Imagine the scene. It’s Friday afternoon, an hour before Shabbat. You’ve had a busy week, and Shabbat preparations are extending closer to candle lighting than you expected. You check your menu for dinner: you still need to make that salad. It should not be a problem until you realize that you forgot to buy the kosher-brand croutons. All the kosher-supervised grocery stores close 2 hours before Shabbat. Are you going to have to change your menu? Will your Shabbat guests be deprived of enjoying your favorite salad? But then you remember: Winn Dixie! Our neighborhood grocery store, right in the heart of Emerald Hills with an extensive selection of kosher products, including many varieties of kosher croutons. Once you’re going to Winn Dixie for the croutons, you quickly review what else you might need for Shabbat at this late hour. You decide to buy one more package of glatt kosher chicken to grill for dinner and some Pas Yisrael cookies so that you’ll have some extra treats on hand for your lunch guests’ kids. We are all familiar with some version of this scenario. I have seen many of you anxiously waiting to check out at Winn Dixie (why didn’t they ever install self-checkout?) on a Friday afternoon as shkiya approached. Years ago I had an idea to set “office hours” at Winn Dixie. It seems that some people are reluctant to “bother the Rabbi” in his office, even if they have something to discuss. Each of the YIH Rabbis have offices on the shul campus in order to be accessible and to make it as easy as possible for community members to engage with us. My thinking was that catching up after bumping into me at Winn Dixie was a lower barrier of entry than making an appointment to meet me in my office or for coffee. This idea was conceived before Walmart delivery, Instacart, DoorDash, Amazon etc and you had to leave your house to purchase your groceries. Even now, none of these delivery options would help when it’s 30 minutes before Yom Tov and you ran out of yahrzeit candles, forgot to buy flowers, or you need Cholov Yisrael milk. That’s why I could always count on finding a minyan of people at Winn Dixie late Friday afternoons. Alas, this Erev Shabbat saving grace is no longer available to us. Our Winn Dixie has permanently closed. This week we read the double Torah portion of Acharei Mot and Kedoshim, and next week we will read Emor. The literal translation of the first words of these three Parshiyot is “After death we say they were holy”. This idiom has been utilized as a commentary on the human tendency to only appreciate something or someone after they are gone. We should be more appreciative of what we have while we still have it. Nonetheless, as Winn Dixie sits empty it is an appropriate time to reminisce and reflect on this neighborhood institution. Yes, I know that we still have Publix. But for this Emerald Hills resident, going to Publix feels like an excursion while going to Winn Dixie always felt like a quick stop. Not to mention the fact that Publix (so far) has far fewer kosher products compared to Winn Dixie. For our family, Winn Dixie was the store that our children could walk to without crossing any streets. And it was the first store to stop in after Pesach to buy our post-Pesach Entenmanns donuts. Many of us became friendly with the employees at Winn Dixie: we knew their names and they knew the products that we liked. I enjoyed the “Shabbat Shalom” salutation I would receive, along with my receipt, from the cashier on Fridays. Word on the street is that a new, fully kosher supermarket will be taking over the space. This could potentially benefit kosher consumers in many ways. However it does mark the end of an era. At fully kosher stores we might be less likely to run into and to interact with non-Jewish or non-observant neighbors, acquaintances and strangers. At a fully kosher store parents will never have the experience of telling their child that they can’t buy something because it’s not kosher. And at a fully kosher store you can’t buy non-dairy whipped topping for your Shabbat dessert trifle - 10 minutes before Candle lighting.
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