Bat Mitzvah Wants Fair Trade Israeli Chocolate
There may be many chocolate themed Bar and Bat Mitzvah parties. However, only one Bat Mitzvah girl has actually challenged the global Israeli food company Strauss Group. The Strauss Group includes the iconic, red packaged Elite brand chocolate.
Ashira Abramowitz, daughter of Reform Rabbi, Susan Silverman and her husband, Yossi Abramowitz, petitioned the company to make its popular chocolate lines slave free. Her Bat Mitzvah celebration at Kehilat Kol Haneshama synagogue in Jerusalem included Fair Trade chocolate caramel bars baked into the challot and Fair Trade Chanukah gelt from Divine Chocolate.
Ashira learned about Fair Trade from her older sister, Hallel, who traveled to Ghana with American Jewish World Service. Hallel returned to Jerusalem a committed Fair Trade consumer. Hallel taught Ashira what she had learned about the unfortunate child slavery on cocoa farms in West Africa. That launched Ashira onto her Fair Trade interest and then her Bat Mitzvah project/presentation during the Shabbat service.
Ashira reported by email to me just moments after her first formal conversation with the Strauss company:
I spoke with Daniela Prusky-Sion who is the International Corporate Responsibility Manager at Strauss Group. She was very friendly and assured me that they are using ethical chocolate but that their corporate social responsibility essentially ends at the suppliers of the cocoa … I spoke about the importance of not supporting child slavery, especially for Passover chocolates. She thanked me for wanting to help and wished me Mazal Tov on my Bat Mitzvah.
Ashira also invited Strauss Company’s chairwoman, Ofra Strauss, to the service. Unfortunately, neither Prusky-Sion nor Strauss, attended.
Send a sweet gift to the State of Israel on its 68th anniversary this Yom Haatzmaut by signing Ashira’s petition to Fair Trade chocolate in Israel.
One thought on “Bat Mitzvah Wants Fair Trade Israeli Chocolate”
Leave a Comment
Recent Posts
-
On the Chocolate Trail in Bariloche, Argentina
In March, Mark and I finally extended our chocolate trail explorations in celebration of our special anniversary to Bariloche…via Miami, Buenos Aires, Ushuaia, Antarctica, and Buenos Aires again. There were international flights, a cruise, a couple of domestic flights to get there. All of the travel was amazing, but Bariloche, sometimes called the chocolate capital
Read more › -
Sunday Yeast Polemics: On the Bread Trail
Leavened bread or not? While some of us may think of Passover, the question applied to Eucharistic bread and created significant division in the early Christian Church. The leavened bread for Sunday use was often baked at home by women. Over time, preferences shifted to clergy, church-produced, breads… and, the Eastern Orthodox Church preferred a
Read more › -
Sweet Treat: Chocolate and the Making of American Jews
You may wonder: how did chocolate help define American Jews? Through chocolate, we see that Jews were part of America since its earliest days. Well, since 1701 at least, Jews in the Colonies made part of their living through chocolate. Several Sephardim, leaders of their New York and Newport Jewish and secular communities, participated in
Read more › -
How About Some Uterus Challah?
When Logan Zinman Gerber felt enraged about the loss of reproductive rights in the U.S., she baked challah. Not any challah. She shaped it into a uterus. It wasn’t long after the birth of her daughter that Gerber, a longtime challah baker and staff member of the Religious Action Center of the Reform movement, considered
Read more ›
Some Previous Posts
(in alphabetical order)
- "Boston Chocolate Party" Q&As with Deborah Kalb
- 2022 Media for The "Boston Chocolate Party"
- A Manhattan synagogue explores the rich, surprising history of Jews and chocolate
- About Rabbi Deborah Prinz
- Baking Prayers into High Holiday Breads
- Boston Chocolate Party
- Digging into Biblical Breads
- Exhibit Opens! Sweet Treat! Chocolate & the Making of American Jews
- For the Easiest Hanukah Doughnuts Ever
- Forthcoming! On the Bread Trail
- Funny Faced Purim Pastries
- Good Riddance Chameitz or, The Polemics of Passover's Leaven
- How About Some Uterus Challah?
- Injera*
- Jewish Heritage Month: Baseball & Chocolate!
- Matzah - But, the Dough Did Rise!
- Plan a Choco-Hanukkah Party: 250th Anniversary Tea Party
- Prayers Into Breads
- To Shape Dough: A Trio of Techniques
All slave labor is unacceptable for adults and children. Remembering that so many Jews died in forced labor camps during the Holocaust, should be a special reason not to support slave labor. I do not buy any products that support slave labor.