The Jewish Candyfreak

By JOANNA STEIN

Candyfreak: A Journey Through the Chocolate Underbelly of America
By Steve Almond
280 pages. Workman Publishing, Inc. $21.95.

When I called Steve Almond for a morning phone interview, I had a specific question in mind. “Have you had any candy yet today?” I asked naively. He said that he had already consumed three Haviland Thin Mints in his coffee as well as some candy left over from a party the night before. Having read Almond’s Candyfreak: A Journey Through the Chocolate Underbelly of America, a narrative of his obsession with sweets, I should have known.

The comical, conversational tone of Candyfreak was similar to the tone Almond used in the interview. Almond, a Massachusetts-based writer, immediately opened up to me as if I were an old friend. He has had a relationship with candy for years, and he clearly knows everything there is to know about his love. It is safe to say that he can identify the scent, size, shape, texture, taste, packaging, and manufacturer of virtually any candy on the market. As with most great loves, this one has caused battle scars—fillings in all of Almond’s molars.

One chapter in Candyfreak focuses on the history of Goldenberg Candy, a company founded by a Jewish family. According to Almond, many of the early owners and distributors of candy in the United States were Jewish. He told me about Nate Sloane, a Jewish man from Massachusetts who started out distributing candy and eventually bought Fox Cross, the manufacturer of the Charleston Chew. Almond said he’s not sure why so many Jewish immigrants went into the food business, but he expects that it had something to do with the Jewish cultural emphasis on food. “We’re an oral culture,” Almond said proudly.

Apparently, the ties between Judaism and the candy industry continue today. At the All Candy Expo 2004, Almond discovered a line of jelly beans called Maccabeans. He said the Maccabeans tasted “fine,” but he prefers the more traditional Jelly Belly jelly beans.

Almond’s glorious love affair with candy dates back to his childhood memories of his father fishing Junior Mints and M&M’s, one by one, out of his shirt pocket with the crook of his index finger. Almond said he was impressed by his father’s discipline in taking the time to savor the candy. For the most part, Almond, like his father, eats his candy slowly, but he admits that he will occasionally “pound” candy in what he called “a Dionysian frenzy.”

Not only does Almond take pleasure in candy, but he enjoys the bizarre responses that Candyfreak has yielded from its readers. He said that he has received letters and emails with intense testimonials from closet freaks. One woman went so far as to propose marriage to Almond in hopes of having children with great candyfreak potential.

In Candyfreak, Almond mentions that he lived in Jerusalem about 15 years ago. When I asked him about living in Israel for a semester during college, he described Israel as beautiful and amazing, but a perilous place to live.

On the topic of kosher candy, Almond said that many labels carry kosher candy products if for no other reason than to expand their potential buying audience. He noted that candy with marshmallow is usually not kosher since marshmallow contains gelatin. However, the Idaho Spud, a marshmallow bar featured in Candyfreak, is an exception to the non-kosher marshmallow rule.

While he may not keep kosher and never went to synagogue growing up, Almond feels connected to his family’s Jewish history. Two of his great-grandfathers were rabbis. “Their inspiration came straight from the Talmud and the Torah, through my grandparents and parents, to me,” Almond said. As psychiatrists, Almond’s parents play the “rabbinical role of trying to understand people and their inner cosmos.” Carrying on the family tradition, Almond tries to make sense of the world through his writing. For him, writing is an active way to sort out his chaotic feelings, to make bearable the unbearable.

A secular Jew, Almond is connected to the set of values that go along with being Jewish. He claims strong cultural ties to Judaism in the form of foods, social awareness, and the belief in the value of education. Almond said his cultural orientation on life stems from his Jewishness. When he enters a room, he said, he can usually tell who is Jewish. Jewish people tend to have an intense desire to understand, analyze, and mix things up.

Almond subtly incorporates his Jewishness into his writing. Discussing the candy bars of his youth that no longer exist, he writes “I say Kaddish for all of them.” Describing his first taste of a gourmet candy bar, he says “if the bar had stopped here, well, as we Jews say Dianu. It would have been enough.” Deeply attached to the Yiddish expressions that permeated his youth, Almond also integrates words like kvell into his writing, in the same manner as writers Saul Bellow and Philip Roth.

On the topic of his favorite Jewish writers, Almond said nobody crafts a single sentence like Bellow, who writes with a “virtuosity and vitality that instantly put you in someone else’s world.” He referred to the new Roth novel, The Plot Against America, as “the promise of Goodbye, Columbus realized” and considers Roth worthy of the Nobel Prize. Almond’s review of the novel will be featured on JBooks.com in October.