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Dispute began with the Angel Bakery chairman’s protest outside leading haredi rabbi’s home, triggering boycott of company’s products followed by vicious social media attack on the ultra-Orthodox.
By: Lauren Marcus – worldisraelnews.com
Israel’s largest bakery is engaged in a public spat with the ultra-Orthodox community, one of its most important consumer segments, due to political differences and incendiary comments from the business founder’s grandson.
Angel Bakery, which is headquartered in Jerusalem but provides baked goods to restaurants, supermarkets, and stores throughout the country, sells price-controlled and government-subsidized products that are a staple in millions of homes in Israel.
Ultra-Orthodox Jews make up a significant portion of the company’s consumers, and thousands from the community also work at its factories and distribution centers. But now, leading rabbis and leaders have called for the community to boycott the company’s products.
A widescale boycott by the ultra-Orthodox community could lead to Angel Bakery losing millions of shekels in revenue.
Mixing business with politics
The dispute began shortly after Angel Bakery named former Public Security Minister Omer Bar-Lev, who served as a lawmaker from the left-wing Labor party, as head of its Board of Directors.
Last week, Bar-Lev participated in a protest outside of the home of the 100-year-old Rabbi Gershon Edelstein, spiritual leader of the Lithuanian ultra-Orthodox movement in Israel and the Degel HaTorah political party.
Demonstrators gathered on the street outside Edelstein’s home in the ultra-Orthodox enclave of Bnei Brak, chanting and holding signs expressing their opposition to blanket exemptions from military service granted to yeshiva students.
Bar-Lev posted a selfie at the event, referring to potential legislation to ease the military exemption process for yeshiva students. The former lawmaker also referred to reforms to the judicial system as a “coup,” although they were proposed by democratically elected politicians.
“Beyond and in addition to the importance of military service for everyone, the law of ‘no equality in the burden’ that the Coalition intends to enact is the bribe being paid to the haredi parties by [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu and [Justice Minister Yariv] Levin so that they’ll vote in favor of the coup,” he wrote.
The tactic of protesting outside of politicians’ homes has become commonplace in recent months, as left-wing demonstrators have descended upon the residences of supporters of judicial reform. Some have even trapped politicians inside and prevented them from leaving.
But the protest outside Edelstein’s home, due to his status as a revered spiritual leader in the community, appears to have been a step too far.
‘Hypocrites, parasites’
In response to Bar-Lev’s political actions, several leading rabbis, including the son of former Sephardic Chief Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, encouraged members of the community to avoid buying Angel’s products.
Right-wing politicians, including Shas Chair Aryeh Deri and United Torah Judaism head Moshe Gafni, also expressed support for a boycott.
“It cannot be that the chair of Angel’s Board of Directors goes to protest at the home of one of the greatest [rabbis] of this generation. Bar-Lev’s remarks are very problematic, hostile, deeply hateful, and ignorant of this world,” MK Limor Son Har-Melech (Religious Zionism) told Kan News.
“The boycott will end when Omer Bar-Lev faces judgment. The boycott needs to continue until he is fired, she said.
The calls for a boycott triggered anger among left-wingers and supporters of Bar-Lev.
“There is no limit to the chutzpah on the part of the ultra-Orthodox public in Israel,” wrote Yoel Spiegel, the grandson of the bakery’s founder, in a now-deleted Facebook post.
