As Passover Nears, Jews Seek Supplies

When Ronda Kushner relocated to Orange County 10 years ago from suburban Detroit, she didn’t expect the move to involve a challenge of faith.

But there it was, a dilemma right at the start of her first California Passover.

“I walked into the market and said, ‘Where’s the Empire [kosher] chicken?’ and they said, ‘Empire? What’s that?’ ” Kushner recalled.

“And there were no bagels to be found anywhere. They said I had to go to Los Angeles, or Los Alamitos, for that.”

Life has gotten better. Store stocks of traditional Jewish foods have improved so much that mainstream chains such as Hughes and Ralphs set up special Passover food displays, including several varieties of the all-important matzo. Kosher breakfast cereals are even available for those who observe Jewish dietary laws year-round.

But as Passover nears--it begins Monday evening with the traditional Seder, a blend of religious service, storytelling, music and food--many Orange County Jews say they still have trouble finding the foods they want in the quantity and quality they need.

The Seder revolves around food, its rituals and symbols embracing both history and hopes for the future as it retells the biblical story of the Jews freed from slavery in Egypt by the leadership of Moses and the miracle of the Red Sea parting to clear their path to liberty.

The matzo represents the unleavened bread Jews had to eat after they fled Egypt in such haste there was no time to let the dough rise. Maror--bitter herbs--recalls the taste of slavery, while the brownish haroset--a mix of apples, nuts, cinnamon and wine--represents the mortar with which Jewish slaves built garrison walls for the pharaohs. And then there’s the wine, representing God’s gift of personal salvation.

Stories about trouble finding supplies in Orange County for the Seder have taken on near-mythic proportions for some Jewish families, feeding a comedic lore of well-intentioned Gentile attempts to cater to Jewish traditions.

“I remember during Hanukkah once going into one of the major chains, but finding a whole Passover display,” said Rabbi Bernard P. King of Congregation Shir Ha-Ma’alot in Irvine. “It was like somebody had said, it’s Hanukkah, better get out the Jewish food. We called the manager and said by the way, it’s nice you’re getting the food, your heart’s in the right place, but it’s the wrong holiday.”

Gerald H. Barkan, middle/high school principal of Tarbut V’Torah Community Day School in Costa Mesa, moved to Orange County a year ago from Tucson, where his home was the site of an annual gathering of 30 family members and friends. This year, he’s participating in a Seder at the home of an Orange County friend, so he won’t have to worry about stocking a Seder himself.

Even though Tucson is hardly known as the center of Jewish life in America, Barkan has trouble getting used to the lack of supplies in Orange County, which he and others ascribe to the nature of the area itself--sprawling and without the kind of cohesive centers that form the heart of a traditional neighborhood.

“We’re just geographically too spread out,” said Rabbi Mark Miller of Temple Bat Yahm in Newport Beach, who was raised in a Jewish neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side. “We don’t have the continuity of living that I grew up with in Chicago, or my wife did in New York, where children remained in the neighborhood where they grew up.

“Here, it’s the newness, the rootlessness. We don’t have the Jewish streets in the neighborhoods, the delis and bakeries and butchers that we did back in the old neighborhoods. Those neighborhoods were started by people who were fairly traditional, so they wanted to remain in cohesive areas to have access. Out here, people often don’t have that kind of orientation.”

Some of that is born of the very nature of neighborhoods. Ethnic enclaves in New York, Chicago and other cities grew as part of immigrant culture. Most Jews in Orange County--the Jewish Federation of Orange County estimates there are 75,000 Jews in a population of 2.4 million--are transplanted Americans, migrants instead of immigrants and versed in the underlying culture. So they seldom need the support network of common language, or common faith, that comes with immigrant neighborhoods.

“We’re not bringing those traditions and those memories that my grandparents did coming from Europe, or that my parents did being the children of immigrants,” Miller said. “Here, we’re so established and settled and secure and assimilated that we just don’t have [the cohesion]. And many people don’t even know they don’t have it. They have so little they don’t know what’s missing.

“It’s featureless, colorless. We stay because it’s a good life, but there’s some sacrifice to make for this so-called good life.”

Allan Ratman, who runs the kosher-style Katella Deli his father founded in Los Alamitos 32 years ago, believes some of that lack of focus on tradition stems from success.

“A lot of Jewish kids don’t get into the business anymore,” he said. “A lot of Jewish people are sending their kids to medical school and engineering school and law school. A lot of them don’t want to get into it. It’s a tough business.”

Irwin Goldberg moved to Orange County five years ago specifically to get into that tough business. After managing a kosher deli in Brooklyn, he decided he wanted to run his own business. So he bought the Kosher Bite Deli & Meat Market in Laguna Hills, believed to be the only fully kosher deli in South County.

“There isn’t enough support for too many kosher delis,” said Goldberg, 29, adding that he bought the business on Moulton Parkway because of its proximity to a Leisure World complex with a large Jewish population. “It’s tough. If there was a second store, one of us or both of us would probably go out of business.”

As it is, he said, about 30% of his clientele is non-Jewish.

For Miriam Ninyo, 36, who caters events for Congregation B’nai Israel in Tustin, such mainstream acceptance of Jewish traditions signals the clearance of a broader hurdle. It implies acceptance by the community at large, she said. And in the days when supplies were hard to find, she said, many Jews made do without or simply didn’t hold Seders. With growing convenience, she said, comes growing observance.

“The stores are trying to accommodate us,” Ninyo said, munching a piece of matzo as she watched students at Tarbut V’Torah practice the Seder rituals. “Now there are all sorts of brands in the stores, they’re less expensive and they’re even using coupons in their ads.

“A lot more people are doing it on their own, who never used to.”