Antisemitism in California cafés has a dark – Latest News
A person and his little one had been kicked out of a cafe as a result of they had been Jewish. Oakland, in 2024? Brooklyn, final week? Or Nazi Germany, 90 years in the past?
Try all three.
In Oakland, Abdulrahim Harara, proprietor of the Jerusalem Coffee House, allegedly ejected a Jewish man and his 5-year-old son final yr as a result of they had been sporting baseball caps that had a Star of David in their design.
But what began in Oakland didn’t stop there.
In Brooklyn final week, Dan Goldman, a Democrat and Jewish member of Congress, and his 7-year-old daughter visited Poetica Coffee, a cafe in the tony Park Slope part of Brooklyn. That’s the neighborhood the place a co-op grocery store not too long ago voted to ban Israeli merchandise.
Poetica Coffee store in Brooklyn refunded Goldman his money over his assist for Israel. Gregory P. Mango for NY Post
After discovering that the Goldmans had been in the cafe, Poetica Coffee proprietor Parviz Mukhamadkulov introduced on social media that he was refunding their money and banning them from the premises as a result of they’re “genocide enablers.” (That’s a code phrase for “Jews.”)
Meanwhile, a TikTok influencer referred to as “redhead heretic” has been visiting Los Angeles cafes comparable to Couplet Coffee to “let everyone know” that the house owners are Israeli residents. In one snippet, she cheerfully calls out “Thank you for leaving” to departing prospects.
Tiktok/@redheadherertic
Tiktok/@redheadherertic
These episodes are tragically reminiscent of a darker period.
The Australian scholar Michael E. Abrahams-Sprod has chronicled the methods in which Jews in the city of Magdeburg, in Nazi Germany, step by step had been excluded from public life in the Thirties.
Signs proclaiming “Jews Not Served Here” (Juden unerwünscht) and “Jews Not Welcome Here!” (Juden unerwünscht) started showing in shops, resorts, cinemas, public transportation, groceries, and eating places.
Abrahams-Sprod interviewed a survivor who recalled that at age 8, in 1933, such indicators had been posted “on nearly every shop and I know it was difficult for my mother to do the shopping.”
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Another survivor, Gisela Kent, instructed him: “There was one place in Magdeburg called ‘Schwarzs Kaffee-Garten’ [Schwarz’s Coffee Garden] where [we] used to go every Sunday … my parents, my aunt, uncle and my grandparents, for quite a while, until about 1936. And then they stopped, or perhaps they were asked to stop.” As the indicators proliferated, “you just didn’t go out.”
Survivor Gerry Levy recounted how his aunt as soon as took him to a Magdeburg restaurant for ice cream. When they had been recognized as Jews, they had been “approached by the manager and asked to leave.”
Cafe exclusions weren’t the one method in which food was weaponized for antisemitic functions. Ninety years earlier than the Park Slope Co-op weaponized food towards the Jews, grocery shops in Magdeburg started proscribing what Jews might buy: In December 1935, the chief of police introduced that solely these Jews who had been deemed “inconspicuous” and “of acceptable appearance” could be allowed to buy instances of milk.
By 1938, in keeping with Abrahams-Sprod, “Jews in Magdeburg were so isolated in their city that they avoided going out in public …They were effectively living in a ghetto without walls, owing to the threats that surrounded them in non-Jewish spaces.”
That description of life in Thirties Magdeburg was an eerie precursor to the horrific chants of “We have to make them scared!” by pro-Hamas demonstrators outdoors a Manhattan synagogue final yr.
The Jews of Magdeburg had been too scared to go away their houses. Today’s antisemites have the identical aim.
Of course, there are numerous important variations between the rising antisemitism in the United States in 2026 and the antisemitism gripping Nazi Germany in 1936.
One of essentially the most essential variations is the response of the authorities. The US Department of Justice filed a lawsuit towards the Oakland cafe proprietor; the swimsuit is pending. The DOJ has introduced that it’s now additionally investigating the Manhattan incident involving Congressman Goldman.
Swift and forceful motion by the authorities is significant to holding American society from going down the slippery slope from Oakland, to Park Slope, to a reincarnated Magdeburg.
Dr. Medoff is founding director of The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies and creator of more than 20 books about Jewish historical past and the Holocaust.
