A Bitter Tale

The winter of 1994 was tough on many of Europe’s root crops. A week before Passover the Jewish Community of Madrid found that the shipment of horseradish it had ordered from Bolivia would now not arrive until ten days after the Passover ended.

The community needed the horseradish for its traditional paschal ritual of Marror, but whomever they tried approaching from among the EU suppliers, they received the same reply “Sorry! No can do.” In desperation, the Rabbi phoned one of his Yeshiva friends in Tel Aviv – who happened to be the second cousin of the Mashgiach for Agrexco – and begged him to organize the despatch of a crate of Israeli horseradish roots, by air-freight to Madrid.

It took the friend two days to organize, and two days before Passover, a crate of grade A tear-jerking Israeli horseradish roots was proudly loaded at Ben Gurion Airport onto the El-Al flight 789 to Madrid, and all seemed to be well.

Unfortunately when the Rabbi came to Madrid Airport in order to take the crate out of Customs, he was informed that an unforseen wildcat strike had just broken out among the members of the airport’s Transport and General Workers Union, and no shipments would be unloaded for at least four days.

So you see, “the chraine in Spain stayed mainly on the plane!”