By Cindy Mindell

Deborah R. Prinz serves the Central Conference of American Rabbis as director of program and member services and of the Joint Commission on Rabbinic Mentoring. She is also the Rabbi Emerita of Temple Adat Shalom in Poway, Calif., having served as the congregation’s senior rabbi for nearly 20 years. Since 2006, Prinz has been obsessed with chocolate, and more specifically, the role Sephardi Jews played in bringing the stuff to Europe and the New World. Her book, On the Chocolate Trail: A Delicious Adventure Connecting Jews, Religions, History, Travel, Rituals and Recipes to the Magic of Cacao (Jewish Lights, 2012), tells the surprising history behind the Western world’s beloved confection. On June 9, Prinz will lead a JCC Greenwich tour to Brooklyn, home of kosher and organic Cacao Prieto Distillery and Chocolate Factory. She spoke with the Ledger about how she stumbled upon the story that led her on a trip of discovery through Europe and beyond.

Q: How did you discover this story?

A: Actually, the story found me. In March 2006, my husband, Rabbi Mark Hurvitz, and I were planning a Sabbatical where we would travel through Europe and spend each Shabbat in an under-served Jewish congregation, exploring and touring along the way. A month prior to our departure, I was listening to National Public Radio and heard a story about chocolate in Paris. Mark and I agreed to spend a week in Paris visiting all the chocolate shops mentioned in the report and I mapped out a route that included the shops and nearby cultural sites. There is a lot of chocolate in Paris. We happened to walk into a shop not included in the NPR story, I happened to pick up the company literature and I happened to speak enough high-school French to read the line, “Jews brought chocolate-making to France.” I’d never heard about that in all my Jewish studies, from elementary school through seminary, in my teaching or congregational rabbinic work.

Q: What was the book, what was a particularly intriguing aspect of your research?

A: In terms of the Jewish story, the most interesting moment was our visit to Bayonne, France, which was probably the location where Jews first began to make chocolate in France, and is still a significant chocolate-making city. Jews came to the city in the mid-16th century after the expulsion from Spain. They were restricted to the suburbs; chocolate-makers would shlep their manufacturing equipment into the city to compete with Catholic chocolate merchants. Today, there are no Jews in Bayonne involved in the chocolate business and yet, when we visited, we were told repeatedly, “Jews brought chocolate-making to France.” That matched up with what I had read in the company literature from the Paris chocolate shop. I think the Bayonne chocolate-makers keep the fact alive as a way to lend authenticity to their product.

Another interesting discovery was how conversos used chocolate in New Spain – as part of Friday night Kiddush, breaking the Yom Kippur fast, and sent as part of the se’udat havra’ah, the comforting meal, to a house of mourning. New Spain was heavily Catholic, so anyone who didn’t fast on Catholic fast days or refrained from eating on non-fast days risked detection and persecution.During the Colonial period in America, there were some well-known Jewish merchants involved in the chocolate business – the Gomez family in New York City, Aaron Lopez in Newport, R.I. The Gomezes, who helped found the Spanish-Portuguese synagogue, had five members in two generations in their chocolate business. In the early 18th century, Rebecca Gomez was probably the only woman in Colonial America manufacturing chocolate.

Q: Is there anything “genetic” about Jews and chocolate, or something you might consider “Jewish chocolate?”

A: I think there is something genetic – “genetic” in a broad sense, in that Jews have had an interest in chocolate over generations. It was discovered by Europeans in New Spain and Central America – Christopher Columbus and his sons reported that they were the first Europeans to see cacao beans – and there were probably some conversos in Columbus’s crew. So in that sense, Jews were some of the first Europeans to see chocolate.

The dispersion of Jews after the expulsion from Spain follows the diffusion of chocolate throughout Europe and then to New York. Jews exiled from Spain and Portugal maintained strong family and mercantile connections as they migrated. There is a striking relationship between the paths of the exiles from Spain and Portugal to places such as London, Martinique, Amsterdam, Newport, R.I., and New York, and the fact that those locations became significant chocolate centers.

The Grand Café in Oxford, England, founded by a Jew around 1650, was probably the first place where chocolate was served and sold in that country. During the same period, the newly-appointed Spanish ambassador to the Hague, Don Esteban Gamarra, was afraid that he wouldn’t be able to get the drinking chocolate that he was accustomed to drinking every morning. His staff reassured him that “Jews are the chocolate specialists of Amsterdam” and that there was very good chocolate to be had there.

In terms of a “Jewish chocolate,” Mexican hot chocolate may be the original or foundational chocolate, and was probably the first thing that most Jews were tasting by way of chocolate. When Mark and I visited Bayonne, the hot chocolate tasted much like what we had tasted in Mexico – cinnamonny, slightly sweeter but not very sweet – and may be the chocolate that Jews brought to the city, connecting back to the original chocolate that Europeans encountered in Mexico.

The book includes some discussion regarding the development of chocolate Chanukah gelt and a values perspective regarding what we buy: there have been significant child-slavery and labor issue related to some of the places where the beans are grown, especially in Ghana and the Ivory Coast.

In my opinion, we don’t have enough chocolate in our cuisine. Jews could add more chocolate recipes to Rosh Hashanah, Simchat Torah, and any number of other opportunities that we’re missing out on.

“On the Chocolate Trail” with Rabbi Deborah Prinz: Sunday, June 9, 1-5:30 p.m. | Info/registration: www.jccgreenwich.org /

(203) 552-1818.

Rabbi Prinz offers up a recipe for Cayenne Wake-Up Chunks, suitable for a Shavuot treat, on page 14.

Comments? email cindym@jewishledger.com.