Many Jews spend countless hours preparing for Passover, including searching for every crumb that is anathema on the holiday and preparing the unusual seder menu. Shelley Atlas Serber, of Long Island, N.Y., estimates that she has spent “hundreds and hundreds of hours” to help people prepare for the holiday.
Serber created the 78,000 member-strong Facebook group “Kosher Trader Joe’s.” Some 25,000 have requested her detailed guide to kosher-for-Passover products at the grocery chain, she told JNS.
“It’s been a crazy few weeks doing this, but it’s a labor of love and very well-received across the country,” she said.
“I literally went up and down the aisles,” she told JNS. “I spend hundreds and hundreds of hours on it, and I do the legwork for everyone.”
Serber gives the list away for free, although she asks requesters if they want to donate and directs them to her social media accounts and newsletter. “Want to share the guide? Amazing,” she writes in the form. “Please share this link, not the PDF itself.”
The PDF, which runs 18 pages, includes items that range from Aviv matzah and Empire poultry to fresh herbs, frozen fruit and a wide array of wines, which are available in select regions. She includes detailed notes about certification requirements and preparation guidelines.
The document is subject to change, she told JNS.
“I got a message that I had to remove an item. It happens,” she said. “My biggest fear is that I have to retract something.”
When that happens, she sends an email to those who registered their address, thus asking people not to share the PDF.
“There are so many followers around the country that do not live in large communities,” Serber said. “There are those that rely on Trader Joe’s for their kosher everything.”
“You can make a full meal just with Trader Joe’s items for Pesach,” she said. “Will it be as elaborate as you usually do? Maybe not. But trust me, you will be well-fed and you will be well looked after.”
Serber, who works in marketing and design and who illustrated the “unofficial” Taylor Swift Haggadah, told JNS that the guide can be particularly helpful to those who intended to go to Israel for Passover but find themselves spending the holiday at home.
“For those that were meant to be somewhere else, and now you’re at home, we’ve got you,” she said. “You can do it.”
She told JNS that she dedicated this year’s Passover guide to Omer Neutra, who had been an active member of the Facebook group before terrorists killed him on Oct. 7, 2023 and took his body hostage to Gaza.
“It was a privilege to have the platform to rally for him, to fight for him, to show support to his family,” Serber said. “He was an active member. He was part of the shtick. He was part of the fun.”
Serber launched the group more than a decade ago after noticing repeated questions in online recipe forums.
“Every day people would say, ‘I’m going to Trader Joe’s. What should I buy?’” she said. “So I was like, ‘We should just start a group like kosher Trader Joe’s.’”
“It’s truly a community,” she told JNS.
The group has evolved to be about more than just food. A woman in Las Vegas asked advice on what to wear to her first Shabbat dinner, at Chabad, Serber said.
“The responses were fantastic,” she told JNS. “Then it started—the invitations for her to come to Kosher Trader Joe’s members’ houses.”
“That taught me and the members of the group what a silly Facebook group about a supermarket can do,” she said.
Each time Serber goes to Israel, she does a giveaway for her followers in Israel and brings a suitcase packed with Trader Joe’s items, she told JNS.
Bruce Kaplan, a retired aerospace engineer, shared a photo in the Facebook group of a recent endcap display, that is items at the side of an aisle, at a Trader Joe’s in Virginia.
Store employees packed the display with kosher-for-Passover wine, matzah, apples and cinnamon, babkas, macaroons and challahs.
“This is awesome that they’ve tried to put a beautiful display together,” Serber wrote.
“All the Jewish holidays in one,” a member wrote. “It is still nice they tried.”
Kaplan told JNS that he appreciated the display, despite the decidedly not-kosher-for-Passover items like challah and babka.
“They’ve saved me a lot of time searching for kosher-for-Passover wines among the hundreds of choices,” he said. “I’m going back to the store tomorrow to thank them for the effort and to give them Shelley’s list.”
