My Sixth Sense
China's Kosher Restaurant and the Tibet Issue
By Menachem Lubinsky...I must have received more than a half dozen e-mails with various links to the story that the Chinese government would be opening a kosher kitchen this summer when it hosts the Beijing 2008 Olympics. It is no secret that the Chinese are hoping that the Olympics will be a showcase for a society that has often seemed closed to the Western world. While certainly newsworthy, I had decided to hold off on covering the news about the restaurant until it actually opened and was used by kosher adherents. Many people that I know make their livelihoods from doing business with China and they have often remarked how friendly the Chinese are to Jews, not withstanding their foreign policy, which could be construed as being against Israeli interests. More than 1200 Chinese companies are kosher certified, as many of their ingredient and end user products end up in kosher markets all over the world. So when 185 rabbis called for a boycott of the Olympics this summer, it was a bit disturbing to them, particularly when there was an attempt to equate the Beijing Olympics with the 1936 Olympics in Berlin prior to the Second World War. I received a call from an Israeli importer who feared a backlash from the Chinese by imposing greater tariffs and further increasing food prices, particularly kosher foods. Don't get me wrong, what is happening in Tibet is appalling, but equating the 2008 Olympics with the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin is equally as appalling. Some people are too quick to equate the Holocaust or the events in pre-War Germany with contemporary civil rights abuses, as a number of Orthodox Jewish organizations pointed out in their statement to counter the call for a boycott of the Beijing events. There is not even a remote similarity to the preposterous crimes committed during the Holocaust. I don't necessarily disagree that there is a moral imperative to speak out against abuses like the Chinese are allegedly perpetrating in Tibet. But at the same time, there is a need to be careful not to throw out the baby with the bathwater. Jews have some very important interests in China, including its being a major supplier of food and food ingredients to the kosher food market worldwide. So the opening of an Olympics kosher restaurant by the Chinese is noteworthy in the context of the broader interests of the kosher community and that is certainly a far cry from the behavior of the Third Reich in 1936.
