Costco Now Carries “Uncle Yossi”

By COLlive reporter

Costco, one of the nation’s top three retailers and the world’s largest membership warehouse chain, has started to carry the book “My Favorite Jewish Bedtime Stories.”

Authored by the late master storyteller, Rabbi Yosef Goldstein OBM, also known as “Uncle Yossi,” the book is a delightful collection of classic Jewish tales and parables drawn from Jewish lore and tradition.

The 120-page book published by the Jewish Learning Group in adorned by 85 beautiful illustrations by Joseph Maya and its universal ethics and morals are suitable for all ages.

“My father was always excited to get one more child say Shema and hear about Torah and Mitzvos,” says Uncle Yossi’s son, Rabbi Zalman Goldstein, himself an author of over 14 books, a few of them bestsellers in the Jewish market.

“When my father was once told that someone in another state was selling bootleg cassettes of his stories, he called the person and instead of giving him an earful, thanked him for helping him spread the light of Torah and Chassidus into even more Jewish homes. That’s what I grew up with,” Goldstein said.

He says that “the deeply ingrained ambition of spreading the light of Torah and Chassidus far and wide definitely continues into the next generation,” and has led him to send several copies to Costco’s book-buyer with a note.

Goldstein wrote that each year, around the winter holidays, he was surprised by “the stark lack of Jewish offerings in the holiday gift sections of major secular chains.”

“To my delight, they loved it so much that they decided to skip a small market test and roll it out across all the Costco locations at once, in what they call their Judaic regions,” Goldstein tells COLlive.com.

These areas include stores in New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Georgia, Florida, Chicago, Minnesota, California, and others around the country.

Goldstein has already published nearly 50 of his father’s stories in the two volumes “Uncle Yossi’s Big Book of Stories,” with a third volume being prepared.

But the Costco deal is making him especially proud.

“Of course this is a great validation of the vision and quality of the content and design of the book,” he says. “Ultimately, I am thrilled that my father’s legacy of spreading Yiddishkeit continues as he watches from the Heavens. What more can a child ask for?”

The book is on sale at Costco at the discount price of $9.95 (list $16.95) and at UncleYossi.com, through Chanukah.