UH OH -- NO EGG ROLL

OY VEY!

One of my Chicago friends and partners -- a great Jewish professional -- sent me a story appearing in Reuters website with a commentary -- “How to really bring Israel to her knees.”

The article written by Rebecca Harrison -- Eateries go on spring roll strike. In pertinent part, reporting from Jerusalem, the author wrote:

“Israel’s Asian restaurants went on a one-day spring roll strike Tuesday in protest over government plans to rid kitchens of foreign chefs, and said sushi and noodles would be the next items off the menu. The restaurants are angry at government plans to purge Japanese, Chinese and Thai eateries of Asians cooks and replace them with Israelis as part of a broader program to cut the number of foreigners working in the Jewish State.

The Israeli “Ethnic Restaurant Organization” said the country’s 300 Asian restaurants refused to serve spring or egg rolls -- among their popular dishes -- Tuesday, and planned a follow-up strike in two weeks for the sushi and noodles. ‘Today there is no egg roll and in two weeks time there will be no sushi and noodles,’ Arnon Volosky (do you think this guy is Asian??) head of the Organization, told Reuters.

The government argues Israelis can be trained. ‘Everyone can make Chinese food,\it’s not impossible to learn,’ said Shoshana Strauss, a lawyer working on foreign worker issues for the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Labor. Asian restaurants first started dishing up Chicken Chow Mein and Thai Green Curry to Israelis about thirty years ago and have evolved into a $1 billion shekels a year ($275 million) industry.”

It is fortunate that Israel faces so few problems that it can focus on ridding the country of the expert chefs who prepare the regular Sunday take away diet of egg/spring rolls and even sushi and noodles.

What if this happened in America? Would Jews have to cook on Sunday evenings (or, as Justice Elana Kagan pronounced, Christmas Day) -- would our diet be restricted to pizza carryout and, or horror of horrors, corned beef sandwiches (not that that would be a bad thing). Would this be the subject of a Workshop at the GA? Will JFNA open a Mailbox?

We will soon see whether this incredible threat to Israel’s economy and to Jews everywhere is resolved. And, how.

Rwexler