For the refugees who escaped the horrors of the Second World War, it was incredibly difficult to start over again in a place that was totally foreign in culture, language, and lifestyle. Many escaped penniless with just the clothing they wore and were helped by Jewish organizations like HIAS (Hebrew Immigrants Aid Society) of The Associated, here in Baltimore. Others were brought over by relatives, and some were even sponsored by generous private individuals, who provided affidavits to ensure that the refugees would not become a burden to this country. The money they posted made the government more likely to issue the needed immigration papers to the refugees who were trying desperately to enter America. Here in Baltimore, the Strauss family saved many, many Jews. In New York, a tzadik named Mike Tress gave away his entire business fortune (he owned Cat’s Paw rubber heel company) to save European Jews.
My family had great mazal; we were very fortunate to escape Hitler in time. My father’s parents, seeing the horrible future facing German Jewry, sent my father to Palestine in 1938. My grandmother actually left Germany to visit him that same year. A first-class business woman, she did not like the economic conditions of that time in Palestine and advised my dad to go on to America. After a short visit, she returned to Germany, where her husband was forced to stay behind to ensure her return. My father left Palestine and came to Baltimore, where he had relatives who helped him get started. My grandparents in Germany were eventually sent to a concentration camp for a short period but were miraculously released. In 1940, my father was able to borrow the funds to get them admitted to this country.
My mom’s family had a similar experience. Her parents sent her to England in 1939 to study to become a registered baby nurse, a degreed nanny at the Hibrary Home in London. My grandfather was taken to Buchenwald for a short period, and while many perished due to disease and the horrible camp conditions, he survived and was released.
In England, my mother applied to the U.S. ambassador to England, Joseph Kennedy (father of the future president), and was miraculously issued the immigration papers to get my maternal grandparents out of Germany. Once in England, they were interned as enemy aliens on the Isle of Man, again for a short period of time. Eventually, they too made it to the U.S., in 1940, and settled in Vineland, New Jersey.
It was truly a miracle that both families were so fortunate. Not only were their lives spared through chasdei Hashem, but both were able to ship a lift from Germany, so they came here with some money and some furniture and other personal possessions.
Beginnings
It was extremely difficult to find jobs in America where one did not have to work on Shabbos, so my Schlossberg grandparents started a wholesale gourmet food company in Baltimore in 1942, pledging to operate it with strict adherence to halacha. The tiny company started in a garage and sold candy and food delicacies that were very difficult to come by in the war years.
Early that year, my grandmother, Nana, had started to make continental-style chocolates in her own kitchen. (She had taken a course in candy making while still in Germany, anticipating their move to America.) The chocolates were so well liked that by the end of that year they opened a retail shop. Customers impressed with the quality of the chocolates gave us the idea to wholesale the candy and sell it to other stores for resale. Nana never really liked the retail business for two primary reasons: First, retail always posed major challenges as to Shabbos and Yom Tov closings. Saturday represents a large percentage of retail sales, and if the business is not specifically geared to the Yiddishe trade, those closings present major sales issues. Secondly, Nana preferred to reach out to customers by visiting them; she said that, in retail, you had to wait for the customer to come. So she closed the retail store and started selling the chocolates to many stores, but they couldn’t keep up with the demand, as the production facilities were very limited.
My father joined the company and took over the sales routes. He also began to purchase other specialty products to sell to stores. Sugar rationing during the war made candy very scarce, so adding party foods helped keep the business going. We had to change locations three times as more and more party items were added.
My parents married in 1945, and worked at Castle Food together with my grandmother. By that time, Castle Food Products (our name, Schlossberg, means castle mountain in German) was selling many specialty food products. Many products carried our own company label, “Castle Village.”
By 1954, the company was carrying over 1,100 food products from all over the world. The company was a shomer Shabbos company in every way, but most of the food items were not kosher. We carried rice crackers from Japan, olives from Spain, ripe olives from California or Greece. Pickles were domestic or from Germany or France. Then there were snails from France, chocolates from Switzerland or Italy, and foie gras and truffles from France. We carried sardines; anchovy paste; quail eggs; wild rice; pure maple syrup; antipasto; pastas; chestnuts; cookies and crackers; teas and coffees; hearts of palm; European canned vegetables; preserves and jellies; olive oils; seasonings, herbs, and exotic spices; candies and confections; as well as Mexican, Spanish, French, Swiss, and English foods and cuisine.
Much of the business was done in Washington, where the foreign embassies, caterers, fancy restaurants, and gourmet shops were serving the international and foreign customers who resided in our nation’s capital. We once even sold to the White House, the time we provided the famous beluga caviar when the Shah of Iran came to visit. Although my dad sold to the finest Washington chefs and gourmets around town, they all knew he could not even sample most of his goods, nor could he eat in their restaurants to which he was always invited as their guest. He was a kiddush Hashem to his Jewish and non-Jewish clientele.
Castle Food was known to have the finest array of wholesale food gourmet delicacies in the mid-Atlantic area. While it was often very difficult to run the company as a truly shomer Shabbosconcern, we did all kedas ukedin (properly), and Hashem rewarded the family and business with hatzlacha, and the business, baruch Hashem, grew.
Never on a Shabbos
After four years in yeshiva and graduating college with a business degree, I joined the company in 1972 and began my career in the food industry. We were located at that time on Greene Street, near the Lexington Market. We would later relocate to Loch Raven Road and later to Jessup, Maryland. Each time we moved, we had a festive chanukas habayis, showing hakaras hatov for the expansion Hashem was granting us.
For the 45 years of our family’s ownership, Castle Food Products was always closed Friday well before Shabbos and remained closed every Shabbos and all Yom Tovim. All the drivers knew when Shabbos started and knew they had to bring all trucks back to the company before Shabbos. That meant that the trucks left extra early on Friday mornings in the winter, and had fewer deliveries to ensure returning well before Shabbos. Every driver, whether Jewish or non-Jewish, would receive a good Shabbos greeting, as did all the office workers and warehouse crew. The over 50 employees were all aware of Shabbos, and they all got time off for all Jewish and non-Jewish holidays. Some years, when the Yom Tovim landed on weekdays, between the Jewish and non-Jewish holidays, the employees had a full month of paid leave for the year.
Our non-Jewish employees knew the Yom Tovim dates at the beginning of each year. On Chol Hamoed Pesach, we did not sell chometz. To avoid chometz issues, we notified all our vendors that the company took no shipments over Pesach. However, one year, a huge chocolate shipment from Switzerland arrived during Chol Hamoed. After asking a shaila, it was determined the chocolate was kitnayos, and therefore there was no halachic reason not to take possession of the goods. But, of the many hundred cases unloaded that day, we realized that three cases were chocolate with a cookie wafer inside. Those three cases were rejected, so as not to accept chometz on Pesach. Only after Pesach did the exporter ship those three cases.
Rabbi Mendel Feldman came down to the company each year before Pesach to sell the company’s chometz. Large chain stores like Giant Food would purchase double shipments, knowing that we did not transact any chometz business the week of Pesach. The company educated many Jewish customers who were not aware of an upcoming Yom Tov. Many of our existing customers urged us to sell kosher food lines, but that was not in our business plan. Instead, I advised these customers about kosher marketing and sales tools that would help their businesses. Actually, many of our 6,000 products were under hechsher, but kosher was not the focus of our distribution company. We also tried to sell as many Israeli products that were considered gourmet specialties and fit into our overall gourmet program. The company had a fully-equipped kosher kitchen, and of course, all functions and parties were strictly kosher.
One Shabbos morning we were davening at Shearith Israel when two uniformed ADT burglar alarm employees and city police entered the shul and inquired of persons in the back of the shul as to where we sat. They had tried to phone us at home, and not being able to reach us, they dispatched this group to our home. Neighbors told them they could find us in the synagogue. They approached my dad in shul informing him the company had been broken into through a skylight in the roof, and they needed access to make sure no burglar was still in the building. We explained that it was Shabbos and we could not respond and open the property, so they hired guards to watch the property that entire day, and we attended to the situation after Shabbos ended that night.
One Happy Family
For shomer Shabbospersons, Castle was a great place to work, and over the history of the company, many suchindividuals worked there. If someone in town was out of work, Castle always had a temporary job for them until they could find permanent work. A daily Mincha minyan at the Loch Raven location created a midtown location for Mincha. Much chesed took place at this company. Interest-free loans were made to help all employees when needed.
Castle employees comprised African-Americans, frum and non-frum Jews, Russians, as well as Italians and other non-Jews. It was one big happy mishpacha, a place where everyone respected his or her fellow workers. We had very little employee turnover. Many employees worked at Castle for over 25 years, and most employees worked many years at the company. We did not pay the highest salaries, but we offered terrific health benefits and a very generous 401K program.
An English Lord Eats Humus
Entertaining business clients was an exercise in creativity, as Baltimore back in the 60s and 70s was limited as to kosher restaurants. I remember a call I got in the 70s from a Madison Avenue public relations company, who told me that Sam Twining of Twining Tea was coming to Baltimore to appear on a local Baltimore show hosted by a little known host, a young lady named Oprah Winfrey. Sam Twining was a real English Lord, knighted by the Queen, a member of the Twining dynasty, and a figurehead of the tea company. We were a large Twining customer and importer, and since Mr. Twining was coming to town, he very much wanted to take us to dinner. At that time, there was one kosher restaurant operating in Baltimore, and it was on the porch of the Boxwood Motel, just past Old Court Road where Office Depot is today.
I explained that the kosher restaurant did not have the ambiance to take the English lord to dinner. Instead, we put together an elaborate, five-course gourmet kosher dinner in our home with white glove service and all the trimmings. It was fabulous, and for dessert we brewed tea to accompany the apple strudel. The next year, Mr. Twining returned and demanded that we be his guests, so to the Boxwood we went! We had a very heimishe dinner. It was the first time a knighted Englishman ever had humus, and he loved it!
In the 70s and 80s, we used to take many very important customers to upscale New York restaurants like Lavana, Mr. Broadway, Dougie’s, and Tevere 84, mostly when we attended fancy food shows.
We once had a table at a convention in a large Washington DC hotel. We were entertaining six executive buyers, one a vice-president of a major retail chain. Four Castle executives and their spouses came, of which two couples were kosher. The hotel set our entire table with all new china and brand new cutlery and even glassware, as they could not be sure where the kosher individuals would sit. They served the four kosher persons sealed kosher airline dinners, and the rest of the table ate the gourmet meals served to the entire convention of hundreds of guests.
Another time, I sponsored an evening for customers at a very fancy French treif restaurant in Ellicott City. I had a local kosher caterer mirror the six-course, non-kosher dinner, course by course, and we brought in mevushal wines for the kosher participants.
Truck Accident at the Church
Running a fleet of 10-plus trucks was always a business challenge, as the trucks delivered the foods to our customers in Delaware, Baltimore, Washington DC, and throughout Virginia. One memorable time, I received a call from the Washington Cathedral on erev Shabbos. One of our vehicles making a delivery to the Cathedral’s gift shop drove under a gate where a wooden icon of religious importance sat on the top of the gate structure. The truck unfortunately didn’t clear the structure and lifted the extremely valuable, antique, hand-carved wooden religious icon right off the gate, and the icon was now resting on the truck. A crane would be necessary to lift the icon off the truck to prevent serious damage. Oy vey, what a shanda! Why did it have to be a church? We brought in a crane, and the truck came back before Shabbos.
Yom Kippur in Jail – Almost!
It was erev Yom Kippur, and the company was closing early. I got a morning emergency call from a Pikesville deli needing five cases of crackers for their hundreds of Yom Kippur fish and lox platters going out that day for breaking the fast on motzai Yom Tov. All the trucks were gone, but this was a good customer, so I got a fellow from the warehouse to take my personal car and make the important delivery.
Since it was erev Yom Kippur, I explained to the warehouseman exactly what to do: Go to the customer, make the delivery, and come back immediately without any delay, so that I can go home before the taanis and prepare for Yom Tov. About three hours later I was a bit concerned. The driver had not returned, so I called the customer who confirmed the delivery had been made. Suddenly, three uniformed city policeman came down the hall to my office. They informed me that my car was involved in a drug transaction, and I was taken by the police to Whitelock Street, where I saw a swat team surrounding my car and my driver with his hands on the roof being frisked by drug agents. Car seats were being removed, trunk, and all doors were opened. There must have been 10 squad cars surrounding my vehicle. I envisioned spending Yom Kippur in jail. My driver had picked up a passenger who was involved in a drug drop with my vehicle. My driver and his criminal passenger were arrested, and I convinced the police that neither I nor my vehicle were guilty of anything. It was a miracle that I made Kol Nidrei that night.
Cajun Kosher
One time we brought in the world-famous Cajun chef Paul Prudomme. His gourmet spice line is under Star-K certification. We brought the chef to Baltimore for a party for our customers and held the event at a local non-kosher country club. The dinner was completely kosher, served on beautiful paper goods. All the food preparation was done in advance at our home, and we ordered all the kosher food and glatt meats, which were cooked in brand new, toveled pots and frying pans on portable burners we lit at the club, so as not to use the non-kosher kitchen. It was probably the chef’s first totally kosher experience.
Candles in China
Traveling for business has led my wife and I to most European countries, Australia, China, and many other wonderfully exotic destinations. Kashrus was always a challenge, and was much more difficult in the 70s and 80s than today. Many of my kosher stories are in a book I wrote in 1995, The World of Orthodox Judaism, published by Aronson and still available on Amazon and in Jewish bookstores. Recently Mishpacha magazine wrote about my kosher experiences in Hong Kong.
The best story is the time my wife needed to bench licht for Shabbos in Beijing, capital of China. I feared that lighting candles in our room in a wooden hotel building was a danger, and I suggested we light candles at a table in the hotel restaurant as an alternative. We gathered our kiddush wine and food and ordered Coca Cola in the restaurant. My wife lit the candles, and all of a sudden, our table was surrounded by eight waiters, who happily sang “Happy Birthday” in Chinese in harmonious chorus.
I will never forget another China Shabbos, when we were making Shabbos and watching the Chinese fisherman in their boats through our hotel room window overlooking Hong Kong Bay. That Friday night, we invited non-frum Jewish people to join us for licht benching and the singing of “Shalom Aleichem” followed by kiddush. We always took along small bottles of wine and grape juice on our travels.
Who Moved the Door Stopper?
We had many Shabbos predicaments at hotels. To avoid the elevators, we always arranged to stay on a lower floor and used the stairs. Non-Jewish traveling companions often helped us maneuver Shabbos issues that presented challenges to us along the way. Once, in Hong Kong, we placed ashtrays between locking doors in the staircase to allow us to get into our sixth floor hotel room. We left the hotel to go out with our fellow business persons on Friday afternoon, and returned to our hotel by foot Friday night after Shabbos already started. We climbed six flights only to realize that someone had pulled the ashtray from the door, and we could not get in. We returned to the lobby and waited a few hours until our non-Jewish friends came back from dinner and had them open the door to the floor.
Then in Beijing, at a state dinner at the Beijing Guest House, we gave the chef our kosher sealed frozen dinner, but they brought it out to our table on their treif china. We had to fake eating it by just moving the food around so as to not start an international incident.
In all our travels, we tried to make a kiddush Hashem, educating many non-frum Jews who traveled with us but also to non-Jews who saw how seriously we took kashrus. In Egypt, we even shared our kosher food with many of our fellow travelers, who could not stomach the local Egyptian cuisine. They devoured our dried salami from Wasserman and Lemberger, which fed many. Because of the extreme heat in Egypt, we were told we needed to drink constantly to keep hydrated. Erev Shabbos, I asked a restaurant in the lobby if we could order bottled water during the day and have them keep a running tab, as we could not sign. They refused to accommodate our request, so I gave them cash in advance and told them to return whatever we did not use.
More Travel Issues
There were other challenges for me as a business person, such as crossing the International Date Line, which at times caused issues with Shabbos and with counting sefira. But I always sought rabbinical advice on how to properly conduct myself halachically in these situations. Many times the groups we traveled with would fly out on Shabbos, and that meant we had to catch up with the group a day later, flying Sunday instead. The business groups would eat in treife restaurants, and they all knew we would accompany the group to be sociable and businesslike but that we always brought our own kosher food to every meal.
The End of an Era
I sold the company in 1987, the day before erev Pesach, and I wired my Rosh Yeshiva in Eretz Yisrael that I had sold all my chometz permanently! At settlement, a heter iskah was needed (a business document when interest is a factor in a business deal with fellow Jews), because I sold the business to Jewish investors and there was a future payable note involving interest. Counsel for the other side was extremely uncomfortable signing the all-Hebrew document, and the sale hit a snag as the many attorneys working on the sale came to an impasse. To collect the interest on the note required the existence of a heter iska written between buyer and seller. My yeshiva-trained attorneys had a solution. It was to allow the other side to retain the heter iska document in their records. We did not actually need a copy; there just had to be one. The attorneys for the buyers were comfortable with that, and the company was sold. My five-year contract with the acquiring company stipulated clearly that, as president of the new entity, I would take off on all Shabbosim and Yom Tovim.
So Castle Food Corporation and its management, the Schlossberg family, and many of its employees and staff were all shomer Shabbosand conducted their business practices with careful adherence to halacha in every aspect of running the company. Hashem rewarded the company with hatzlacha and much mazal.
