You’ve head about the rice shortage, when it comes to food supplies. And you’ve read about the wisdom shortage, when it comes to Presidential candidates…
But now — in an unprecedented development being experienced from coast-to-coast — Jewish Americans seeking those unleavened crackers (often oversized) so central to Passover and so delicious when you spread cream cheese on them (delicious enough to make you plotz..) have faced a horrific situation: The Great Matzah Shortage of 2008.
But unlike food shortages this can’t be blamed on economic trends or political ineptness.
Some of it’s due to a factory glitch and some of it’s due to big chains having decided to no longer to carry the stuff that my father always insisted “tastes like library paste.”
Shortages have been reported across Southern California, but the problem isn’t confined to the Southland. The Bay Area and Reno have also reported shortages, and supplies are limited in Portland, Ore.
Ralphs did not return calls seeking comment. A Vons and Pavilions representative said the chain hadn’t been affected, but calls to several area stores found no stock at press time Tuesday. Trader Joe’s and some Costco stores did not carry matzah this year, and representatives from Gelson’s and Whole Foods say their supplies are dwindling.
“Unfortunately, due to a manufacturer issue, there has been a shortage on matzah this year, which has impacted our stores,” Whole Foods spokesperson Shawn Glasser said.
Construction issues and problems with a new state-of-the-art oven at Manischewitz’s only plant in Newark led the company to announce it wouldn’t produce Tam Tams and other kosher-for-Passover products this year, including its flavored matzah lines. Instead, the company focused on unsalted, whole wheat and egg matzah. In late January, R.A.B. Foods Group, Manischewitz’s parent company, sent a memo out to distributors listing which products would not be available, adding that its plant would work around the clock to produce Passover products.
“The last few months have been difficult; we are now heading in the right direction. We appreciate your patience and support, look forward to serving all of our customers with our full line of quality products and will work very hard to win your confidence back with improved service in the future,” the memo stated.
And, indeed, a search for matzah proved fruitless at many stores in San Diego. Some carried big cases costing over $10 — but only one or two or those were left. Most didn’t have the standard unsalted kind (or even the more controversial egg kind) — only a few exotic varieties that would have given my grandfather Abraham Ravinsky cardiac arrest if he had seen it on our seder table.
The San Francisco Weekly blames part of the matzah famine on CostCo, but investigative reporting done by this writer (a telephone chat with my mother Helen Gandelman from her home in Connecticut) reveals the situation is the same in some parts of the East Coast:
The wholesale giant began stocking up on the Bread of Affliction by the container-full — and a container is 40 feet long, 10 feet wide and 12 feet high.
Of course, the consumers’ gain was the supermarket and shopkeepers’ loss. The matzah they bought at high cost and sold at astronomical costs suddenly lost 75 percent of its value. In many instances, merchants literally couldn’t give the stuff away.
Fast-forwarding to the present day, Costco deduced that, quite possibly, hawking matzah for a buck a pound was not a money-maker and abruptly opted not to stock any in the Bay Area. While the Chronicle’s Matthai Kuruvila creatively speculates that “a jubilee year in Israel when some fields lie fallow” or “increased Jewish observance” may explain the shortage — and let’s give him an Aleph for Effort — I think the explanation lies closer to home.
With local retailers anticipating Costco selling boatloads of matzah at prices they could never hope to match, they stocked at normal low levels apropos for a smattering of kosher consumers. But with Costco out of the game, smaller stores sold out quickly and last-minute shoppers were up the creek (anecdotally, stories abounded of luckless Jews traipsing to a dozen or so stores in search of a box of matzah. And, believe you me, some gouging occurred: One lady told me that the five-pound box that was $11.99 when she called a San Francisco store on the phone was suddenly $14.99 when she got there).
For those who traditionally eat matzah in the place of bread during the Passover holiday (which ends Sunday, April 27), these are the times that try Jews’ souls. After all, how many potatoes and incredibly fatty kosher macaroons can you stand?
And, indeed, matzah is also great for weight control (put tuna fish on it instead of on bread).
The question: come Passover 2009 will matzah be on the list of foods such as rice and corn that are in short supply?
SPECIAL BONUS: Here’s my favorite joke about matzah.
A Jewish family decided to invite a gentile blind man over for Passover.
They handed the blind man a big piece of matzah. He ran his fingers over it and said:
“Who wrote this crap?”
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.