MELVILLE, New York — Target was in the news this past weekend, as a major computer glitch caused the checkout registers in almost all of their stores around the world to stop working. Target has found themselves in the middle of some controversies within the Jewish community in the past. In 2017, they apologized for selling Cards Against Humanity, a party card game that was intentionally offensive, when it was discovered that there was a Jewish-themed card set that contained anti-Semitic images and messages that were derogatory or hurtful to Jews. What other event in Target’s past led to an apology?
A. In 2010, it was discovered that Target was selling world globes that misidentified Israel as Palestine. Target blamed the supplier of the globes and removed the globes from sale. The company stated that while the globe said Palestine where it should have said Israel, there was also a separate label key that did have Israel’s name. But the spokeswoman added that “the important issue is that we are no longer selling this product in our stores and we are sorry for offending our guests.”
B. In 2011, Target made the corporate decision to expand its food section and include fresh produce and other food products to compete with grocery stores. The following year, Target included a large Passover food section in a number of its stores in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and other areas with large Jewish populations. The advertising and store displays showed a photo of the many products available under the words “Targeted For Our Jewish Guests on Passover,” showing matzah, gefilte fish, and canned Manischevitz chicken soup, but also a picture of Lender’s Bagels. Target apologized while blaming an outside advertising company for the error.
C. Target is the name sponsor of Target Field, the home of the Minneapolis Twins. When the Twins sponsored a Jewish Heritage promotional night in 2017, Target arranged to advertise the event by including a picture of a baseball player in a Twins uniform, wearing a yarmulke. The yarmulke featured the Target logo, which immediately drew criticism from the Jewish community for its insensitivity to growing anti-Semitism, as it looked like they were suggesting that Jews be targeted.
D. In 2013, Target suffered a major security breach, notifying more than 40 million customers that their credit card information may have been hacked. A Target spokesperson told an interviewer on CNBC that “the fault lies with an Israeli contractor, CyberSafe Security, whose failure has compromised the safety of our customer’s finances.” Far right organizations immediately launched an attack on “Jewish companies controlling American corporate finances,” leading Target to apologize for unnecessarily specifying that the contractor was an Israeli company, while clarifying that Target was ultimately responsible for the protection of their customers’ data.
E. In 2015, Target opened their first store in Israel. The store included a kosher deli, and all of the food products being sold were kosher. Target’s advertising department created a variation of their standard logo to mark the occasion, by adding a Letter U to the inside of the Target circle, with the words “Target–Certified Kosher for Israel” above the logo, believing that the U in a circle was a generic kosher symbol. After being sued by the Orthodox Union, holder of the O-U trademark, Target apologized and redid the logo, replacing the U with a K, until they were sued by the Organized Kashrus Laboratories, the holder of that trademark. They tried one more time, replacing the K with the Hebrew letter Kaf, but when Kaf-K Kosher Supervision sued them, Target gave up and began selling non-kosher food.
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Zimmerman is the author of the Rashi, Rambam and Ramalamadingdong series of Jewish trivia e-books. Learn more at http://www.rrrjewishtrivia.com