Lauren Adler and some of the 130 chocolate bars from around the world featured at her Queen Anne store, Chocolopolis.

Also: the politics of social justice
I ate a cocoa bean!
Actually, I ate a little bit of two different cocoa beans. The one from Venezuela tasted a bit nutty, almost like walnut, but a tad bitter. The one from Madagascar was completely different in a way that is difficult to describe: Not nutty, but tart.
This was my introduction to the world of chocolate, compliments of Lauren Adler, proprietor of Chocolopolis, a new shop on top of Seattle’s Queen Anne Hill. Lauren is not a chocolatier, she explained. A chocolatier makes candies, such as truffles, although the store carries some specialty candies. She is also not a chocolate maker — they make chocolate bars — but she sells the products of those international makers, carrying 130 bars, arranged geographically, representing beans from around the world.
Most of the bars are “single origin,” made with a single type of bean, with its country of origin indicated on the label. There are many varieties of beans, even though cocoa trees only grow between 20 degrees latitude north and south of the equator. (Only one cocoa plantation exists in the U.S., an operation in Hawaii recently revived by Dole.) The plant hybridizes so easily that varieties are evolving all the time.
“We really want to educate people’s palates,” says the Washington, D.C., native who opened the store about two months ago, capping a career in corporate and retail sales. She’d been an in-store bakery manager for Star Market in Boston (similar to Safeway or QFC) and also worked at Merrill Lynch before she came to Seattle in the 1990s to work for Amazon.
“I always wanted my own store,” she says.
A few years ago, she took a truffle-making class and read Mort Rosenblum’s book, Chocolate, “so all these things came together…[I decided] I just wanted to open up a nice chocolate store.” She got support and encouragement from husband Mark Kotzer, the “nice Jewish boy” she met out here.
Opening the store has eaten up most of her free time this year, but Lauren has been active in the Anti-Defamation League and served on the board of the Jewish Federation’s Young Leadership Division.
“I really am passionate about the ADL,” she says, but the store “has taken over my life.”
Chocolopolis carries some kosher bars and Lauren plans a selection of Passover items in the spring. Stop by the store on Saturdays to taste the bar of the week for free or attend a more in-depth tasting on Thursday evenings for $5. Private tastings can also be arranged.
“It makes an economical holiday party,” says Lauren. For information, visit their Web site, www.chocolopolis.com.
By the way, those cocoa beans I tasted? They have 100 times more antioxidants than blueberries!
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The Reform Movement’s Religious Action Center, which has been transforming values into public policy for 30 years, has become a hub for Jewish social justice under the leadership of Rabbi David Saperstein.
Now Saperstein has tapped Jeff Oakley of Bellevue to be one of the Center’s public policy fellows. Oakley, who grew up at Temple B’nai Torah, is an Eisendrath Legislative Assistant specializing in issues pertaining to Israel, Iraq, Iran and interreligious affairs.
He just started about a month ago, but tells me he will be monitoring legislative activity, developing synagogue social action programming and working overall to mobilize grassroots American Jewry.
Jeff graduated in June from Occidental College and spent his second summer working at Camp Kalsman, the Union for Reform Judaism’s new camp in Arlington. He is a veteran of Jewish camping, having attended URJ camps Newman and Swig. He was also president of TBT’s youth group.
Jeff has a long-standing interest in social justice, which he said was nurtured by his parents, Shellie and Randy Oakley. “Since I’ve been going to religion school, social justice was on my mind,” he told me from his office in the other Washington. “We did a Seeds of Peace fundraiser, [which] really excited me.” (Seeds of Peace teaches conflict resolution to young people, with a focus on the Middle East.)
In college he studied diplomacy and world affairs with a focus on the Middle East, and in 2006 was given a grant through the campus office of religious life to attend a forum on conflict resolution in Nicosia, Cyprus, part of a program to help students develop vocations with meaning. The conference “reinforced my personal commitment to social justice and conflict resolution,” he says.
He’s been busy learning his job, but has tried to fit in some sightseeing in our nation’s capitol.
“I miss the mountains, but I’m invigorated and excited by the things going on here in Washington.”