{"id":92788,"date":"2026-06-04T17:36:40","date_gmt":"2026-06-04T22:36:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/?p=92788"},"modified":"2026-06-05T10:45:13","modified_gmt":"2026-06-05T15:45:13","slug":"bamba-blankets-nyc-after-park-slope-food-coop-vote-to-boycott-israeli-products-whats-next","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/bamba-blankets-nyc-after-park-slope-food-coop-vote-to-boycott-israeli-products-whats-next\/","title":{"rendered":"Bamba blankets NYC after Park Slope Food Coop vote to boycott Israeli products. What\u2019s next?"},"content":{"rendered":"

By JACKIE HAJDENBERG<\/p>\n

(New York Jewish Week<\/em> via JTA) \u2014 Jewish institutions are responding to a boycott of Israeli products at a Brooklyn grocery store by buying up Bamba.<\/p>\n

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The exterior of the Park Slope Food Coop in Brooklyn. (James Leynse\/Corbis via Getty Images)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Four thousand free bags of the Israeli peanut butter-flavored snack made their way Sunday along the Celebrate Israel Day Parade route up Fifth Avenue, passed around by volunteers with UJA-Federation of New York.<\/p>\n

It was the organization\u2019s first response to a contentious election result at the Park Slope Food Coop, the members-only Brooklyn grocery store that last week voted to boycott Israeli products. Bamba is one of the products no longer sold at the coop as a result of the boycott and a symbol of the Israeli snack food industry.<\/p>\n

The Bamba distribution was coordinated by UJA, which was a sponsor of the parade, and the nonprofit group Met Council, which will also be distributing bags across their network of food pantries. (An initial purchase of 20,000 bags was made by UJA in the wake of the coop vote last week.) The snacks were brought to UJA\u2019s office by truck on Friday.<\/p>\n

The Met Council will distribute the remaining Bamba to the hundreds of food pantries who receive its food deliveries, including the 14 it owns and operates, by next week, CEO David Greenfield told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey smartly decided to make lemonade out of lemons,\u201d Greenfield said of the UJA initiative. (Some of the pantries, he noted, may decline the Bamba anticipating clients with peanut allergies.)<\/p>\n

The Bamba will be added as an additional free snack item to pantry clients\u2019 usual takeaways. Some of it will also be delivered directly to Holocaust survivors within the Met Council\u2019s network.<\/p>\n

Sunday\u2019s parade was a respite for members of the Jewish community who say they felt alienated in the wake of the coop vote Tuesday night. But it was also controversial due to New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani\u2019s decision not to attend \u2014 a mayoral first \u2014 and the surprise appearance of far-right Israeli Finance Minister Betzalel Smotrich.<\/p>\n

But why purchase the popular Israeli snack in bulk, as opposed to encouraging local grocery stores to stock up on it and other Israeli items?<\/p>\n

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View of posters at the Bamba factory of the Osem corporation in Kiryat Gat, Israel, Feb. 19, 2019. (Flash 90)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cThere are a bunch of ideas on the table,\u201d Hindy Poupko, senior vice president of the UJA-Federation told JTA. \u201cWe wanted to do something in the immediate aftermath of the boycott to demonstrate solidarity with the anti-boycott members of the coop, and all the work that they put into it. We wanted to immediately demonstrate to our community that we are able to respond quickly when these things happen, and also demonstrate that we will always be on the side of coops working together \u2014 not engaging in boycotts.\u201d<\/p>\n

One option UJA is floating, Poupko said, is an Israeli fair at a number of Jewish community centers where visitors can purchase Israeli goods.<\/p>\n

Some advocates have even begun taking legal action against the coop, hoping to see the items restored to the shelves.<\/p>\n

A group of pro-Israel activists filed a cease and desist motion in response to the boycott, alleging that the boycott itself is illegal and discriminatory.<\/p>\n

CUNY law professor Jeffrey Lax announced in a post on X Wednesday that he had filed a New York State Division of Human Rights complaint on behalf of his Jewish advocacy group alleging that the boycott violates a state law that prevents the boycott or blacklist of products based on protected classes, including national origin.<\/p>\n

\u201cInstead of bringing neighbors together, this community institution chose to alienate many of its longtime Jewish members and their allies by banning a handful of Israeli products,\u201d the ADL of New York\/New Jersey said in a Thursday statement on X. \u201cThis move does nothing to advance peace in the Middle East; instead, the heinous rhetoric about Israel and Jews invoked in the process to ban these products contributes to the intense climate of antisemitism in NYC.\u201d<\/p>\n

The coop itself has not responded to JTA\u2019s requests for comment. Activists aligned with the boycott, which passed with a 67% majority, referred JTA back to a press release distributed immediately following the vote last week.<\/p>\n

\u201cTonight\u2019s win is proof that cooperative movements are powerful models for exercising solidarity and participatory democracy,\u201d coop board candidate Taylor Pate said in the May 26 statement.<\/p>\n

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Asked for comment in regards to the coop vote results, Jewish Community Relations Council CEO Mark Treyger, through a spokesperson, referred JTA to a May 9 sermon by Congregation Beth Elohim senior Rabbi Rachel Timoner, in which she called it \u201cthe hyper local example of a proxy war.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the boycott was designed to change Israel\u2019s policies or to create a Palestinian state, or if it had the goal of safety, freedom, and equality for both Israelis and Palestinians, many of us would support it,\u201d Timoner added. \u201cBut the BDS movement is not that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Timoner clarified her stance on the boycott at the coop in a sermon days after the vote.<\/p>\n

\u201cI do think that there is a lot of antisemitism threaded through the entire conversation about Israel,\u201d Timoner said in the May 29 sermon. \u201cBut the vast majority of people who voted for that boycott were simply trying to say that what is happening to the Palestinians is wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n

A representative for Nestl\u00e9, the parent company of Osem, which manufactures Bamba, did not respond to a request for comment about the boycott.<\/p>\n

The boycott means Brooklynites will have one fewer place to buy Bamba, the now ubiquitous snack that has been sold at Trader Joe\u2019s for the last decade and is credited with reducing the prevalence of peanut allergies in Israel.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s at least one other place in New York City where Bamba was once available and no longer is. In March 2021, at the opening of baseball season, Bamba and the New York Mets announced a partnership in which the snack would be sold at the stadium in the main snack kiosks. The following year, the baseball team and the snack launched a sweepstakes for children to win free tickets to a game.<\/p>\n

Since a March 2023 announcement that the brands would partner again for the season, Bamba has not publicly commented on their partnership. The Mets did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n

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