Covering Culture

Major Misfire With Passover Piece Leaves Writer Stung by Stereotyping, Misunderstandings

Posted May 15, 2008

By Lisa Fernandez

So far in my columns I've offered personal, hands-on tips on how to cover culture.

This time I seek your comments about the reaction to one of my recent articles. In April I wrote what I thought was a humorous look at a Jewish tradition during Passover. Several readers said they were offended by the article's subject and tone.

I am still trying to figure out why those readers didn't get my jokes in the story, which was about a shortage of kosher crackers, called Tam Tams, that are a popular item in Passover meals.

First, I should let you know that my last name, Fernandez, comes from Sephardic Jewish ancestors from Portugal. I am a Conservative practicing Jew who keeps kosher, speaks Hebrew and went to Orthodox elementary schools.

When Passover rolled around this year, I started looking for stories to write, as I do with a holiday of any religion. Turns out a small Jewish paper in New Jersey had broken a story I was sure would be big news with the people I know: The Manischewitz plant wasn't able to make Tam Tam crackers in time for Passover this year because of a glitch in its baking machinery. Manischewitz is the sole maker of these popular crackers.

Not having Tam Tams for Passover, when observant Jews are forbidden to eat any unleavened food, is like not having Cadbury eggs for Easter or chocolate for Valentine's Day. Of course, these holidays can be celebrated without such treats, but they are what make the holiday familiar and comforting.

So, I wrote the story with a light-hearted tone. Here's the headline: "Oy Gevalt! Jews brace for kosher cracker crisis this Passover."

Here are my first few paragraphs:

www.manischewitz.com

Imagine Easter without Cadbury eggs or Marshmallow Peeps. Thanksgiving without pumpkin pie. Valentine's Day without See's candies.

Passover without Tam Tam crackers? Many Jews will have to do without their favorite salty cracker fix this year. Short of the Red Sea parting in time for the holiday, this may go down as the "Great Kosher Cracker Crisis."

"This is huge, it's a dire emergency" said Susie Weitzman, who works at the Jewish Community Center in Los Gatos. "My kids love Tam Tams. They eat them with tuna and crunch them up in their soup."

You wouldn't believe some of the emails and phone calls I got – even on my cell, which I say on my voice mail is only for emergencies. I should also mention that I had written a story about the looming shortage of matzo that followed the news of the Tam Tams. It was pretty straightforward.

Yet, here's an e-mail from a reader named Felicia:

"Your latest articles in The Mercury News: 'Jews Face Passover Without Tam Tams...' and 'Hit or Miss With Finding Matzo...' are incredibly naive and somewhat contrite. It amazes me that with all the 'real' issues facing the Jewish people, you chose to write about crackers and matzo.

"Passover is an important holiday; however, we do not celebrate the matzo, we celebrate our freedom and remembrance of those slaves who left Egypt. I think we'll all be fine with the amount of matzo in the Bay Area during the coming 8 days of Passover observance.

Karen T. Borchers - Mercury News Lunardi's Supermarket, in Los Gatos, had a dozen or more boxes of Tam Tam.

"As for the people you 'quoted' in your articles... let's just say some people will talk to anyone to get their names in the newspaper.

I do believe in freedom of press and certainly enjoy humorous or satirical articles, but I found your recent articles to fall under neither of these categories. Perhaps Mark Twain said it best, 'Wit, by itself, is of little account. It becomes of moment only when grounded on wisdom.'"

Sheesh! I emailed Felicia back twice asking to speak with her on the phone, telling her in the email that I was Jewish, and observed Passover pretty strictly and couldn't understand why she was so upset. She never responded.

But overall, she represents about a dozen angry Jewish readers who either didn't get my jokes or didn't appreciate them.

Besides Felicia, some readers called to say that thought "Oy Vey" was making fun of Jews. (Oy vey is a Yiddish expression that loosely means, "oh my.") Then, in one sentence, I wrote that a shopper had scored an outdated box of Tam Tams from last year and was "guarding them like gold" until Passover. A reader phoned to to say she thought I was stereotyping Jews as money hungry. Another reader didn't like my purposefully glib sentence, "Luckily, Jews won't starve this holiday," and went on to say that there were plenty of fruit gels and macaroons to nosh on instead. That reader said that I shouldn't make fun of such food issues because Jews had actually starved during the Holocaust and, in these times, are sometimes accused of eating too much.

I write about a lot of religions and cultures, especially Sikh, Muslim and Hindu. I have never received any complaints about my articles' tone from any of these groups. This type of criticism, especially from the Jewish community, baffled me.

So, here's my armchair analysis of what happened:

1) I was the victim of prejudice and stereotyping. Readers saw my byline, "Lisa Fernandez,” and assumed I was a Catholic Latina. "How dare an outsider make fun of us!" they must have thought. The Jewish readers that I know, and who know me, actually wrote me to say they found the article funny. Also, when I contacted some of the angry Jewish readers and told them my background, most completely backed down.

2) A metro daily isn't the right medium for this kind of jesting tone. The San Jose Mercury News is neither a Jewish newsaper with a predominantly Jewish readership, nor does it cover Jewish issues all that deeply. To step in and write a piece intended to be funny seems out of place and inappropriate. Check out Jennifer Steinhauer's article in The New York Times written by Jennifer Steinhauer. New York has a big Jewish population. The lighthearted remarks she made about a matzo shortage during Passover apparently didn't prompt the same kind of criticism as my article did. This was Steinhauer's nut graf: "Hypothesis: If the shortage had been on gefilte fish, complaints would have been far fewer.'' This is obviously written with a sense of humor, and an inside joke for Jews. Gefilte fish, to put it mildly, is an acquired taste and not considered haute cuisine, though it's a traditional Jewish dish.

I scanned Steinhauer's "reader comments" on The Times website, and none conveyed a sense of being upset with her. In fact, most people were commiserating about not being able to find matzo where they lived.

3) The reaction to my article may have been related to geography. Tam Tams are hugely popular on the East Coast; I assumed they were on the West Coast, too. Turns out I think I was wrong, and my story should have at least mentioned this difference. So when I wrote about the shortage as a crisis, I didn't realize it wasn't that big a deal for many of the Silicon Valley Jews who read our paper. It also turns out that my first quote is from a person who cared about Tam Tams is from the East Coast.

A colleague of mine who I respect deeply and is a wonderful religion reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle, Matthai Kuruvila, (who also used to sit right next to me for years at the Mercury News) wrote a story about the matzo shortage. He played it straight, allowing the quotes to set the tone. He told me he didn't get any negative calls about the story.

I asked him whether he had been tempted to have fun with the story but worried he shouldn't or couldn't because he is of Indian descent and not Jewish. He said his background had nothing to do with it. He just doesn't like being too lighthearted or sarcastic with any religion, because it's like making fun of someone's mother. Religion is too sacred (no pun intended) to mess around with.

I asked him to critique my Tam Tam piece. He told me he thought the tone was a bit of a stretch, giving Tam Tams more importance than they really have. I also asked my rabbi what he thought of the story. He said it was hysterical and wouldn't have changed a thing.

I'm still mulling it over. I really don't think I would have done much differently with the story, other than noting the difference in the Passover eating habits between the East and West coasts. I think everyone should experience the good, the bad and the ugly with coverage of their particular culture. I don't think all stories have to be written seriously. I think reporters should be able to exercise news judgment about what they write about, as well as the tone they take. Obviously, something went amiss here, but I'm not sure: Was I too rough with the readers, or were they too rough with a reporter with a Spanish surname was writing about an important Jewish holiday?

Lisa Fernandez is a reporter at the San Jose (Calif.) Mercury News. She covers everything from crime to community, and believes that a person's cultural background is often a key motivating factor, but is sadly overlooked by the mainstream media. She has a degree in anthropology from McGill University in Montreal and a master's degree from Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University in Chicago. Please submit ideas or stories for Lisa to review.