Манишевиц: Кошер өнімдерінің тарихы мен брендтері

the band
American brand of kosher products

Manischewitz (,/m//æ//n//ɪ/'/ʃ//ɛ//v//ɪ//t//s/; ) is a brand of kosher products founded in 1888 in Cincinnati, Ohio, and best known for its matzo and kosher wine. It became a public corporation in 1923 but remained under family control until January 1991, when it was bought out by a private equity firm. On April 7, 2014, Sankaty Advisors, an arm of the private equity firm Bain Capital, bought the company from a group that included the investment firm Harbinger. It is the world's largest Matzo manufacturer, one of America's largest kosher brands, and the first American exporter of matzo.

Because matzo must go from mixing to baking in a very short period of time to prevent the possibility of the dough rising, before the mid 1800s, matzo was typically baked in purpose built ovens located in synagogues. Starting in the mid 1800s, it was typically baked in small bakeries with specialized machines. By 1926, the Cuvier Press Club described it as the largest firm of matzo bakers in the world, and the first American exporter of the flatbread. The company built a second production site on Bay Street in Jersey City, New Jersey, in 1932, to better serve the large Jewish community of the New York metropolitan area, and the Cincinnati facility was eventually closed in 1958. In 1990, a $1 million fine was levied against the company for price fixing with its two main competitors at the time, Streit's and Horowitz Margareten. In 1998, Richard A. Bernstein purchased the company from KKR. In 2004 its name was changed to the R. A. B. Food Group, LLC and today it is known as The Manischewitz Company. Manischewitz remains the world's top matzo manufacturer and one of America's top kosher brands. In July 2017 the company closed the facility in favor of another New Jersey location, cutting 169 jobs.

Manischewitz's main innovation making matzos with machines instead of by hand aroused some initial controversy. Some rabbis of the era claimed that in order to be acceptable for religious use, the matzo had to have been made by a man and not a machine. Manischewitz was ultimately able to overcome these concerns, in part by demonstrating meticulous adherence to the halakha (religious rules). Manischewitz acquired Horowitz Margareten Matzo and manufactures Goodman matzo and macaroons. In addition to matzo, Manischewitz labeled foods include cookies, macaroons, pasta, and soups. Other well known kosher brands associated with R. A. B. include Carmel, Elite, Mother's, Rokeach, Mrs. Adler's, and Tradition; many of these were acquired by R. A. B. after successful runs as independent kosher labels. However, R. A. B. is not involved with Manischewitz wine, except in name. Beginning in 1986, it licensed the Manischewitz brand name to the Manischewitz Wine Company, a subsidiary of Canandaigua Wine Company (now Constellation Brands). In 2021, the brand was acquired by E & J Gallo Winery.

The Manischewitz winery is located in Canandaigua, New York. It is the property of E & J Gallo, which continues to license the Manischewitz name from R. A. B. Foods. The winery was founded by Leo Star and run by the Star family since 1927. The Manischewitz winery is best known for its budget concord wine, which is widely available in much of North America. Made from labrusca grapes, it is combined with a large amount of residual sugar. Because concord was popularized by the U. S. media over the years as being the kosher wine, it is often the wine that is used to celebrate Passover. However, Manischewitz's sweet Concord contains corn syrup, a sweetener derived from corn, which is forbidden during Passover among Ashkenazi Jews. Manischewitz produces special Kosher for Passover bottling of its wines, which are sweetened with cane sugar as opposed to the corn syrup that is used throughout the year. The sweetness of Manischewitz wine and other kosher wines is often the fodder of jokes. However, Kosher wine does not have to be sweet. One of the reasons for the prevalence of sweet kosher wine in the U. S., and in the Americas generally, dates back to the early days of Jews in America, when they needed to locally produce kosher wine for the Kiddush ritual that is performed on the Shabbat and holidays. The combination of a limited choice of grape varieties that could grow in the areas where Jews had settled, along with the limited amount of time that was available to produce the wine and a market that was dominated by hard cider, yielded a bitter wine that had to be sweetened in order to make it palatable. Because the sweet Manischewitz variety of wine is so well known in the U. S., the existence of a thriving kosher wine industry that is anchored by vineyards in France and Israel, along with a growing U. S. industry, is often a surprise to Americans who are unaccustomed to taking kosher wine seriously.

The company was fined $1 million in 1991 for price fixing. Between 1982 and 1986, Manischewitz colluded with two other matzo producing companies to fix the price of their product during the Passover season. Many Orthodox Jews have a long standing practice to not use Manischewitz brand products on religious occasions. Some of this has been traced to their Saturday morning sponsorship of radio ads with their "Manischewitz Matzos for Pesach" jingle heard by Observant worshippers when walking home from synagogue at a time of year when open windows made it clear that these people were not of interest to the company; they in turn would not allow the company's products into their homes. Emphasis on Sabbath observance is the key issue.