Last Friday, thousands of loaves of Angel Bakery Challahs were left untouched in grocery stores in Haredi neighborhoods across Israel, in response to a spontaneous boycott that had been declared by Haredi politicians and even a few Haredi Rabbis. The reason was the Chairman of the Board of Angel Bakery, Omer Barlev, who led a demonstration calling for “an equal sharing of the burden” of IDF service, in front of the Bnei Brak home of Rabbi Gershon Edelstein, the Rosh yeshiva of Ponevezh, president of the Vaad Hayeshivos, and the spiritual leader of the Lithuanian faction in United Torah Judaism. Rabbi Edelstein, may he live a long and prosperous life, just turned 100 last month, which seemed to make his enraged supporters even angrier.
The news Friday and Saturday nights were saturated with images of those crates that were left outside Haredi markets and that the locals wouldn’t touch even for free. Every new report added Haredi schools and other institutions that severed their contracts with Angel, to the tune of millions of loaves. Even the World Zionist Organization announced on Sunday that, out of respect for all parts of Israeli society and given the injury of the chairman of the board of Angel to one of the spiritual symbols of the State of Israel and the Jewish people in Israel and the world, food suppliers at events and activities held by the WZO for visiting students in Israel, to avoid serving Angel bread.
Sounds devastating? For sure. So why did the Shlomo Angel stock rise by 1.12% on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange on Sunday? On April 30, their stock was at NIS 3.8, then it started sliding down on May 1, concluding on Thursday, May 4 at NIS 3.756, but on Sunday, with all the tumult of the boycott, it’s back to a robust NIS 3.798, almost NIS 3.8.
I’ll explain. Angel has been selling to its institutional and supermarket customers at a loss for more than a year now, because Orna Barbivai, the Minister of the Economy under Lapid-Bennett refused to permit them to raise their price-controlled bread by 3.2%, followed by Nir Barkat, the current Minister of the Economy, who won’t allow them to raise it by 5.5%, despite what’s happening to the price of wheat worldwide.
Every loaf of price-controlled bread Angel sells is a loss, which they must swallow to hold on to their shelf presence in the supermarket chains. But now that they are boycotted, the chains are off and they can sell their products for a profit. And because of the fantastic boost their product received in the secular food stores, they may also be able to start charging what the market would bear.
This is why the Shlomo Angel stock is climbing when it should be down.
One huge financial burden was removed from the giant bakery when the Haredi contractors canceled their orders for the Lag B’Omer festivities on Mt. Meron that start Monday night. The bakery is going to lose so much less money.
In the end, the show of force on the part of Haredi consumers is impressive and enviable, proving once again to all the manufacturers and vendors in Israel that you can’t insult Haredim and not expect to be punished. It just so happens that in this case, Israel’s centralized state economy favored the secular offender.
