Chabad Solves Peru’s Kosher Flour Dilemma

Two hundred kosher challah loaves are sold each week from Chabad of Lima’s newly refurbished bakery. That’s one loaf for every thirteen Jews in Peru. Chabad’s enviable market share is owed to the fact that it’s the only kosher bakery in the country. And because of Peru’s recently adopted flour enrichment regulations, Chabad’s bakery is one of few places kosher flour may be purchased in the nation.

For seventeen years, Chabad baked loaves and simple holiday baked goods, like Chanukah donuts in home ovens. Demand for the bakery treats climbed as more Peruvian Jews gained an appreciation of the mitzvah of eating kosher through Chabad. Last year, a donor helped Chabad purchase a professional grade oven, mixer and sifter. Now a professional baker produces fancy cakes and cookies along with bread. “When we came here, we could not tell people to keep kosher–it would not have a chance. Now more people keep kosher in Lima because they have more possibilities to buy kosher food,” said Rabbi Schneur Zalman Blumenfeld, director of Chabad of Lima.

Unlike the U.S., where major flour brands are certified kosher, Peru’s two-year-old flour enrichment program has left kosher observant Jews searching for options. Vitamins and minerals added to the flour have a “non kosher source,” said Rabbi Blumenfeld. While a solution is sought, a friendly flourmill owner sets aside a monthly allotment of some 500 kilos of flour without additives for Chabad. As the mist settles in the early morning, steaming baguettes are stacked in the back basket of a messenger’s bike parked at Chabad’s bakery door. A bit of Paris in Peru. Pedaling speedily, the messenger crisscrosses paths with other bakery boys on his mission to deliver the key component of a Peruvian breakfast.

Twenty Jewish families begin their day with hot French bread, just like their neighbors, but theirs is kosher. After the breakfast rush, the baker continues at his craft, churning out rolls and carbohydrate delights to accompany the meals sold at Chabad’s dairy and meat restaurants. Busy as the Chabad bakery is, no entrepreneurs have stepped forward to take over the operation. Kosher supervision is hard to come by; the foreign rabbis from kosher overseeing organizations are busy in the backwoods of Peru checking coffee and chocolate production. Besides, a businessman would shudder looking at Chabad’s ledgers. Sick and infirm Jews visited by Chabad receive challahs without charge, as do families who’d otherwise go hungry and some Israeli backpackers.

“We lose money because we give food away to those in need,” said Rabbi Blumenfeld. Fridays Chabad’s bakery becomes a gathering place. Latest engagements and dating news, baby births and Shabbat invitations are exchanged as Lima’s Jews pick up their Shabbat orders.  Leave it to Chabad Shluchim to knead community bonds and Jewish pride out of Peru’s sticky flour situation.