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‘We are not alright’: How Oct. 7 defined Eric Adams’ Jewish legacy
As New York City Mayor Eric Adams was welcomed to deliver remarks at his final Hanukkah reception — just a day after the horrific terror attack in Bondi Beach — he made a characteristically unscripted entrance, walking in from the side of the room holding a wireless microphone instead of stepping onto the stage in the center. Adams told the audience on Monday night that he did not want to be separated from them by ropes or barriers. “I just really wanted to remind all of you that I am on your level,” he said. “I want you to know that your pain, I feel your pain.”
That moment, signaling that he understood not just the community’s fear after the attack, but its need for visible solidarity, was the kind of instinctive gesture that, aides and allies say, has defined his relationship with Jewish New Yorkers during a tumultuous single term as mayor.
As he prepares to leave City Hall on Dec. 31, having failed to overcome his unpopularity citywide and win reelection, Adams remains personally popular among much of the Jewish community, which continues to grapple with uncertainty about his successor, Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, whose stance on Israel has been divisive.
Throughout his tenure, Adams cultivated a reputation for speaking the Jewish community’s language, understanding their concerns and being willing to step up in moments of crisis. Senior aides say he rarely reads prepared remarks, even when speeches are written for him, particularly at Jewish events.
This spontaneity was most evident in a four-minute speech he delivered at a rally on Oct. 10, 2023, days after the Hamas attack on Israel. The moment raised his profile in Israel, when he declared, “We are not alright.”
“The fact that everybody in the Jewish world has seen that speech, such a short clip, speaks to the impact on Jews around the world,” said Fabian Levy, the deputy mayor for communications, who is Jewish. He recounted the behind-the-scenes moments leading up to the speech in a recent interview, growing emotional at times and struggling to speak. Before Adams took the stage, he met with the parents of Israeli-American hostage Omer Neutra.
Levy, 41, is considered one of Adams’ closest aides, frequently at the mayor’s side. He was first appointed as press secretary in 2021, and elevated to his current role in August 2023, becoming the first-ever deputy mayor of Persian or Iraqi descent. Levy said that some of his relatives in Israel, who knew he worked in government but did not realize he worked for Adams, had posted that Oct. 10 speech to a family WhatsApp group and suggested he “work for this guy.”
When I asked about his popularity in Israel in a recent interview, Adams said, “My clarity of message, I believe it resonated with people who have been there for others, yet did not see their allies stand up and fight with them. The friendship we have with Israel and our Jewish community is not one that ends during the time of conflict, but one that withstands difficult challenges.”
In Monday night’s farewell address to the community, following a final official trip to Israel, Adams cast himself as a modern-day Maccabee.
Eric Adams’ relationship with Jews
Adams, 65, has had a longstanding relationship with the Jewish community dating back to his time as a police officer in the 1980s, a connection that continued through his four terms in the state legislature and two terms as Brooklyn Borough President.
He aggressively courted Orthodox voting blocs, critical to electing him, in the 2021 crowded Democratic primary for mayor. “I don’t need a GPS to find Borough Park,” Adams said in a campaign stop in Borough Park a day before the primary. “I was there for this community for over 30 years, and I am going to be there as the mayor. I’m not a new friend. I’m an old friend.”
Adams initially moved his Jan. 1, 2022 inauguration — traditionally held at noon in the plaza outside City Hall in downtown Manhattan and drawing thousands of spectators — to the evening out of respect for Shabbat observers, since it fell on a Saturday. The ceremony was later postponed and scaled back altogether as the Omicron COVID-19 surge swept through the city at the time.
A large number of American Jews served in senior roles at City Hall and throughout Adams’ administration. That includes Jessica Tisch, who became police commissioner in 2024; Robert Tucker, commissioner of the fire department; Fred Kreizman, commissioner for community affairs; Zach Iscol, the emergency management commissioner; and Ed Mermelstein, commissioner for international affairs until July.
In the mayor’s office, Levy served alongside Menashe Shapiro, deputy chief of staff; Moshe Davis, Adams’ Jewish liaison and later also director of the newly-created mayor’s office to combat antisemitism; and Lisa Zornberg, his chief counsel, who inspired the mayor’s widely cited Oct. 10 line and resigned last year amid the federal investigations that rocked the Adams administration.
Joel Eisdorfer, a member of the Satmar Hasidic community in Borough Park, was senior adviser until he stepped down in 2024, citing family reasons, and was a close political ally who helped mobilize Jewish support during Adams’ campaigns. Adams’ personal photographer, Benny Polatseck, who is also Hasidic, documented many of his appearances at Jewish and other official events.
“You see yourself in my administration, in a very significant place,” Adams told Jewish reporters in 2024.
In speeches to Jewish audiences, Adams described New York City as the “Tel Aviv of America.”
But Adams faced criticism from parts of the broader Jewish community after launching a Jewish Advisory Council that met regularly to discuss Jewish-related issues. Some liberal groups argued the council was not representative of the city’s full Jewish diversity, noting that at least 23 of its 37 members were Orthodox Jews and only nine were women. The progressive group New York Jewish Agenda later met with Adams after raising concerns that he was primarily hearing from Orthodox leaders and those with more conservative political views.
Last year, Adams announced the creation of a new office to combat antisemitism, which led to a bitter feud with the city comptroller, Brad Lander, who is Jewish and who was at the time a mayoral candidate. (Adams and Lander have long had a strained relationship, sparring over policy and oversight.)
Adams also signed an executive order adopting the controversial International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism, which labels most forms of anti-Zionism as antisemitic. Critics, including progressives and Jewish advocacy groups, warned it could chill free speech.
Some Jewish elected officials also criticized Adams for his crackdown on the pro-Palestinian protests across the city and on college campuses. He was unapologetic about his opposition to the call for a ceasefire in Gaza.
Recently, Adams signed a measure barring city agencies from participating in Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions efforts, which would pre-empt any moves by city officials to divest from Israel Bonds and other Israeli investments. Adams maintained that it wasn’t an attempt to tie Mamdani’s hand but “to protect my legacy on the investment in Israel.”
During a roundtable with ethnic media outlets at City Hall on Monday, Adams didn’t elaborate when asked by the Forward how he would define his tenure in terms of curbing antisemitism and protecting Jewish New Yorkers. Antisemitism was up 18% in New York last year, with 68% of the 1,437 incidents occurring in New York City, according to the Anti-Defamation League. In the first quarter of 2025, NYPD data showed antisemitic acts made up 62% of all reported hate crimes citywide. Last month, anti-Jewish crimes were 37% of all reported hate incidents.
Adams said the numbers have been steadily dropping as a result of his moves to counter antisemitism, including his signature “Breaking Bread, Building Bonds” initiative, which encourages New Yorkers to host meals for 10 people from different racial, ethnic and religious backgrounds. “I think that the next administration must be extremely clear in their position around hate in general and antisemitism,” he said.
Levy said that Adams acted bravely in taking a firm stance on Israel, even when it carried political risk. “Some people are saying that it could have been the reason why he is no longer going to be mayor for another term,” Levy said. “He did it because it was the right thing to do.” Adams took a recent trip to Israel to bid farewell.
Shadowed by controversy
Despite his close and warm relationship with the Jewish community, Adams’ career has also been marked by recurring controversies. During the 1993 mayoral race, when he supported incumbent Mayor David Dinkins, Adams drew backlash after suggesting that then–state comptroller candidate Herman Badillo, who is Puerto Rican, would have shown greater concern for the Hispanic community had he not married a white Jewish woman. In the 1990s, Adams worked with the Nation of Islam as part of community crime patrol efforts and appeared publicly with its leader, Louis Farrakhan, who spewed antisemitism. He later came under fire for condemning former Rep. Major Owens during a 1994 congressional primary after Owens denounced Farrakhan.
As mayor, Adams faced renewed scrutiny in 2022 after defending his endorsement of a minister previously cited for antisemitic slurs in a race against a pro-BDS lawmaker. More recently, he faced criticism for invoking Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf while pushing back against allegations that he struck a quid pro quo with the Justice Department to end his federal corruption case, and for sitting for an interview at Gracie Mansion with Sneako, an influential antisemitic online streamer.
Adams made combating antisemitism central to his reelection effort. After withdrawing from the Democratic primary, facing a surging field of challengers, Adams sought to run on an independent line dubbed “End Antisemitism.” It came under legal challenge after creating another “Safe and Affordable” ballot. He ended his campaign in late September after failing to gain steam and in an attempt to clear the field for former Gov. Andrew Cuomo to stop Mamdani.
He also got into a dispute between Williamsburg Hasidim over the bike lanes earlier this year.
What his aides and Jewish leaders are saying
Adams’ senior aides and Jewish leaders all pointed to Adams’ response to the Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel as the high point of his tenure.
“His consistent support for the Jewish community after Oct. 7 was a model for what real leadership looks like,” said David Greenfield, a former member of the City Council who is now the chief executive of Met Council, the nation’s largest Jewish anti-poverty charity. “His remarks were, for many of us, the first time we felt genuinely seen and defended by leaders outside our community. At a moment of surging antisemitism, he didn’t hedge or look away.”
Sara Forman, executive director of the New York Solidarity Network, a pro-Israel political organization, said the expression of empathy he expressed toward the Jewish people by showing up “was very poignant and also a very significant legacy that Eric Adams is going to leave with all of us.”
In interviews, Adams’ Jewish staffers described a natural rapport with the community that often lessened the need for formal outreach or guidance on specific issues.
Shapiro, his deputy chief of staff, said that Adams’ unscripted nature underscored his familiarity and a genuine sense of belonging in the community. “He felt so comfortable in their presence, he knew exactly what he wanted to say,” Shapiro said.
“With Mayor Adams, you always felt like he practically went to yeshiva with you,” Davis, his liaison to the community, said. “He’s been in this so long and really knows what the community cares about.”
In his remarks at the Hanukkah event, Adams reassured the community that he will remain an ally after he leaves office. “I am going nowhere,” he said. Earlier in the day, Adams referred to what comes next as “God’s Plan A.” Adams is reportedly exploring a private-sector opportunity tied to an Israeli construction firm. “The end of the mayoralty means the beginning of what we are going to do together,” he said.
The post ‘We are not alright’: How Oct. 7 defined Eric Adams’ Jewish legacy appeared first on The Forward.
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‘There was a campaign’: UN torture official says colleagues tried to block her letter documenting Oct. 7 atrocities
An Australian lawyer tasked by the United Nations with monitoring and documenting allegations of torture and cruelty is accusing colleagues within the UN human rights system of trying to block the publication of a Jan. 2024 letter she wrote documenting allegations of abuses committed during the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack on Israel months earlier.
Alice Edwards, who since 2022 has served as United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, said she faced weeks of pressure from colleagues who argued that allegations included in the letter she drafted were false and urged her not to send it.
“There was a campaign to prevent that letter going out,” Edwards said in remarks delivered earlier this month at University College London and obtained by the Forward. “There was weeks of being bullied and deterred from writing it and telling me that everything in it was false.”
Edwards’ statements resurfaced a long-simmering conflict in the UN human rights system around its treatment of Israel, which is frequently singled out by UN resolutions and by rapporteurs as a perpetrator of human rights violations.
Meanwhile, other UN rapporteurs have declared doubts on evidence of sexual violence committed during the Oct. 7 attacks — prompting a surviving hostage and the head of an investigative commission that published a report last month compiling witness and survivor testimonies to confront them this week at a hearing in Geneva.
Edwards’ letter, sent in early 2024 to Palestinian authorities and copied to Hamas, detailed allegations of torture, sexual violence, including rapes and gang rapes, burning people alive, and other abuses committed during the Oct. 7 attacks.
According to Edwards, colleagues had given extensive feedback on drafts of the letter, with some items removed from the final version as a result. “All the comments of these individuals had been taken into account,” she said, adding that “the letter shrunk considerably.”
Even after those revisions, Edwards said, only one counterpart — the UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions, Morris Tidball-Binz — ultimately signed the communication before it was sent.
Other special rapporteurs and working groups who had expressed interest in signing it, she said, “had also been bullied by others not to sign on.” Edwards added: “There was this concerted effort for this letter not to put on record some allegations that had been received.”
Contacted by the Forward, Danny Danon, Israel’s Ambassador to the UN sent a written statement. “Dr. Alice Edwards’ testimony exposes an uncomfortable truth: when it comes to Israel, facts are too often sacrificed on the altar of politics,” said Danon. “The evidence is overwhelming and undeniable. For more than two years, Israel has documented and presented the horrific crimes committed against its citizens.”
UN special rapporteurs are independent human rights experts appointed by the UN Human Rights Council to monitor, investigate and advise on thematic topics that include torture, violence against women, and education among others. While their recommendations are not binding, their advice informs UN action and aims to influence governments’ responses to alleged violations.
Israeli officials and advocacy groups had long argued that the United Nations devotes disproportionate attention to Israel’s alleged wrongdoing compared to other countries and holds Israel to a double standard. Since the Hamas-led attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, they say, the UN and its rapporteurs have not adequately condemned Hamas’ atrocities and the treatment of Israeli hostages.
Reem Alsalem, the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, has said that the Israeli government’s failure to cooperate with her mandate has undermined investigative efforts and “represents a profound injustice to all the victims.” She also has called into question reports from victims, witnesses and investigators who described rape as part of the Oct. 7 violence.
In a post on X in November 2025, Alsalem wrote: “No Palestinian applauded rape in Gaza. No independent investigation found that rape took place on the 7th of October 2023.”
She also wrote of allegations of Hamas perpetrated sexual violence against Israelis: “I firmly believe that never have we seen such a weaponization of accusations of sexual violence as well as disinformation to manufacture consent for the commission of a genocide – aided and abetted by the media and governments around the world.”
The tensions resurfaced publicly this week at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva when Dr. Cochav Elkayam-Levy, founder and chair of the Civil Commission on October 7th Crimes by Hamas against Women and Children, presented findings from the commission’s recently published report, Silenced No More.
The report, which has been received by governments, international organizations, academic institutions, and policymakers around the world and boasts many endorsers, is the most comprehensive body of evidence yet of sexual violence on October 7. It catalogues witness testimonies, accounts from hostages about sexual abuse during their captivity, and analysis of over 10,000 photos and videos, including hours-long videos recorded by the perpetrators.
“For two years, we immersed ourselves in testimonies of unimaginable violence,” Elkayam-Levy said Wednesday during her presentation of the findings at the UN in Geneva. “We revealed 13 patterns of abuse — including rape, gang rape, sexual torture, burning, and the deliberate mutilation of victims’ faces and genitalia.”
She went on to single out the UN human rights representatives as unresponsive to the evidence. “Will the UN rapporteurs who doubted or denied these crimes acknowledge the truth?” she said, adding, “We call upon you to recognize our findings.”
A day earlier, Ilana Gritzewsky, a survivor of Hamas captivity who has spoken publicly about sexual violence she experienced, confronted Alsalem directly during a live testimony in an emotional appeal.
“Ms. Alsalem, you said there was no evidence of sexual violence on October 7,” she said. “I am the living proof of sexual violence by Hamas. When I and other Israeli women begged not to be raped, why were you silent?”
‘She was very brave’
Asked about Edwards’ allegations, the UN office that supports the special rapporteurs and other independent human rights experts provided a statement to the Forward: “While the experts frequently issue joint communications on issues that engage multiple mandates, participation in any particular communication remains at the full discretion of each expert, in line with their mandate.”
According to Dr. Shelly Aviv Yeini, the former head of the international law department at the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, Edwards and the United Nations Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict, Pramila Patten, were among a small number of UN officials who meaningfully engaged with hostage families after the terror attacks. Individuals within the Office of the Secretary-General reached out later in the war.
Aviv Yeini told the Forward that her group and the International Jewish Lawyers Organization provided Edwards with a report that informed Edwards’ later work. Edwards published a report determining that the families of hostages should also be recognized as direct victims of torture and hosted an event in Geneva alongside the forum to present and discuss those findings.
“I think she was very brave, acknowledging the families and defending us in a time when it wasn’t so easy,” said Yeini.
Adam Wagner, who spoke at the event and represented hostages with British ties taken by Hamas, told Edwards that she was “the only UN official” whom hostage families felt “ever reached out to them or did anything for them.”
Edwards’ position at the UN, like those of all other UN rapporteurs, is unpaid. As a part of her work, she is able to go on one official visit to a country for the purpose of investigating allegations of torture per year. Edwards says she supplemented this with several other trips, which she funded herself. In December 2024, she embarked on a self-funded trip to Israel to investigate the Oct. 7 atrocities, during which she visited southern Israel, including kibbutzim that had been decimated by Hamas, and spoke with victims and hostage families, among others.
Edwards said at the talk that she believes she was the only UN special rapporteur to request access to the video compilation assembled by Israeli authorities to personally review footage from the Oct. 7 attacks. According to Yeini, Edwards met repeatedly with hostage families, visited attack sites, and reviewed evidence firsthand.
Edwards told the Forward in a statement that the role of independent experts is “to document violations wherever they occur and regardless of the identity of the victims or the perpetrators.”
“Our credibility depends on maintaining public confidence that human rights are applied universally,” she said. “Where people perceive selectivity, double standards or political alignment, confidence is weakened.”
The post ‘There was a campaign’: UN torture official says colleagues tried to block her letter documenting Oct. 7 atrocities appeared first on The Forward.
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The Netanyahu-Trump alliance reaches its breaking point
For decades, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s greatest political asset was the United States. Even Israelis who distrusted him, opposed him, or blamed him for deepening the country’s divisions often accepted one proposition: Netanyahu understood the U.S. better than any other politician. He knew how to preserve Israel’s position at the center of American politics and power, without which the country would be in danger.
That belief is no more.
As negotiators meet this week to discuss the future of the Middle East, Israel finds itself in an extraordinary position. Central questions under discussion involve Israel’s security, Israel’s freedom of military action, and the future of Iran’s nuclear and regional ambitions.
Yet Israel is not in the room. Iran is.
The result, in Israel, has been something close to wall-to-wall shock and condemnation. And the harshest criticism is aimed not at the agreement but at Netanyahu himself. Switzerland looks like a vindication of the deepest concerns of opponents who have long argued that Netanyahu mortgaged Israel’s bipartisan support in Washington in exchange for a close relationship with President Donald Trump.
“The strategic damage that this government is leaving behind in terms of our relationship with the United States is damage that will take years to repair,” said former Cabinet minister Izhar Shai.
Netanyahu “built Israel’s entire strategic position around President Trump,” Shai added. “But Trump does what is good for himself and for his voters. He does not act on behalf of the state of Israel.”
Someone might want to convey that message to Trump, who has repeatedly suggested that he determines what Israel can and cannot do, and publicly implied that Netanyahu follows his instructions.
Now, as Trump makes promises about Israel’s actions without Israel in the room, he’s solidified the international impression that the hallowed U.S.-Israel relationship has been reduced to that of a superpower dictating terms to an utterly dependent client. No American president from either party has treated an Israeli prime minister this way — at least in public.
An alliance close to fracturing
Many Israelis are confronting the once-unthinkable possibility that their country’s relationship with the U.S. has been materially damaged by the very leader who claimed unique mastery over it. The concern is not merely that Trump disagrees with Netanyahu. It is that influential figures in Washington increasingly appear to believe that Netanyahu helped draw the U.S. into a military confrontation with Iran based on assumptions that were flawed from the outset.
Since Netanyahu spent years narrowing Israel’s political base in the U.S., there’s nowhere for Israel to turn. Netanyahu’s repeated confrontations with Democratic administrations, beginning most dramatically with his 2015 speech objecting to President Barack Obama’s proposed nuclear deal with Iran, steadily weakened bipartisan support. His identification with Trump — whom he openly supported in the 2024 election — meaningfully deepened that trend.
Meanwhile, relations with many European governments deteriorated, especially during the cataclysmic Gaza war. The result is that Israel now finds itself with fewer reserves of international goodwill than at any point in recent memory.
For Israelis, the American relationship has never primarily been about aid. The billions of dollars in annual military assistance are important, but for a half-trillion-dollar economy they are not decisive. The real value of the alliance is strategic.
American backing provides Israel with a level of deterrence that no other country can offer. It shields Israel diplomatically, particularly at the United Nations. It anchors the network of trade, investment, technological cooperation and international legitimacy on which Israeli prosperity depends. Without that support, Israel would face far greater risks of diplomatic isolation, economic pressure and boycotts.
Israelis understand this intuitively, even if their politics do not always reflect it. It is their prosperous economy that finances a sophisticated military. International trade and investment help sustain that prosperity. Strong alliances help make those relationships possible.
Remove enough pieces from that structure, and eventually even Israel’s military power will begin to erode. Remove the U.S., and it could crumble.
A boon for Israel’s military foes
The immediate strategic implications of negotiations are also serious. If Washington agrees to constrain Israeli freedom of action in Lebanon as part of a broader accommodation with Tehran, as appears possible, Israel could find itself pressured by its strongest ally to withdraw from positions it regards as essential to its security. For residents of northern Israel, many of whom only recently returned home after months of displacement, that prospect is deeply unsettling.
And a weakened Israeli deterrent could strengthen Hezbollah politically as well as militarily. The organization is battered. But if Israel is forced to accept restrictions on its freedom of action while Hezbollah remains intact, the Lebanese government — which recently took risks by signaling a willingness to challenge Hezbollah’s dominance — may conclude that confrontation is no longer worth the danger.
In the worst case scenario, Hezbollah could emerge from the crisis with greater influence than before, emboldened to test Israel through provocations, targeted attacks or efforts to intimidate opponents inside Lebanon.
Israel’s military future as regards Iran also looks grim. The Islamic Republic has emerged strategically strengthened from this conflict. It’s all but certain that Tehran has no real plans to abandon its long-term nuclear ambitions, even if it accepts temporary restrictions. Israelis’ expectation now is that Iran will eventually resume enrichment activities — while Israel’s ability to respond militarily has been narrowed by understandings reached over its head.
That is why the current moment feels so dangerous. Israelis are considering, for the first time for real, that by relying on Trump, Netanyahu has wrecked the strategic framework that has underwritten Israel’s security and prosperity for generations. The October election may therefore become more than a referendum on the aftermath of the Oct. 7 attack, Gaza or Iran. It may become a referendum on the central promise that sustained Netanyahu’s political career for decades: that whatever his faults, he knew how to manage America.
The post The Netanyahu-Trump alliance reaches its breaking point appeared first on The Forward.
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The White House cabinet is eating like your zayde
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is hawking a new diet: sauerkraut. Yes, lacto-fermented cabbage. And it’s catching on with Trump’s cabinet, according to The Wall Street Journal, which reported that Vice President JD Vance, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick are all heaping their plates with cabbage — apparently “drawn by the promise of slimmer waistlines and glowing skin.”
This claim may sound like it belongs in the marketing material for some sort of beauty product, or a scammy gas station supplement, rather than a jar of preserved vegetables. But RFK Jr. boasted that he lost 20 lbs in 30 days from eating mass amounts of the stuff. One might assume something like a tapeworm is responsible for such extreme weight loss — especially given Kennedy’s previous worm-related medical issues — but he asserts it’s all thanks to cabbage.
The diet, drawn up by one Dr. Sean O’Mara, an MD who advertises himself as an “executive biological consultant to high-performance leaders,” is apparently not just about sauerkraut; it includes other fermented vegetables, urges followers to also eat steak, snack on “old world cheese” and cut out alcohol and sugar.
Admittedly, this sounds like a fairly normal, low-carb diet. But sauerkraut is so core to the meal plan that members of the cabinet have taken to making their own, and carrying it around just to make sure they’re never without. Kennedy’s wife, Cheryl Hines, said on a podcast with Steven Miller’s wife, Katie, that she has had to refuse to stow a container of sauerkraut in her clutch when she and her husband go out for a nice evening. But, she said, he brings it anyway, presumably in his own bag. Or maybe tucked under his arm.
It’s hard to imagine anything more bubbie-coded than whipping out a jar of sauerkraut from a handbag while out at a nice dinner.
It’s not that Jews have some kind of patent on fermented vegetables; they exist in many cultures, like kimchi in Korea and miso in Japan. Sauerkraut specifically is common throughout European countries like Germany, Czechia and Russia.
But in the U.S., there’s a pretty strong association between Jews and pickles, whether they be sauerkraut or cucumbers, thanks to the deli culture imported with Jewish immigrants into the U.S. Jews created a pickle district on the Lower East Side, selling the preserved vegetables from pushcarts and spreading the food through the city. We’ve long been aware of the healthy gut biome effects of a lacto-fermented vegetable.
Ashkenazi food has long been made fun of for being gross — largely thanks to innovations like jarred gefilte fish, its beige-heavy color palette and, as the Wall Street Journal piece hinted at, the diet’s resulting gastrointestinal effects. Much of shtetl food culture was the result of hardship, and the need to preserve food through long winters, not an attempt for glowing skin and slim waistlines. The hardier the vegetable, the longer it lasted. Enter the cabbage. There are few foods less sexy than cabbage. (And I love cabbage.)
Which is why it’s so funny to see some of the most powerful men in the U.S. adopting the diet of a poor shtetl Jew — and doing so for aesthetic reasons.
There are a lot of weird diets and quasi-scientific buzzwords like “seed oils” and “clean protein” floating through the MAHA world that these American leaders often play to. But most of those, at least the ones promoted by men like Vance, have some cross-over focus on manliness and discipline — they’re about building muscle in some sort of primitive way. Think the carnivore diet or Kennedy’s obsession with beef tallow. Seeing these men turn to a diet I associate with my grandmother because they want to lose weight feels absurd, especially in the days of Ozempic for those with the funds to pay for it. Perhaps that does not have the right optics.
Of course, sauerkraut is nothing to be ashamed of. In recent years, Jews have been reclaiming pride in their food cultures; bespoke pickling classes have boomed. So the White House cabinet’s sauerkraut kick is really just them being really late to the shtetl chic trend. But you still should probably be ashamed of smuggling your own food into a nice restaurant, even if it’s sauerkraut.
The post The White House cabinet is eating like your zayde appeared first on The Forward.
