Change on Melbourne’s kosher meat scene
As you eat your chicken this Shabbat there is much history to recall.
The recent announcement of the closure of Melbourne’s Solomon Kosher Butcher’s shop on Glen Eira Road even as the business continues in a new format, is reflective of further change in consumer habits from buying over the counter to buying online and the purchasing of prepackaged meats in outlets such as supermarkets.
Its products, albeit prepackaged, will be available from an outlet in Carlisle Street; however phone and online orders of particular products remain operative as the dedicated Solomon’s retail premises closes.
Nevertheless at this point so indicative of change in retail patterns affecting our long standing traditions, a little history is in order.
Melbourne Jewry was concerned with kashrut from the earliest period. Its first religious communal appointment was Reverend Moses Rintel, who arrived from Sydney in 1849 and acted as shochet, mohel and teacher as well as minister.
Generally speaking, for the next 100 or so years, kosher meat under supervision of congregations, the Victorian Beth Din and then a dedicated Shechitah Board, was sold in non-kosher butcher shops, which undertook to keep kosher meat separate. For much of that time there were two hechsherim – of the Melbourne and East Melbourne Congregations respectively.
In 1928 Norman Smorgon acquired a butcher shop in Lygon Street, Carlton, which would serve the community for four decades, albeit under various ownerships. Smorgon worked in conjunction with Batagols of St Kilda and alongside Messrs F Watkins and the Polonsky brothers of Rathdowne Street, each of which had varying relationships over time with individual shochtim, the Melbourne Beth Din or the United Shechitah Board.
However, even with dedicated butcher shops under Beth Din supervision the situation was unsatisfactory in the eyes of European Jews who arrived in Melbourne in the early decades of the 20th century and mainly settled in Carlton.
Many did not even buy their chickens from a butcher; rather chickens were bought live from the market (as had commonly been done in Eastern Europe) and the shochet came to the house and shechted the fowl in the backyard. (This obviated the need to use the butcher shops which were considered less reliable than the shochtim themselves). For a while, meat was available under supervision of Rabbi Gurewitz of Carlton at the Rathdowne Street shop of Unglik and Zigal. What we now know as Continental Kosher Butchers, now operative for over 75 years, had its origins about 1945.
Given concerns regarding the Beth Din of an Anglo community whose outlook differed from that which they were used to, an early action of the postwar immigrants who would form the Adass community was arranging for the 1949 arrival of a person they knew from Nitra/Slovakia – Reb Moshe Shmuel Rosenbaum – to serve as shochet and mohel.
And so, from 1949 a series of small butcher shops were operated by community members; over time they were consolidated. This was as much a product of the principle of economies of scale, as it related to new health regulations and the demand for a better display facility than that which existed in the comparatively primitive small shops with sawdust floors and a fridge facility in the back room from which meat was brought out on demand. (The only currently operating Adass Butcher shop – Melbourne Kosher Butchers – was taken over by Yankel Unfanger in the 1980s).
Simultaneously there was also a consolidation of establishments serving the other elements of the kosher market including those supervised by the Beth Din and those somewhat ephemeral establishments that operated independently. During the 1990s the Beth Din ceased its involvement in shechitah and supervision of butchers.
The smaller post-1950 butcher shops referred to above sold meat and smallgoods, rather than poultry. This reflected consumption patterns in the Australian community generally, where the contemporary emphasis was on red meat.
Poultry, then difficult to farm en masse, was a much less commonly used specialty item. However, as chicken consumption expanded across Australia thanks to improved technology on dedicated farms, so too did provision for kosher consumers and a number of specialised poultry shops were established. Included among those under the Adass hechsher were those of the Eckstein and Hofstatter families; the latter after moving into barbecue as well as raw chicken, became the forerunner of today’s Eshel shop and catering service still in the same family hands.
What we now know as Solomon Kosher Butcher had its origins in the 1950s with the commencement of Eatmore Kosher Butchers in Acland Street, St Kilda, when David Burd acquired an already existing poultry business. In July 1965 Godel Wroby joined his brother-in-law David, to develop Eatmore Poultry Pty Ltd, the forerunner of today’s Solomon butchers.
Though already from that time the Acland Street shop supplied only kosher poultry, August 1980 saw an announcement in The AJN that Eatmore in Acland Street was now under Beth Din supervision. It remained so until February 1993 when following the purchase of another business, Balaclava Kosher Poultry, premises were rented in Carlisle Street for what was now to be known as Solomon. The Mizrachi Kashrut Committee (forerunner to Kosher Australia) took supervisory responsibility.
However, October saw the opening of Solomon Kosher Butcher in Glen Eira Road, replacing the Acland Street store that now closed. That closure was yet another indication of the decline of Acland Street as a Jewish hub. But it also marked the beginning of the move from solely dealing with poultry to the sale of red meat. The Carlisle Street shop was closed in October 1996; a year later Solomon merged with Chedwa Kosher Butchers (also in Carlisle Street) but in 1998 that outlet also closed. Solomon’s now traded only from Glen Eira Road under the supervision of Rabbi Groner (Chabad). It remains under Chabad supervision.
With the absorption of Chedwa Butchers by Solomon’s, the total number of kosher butcher shops in Melbourne was reduced to three and so it has remained until this point even as the availability of packaged meat provided by two of those shops to supermarkets significantly changed consumer purchase practices.
While the Solomon business and name will remain serving the Jewish community, this move is further indication of such change.
Shabbat shalom,
Yossi
Yossi Aron OAM is The AJN’s religious affairs editor
comments