Aliyah Blog 44: Pesach Shopping & Osher Ad

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Aliyah Diary

Arrival
01. Aug 19, 2024: Preparation In America
02. Aug 25, 2024: First Few Days
03. Aug 29, 2024: Moving In

Cultural Adjustment
04. Sept 4, 2024: First Day of School
05. Sept 8, 2024: Two Weeks In . . .
06. Sept 16, 2024: Getting Comfortable
07. Sept 22, 2024: Ready for Yom Tov
09. Sept 30, 2024: Nasrallahed on the Floor
15. Nov 10, 2024: Safety Fourth
18. Nov 24, 2024: Language – l’at, ‘lat
29. Jan 31, 2025: My Son Still in America
31. Feb 3, 2025: Internet Filtering for Kids
37. Mar 3, 2025: Technical Difficulties
39. Mar 12, 2025: Prove Yourself
40. Mar 17, 2025: Holiday Loneliness

Shopping
11. Oct 13, 2024: Packages. (חבילות.)
34. Feb 17, 2025: Finding Obscure Things
41. Mar 23, 2025: New Shopping Habits
44. Apr 6, 2025: Pesach Shopping & Osher Ad

Government and Bureaucracy
10. Oct 8, 2024: Driver’s License
13. Oct 30, 2024: Bureaucracies and Stories
19. Nov 28, 2024: Taxation for Americans
22. Dec 23, 2024: Doctors & “Choleh Chadash”
27. Jan 23, 2025: Healthcare in Israel
32. Feb 5, 2025: How To Hire the Wrong Person
33. Feb 10, 2025: Quest to Pay My Taxes

Politics & Thought
12. Oct 25, 2024: October Sun and the Jew
16. Nov 17, 2024: Where People Look Like Me
17. Nov 19, 2024: Jewish Identity and Outlook
21. Dec 11, 2024: Let Freedom Ring
38. Mar 6, 2025: Talking in Quiet Peace

Travel and Trips
08. Sept 25, 2024: Jerusalem Concert
14. Nov 2, 2024: The Kindness of Strangers
20. Dec 5, 2024: Tel Aviv Art Museum
23. Dec 29, 2024: The West Bank. (Shomron)
26. Jan 18, 2025: Dead Sea Beer and Ice Cream
28. Jan 26, 2025: Yarkon River Judaism, Tel Aviv
30. Jan 31, 2025: My Son Visits and we Travel
35. Feb 20, 2025: Mitzpe Ramon Stars, Ein Avdat
42. Mar 28, 2025: Hike Nahal Tavor, Mt. Tabor

The Roads
24. Jan 5, 2025: Supermarkets & Highways
25. Jan 12, 2025: Not Cutting Me Off
36. Feb 25, 2025: Road Rules of Israel

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Pesach Shopping is Easier in America

Culture shock #997: kosher supermarkets don’t have shmura matzah, fruit jellies, chocolate leaves, or onion powder for Pesach [passover].

Where, oh where, are all the Israeli matzah brands that fill store shelves in America? There has got to be 20+ brands of shmura [watched] matzah in even a small kosher supermarket in America. Here, you -may- find non-shumura matzah in a corner even in a super-duper kosher supermarket in the most religious of neighborhoods. What gives, country?

Next, you have to check hechsurim again, like you’re in America in a not-kosher supermarket. Much of the country, being Sefardi, eats kitnoyos [legumes]. Hechshurs say anything from, “kosher for pesach according to this hashgacha … though not for this one” … on the same box. Some say “with kitnoyos” and some say “without”.

The number of products is just nowhere near what it is in America … where you can walk in and not actually check anything. Just buy.

Wanting that experience in Israel, I went to Kfar Chabad which has a kosher l’pesach supermarket with just products that meet my American Ashkenazi standards for Pesach. Enter an unfinished basement after parking on an unpaved lot and it’s … small by American standars. We found some products there. It was fine. Just not what I expect from America where we have huuugggeee supermarkets with everything. They did have some shmura matzah in boxes … machine and handmade.

Thinking I had ordered from someone by way of a Google Forms spreadsheet going around my community, I didn’t buy there … though I have no idea what it would be like … and then I checked the list and my name wasn’t on it. Sigh.

Finding Shmura Oat matzah for those with celiac … nowhere to be found. Still looking. We’ve given a list of places by someone, finally.

Osher Ad – Israel’s “Costco”

Osher Ad – where you go for good prices and lots of products. It’s kind of like Israel’s Costco except that it’s about the size of a very large American supermarket, the parking spots are tiny and unplentiful, and … while they actually have some Costco products (garbage bags, diapers …) the amount of bulk and variety of goods isn’t the same. It’s a supermarket, really. No furniture, electronics, mattresses, car batteries, and all that at Costco. Even describing Costco to an Israeli overwhelms them.

This is Osher Ad from the outside:

You enter from the front and exit from the back side. That … actually makes sense … Costco should try it except the buildings are so large it probably wouldn’t work.

Appliances are in a tent outside – which I guess you can do when it doesn’t get below freezing:

There’s no membership requirement like Costco (Costco is designed to break even except for membership fees) – however, you have to take one of these scanning guns to enter:

They are currently stocked with Pesach products – I get a kick out of stuff like this … table covering maps – it’s clear plastic. Draw your own mat on it:

Some products are in bulk – and viewed from the correct angle, look like an Andy Warhol:

This is from the front of the store looking towards the back – it’s big … not -that- big though. Should you want to buy fruit, vegetables, meat, fish, and whatnot, you have to weigh it yourself and put your own sticker on it. More on that later.

… except for the candy where an Arab lady weighs it and puts the sticker on for you:

… I asked her if it made sense to say “Ramadan Somayach” or anything like that, trying to be friendly. She shrugged. I don’t know.

The picture is taken at the dividing line between candy which does not have kitnoyos and candy which does. All the good stuff is on the kitnoyos side.

Here’s where you weigh your meat, vegetables, and the rest of the ‘whatnot’ described above as such:

The machine has seen better days. It works well though. You can scan the barcode on the product and then say print me a label. It won’t print the label though. For that, you have to push the button on the machine.

The horseradish wasn’t recognized … so I put it back rather than deal with it.

In the kichen products, they have a 40 centimeter knife – that’s 1 1/3 feet!

Here’s some dualing hasgachas on Osem soup:

The hashgacha on the left is from Chasam Sofer … it’s a recognized very strong hashgacha and it says that this is Osem soup is kosher for pesach. Badatz Yerushalyim is also on the package and it says it’s not kosher l’pesach. Bedatz Yerushalayim is about as strong and strict a hechsur as you can get … strongest that I know of … I guess it doesn’t meet their standards of supervision.

Then there’s the section with some Costco products – from Canada – with English and French:

We also found Costco garbage bags.

Happy day! They sell shumura matzah (machine and hand-made) in boxes on the shelf!

My minhag, for years, has been to eat Holyland Shmura matzah from Jerusalem. Why? It’s at Costco and it’s $16/lb and they’ve never raised the price! Here, the boxes are bigger … they’re measured in kilograms. I did the conversion and at Osher Ad the matzah comes out to about $10.50/lb. No idea which brand I like, so I got all three kinds they had.

Is hand or machine made matzah better? My family prefers the taste of the Costco matzah which is hand-made … so … I got both this year. I had a moment of glee when I realized the issue over hand versus machine made was a product of the first industrial revolution. I taught American / American-Jewish history in middle school for four years before I made aliyah and I spent some time on the dispute over hand vs. machine made matzah and the controversy over hand vs. machine made textiles.

Then when you’re ready to checkout your put your shopping cart on a scale. Seems like a good idea though it’s kind of like Shylock taking a pound of flesh. A little too much or a little to … little, and you’re in trouble:

We didn’t weight our horseradish and carrots … pre-packaged … and scanned something twice by accident … and so a worker takes everything out of the cart … scans it all again himself while your products are … wherever he can put them (mostly on top of an ice cream freezer) … and you use the, “I’m new here” excuse with your American accent:

By the way, once you get through all that … you’re not done. Then you take your price gun and go pay … and hope that works:

Harrowing.