“I am absolutely heartbroken,” the owner of an Israeli-made tahini brand in New York told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday after one of the main grocery co-ops in the US voted to boycott all Israeli products.
Rachel Simons is originally from Australia, but moved to New York 12 years ago, where she co-founded Seed + Mill with friends Lisa and Monica. Seed + Mill started as a small kiosk in New York’s bustling Chelsea Market in 2016. It became the first store in the US dedicated to sesame products, selling tahini, halva, and tahini soft serve.
“We wanted to open people’s minds to the fun and delicious versatility of sesame seeds,” Simons told the Post.
Chelsea Market gets foot traffic of about 20,000 people a day.
“Most of them come from other parts of the world, and they’re all very interested and fascinated by the way sesame and halva and tahini has threaded or weaved its way across the globe and, you know, a lot of cultures, a lot of people have a really strong, nostalgic, sentimental attachment to these types of historic products.”
“I wrote a cookbook last year called Sesame, and it was published by Penguin Random House, and the book is all about celebrating the global love affair that people are having with sesame and tahini and halva specifically.”
Seed + Mill has grown from being a little shop into a brand that distributes its products across the US.
One of its customers is Brooklyn’s Park Slope Co-Op, which, on Tuesday night, voted in favor of a boycott of all Israeli products. Of the 6,772 votes cast at a meeting, 67% voted in favor of the boycott, 31% voted against, and 2% abstained.
Now, the less-than-a-dozen Israeli products will be removed from the shelves.
Simons has heard nothing from the co-op about the vote and only learned about it from the press.
“I anticipate not receiving any Purchase Orders from the co-op anymore, but I have not heard from them directly.”
A target of BDS campaigns since Oct 7
This is – unsurprisingly – not the first time that BDS has impacted Seed and Mill: The business has been the target of campaigns since October 7.
But this time is different, in that it happens to be a “very large account that will have very real damages and will affect revenue meaningfully,” Simons told the Post.
“It’s a very visible storm and my worry is that this sets a precedent for other co-ops. There’s a lot of food co-ops in the US and I worry that this becomes normalized for others.”
Al Arz Tahini – another brand – is one of the other businesses being boycotted by Park Slope.
What is perhaps most ironic is that both Seed + Mill and Al Arz are produced by Israeli Arabs in northern Israel.
“The stated mission of the boycott is to end apartheid, and I keep saying, what apartheid? My products are made by Israeli-Arabs, not Jewish Israelis.”
“Had the Park Slope Co-op asked me to talk to them beforehand, I would have loved to have shared [the Israeli Arab manufacturer’s] stories and humanized that business because if their stated goal is to end apartheid, I would have loved to explain to them that this is not what apartheid looks like.”
On an emotional note, Simons told the Post she is “absolutely gutted.”
“I am still optimistic and hopeful, and genuinely had hoped that one by one we would be able to see each other, humanize each other, not discuss geopolitics. I care deeply about the people that I work with, my manufacturing partners, my team here in New York, you know, I care deeply about everybody trying to just make a living and live in peace in the Middle East of every race, religion.”
Simons calls herself a citizen of the world (“even though it’s a cliché”).
She grew up in Australia to a Zimbabwean mother and Czechoslovakian grandparents. She has lived in London, Tel Aviv, Hong Kong, and now New York.
“I feel like I have a connection to every country in the world, and I love all people. What really got me started at Seed + Mill is I genuinely just like to talk to people of any faith and any colour and any ethnicity. So to say I’m devastated is an understatement.”
She finished with a message to readers: “If anybody reading this who disagrees or agrees, just come to our store in Chelsea Market, which is where we started. Have an ice cream. I love talking to people face to face, and if anyone would like that, the ice cream will be on me, and all I would ask of them is just to sit and have a proper conversation as opposed to an argument. I just want to talk about the people impacted here and their personal human stories.”
