Back to the Grind

T he “Eat More Horseradish” sign on the grounds of the Tulkoff Food Products plant outside Baltimore is not exactly subtle advertising but the largest horseradish manufacturing plant in North America was never afraid of being on the sharp side.

After we enter the state-of-the-art facility ranging over more than 80000 square feet of a business park in suburban Dundalk Maryland we leave behind our jewelry and cell phones and suit up in white lab coats and red hair nets that designate our visitor status. We’re soon met by Meir (Michael) Tulkoff director of specialty sales. He is more familiarly known as Magic Michael and is famous in Israeli hospitals for helping raise the standards of medical clowning in Israel. In fact he and his wife Debbie made aliyah 16 years ago but when hospital budgets there were cut he figured out a way of rejoining the family business without giving up the dream of living in Eretz Yisrael. He comes to the States twice a year for several weeks and works the rest of the time from his home in Rechovot via phone and e-mail.

Tulkoff — who became religious after college and spent the first three years after his wedding learning under Rabbi Nachman Bulman z”l in his kollel community in Migdal Ha’emek — grew up in a typical American Jewish traditional home among family that was running a three-generations-old business. He points to a collection of photos one of them taken in the early 1920s.

“My grandparents Harry and Lena Tulkoff — Pop and Bubbe who were Russian-born first cousins — are standing behind the counter of their small grocery store. On the counter you can see individual eggs for sale sweet butter pot cheese and Domino sugar priced at 18 cents a pound. There is some kind of netting over a product on the counter to keep the flies away.