I’ve spent 18 months spanning my sophomore to senior year of high school working at a kosher Jewish bakery and then 3 of those months at a kosher Jewish restaurant.
I’m not Jewish.
This didn’t stop me from meeting and befriending amazing people, having wonderful experiences and learning more than I ever would have thought about the Jewish community. My improved understanding, respect and friendship with a historically minority group helped me expand these qualities to other marginalized groups in society.
The summer of my sophomore year I walked into one of my favorite bakeries; I loved their big homemade meringues. I was talking to the owner, this scruffy, bespectacled hippie and during our conversation I mentioned how I was looking for a summer job. “You’re hired, when do you wanna start?” or something of that nature unexpectedly followed. The owner of The Grand Bakery was an OG “hippie Jew” named Bob Jaffe, or better known as Baker Bob. “Jesus was a jew, so why not?” I thought to myself and took the job. Thus began my journey to learning about kosher laws and the Jewish community.
“Kosher” refers to the Jewish religious dietary laws that dictate what can be consumed, how, when and with what. In the bakery setting it referred to foods that were “parve,” meaning “neutral,” and these are foods that can be eaten with anything at anytime. Under kosher laws you do not eat meat and dairy together or within a span of time, therefore parve foods are always safe to eat. The point of the bakery is that, for example, if there is a bar/bat mitzvah, there is most likely a celebratory meat dish which means that no other foods may contain dairy. So at the Grand Bakery, we provided parve cakes, cupcakes, cookies and other non-dairy kosher goods. In the kitchen, because meat and dairy cannot touch or be consumed together, Bob decided it would be easier for the bakery to be exclusively meat free, excluding fish which is parve.
Bob had a wife and three kids. He was a caring family man, politically involved hippie and major Deadhead. He was also a very close mentor for me. Bob Jaffe was the first vegetarian I was around on a regular basis and around everyday activities. Without his influence I don’t think I would be where I am as a dedicated vegan today. He would check in on my family and occasionally my love life, and give me long anecdotes of advice, only sometimes asked for. He helped me understand what it meant to be a individually thinking religious, non religious spiritual non spiritual person and I’ll never forget all the times I was paid to listen to a political rant for 20 minutes. I’ll always treasure that self proclaimed “bad hippie jew” and what he meant to me in my finding myself in my high school years.
My job at the bakery exposed me not only to the friendships with a “bad hippie jew” father, but others as well. I was friends with James, a young gay white guy with more hippie style and sass than I’ll ever be able to properly articulate. I was friends with young women, black, latina and white, at all different stages of life. I was friends with Mitch, who was an old black man with a white beard, always wore a white undershirt and ball cap, and smoked a thick cigar with a cup of wine at 6pm or “wine time”. Mitch gave me that good old man advice and cared for me as old men with lots of stories do. He would teach me how to smoke a cigar although I never touched one and when I got off he’d give me “alright baby have a good night and drive safe.” Mitch had that “old black man magic.”
My happy, uniformless job with no organized breaks, lunch or schedules at the bakery, lead me to my friendship with a young mother named Farah. She was only about 24, with one toddler son who she loved more than anything in the world, and a husband who had allowed her to work at the Grand Bakery. Farah was my first Muslim friend who taught me about the light and dark sides of all things. I mean I don’t feel the need to overcompensate with how amazing and kind she was because she was normal. Of course she was kind and friendly and that’s why we were friends. She was a delivery driver and when she came to pack and unpack the van, she’d ask about my weekend and I would ask about her son. She wore a hijab and very often had very cute and colorful designs and outfits. We would laugh at jokes and exchange everyday stories, and throughout the whole time we were both aware that she was Muslim, I am Catholic and we both worked at a kosher Jewish bakery. My friendship with her showed me the good and normalcy of a community that is facing extreme discrimination and stereotyping. Unfortunately, she was later told to quit her job by her husband who felt she was being “too exposed” due to James, as a gay man, and possibly the other religions practiced in the space. This experience showed me the unfortunate truths as well. There is good and bad to all things, and we should believe only good until inarguable personal evidence surfaces.
Families all the way from Israel came to the Grand Bakery and Amba (the kosher restaurant I worked at) and Oakland Kosher (the local kosher market) because these were the only three kosher establishments in virtually all the Bay Area. Sometimes families would have to drive an hour or two just to go out to eat! Dedicated kosher keeping jewish people go through what we consider leaps and jumps to practice their religion. In seeing this, I developed a stern foundation of respect for the Jewish community and what it meant to be Jewish.
One day, while holding down the fort at the bakery, Bob ran to the bank for what takes about 15 minutes to get change. At this time by myself I received a phone call. The not very old but not naively young, middle aged voice started screeching anti-semitic comments on the phone in my ear. In shock and unable to understand what was going on right away, I hesitated for awhile before sternly saying “you need to stop calling here!” and hung up. He called two more times that day to scream hateful messages, inexplicably all times when Bob was not there. In a fuss so frustrated, I almost started crying in anger. I told Bob what had happened, he apologized, blocked the number on the bakery phone and told me “it happens”… It happens? IT HAPPENS?! No! This is not allowed to just happen. I was treated with anti-semitism by an oppressor who did not know that I wasn’t even Jewish…talk about being in another person’s shoes. I have never forgotten that day, what it taught me and the immense sense of protection I developed for minority groups and the Jewish community in particular.
I came and left work each day happy to have spent time with my friends and worked hard to keep an essential ally to the Jewish community running, owned by a good man with good intentions. I was proud of my job and who I became due to having had it. I was very sad when Bob decided to retire, but happy when I knew he’d be doing what he wanted for his life after giving to his community so generously for so long. The Grand Bakery helped make me, a half Chinese Catholic, into who I am now.
Today Bob has found someone to buy the Grand Bakery and bakes out of a new location and is currently selling many of the same products, including, of course, the necessity that is Challah bread. The kosher spirit and community history is still alive in the Bay. Find Lower Hills in Oakland at 3033 MacArthur Blvd, Oakland, CA 94602 to experience some of the magic.