A Word From the Weiss

        The dire news leaked out on a Tuesday afternoon last month and instantly began to spread faster than you can shmear cream cheese on an "everything" bagel.
        The Crown was closing. The Crown was closing!
        The Crown Market? Closing? Oh, say it wasn’t so!
        Established in 1940, this haimishe, family-owned supermarket had long reigned as a cornerstone of my local Jewish community, selling Glatt kosher meats, sliced Nova Scotia lox, schmaltz herring, potato latkes, and other such delicacies for the past 74 years.
        There are enough Jews in my town for it to boast a vibrant Jewish community center, a Jewish swim and racquet club, an annual Jewish book festival, an annual Jewish film festival, and multiple synagogues serving every conceivable Judaic sect, including the temple to which I belong, which is among the largest Reform congregations in the Northeast.
        And yet whenever I try to convey to people just how Jewish the area I live in is, I always hasten to point out that we have a full-size kosher supermarket to call our own. You might call it, in essence, the crown jewel of Connecticut Jewry.
        OK, maybe The Crown Market didn’t exactly look like a crown, or much of a jewel. After 74 years of purveying everything from hot pastrami on rye to hamantaschen, the big brick building on Albany Avenue had grown to look a little dated both inside and out.
        But that, let’s face it, only added to its old-world charm. There was nothing like the sights and smells of the freshly prepared specialties in its bakery and deli departments to transport you back to the days when you visited your grandparents in Brooklyn and got to dine on lokshen kugel, lox, bagels, and your bubbie’s homemade chicken soup.
        “It’s unique!” declared my cousin Susan, who since moving to Connecticut has shopped there regularly for the fresh-baked rye bread, sour pickles and creamy whitefish salad. “Nowhere else do you have a Jewish Mom and Pop supermarket, except in Brooklyn.”
        And so my entire women’s book group, the Shayna Maidels, was ready to plotz.
        “Really? I can't believe that! When and who did you hear it from?” wrote a member named Ruth when news of the store’s imminent demise circulated among our ranks within seconds.
        “Hard to believe! When? Why?” responded another member named Renee.
        But their No. 1 concern, along with distress over all of the lost jobs and how we’d manage now during major Jewish holidays: What were we going to do without The Crown’s tuna?
         Personally, to be perfectly honest, I’d never been a devotee of the store’s special tuna salad, a practically pureed version prepared with some sort of secret ingredient that they have never deigned to divulge. I prefer my own recipe, light on the mayo, yet heavy on the celery... and motherly love. But I was apparently almost alone in that regard. Everyone else seemed to consider it a lifeline, about as integral to survival as oxygen.
        And at the thought of doing without it, along with The Crown’s matzah ball soup, mandelbreit, and prune danishes, they all went into mourning en masse, hook, line and sphincter.
        OK, it might sound a little extreme for us to be ready to sit shiva for a supermarket. But there you have it. This felt more like losing an old friend, or even a whole way of life.
        Never mind that this was the one place on earth where it takes me 45 minutes just to  pick up a loaf of challah, and I have to put on stylish clothes and makeup just to buy milk, lest all of the yentas I invariably run into there begin to gossip that I’m looking a little shvakh. 
        So everyone went into total shock. Including me, of course. After all, The Crown had long been there at many of the most pivotal moments of my life. It had catered the big dinners we’d held on the eve of both our children’s bar and bat mitzvahs. It was where I went for rugelach or seven-layer cake each time I made a shiva call. (A good Jew never arrives anywhere empty-handed, least of all to a house where people are in mourning.) And it had known exactly what kind of spread to supply after each of my parents and my mother-in-law had died and we’d needed provisions for people paying shiva calls to us.
        Although I like to fancy myself a true ballabusta – one who cooks most traditional Jewish foods from scratch – it also had long served as my mainstay on important Jewish holidays. Now where would I ever hope to find freshly made gefilte fish for Passover?
        Yet the unfortunate truth was that I rarely shopped there anymore, other than for major occasions. If I had known they were in trouble, I would have gone in more often. Then again, if I’d gone in more often, maybe I would’ve known that they were in trouble.
        In making the grave announcement, the owner cited the rising prices of goods and the record cold weather we'd been battling all winter. Indeed, a disproportionate number of people flocking there for kosher chickens weren’t exactly spring chickens themselves. All that snow had no doubt been enough to make elderly customers stay home.
        There also may have been some issues about how kosher the place really was. Their choice to stock trayf like clam juice was viewed as an affront by some clientele.
        But the main issue, no doubt, was mounting competition from local chain stores. There were already a Big Y and a Whole Foods Market nearby, and within the past six months or so a so-called “Neighborhood Market” run by Walmart had opened its doors.
        Although The Crown may have the market virtually cornered on many Jewish items like kasha varnishkes, some of these stores had shown the good sense to offer kosher fare themselves. And let’s face it, there was no way a solo business could compete with such rivals when it came to items like detergent, diapers, and paper towels.
        I don’t know about you, but I’m usually too busy to visit more than one store in a single day, and I’m inclined to save money whenever possible. So more often than not, I’d opted to go to the places where I could find everything on my list at the lowest price.
        That, to me, had seemed like showing sechel -- good sense. Now it seemed like a shonda.
        Yes, as with most issues of the Jewish persuasion, there was more than enough guilt in this case to go around, and I instantly blamed myself as much as anyone else.
        But if I was part of the problem, could I also be part of the solution? Suddenly, I was ready to shell out a bit more for everything if that would help keep The Crown open.
        And I was far from the only one. Every Jew I knew seemed eager to do the same. But was it too late? Or might some local hero still rise up and turn The Crown around?
        “There’s only one person in this community who can save it,” asserted my good and well-informed friend Arlene, who was feeling under the weather and craving Crown chicken soup.
       “Who?” I replied, proceeding to barrage her with the names of various rabbis and big machers (Jewish movers and shakers).
        I got it on the third try.
        The great Jewish hope she had in mind was a prominent businessman named Henry Zachs. But Arlene said he had already made overtures to the current owner, and it was too late.
        Word was that the store would close by early March, or as soon as its inventory ran out.
        So I went shopping there that very night. The place felt like a funeral parlor. Patrons pushing carts wandered throughout the aisles in disbelief, fighting back tears. There already had been a stampede of devotees snapping up the last of the kosher chickens. The meat case, normally brimming with quartered pullets, was nearly bare.
        Seeing that, I rushed over to the bakery counter, where the usual happy-faced cookies were now sporting frowns. I opted instead to snag the last pound of chocolate-covered macaroons, even if Passover was more than a month away.
        What about the longtime employees who’d served us there for decades? I was relieved when an unfamiliar woman behind the deli counter called out my number. What would happen to Eddy, my favorite clerk in the takeout department, the 5 O’clock Shop, whom I’d known for nearly 20 years? I couldn’t bear to look him in the eye.
        When I got home, I discovered that a petition was already circulating online asking the owners to do whatever possible to allow this deeply cherished store to stay open.
        “The Crown Market is an institution serving both Jewish and non-Jewish members of the community,” it stated. Offering the area’s largest supply of kosher meats and prepared foods, “It provides a valuable community service and another option to the big box stores that surround it.” So it urged the owners to renegotiate their lease and seek community support to remain afloat.
        Without hesitation, I signed and forwarded it to almost everyone in town I know.
        One friend, to my surprise, wrote back something that sounded a bit snippy.
        “Don’t they need business and money? How is a petition going to solve anything?”
        Yet nearly everyone else seemed to feel like I did – that it was at least worth a try -- and quickly added their names.
        And they were far from the only ones. Within a week, nearly 2,000 people had signed as well, hundreds also posting comments about what The Crown meant to them, some from as far away as California and Tel Aviv.
        “The Crown is indeed an icon,” wrote Steven Bernstein of West Hartford, CT. “I will mourn their closing with much sorrow. (Their mandel bread -- my family's Friday night dessert of choice throughout my childhood -- is unmatched in the world.)”
        “An institution such as the Crown and all that it has offered for so long cannot be allowed to 'go under'!” wrote Heske Zelermyer from Delray Beach, FL. “…Owners: change your goals, it's not only about money, it's about a Jewish community and history and loyalty.”
        “Like my mother before me, I have spent most of my married life shopping at the Crown,” wrote Rhoda Peskin of Longmeadow, MA, noting that she and her husband drove there regularly, making the hour-plus round-trip to stock up on kosher meat and other items they couldn't find closer to home. “…Please find a way to keep the Crown open,” she pleaded. “Pesach will be here sooner than we think!”
        Many people wrote to suggest that the place remain open, but that they eliminate the grocery and produce aisles and just retain the kosher meats, deli, bakery, and takeout sections and put in tables so that people could meet there to eat and schmooze.
       Kind of like a kosher Starbucks, only with lox, smoked sturgeon, and coffee cake.
        Meanwhile, Colin McEnroe, widely known locally as a newspaper columnist and radio talk-show host (although not a Jew) tackled the issue in his weekly blog.
        “The Crown is not just food. It’s culture,” he wrote. He proposed that it be reincarnated as something he called CSK -- “Community Supported Kosher.”
        “If you love this market, you buy a ‘share,’” he explained. “Every month, they deduct $100 from one of your cards, and you have that much credit.”
        Personally, I wasn’t convinced that either move was quite the way to go. But I did think it was time for the whole community to come to The Crown's aid together.
        Forgive me for referencing, of all things, a Christmas movie, but perhaps this was the moment when we needed to reach into our collective hearts and pocketbooks and cough up whatever we could, the way the citizens of Bedford Falls do for good ole George Bailey at the end of It’s a Wonderful Life. We needed to be there for The Crown because it had always been there for us, not just at Pesach but day in and day out, at key moments of our lives – assorted simchas, busy nights when we were too beat to cook, and every year on Yom Kippur, when we broke the fast with its luscious store-made cheese blintzes.
        And so I chose not to write about it in my own blog quite yet, hoping that if I waited a bit, some miracle might occur and permit me to pen a happy ending.
        In the meanwhile, I began shopping there every day for the first time in years.
        After biting into one of those scrumptious chocolate-covered macaroons, I decided to go back to buy another pound to store in the freezer until Passover.
        I also stocked up on staples like toilet paper and Tide, not bothering to check the price.
        I even bought a tiny container of that famous tuna, just to give it one more chance. Turned out to be much better than I remembered. My husband took one bite and quickly inhaled the rest. Then he insisted I go buy another pound.
        So I went back again the next day.
        And on my way out, I struck up a conversation with the customer service manager, who divulged that there was not only a ray of hope, but an actual reprieve in the works.
        He said negotiations were still under way and that an announcement wouldn’t be made public for a few more days. But as large as the Jewish community is here, it’s a very small town when it comes to spreading gossip, and it couldn’t be kept under wraps.
        That very night, the news leaked out online, and it was widely broadcast the next day.
        Henry Zachs, a prominent local philanthropist and the founder and CEO of Message Center Management, had indeed come forward to lead the effort, along with Alan Lazowski, chief executive of LAZ Parking, and Brian Newman, a past president and chairman of the board of the local JCC.
        "The community really, really came together,” Zachs told the Hartford Courant. “People from all denominations, people that were unexpected."
        Zachs declined to say how much had been raised or what the purchase would cost. But I later heard from a friend that they had managed to raise about $1.8 million from over 40 investors, most of whom agreed to ante up at least $25,000 apiece.
        "We are blessed to have a community that cares so deeply about saving this precious asset, as well as saving valuable jobs," Zachs said in a prepared statement, according to the Courant. "We are honored to be part of this local communitywide effort, all working together toward the common goal of ensuring that The Crown Market... can continue to thrive for future generations."
        Those generations may not see the exact same Crown we now know and love. After 74 years, it is slated to be brought into the Top Chef era with an organic department, along with a much-needed facelift both inside and out.
        It was later announced that the store will not only be spared the chopping block, but continue to sell chopped liver and other wares without interruption.
        Indeed, the next time I stopped in to stock up on tuna for my husband – and OK, I’ll admit it, for me to nosh on too – the butcher case was packed with plump kosher pullets again.
        I also had no hesitation about placing my deli order with Eddy, who was beaming.
        Needless to say, the smiley faces were back on the happy cookies, too.
        And so, like The Crown itself, I get to have my happy ending, after all. Or do I?
        I worry that this episode is just one example of much more pervasive problems in modern Jewish life. My temple, as sizable as it may be, struggles due to dwindling membership to pay its bills and continue to support programs like its nursery school (and how can anyone really be surprised, with family dues topping $2,500 a year)?
        Many Jewish day schools are also in jeopardy of closing due to declining enrollment, thanks to rising tuitions and fewer families opting for a Jewish education. My friend Arlene has heard that there are only four kids enrolled in kindergarten at the local Solomon Schechter Day School. Back when my children both attended, it was packed.
        “I think there’s a bigger problem here,” she said.
        Can we afford to count on there always being a big macher to rush to the rescue?
        Who knows? All I know is that we cannot afford to continue taking the schools, stores, and other institutions on which our Jewish future rests for granted.
        We need to support them by joining and/or just showing up. We must continue to use them or we will surely lose them.
        I will still bake my own hamantaschen this Purim (please see my recipe if you want to, too). But from now on I intend to keep chowing down on The Crown’s world-renowned tuna, whatever the heck that special ingredient is. Maybe it's schmaltz. Or motherly love.