Moishe Ferencz: Supermarket Widower
Moishe Ferencz opened JC Kosher Supermarket on Martin Luther King Drive in 2017 after he and his wife, Mindy, moved from Brooklyn searching for more financial stability and space for their three children. Moishe and Mindy ran a successful business together, putting out hot kugel and cholent for their customers each Thursday and selling at least five different varieties of yogurt. The store was a gathering place where customers came to talk politics. Children came by in masks and princess crowns to collect Halloween sweets from Moishe, who handed out individual pieces of candy from a clear Tupperware container.
But the search for a better life also brought Moishe unimaginable grief.
One day, he stepped out to bring cake to the synagogue and Mindy took her place behind the counter, only two be ambushed by two anti-Semites who shot and killed her and two others.
“You gave me everything I ever wanted,” he said in Yiddish during her funeral, sobbing. “And now, I have to do it all without you.”
Moishe’s strength and loving relationship with his late wife is an inspiration to Jews and non-Jews everywhere, and we humbly honor him by including him in the Forward 50.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.
If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO