op is NOT considering a ban on Israeli-made or -grown products.

This myth, reported around the globe by the Jewish Forward and dozens of blogs that seem to regard the 16,000-member supermarket as some kind of anti-Israel committee rather than a great place for produce, evolved from a stray comment at an open meeting in January, when a Co-op member who identified herself only as Hima inquired about whether the Co-op sells Israeli products.

“I don’t know whether or not we carry Israeli products,” she said, “but I propose that we no longer carry them.”

Sorry, Hima, but that’s now how it works at America’s largest, member-run food cooperative. Stray comments at a Park Slope Food Co-op general meeting don’t become Co-op law until — and please believe me because I know this from personal experience — extensive debate, discussion and more mudslinging than at an organic composting facility.

http://www.brooklynpaper.com/stories/32/8/32_8_gk_coop.html

[LeftishBrit]

29. Sounds like typical media spin,

As a British academic who keeps being informed by non-Brits that all British academics are boycotting Israel, when we are *not*, I have a certain fellow-feeling for the Co-op members!

[oberliner]

32. It's amazing how one little incident can get spun out of control

One wonders though if due to the attention from this press coverage that perhaps such a conversation will actually begin in earnest.

[Dorian Gray]

39. That's what my friend said

who is a member there. She said the process of banning them would involve a input from all the members and a vote. Not a quick process at all.

[oberliner]

44. Glad to hear that

Much ado about nothing it seems.