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A Jewish museum exhibit features the Palestinian flag. Some visitors wonder if it belongs.
(J. The Jewish News of Northern California via JTA) — Tucked in the far corner of a large, brightly-lit exhibition hall on the ground floor of the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco, there is a delicate-looking piece of art with a strong political message.
At first glance, it appears to be three circular vases with flowers in them. The ceramic vases sit on shelves attached to the wall, and colorful collages hang above them. On closer inspection, visitors will notice that the flowers are made out of paper and that affixed to each vase is an image of the Palestinian flag printed on foam board.
A nearby label written by the curators of the exhibit, titled “Tikkun: For the Cosmos, the Community, and Ourselves,” explains that the piece was inspired by a conversation the artist, Tosha Stimage of Berkeley, had with a Palestinian man. He told Stimage about the plants that are native to Palestine — “a place which he can no longer access due to the ongoing conflict in the region,” the curators write.
The label also includes a note about the flag: “Some may find its presence at The CJM troubling or confusing, while others may find it appropriate and forthright. Stimage recognizes the potential for these divergent responses and hopes to use them as a means of generating dialogue.”
On a Sunday afternoon in October, Maury Ostroff read the label and walked away without inspecting the artwork.
Visitors to the “Tikkun” exhibit are encouraged to share their responses to the artwork via comment cards. (Andrew Esensten)
Asked how the presence of the flag made him feel, Ostroff, who is Jewish and lives in Muir Beach, in Marin County, replied, “Unhappy.”
Why?
“It’s not offensive to me in the same way that a swastika is. My skin is a little bit thicker than that. But I wish it weren’t here.”
He added, “What’s so Jewish about this? What’s so ‘tikkun olam’ about all of this?”
For the “Tikkun” exhibit, which opened Feb. 17 and runs through Jan. 8, the CJM invited both Jewish and non-Jewish Bay Area artists to contribute new works on the theme of repair, however they chose to interpret it. “No one is listening to us,” the piece by Stimage, who is not Jewish, is the first work of art featuring the Palestinian flag to be shown at CJM in recent memory; the museum could not say when or if the flag has been displayed on its walls before.
The piece prompted several internal conversations among CJM staff when it was first submitted and, since it has been on display, has generated a variety of responses from museumgoers who have left comments in a box at the entrance to the exhibit. Intentionally or not, Stimage has raised numerous questions with the artwork, including: Does a work of art that is sympathetic to the Palestinian struggle for statehood belong in a Jewish museum? And what is the role of a contemporary Jewish museum, anyway?
“To truly be a contemporary art museum, meaning embedded in the contemporary issues of our day, our job is to provide a platform for dialogue and to share a diversity of perspectives on our walls,” said Chad Coerver, CJM’s executive director since September 2021. “If any institution [like ours] took the path of withholding artwork that troubled our staff, our board or our community, it would be very difficult to mount exhibitions.”
CJM is a member of the Council of American Jewish Museums, a network of 76 museums across the country. CAJM does not have guidelines about the kind of art its member museums can and cannot display, according to Executive Director Melissa Yaverbaum.
J. reached out to several CAJM member museums in New York, Los Angeles and other places by email to ask if they had ever shown artwork with Palestinian iconography or works by Palestinian artists. The museums declined to answer or did not respond.
In recent years, two Jewish museums have been embroiled in controversy over issues relating to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership in Chicago staged an exhibit in 2008 on Israeli and Palestinian concepts of homeland that included maps and portraits of Palestinians. Following outcry from members of the local Jewish community who felt the exhibit presented Israel in a negative light, the museum decided to close the exhibit after only a few weeks. And in 2019, the director of the Jewish Museum Berlin resigned after the museum tweeted a link to a pro-BDS article in a German newspaper. (The museum previously came under fire for welcoming anti-Zionist scholar Judith Butler and representatives of Iran.)
In a joint interview with J., two CJM staffers who worked on “Tikkun” — co-curator Qianjin Montoya, who is not Jewish, and a Jewish senior curator who served in an advisory role, Heidi Rabben — shared the story of how Stimage’s piece came to be in the exhibit. (Montoya’s co-curator for the exhibit, Arianne Gelardin, no longer works at the museum.)
Since 2009, CJM has invited local artists from different backgrounds to create new work as part of the museum’s annual Dorothy Saxe Invitational. The idea for “Tikkun” was hatched before the pandemic put the planning process on hold. Once the CJM and Saxe — a local philanthropist and art collector — agreed on the theme, the co-curators invited artists “already engaged in healing through their relationship to community or in their practice of daily life,” Gelardin told J. last February.
The 30 artists who accepted the museum’s invitation were given only four months to conceive of and submit new works. That was likely the shortest timeline in the history of the invitational, which has been held 11 previous times, according to the museum. Each artist received a packet of materials compiled by CJM staff, with input from the Shalom Hartman Institute, a non-degree granting Jewish education center, to guide their thinking on “tikkun.”
Stimage was invited to participate because she is “very active” in the Bay Area and because “her work reflects ideas of community and connection,” Montoya said.
The curators said Stimage’s inclusion of the Palestinian flag in her submitted piece came as a surprise and prompted challenging conversations. However, they noted that they found the content of some of the other artists’ work surprising, too, and that it’s not unusual for contemporary artists to push the envelope in their work.
“I wouldn’t say we expected to receive a piece about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but we weren’t steering anyone away from that, either,” Rabben told J., adding that the submission guidelines did not place any topic off limits. “That’s a commitment from the museum to authentically represent the creative spirit of the artists that we’re working with,” she said.
Still, the curators said they engaged in a dialogue with Stimage in order to better understand each aspect of her piece and her overall intentions. Through those conversations, the curators learned that Stimage wanted to explore a moment of “rupture,” and that through her piece she hoped to communicate “that before healing or repair might happen, you have to first acknowledge that rupture,” Rabben said.
The Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco is showing “Tikkun,” an exhibit of works by Jewish and non-Jewish artists on the theme of repair. (Andrew Esensten)
Coerver, who was involved in some of the conversations, stressed that “careful consideration” was given to including the piece in the exhibit. “We felt an artwork addressing the plight of the Palestinians was appropriate in an exhibition on healing and repair,” he said. (No work submitted as part of the Dorothy Saxe Invitational has ever been outright rejected, the museum said.)
Stimage did not respond to interview requests from J. According to a CV on her website, she was born in Jackson, Mississippi, and earned an MFA from California College of the Arts in 2016. She is a past fellow at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco and was an artist-in-residence at Facebook in 2018. She also owns a floral gift shop in Oakland called Saint Flora.
Her work often touches on Black identity; she created a piece honoring Sandra Bland, an African-American woman whose 2015 arrest and death in a Texas jail cell sparked protests, and contributed to a 2019 San Francisco Art Institute exhibit on the Black Panther Party.
“I have a responsibility to create things that will, to the best of my present knowledge, do more good than harm, heal, inspire and uplift other humans,” she told the San Francisco Bay View National Black Newspaper in 2015.
Stimage’s precise views on Israel are unknown. CJM referred J. to her artist statement for “No one is listening to us,” which reads: “Olive, sage, and sumac are flowering plants native to the Mediterranean (including regions of Gaza and the West Bank) that have a direct relationship to contested ancestral land and affect the livelihood of so many Palestinian farmers and families caught in the conflict. They are positioned in the space of The Contemporary Jewish Museum as a metaphor for the ongoing conflict over land rights and the desperate need for restoration and healing of an age-old wound.”
The curators told J. that during their conversations with Stimage about her piece, they asked her why including images of the Palestinian flag was important to her but did not request that she remove them.
“We determined that none of [the piece’s] components in and of themselves signified something problematic or concerning,” Rabben said. “Of course, we had the awareness that the symbol [of the flag] will be read in a variety of ways by a variety of people.”
(Rabben pointed out that the exhibit includes other works with national symbols rendered in provocative ways, such as a black-and-white photograph of an American flag that was torn apart and partially reassembled by Mexican-American artist Jose Arias.)
The Palestinian flag — which contains the Pan-Arab colors of black, white, green and red — was adopted by the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1964. Since then, it has been the primary symbol of Palestinian nationalism.
For decades, the PLO was considered an enemy organization by Israel, and anything associated with it “had no place in Israeli public life,” said Eran Kaplan, an Israeli-born professor of Israel studies at San Francisco State University. Israel never went so far as to ban the flag. However, during the First Intifada, which lasted from 1987 to 1993, Israeli soldiers sometimes followed orders to confiscate the flag from protesters in the West Bank and Gaza.
With the signing of the Oslo Accord in 1993, Israel and the PLO recognized each other as negotiating partners. Yet the Palestinian flag remains a contentious symbol in Israel today. Kaplan noted that it recently served as a flashpoint during the funeral procession of Shireen Abu Akleh, the Palestinian American broadcaster who was killed in the West Bank in May. (The IDF conducted a review and admitted that the Israeli soldier who shot her had most likely misidentified her as an armed militant.) After warning Abu Akleh’s family not to display the flag, Israeli police attacked mourners in East Jerusalem, ripping flags out of their hands and off of the vehicle carrying her casket.
Today, the flag holds different meanings for Israelis and American Jews from different generations and political persuasions.
“There are large segments in Israeli society who view any form of Palestinian national identity as a threat to the existence of Israel,” Kaplan said. “There are others who view the PLO as legitimate partners in any form of negotiations [over the creation of a Palestinian state], but there’s an absolute split over those questions.”
Given the sensitive nature of Stimage’s work and others in the exhibit, the curators decided to solicit feedback from visitors via comment cards available at the entrance to the hall. Rabben said the museum has received a number of comments specifically about “No one is listening to us,” most of which were positive. “The majority of those comments were ‘Thank you for offering space for this topic at the museum,’” she said.
Last month, a security guard sitting in the “Tikkun” exhibition hall told a reporter that he had not witnessed any expressions of outrage or protest through the first nine months of the exhibit. “When we opened we were afraid of negative reactions, but they’re not stressed about it,” he said of visitors. “We have shown worse things here.” The guard, who has worked at the museum since it opened in 2008, mentioned a 2010 exhibit, “Our Struggle: Responding to Mein Kampf,” which included a copy of Hitler’s autobiography. “Some people were cussing us out” for displaying the book, he recalled.
Meanwhile, on the same floor as “Tikkun,” there is another, smaller exhibit containing potentially offensive art. A sign outside of the room warns visitors that inside is a Hitler marionette created by the parents of puppeteer Frank Oz. “Our intention in displaying this object is to keep the memory of the Holocaust alive through the objects and firsthand stories of those who experienced its persecution, and to encourage conversation and education about the ongoing horrors of antisemitism and authoritarianism today,” the sign says.
Coerver, CJM’s executive director, said he was proud that the museum’s three current exhibits — “Tikkun,” “Oz is for Oznowicz: A Puppet Family’s History” and “Gillian Laub: Family Matters,” which includes photographs that Laub took of her Trump-supporting relatives — are raising “challenging questions” and providing opportunities for both visitors and museum staff to “expand our horizons.”
“We’ve been wading into some issues that I think are a little thicker than maybe we’ve been confronting in the past,” he said, “and I hope that continues.”
A version of this piece originally ran in J. The Jewish News of Northern California, and is reprinted with permission.
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Jon Ossoff romped to a second Senate term. Can he aim higher?
(JTA) — ATLANTA — Sen. Jon Ossoff’s soaring popularity and cruise to reelection last Tuesday have spurred speculation about his political future — and whether he might aim to become the first Jewish president of the United States.
Less than an hour after polls closed on Election Night, he was projected to handily defeat his Republican challenger Mike Collins. With a campaign focused on expanding affordability and fighting corruption, Ossoff built a broad coalition in one of the nation’s most diverse states, even earning endorsements from Republicans. Ultimately, he retained his seat by a margin of 59%-41%.
The leading polling analyst Nate Silver said Saturday that Ossoff was his “slam dunk number one pick” for a Democratic presidential candidate in 2028, despite Ossoff’s insistence that he has “zero interest in running for president.”
Ossoff’s Jewish supporters have expressed pride in his affirmation of Southern Jewish history while leading a state with a fervent Christian population. But other Jewish constituents have said they feel betrayed by his mounting criticism of Israel’s actions in Gaza, and it remains to be seen whether Georgia’s pro-Israel Jews would coalesce around Ossoff if he pursues the country’s highest office.
For Andrew Lewis, there’s no question that Ossoff is a worthy standard-bearer for the Jewish community. A board member of Atlanta’s oldest synagogue, the Temple — where Ossoff had his bar mitzvah — Lewis said the senator frequently cites the Temple’s role in the civil rights movement, a point of pride for Jewish Atlantans. In 1958, white supremacists bombed the Temple because its rabbi, Jacob Rothschild, advocated desegregation and allied with Martin Luther King Jr. Ossoff was sworn into the Senate on Rothschild’s well-worn bible.
“Our Rabbi Rothschild worked with Dr. King and helped shepherd Atlanta’s Jewish community, and our city and nation, through a very different yet equally divisive time,” said Lewis, who also co-founded the interfaith organization First Five Freedoms. “I take a great deal of pride in that, and I see every time Jon Ossoff speaks about it, he takes equal pride.”
Ossoff has said his entry into politics was interning for Rep. John Lewis, the late civil rights giant, which helped spur his career as an investigative documentarian before he ran for office himself.
Ossoff’s fellow Georgian in the Senate, Raphael Warnock, serves as a pastor at King’s former pulpit, Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church. When Ossoff and Warnock ran at the same time in the 2021 runoff elections for the state’s two Senate seats, they called attention to their rekindling of the Southern Black-Jewish alliance.
Elise Eplan, a former president of the American Jewish Committee chapter in Atlanta, said she appreciated Ossoff’s references to his Jewish identity. Ossoff has said that his father descended from Ashkenazi immigrants and he grew up among relatives who were Holocaust survivors.
“When you grow up in the South, it used to be harder to talk about not being Christian, and being really open about it,” said Eplan. “I have admired the fact that he’s not shied away from that.”
Ossoff during his 2021 run delivered a direct appeal to the state’s Jewish community in the Atlanta Jewish Times, saying that his Jewish upbringing instilled “a conviction to fight for the marginalized, the persecuted and the dispossessed.” He noted to JTA in 2019 that his wife, physician Alisha Kramer, is also Jewish. The couple started dating in high school, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Two years ago, Ossoff faced blowback from Jewish institutions for supporting Sen. Bernie Sanders’ resolutions to block certain weapons sales to Israel. The local Anti-Defamation League Southeast chapter, the Jewish Federation of Greater Atlanta, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and an array of synagogues said they were “deeply disappointed” by his votes for the resolutions, which did not pass. In 2025 and 2026, he voted for further measures to restrict offensive military aid to Israel, while supporting defensive arms sales.
Ossoff stood by those votes during a debate with Collins last month. He also said he had “no doubt” that Israeli forces committed war crimes in Gaza, deferring the charge of genocide as “a question for the International Criminal Court.”
Michael Morris, the publisher of the Atlanta Jewish Times, accused Ossoff in an open letter of “lying to me and your constituents” about his support for Israel by repeatedly voting against arms sales.
But when Ossoff emerged triumphant on Tuesday, the ADL offered him congratulations — despite denouncing other victorious Israel critics.
ADL Southeast Director Todd Young rebuked Collins, Ossoff’s opponent, for links to white nationalists. “This race also underscored the importance of confronting antisemitism in Georgia politics,” he said in a statement. “Throughout the campaign, serious concerns emerged about individuals close to Mike Collins.”
Collins’ former staffers were accused of posting racist and antisemitic imagery and participating in a white nationalist group chat, while his son-in-law promoted antisemitic conspiracy theories online. Those controversies might have muffled Jewish groups’ objections to Ossoff’s voting record on Israel, according to Rebecca Stoil, a professor of U.S. political history at Clemson University.
“Ossoff, and his candidacy with Jewish voters, was benefited by the clear concerns that Jewish voters had with Collins,” said Stoil, a member of Atlanta’s Jewish community.
In his 2021 campaign, Ossoff accused his then-opponent, Sen. David Perdue, of antisemitic dog whistling after a campaign ad depicting Ossoff with an elongated nose.
Ossoff says that he supports the security of Israelis as well as the safety and security of Palestinians. In a Senate speech in November 2023, he said, “Just as I pray for the freedom of hostages taken so cruelly from their families, as a pro-Israel Jewish American I urge mercy for the innocent civilians in Gaza.”
As a rising left flank of his party presses for the end of the U.S.-Israel alliance, Ossoff continues to define himself as “pro-Israel.” He argued last month that before sending weapons to any ally, the United States should assess “whether that foreign government is acting consistent with our interests, our laws and our values.”
Ossoff’s argument that one can be pro-Israel even while conditioning U.S. aid has been increasingly embraced by the center of the Democratic Party, according to political scientist Dov Waxman. He pointed to surveys that capture a drop in sympathy for Israel among Americans, including American Jews.
A new poll from J Street, a liberal Jewish Middle East policy group, reported that 39% of Jewish voters said defensive aid for Israel should continue with conditions, while 31% said all military aid should end and 30% said aid should continue without conditions. Among Jews under 35, 60% supported severing military aid and said that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza.
Waxman said those trends spelled both parties moving away from traditionally stalwart pro-Israel positions of delivering offensive and defensive aid to Israel with few conditions.
“I think Ossoff’s position is really the mainstream position now in the Democratic Party — the center of gravity,” said Waxman. “Which is to say, a position that broadly supports the continuation of the U.S.-Israel alliance, but is not willing to write a blank check for Israel, and is not willing to support what the Israeli government does unconditionally.”
Eplan, the former AJC leader, said she was initially “concerned” about Ossoff’s votes to block offensive weapons sales in 2024. But three years into Israel’s prosecution of the war in Gaza under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, she said, “I understand it.”
“Unfortunately, under Netanyahu, it has become more and more difficult to be pro-Israel in the way we always have been historically,” said Eplan. “I do think that we need leaders who understand some of the nuance, and who are willing when necessary to take a tough stand, but at the end of the day understand the importance of Israel as our ally and as a Jewish homeland.”
If Ossoff decides to run for president, it would be in a new world of U.S.-Israel relations. Democrats are not alone in increasingly scrutinizing the alliance. Republican Vice President J.D. Vance blamed his party’s crushing defeats in the midterm elections partly on “our relationship to Israel” and the Iran war, which the United States joined with Israel. (Ossoff, like other Democrats across the country, has excoriated Trump for “lying a nation into war” and sending “prices soaring with his warmongering in the Middle East.”)
Trump announced on Election Day that the United States would halt military aid to Israel by the end of 2026, saying that Republicans “suffer the slings” from Democrats over the issue.
“Now it is the policy both of the incumbent administration and of people like Jon Ossoff to limit aid to Israel,” said Stoil. “For voters who did care so much about Israel that it was going to be their basis for voting, the moment it becomes a bipartisan consensus to cut off aid, then you pick what most closely represents you on the other topics.”
Meanwhile, Israel is undergoing its own political change following elections on Oct. 27. The next president of the United States could be dealing with a new Israeli government after Netanyahu’s rival, Gadi Eisenkot, scored enough seats and endorsements from other parties to seek to form a new governing coalition.
Pro-Israel groups in the United States are already retooling for the next stage of relations. Kathy Manning, a former North Carolina congresswoman who chairs the advocacy group Democratic Majority for Israel, hopes that a new Israeli government will pave the way for a renewed alliance that Democrats like Ossoff can support.
“If the current government, Netanyahu and his far-right extremists, continue to be the leaders of Israel, I think that it’s going to be very tough for many Democrats to continue to stand shoulder to shoulder,” said Manning. “If the government of Israel changes and we see a Gadi Eisenkot coalition moving forward, I think that’ll be an opportunity for us to rebuild the U.S.-Israel relationship.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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Socialists plan to ‘break’ the US-Israel alliance after winning big in the midterms
The Democratic Socialists of America is looking to use its growing influence to push for a full arms embargo against Israel and ultimately “break” the longstanding alliance between the U.S. and the Jewish state, party leaders said during a recent post-election organizing call after expanding its presence in Congress to eight members once midterm winners are sworn in.
During the call, Kareem Ellerfi, a member of DSA’s National Political Committee, said the newly elected House members will “ensure that Palestine is not forgotten, it’s not left behind, and that we’re fighting to break the U.S.-Israel relationship.” Ellerfi recently returned from a Palestinian solidarity mission that began in Jordan. The delegation had planned to travel to Ramallah in the West Bank but was detained by Israeli authorities while attempting to cross the border and sent back to Jordan.
The call featured three newly elected members of the House — Chris Rabb of Pennsylvania, Claire Valdez of New York and Angela Gonzalez Torres of California — and DSA organizers who said the election results showed that candidates could win while openly opposing Israel and advocating for Palestinian rights.
“Campaigns like mine showed that moral clarity on the genocide in Gaza and an economic populist agenda would win over voters who stayed home in 2024 or who voted for Donald Trump,” said Valdez, whose district includes parts of Brooklyn and Queens. She said a “free Palestine” was among her top agenda items.
A shifting landscape on Israel
The DSA victories come as American support for Israel faces growing divisions across the political spectrum, including among young Jewish Americans.
A growing number of progressive House members already back ending all U.S. aid to Israel, including funding for Israel’s Iron Dome defense system. Earlier this year, 103 of 212 Democrats supported a measure to eliminate the annual military assistance to Israel and another 10 abstained. Dozens also co-sponsored a pair of measures – the Block the Bombs Act and Ceasefire Compliance Act – that would restrict certain offensive arms sales to Israel and increase oversight of Israel’s policies in the occupied West Bank and in Gaza.
Republicans have also voiced support for phasing out military assistance to Israel and moving toward a relationship in which Israel purchases American weapons without financial assistance. Some Republicans have grown increasingly isolationist during the conflicts with Iran, which some in the party blame on Israel.
On Election Day, President Donald Trump announced that he and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had agreed to end the roughly $3.8 billion in annual U.S. military aid to Israel by the end of this year — two years before the current 10-year memorandum of understanding expires in Sep. 2028. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Monday that Israel is “rich enough” to purchase needed weapons.
But DSA leaders made clear that their goals go much further. They want a complete arms embargo and an end to the U.S.-Israel alliance.
The organization quadrupled its presence in the House in Tuesday’s midterm elections, with six new members joining Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan. DSA also celebrated victories in local races, announcing that more than 100 socialists now hold lower-level offices across more than 37 states. Its growing influence includes Los Angeles Mayor-elect Nithya Raman and D.C. Mayor-elect Janeese Lewis George, who join New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, elected last year.
Among the priorities on the call were forcing a vote on the Block the Bombs Act and challenging Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer and House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries, both longtime supporters of Israel.
With Democrats holding a sizable majority in the House, DSA members may not have the votes to pass key legislation. But their presence in Congress and alliance with the Progressive Caucus, which has increased to more than 100 members, could give them a louder voice in shaping the party’s future on Israel and U.S. military aid.
Rabb, who made criticism of Israel and opposition to AIPAC central to his congressional campaign, was defiant. “People think that we can’t do what we do,” he said. “And to those people, I say, get the f–k out of the way and let us do what we need to do.”
A post-election survey of 800 Jewish voters, conducted by the Mellman Group for the Jewish Electorate Institute, found that 24% of Jewish Democrats see their party as “becoming too much of a home for socialists and the far left.”
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Philadelphia Jewish leaders encouraged by counter-response to ‘boycott bike ride’
(JTA) — When the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia first got wind of a planned “boycott bike ride” of six Jewish- and Israeli-owned restaurants scheduled for Sunday, Nov. 8, its CEO wondered if the result would be “a small pebble” or “a big boulder.”
The protest ultimately drew some 300 bikers. But thanks to communal organizing among dozens of Jewish, pro-Israel and interfaith groups, it was met with an estimated 200 counter-protesters — plus hundreds more who turned up, waiting in hours-long lines, to patronize the affected businesses.
“I honestly had a hard time hearing what the boycotters were saying,” Michael Balaban, the federation head, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency the day after the protests. They were drowned out, he said, by counter-demonstrators singing Israeli songs.
The restaurants hardly felt any effects from a boycott, Balaban said — all of them sold out of their inventory. At one shop, the mac-and-cheese kiosk Mac Mart, a visitor offered to buy the open box of baking soda its proprietor kept to eliminate pantry odors.
“What was supposed to be a boycott of Jewish businesses turned into a food festival of Jewish businesses,” Balaban said. “I had several people say, ‘I feel safe walking as a Jew today’.”
A left-wing group called Philly Bike On Your Left had organized the event. Its flyer proclaimed, “No business for Zionists!” with the names of six local Jewish-owned restaurants listed with red “No” signs drawn through them. The planned date fell just before the 88th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the “Night of Broken Glass” targeting Jewish businesses and homes in Nazi-occupied Europe, which protest organizers have said was unintentional.
Some of the targeted business owners, including acclaimed Israeli restaurateur Michael Solomonov, had donated to causes including United Hatzalah, the Israeli first responder organization. Others had simply posted online that they were Zionists. Allan Domb, the owner of Schlesinger’s Deli, told the local CBS affiliate that he believed his business was on the list because he had donated to the local federation after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks in Israel.
In its rhetoric and conflation of Jewish- and Israeli-owned businesses with the state of Israel, the bike boycott seemed like a perfect storm of the biggest Jewish concerns with pro-Palestinian protests. Yet the sheer audacity of the boycott, which Balaban compared to “the proverbial person poking you in the back over and over again,” spurred a broad show of force from Jews and their allies to fight back.
“A real line was crossed here,” he said. “You want to boycott something going on in Israel, we’re not that far from DC or New York. Go to an embassy, go to a consulate. But to think that someone selling tahini milkshakes or macaroni and cheese has a red phone to the prime minister, that’s just silliness.”
Local authorities speaking to the Philadelphia Inquirer said that three people were arrested and two police officers suffered minor injuries.
Local elected officials also spoke out strongly against the ride, including Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner, a favorite of the progressive movement.
“There is widespread perception that this action is antisemitic,” Krasner, whose father was Jewish, said in a video he filmed from his car prior to the event. “That perception is real.” He cited the timing, the targets and the rhetoric around the event as his reasons for making the determination.
Krasner and Lori Shapiro, Pennsylvania’s first lady and wife of Jewish Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro, joined state lawmakers who attended a “solidarity lunch” with some of the targeted businesses days prior to the boycott. The Philadelphia Jewish Community Relations Council had organized the event.
On social media following the protests, Gov. Shapiro called the boycott “blatant antisemitic targeting of Jewish-owned restaurants on the anniversary of Kristallnacht,” and said local support of the businesses “prove once again that hate has no place in our Commonwealth.” Pennsylvania Sens. John Fetterman, a pro-Israel Democrat, and Dave McCormick, a Republican, had also condemned the ride.
Among the groups that did support the ride were Faculty for Justice in Palestine chapters at Temple University and the University of Pennsylvania; the local Students for Justice in Palestine chapter; a pro-Palestinian group of Temple law students; and Writers Against the War on Gaza, a literary activist group that previously helped upend leadership at the free-speech organization PEN America over Israel-related statements and actions.
The local Democratic Socialists of America chapter, which had initially promoted the event, said in a statement on Sunday that it “did not and does not endorse the bike ride on Sunday, 11/8.” But the Philly DSA’s lengthy statement went on to accuse the event’s critics of “political repression of anti-Zionism” orchestrated by “organized Zionist lobbying groups.”
Ahmed Moor, a Palestinian writer who on Monday announced his intent to challenge Fetterman for the Democratic nomination in 2028, wrote on X on Saturday that he had spoken to Jewish women on both sides of the protest. Without taking a side, Moor concluded, “Sometimes being a leader means turning the temperature down.”
Though some of the bikers who spoke to media identified themselves as Jewish, local Jewish pro-Palestinian groups were absent from the bike ride’s list of co-sponsors. Neither the Philadelphia chapters of Jewish Voice for Peace nor IfNotNow commented on the ride on their official social media pages, and representatives from both groups did not return JTA requests for comment.
The Nexus Project, an antisemitism watchdog that has criticized what it says is Jewish communal overreach in describing some criticism of Israel as antisemitic, also criticized the ride and its organizers.
“When ‘Zionist’ can cover almost any Jew who has ever expressed even a modicum of sympathy or support for Israel, Jewish business owners are facing a test no one else does: disavow Israel or lose your livelihood,” a statement from the group reads, adding that the organizing groups’ rhetoric “has also crossed the line.”
The Prayers for Peace Alliance, an interfaith pro-Palestinian group in Philadelphia that includes Jews, criticized the boycott in its own statement on Saturday.
“To be effective, boycotts must be targeted toward companies with the greatest complicity in injustice,” the group said. The planned ride, they added, “does not align with the priorities of the anti-genocide and anti-occupation movement.” They added, “The decision to target only Jewish-owned businesses threatens to undermine trust within this broad, intersectional movement, which includes many American Jews.”
Early on, Balaban said, the federation briefly wondered if they should avoid giving the protests much oxygen. They changed their minds after last week’s midterm elections, which Democrats dominated and which, in his mind, elevated candidates who “use ‘Zionist’ as a code word.” He did not specify any.
“Seeing individuals who use anti-Israel and anti-Jewish as part of their platform come into the fold, it was time for us to let loose and push back,” he said.
Philly Bike On Your Left is also planning a follow-up bike protest for this coming Sunday, named “Great Ride of Return,” a nod to the Palestinian right of return. The group had promoted the follow-up ride on social media before the first one took place.
Balaban knows more is coming; he says they’ll be ready. “We know that they’ll be out again, and we’ll be out again.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Philadelphia Jewish leaders encouraged by counter-response to ‘boycott bike ride’ appeared first on The Forward.
