About the gefilte fish crisis: Doesn't somebody have to answer for the Passover whitefish shortage? (Maybe cast a glance upward?)

by Ken

You can read the shocking headline for yourself below: "Gefilte Fish Supply is Scarce This Passover Due to Bad Winter, Shops Say."

Now my mother took religion very seriously, though perhaps a tad idiosyncratically. For her it entailed, in roughly ascending order of importance:

(1) Lighting of Shabas candles

(2) Preparation of the designated foods for the appropriate holidays

(3) Hadassah, and all things relating to it

As regards (2), the rite of worship most relevant to today's story, my mother regarded those holiday food preparations with only slightly more worshipful seriousness than, say, that of Abraham preparing to sacrifice Isaac. And before Passover that included -- especially once my grandmother was involved in the operation -- the annual moaning about the price of fish this year. But, that it should have come to, well . . . this?

Gefilte Fish Supply is Scarce This Passover Due to Bad Winter, Shops Say

By Rachel Holliday Smith on April 15, 2014 9:03am

CROWN HEIGHTS — Why is this night different from all other nights? Because there's a shortage of gefilte fish!

A harsh winter in the Great Lakes region has sparked a shortage of fresh whitefish, the main ingredient for the Passover dish gefilte fish — in a development that could put a damper on this year's Jewish holiday, according to suppliers of a local Kosher fish market.

Raskin’s Fish Market in Crown Heights has been scrambling to come up with enough whitefish to keep up with demand for Passover, after frozen conditions in the lakes that produce much of the whitefish supply sent fish populations dwindling.

“It’s very bad,” said Schlomo Raskin, who opened the market in 1961 and said he can’t remember a shortage like this in the past 30 years. “You feel very badly when a customer comes in and she wants to buy 30 pounds and you only have five.”

Workers at Raskin’s said they usually get dozens of pounds of whitefish a day during the busy season, but now they’re lucky to get a few. While the problem has lingered for months, they said, it's most extreme this holiday week. The whitefish is ground and made into patties often served in two meals a day during the Passover holidays.

Customers filed in and out of the shop on Kingston Avenue near Union Street to prepare for the holiday, in search of a portion of the remaining fish.

“It’s gold,” said manager Yossi Hayward, 28, “It’s first come, first serve.”

While the whitefish remains scarce, Raskin’s said they’ll make their gefilte with a different mixture of ground fish, including halibut and carp. And for those doing last minute Passover shopping, the shop has pre-packaged gefilte fish for sale, which is made at a kitchen they run in Brownsville.

Speaking with the theological authority of someone who watched my mother make gefilte fish many a year (including several years with my grandmother, after we moved to NYC); who has eaten a fair pile of the stuff over the years; who saw a free-to-members preview screening of Darren Aronofsky's Noah at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria; and, as I mentioned yesterday, only a week and a half ago actually visited Brooklyn's Crown Heights -- and, yes, Kingston Avenue -- I can say that this is an outrage, and that fingers should be pointing.

And it seems clear that the direction in which those fingers should be pointing is upwards, since as I understand God's famous covenant, He is covenantially obligated to maintain a proper supply of whitefish for Passover. I shudder to think what my mother would have said. And my grandmother? Forget about it!

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