22 | JUNE 6 • 2024 J N D etroit’s Hastings Street neighborhood was home to many members of the city’s Jewish community from the 1880s through the 1920s. Jewish institutions, stores and schools served a Jewish community that numbered 10,000 in 1910 and increased to 75,000 by 1927, according to Catherine Cangany, Ph.D., executive director of the Jewish Historical Society of Michigan (JHSM), which developed the current Hastings Street exhibit at the Detroit Historical Museum. During Cangany’s research for the exhibit, she searched local newspapers for articles about the Hastings Street Jewish community during this era. Much to her surprise, she found a Detroit News article about a riot over kosher meat prices in 1910. “It literally fell in my lap,” she says. Cangany told this story about Jewish women’s efforts to combat unfair kosher beef prices in a lecture at the Detroit Historical Museum on May 5. Kosher meat is always more expensive due to restrictions that only certain parts of healthy, unblemished animals can be consumed. Extra processing required for koshering meat also adds to labor costs. But Cangany’s research showed that in 1910, kosher beef prices suddenly increased 250% from $0.06 to $0.08 per pound to an astonishing $0.14 to $0.18 per pound for ground beef and flank steak. This was way too much for many Jewish families. However, Cangany says, the issue was much broader than kosher meat prices in Detroit. Beef prices were manipulated by Chicago’s National Packing Company, an unregulated conglomerate of five U.S. meat- packing plants that controlled much of the U.S. meat market as well as railroads that transported cattle. Some Jewish Detroiters turned to other protein sources, Cangany said, such as veal, chicken and mutton, but the Beef Trust controlled these as well. Most Americans were unaware of the conglomerate’s monopolistic practices and their impact on meat prices. In Detroit, Jewish women blamed the city’s kosher butcher shops, numbering almost 30. A local woman — Rebecka Possner — responded by organizing a boycott of Detroit’s kosher meat markets. Possner stated, according to a newspaper account found by Cangany: “Socialists? I do not know what they are. We are not socialists. We are simply trying to get decent prices so that we can live. I am not an agitator, but I am going to help win this strike.” Possner, at age 17, had led a walk-out of young women workers at a cigar manufacturer in Philadelphia to achieve better working conditions. In Detroit, Possner convinced many Jewish women not only to forego kosher beef purchases at the higher prices but also to prevent this meat from being purchased by those willing to pay the higher prices. Some of their purchased meat was seized by the women boycotters and doused in kerosene. When that tactic failed to stop all kosher beef sales, the boycott led to a riot, fortunately without injuries and minimal property damage. Then the community organized co-operative kosher meat markets that sold beef at rates midway between the original and increased prices. Although the meat quality wasn’t as good and it was not deboned before weighing, the lower price resulted in a sell-out of all 2,200 pounds of stock. Possner expressed concern about the riot but felt that the boycott was a success. Similar events occurred in other cities, following an earlier boycott in New York. According to Cangany, the Jewish women organized a boycott of Detroit’s kosher meat markets in 1910. Who Knew? SHARI S. COHEN CONTRIBUTING WRITER OUR COMMUNITY Rebecka Possner, organizer of the 1910 kosher meat boycott COURTESY ARCHIVES OF MICHIGAN. RETOUCHED BY JHSM.