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.

