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“Whoever wants, come and eat.”
That’s the quote from the Talmud — the e book of Jewish regulation — that welcomes clients to Goldie’s Bagels in Columbia, Missouri, telling them that individuals who can not afford to pay can get a espresso and a bagel, with cream cheese, freed from cost.
The promise is core to the store’s mission: Launched as a popup in 2020, Goldie’s goals to imbue Jewish values into its each day operations.
“My complete factor in opening Goldie’s is we’re going to be so outwardly proud to be Jewish,” founder Amanda Rainey informed the Jewish Telegraphic Company this week, after an indication concerning the “Neighbors Account” initiative went viral on social media.
Rainey, who beforehand labored as a Jewish educator on the Hillel on the College of Missouri, first opened Goldie’s inside Pizza Tree, a restaurant owned by her husband. It moved to its personal location final winter, bringing alongside a sourdough starter that’s utilized in its bagels. (Per baking custom, the starter has a reputation — Seymour.)
Along with bagels, Goldie’s serves conventional Ashkenazi desserts resembling babka and rugelach. Its Instagram account showcases fluffy spherical challahs; egg sandwiches made with zhug, a spicy condiment that originated with Yemenite Jews; and “tzitzel bagels,” a rolled-in-semolina confection that’s distinctive to St. Louis. (It’s not kosher: There’s a sandwich with each meat and cream cheese on the menu.) The wifi password is “MAZEL TOV.” And this spring, the store hosted a Passover seder for its workers.
The seder impressed the signal. The precept of feeding the needy is so ingrained in Jewish custom that the Talmud quote posted on the counter is historically recited in Aramaic on the seder, when the Israelites’ exodus from Egypt is recounted.
Goldie’s had already been handing out free bagels to unhoused folks in downtown Columbia, simply as Pizza Tree had been doing with slices. And it had already been subsidizing that effort with donations that different clients made informally. “Generally folks would slip us some money awkwardly,” Rainey recalled.
However after the seder, a workers member instructed explaining the initiative and citing the quote from Talmud on an indication within the retailer. The signal explains that clients who can not pay can ask the workers to cost their meal to the “Neighbors Account.”
After the signal went viral, folks from across the nation provided to donate, Rainey mentioned. However she mentioned Goldie’s is dedicated to protecting every part native.
“We’ve got so many beneficiant folks in our neighborhood,” Rainey mentioned. “These folks ought to give cash to someone the place they dwell; their very own neighbors.”
Rainey says the store will get possibly two $5 donations a day, which assist pay down the steadiness of the account, and the shop doesn’t take donations until there’s an excellent steadiness. She hopes the initiative will encourage different eating places within the space to tackle one thing related. In the course of the pandemic, different companies started providing free meals to households with kids, and mutual help teams serve people who find themselves unhoused.
However the level of the Neighbors Account is to welcome folks into the shop — and provides them greater than only a meal.
“It’s a bagel and a espresso however if you’ve slept on the road at 7 a.m., a bagel and a espresso is admittedly useful,” Rainey mentioned. “And in addition we be taught folks’s names, we test in on them. We deal with them like folks. After which different folks locally see that and hopefully are impressed to behave higher.”
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