In the aftermath of the Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage in all 50 states, you’ve probably heard stories of businesses that refuse to serve gay clients.
This post is not about how stunningly hypocritical they are, as they willingly serve divorced people, adulterers, and women who refuse to submit to their husbands.
And it’s not about some homophobes in far-off flyover country, who cannot understand that allowing 2 men or 2 women to wed has no effect whatsoever on their own marriages. Or that marriage, legally, is a civil institution; a religious ceremony is just icing on the cake.
Jane Moritz
This story is about a Westport woman, and what happened when she put rainbow cookies on her website to celebrate the Supreme Court ruling.
Jane Moritz owns Challah Connection. Her Norwalk-based company offers gift baskets — not just bread, but kosher meals, deli, fruit and babka — for High Holy Days, housewarmings, birthdays, graduations, weddings, bar and bat mitzvahs, and shivas.
(They also ship baked good, nuts and dried fruit for Ramadan and Eid.)
Last month, when same-sex marriage became legal nationwide, Moritz displayed “rainbow cookies” on her website’s home page. She added a message: “Never have these treasured cookies had such meaning.”
Within an hour, she’d received 3 “hate emails.” She told The Jewish Week that people asked “what was wrong with me, how could I be a Jew, how could I be supporting gay marriage.” They said they would never order from the Challah Connection again.
Moritz responded on a Yeshiva World News message board: “We stand firm in the Jewish values that implore upon us to show compassion and kindness to all beings.”
To which someone replied: “Even though the Torah that you pretend to accept calls this behavior an ‘abomination’ punishable by death. I guess when Torah values conflict with liberal politically correct values we know which side you choose.”
Moritz told The Jewish Week that she is proud of what she did. She does not think it’s her place to judge anyone’s celebration of Judaism — or anything else.
She’s not alone. Orders poured in for the Challah Connection’s rainbow cookies.
