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A kosher baker rejected a synagogue’s order for rainbow Pride treats. The firestorm has been fierce.
(JTA) — The request for rainbow-frosted cupcakes came from a repeat customer — a local synagogue that had relied on the West Orange Bake Shop to make kosher desserts for its special events. But this year, bakery co-owner Yitzy Mittel decided to decline the order. He couldn’t bring himself to produce the Pride-themed goods.
Mittel, an Orthodox Jew, had made a similar cake for an order the year before. But the experience unnerved him, he told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, because his understanding of Jewish law holds that LGBTQ symbols are “antithetical to what we stand for.”
The symbols are “a celebration of something which is against Torah,” he said. “I didn’t want to be making that cake.”
After consulting with both a rabbi and an attorney, Mittel and the northern New Jersey bakery canceled the orders, sending the synagogue elsewhere to find kosher Pride treats.
In the weeks since that decision, Mittel has gotten validation from the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled last week that a Colorado web designer had the right to refuse to build a wedding site for a same-sex couple. The ruling expands on a 2018 decision, in which the court ruled a Colorado baker had the constitutional right, on religious grounds, to refuse to create a wedding cake for a gay couple.
But the local Jewish community is still reeling. Multiple rabbis have accused the baker of bigotry, and some local Jews are boycotting his shop. The area’s Jewish federation privately said it would stop buying from Mittel before publicly walking back its position. And Eshel, an advocacy group for LGBTQ Orthodox Jews and their families, announced an “ally training” in West Orange this coming Sunday in response to the incident.
“The reason why Eshel exists is because these sorts of incidents, when they happen to someone over and over again, make people feel unwanted and unwelcome in their communities,” said Miryam Kabakov, the advocacy group’s executive director. “This is just one small example, but the effect overall is to drive people away from Orthodoxy who are trying to live frum [observant] lives, leaving them feeling like there is no place for them.”
The firestorm comes at a time of widespread advocacy by political conservatives against LGBTQ inclusion and rights. Pride events across the country have faced pushback this year.
Some of that has taken place in Jewish communities. In another New Jersey town 30 miles away, Orthodox rabbis successfully petitioned their mayor to remove four Pride flags that were flying in front of a synagogue on a central street. The mayor later apologized and put the flags back up.
But what happened in West Orange offers a particularly potent example of how culture wars can play out in — and divide — Jewish communities, in part because of the symbolism of a kosher bakery citing what it says are Jewish values to justify declining the order of a local synagogue.
“While I know this has happened in other parts of the country I hadn’t expected it here,” wrote Dan Cohen, senior rabbi of the Reform Temple Sharey Tefilo-Israel in nearby South Orange, on Facebook. “Then I learned that the bakery in question is a kosher bakery, and as a result, the bias was coming from within our Jewish community.”
The initial order was placed June 6 by Congregation B’nai Israel, a Conservative synagogue in nearby Millburn. Rabbi Julie Schwarzwald, the synagogue’s director of congregational learning, planned to pick up the order, which reportedly specified that the treats be decorated with rainbows. A staff member also reportedly made a separate order the same day for rainbow cupcakes for the synagogue’s youth group.
Schwartzwald did not return multiple JTA requests for comment. Attempts to reach the synagogue’s current youth group advisor were unsuccessful.
But according to all accounts, the bakery initially accepted both these orders, only to cancel them later without providing an explanation. It did, however, agree to process the synagogue’s order for cookies without rainbow decorations. (Mittel told JTA that he gave the synagogue a discount for those cookies.)
West Orange Bake Shop produces kosher cookies and cakes from a storefront in West Orange, New Jersey. (Google Maps)
Mittel told JTA that he had canceled both orders and notified the parties within 24 hours. He believes others in the community are impugning his reputation by falsely asserting that he had failed to provide enough notice to the customers.
But when Schwarzwald went to the bakery herself to request an explanation for why the Pride order was canceled, Mittel refused to talk to her. He told JTA he had chosen not to engage because the rabbi had come during peak hours and “wanted to create a scene.”
To Schwarzwald, the message was clear. “I was comfortable drawing conclusions that meant that I was going to take my purchasing elsewhere,” she told the New Jersey Jewish News. “It seems clear that the bakery has made the decision that Pride is not something they want to support. It’s their choice, it’s their legal right, and I can choose to spend my dollars wherever I want.” She was ultimately able to fulfill the orders at a different kosher bakery in West Orange.
The issue blew up as other rabbis in the area learned about what happened and commented publicly.
“When we refuse basic Jewish services to members of our community who are articulating who they are, we are excluding and dividing,” wrote Robert Tobin, rabbi of the Conservative B’nai Shalom in West Orange, in a blog post on June 22. He highlighted the Conservative movement’s recent strides toward LGBTQ inclusion, and an interpretation of the Torah that holds “humans are created in the image of God with a variety of potential gender identities and with the possibility of gender fluidity.” Tobin also reportedly addressed the incident in a sermon, according to the New Jersey Jewish News.
David Vaisberg, senior rabbi at the independent Temple B’nei Abraham in Livingston, New Jersey, tweeted that he was “so disappointed” in the bakery, which is located in a strip mall next to a kosher Chinese restaurant.
“They make great baked goods but have shown themselves to be against the LGBTQ+ in canceling orders of rainbow baked goods in Pride month,” he wrote, adding that he was letting the bakery know why they had lost his business and advised followers to “please do the same.”
In his Facebook post, Cohen addressed the argument that an observant Jew can cite Torah as the basis for their objection to serving a Pride-themed cake. “If I’m being honest, we all pick and choose which sacred texts we embrace and which we ignore,” he wrote. “If by contrast, you CHOOSE to focus on the Biblical texts that exclude people, that denigrate others or are hurtful and judgmental, you aren’t religious. You’re simply a bigot.”
Parts of the Orthodox community have become open to LGBTQ inclusion in recent years. Organizations including Eshel and Jewish Queer Youth advocate for LGBTQ people and families in Orthodox spaces, and some prominent Orthodox figures have come out as gay in recent years.
But others in the community remain opposed to LGBTQ inclusion, citing passages in the Torah specifically forbidding gay sex. The flagship Modern Orthodox campus, Yeshiva University, has cited its status as a religious institution in an ongoing legal battle over its refusal to recognize an LGBTQ student group. The recent death by suicide of a gay Y.U. graduate, his friends said, highlights the pain of being Orthodox and gay.
Mittel says his business is being unfairly targeted by those who disagree with his personal religious choice, which he says is on par with declining to fulfill a church’s order for cakes decorated with crosses — something he says he has done in the past.
“There’s other bakeries out there that will do it,” he said about making Pride-themed kosher baked goods. “Why should I?”
He also insists that he is not homophobic. “If somebody came in and told me they want to pay me three times the price to write on a cake, ‘I hate gay people,’ I wouldn’t do it,” he told JTA. He added, “Symbols carry a lot of weight.”
Tensions reached a new high after a local news site published a leaked internal memo from Dov Ben-Shimon, the CEO of the local Jewish Federation of Greater MetroWest. In the memo, Ben-Shimon advised staff to no longer purchase baked goods from Mittel’s shop, citing “the Jewish value of B’tzelem Elohim, that each one of us is created in the Divine Image and deserves to be treated as such.”
“While it is their right to refuse service, it is also our prerogative not to support their establishment,” Ben-Shimon wrote.
The memo upset some local Jews who felt it was inappropriate for the federation, which serves Jews of all denominations, to make a judgment against a Jewish-owned kosher business whose owner believed he was following Jewish law.
Speaking to JTA, Ben-Shimon characterized the memo as an internal purchasing directive and said it did not reflect the federation’s current position.
“That internal memo did not reflect an appropriate, thoughtful and responsible communal dialogue,” Ben-Shimon said. “While there is significant pain in the community as a result of actions that we have seen, we believe that Federation’s decision-making process should be filled with love and sensitivity, and we will take steps to ensure that this will be reflected in our actions in the future.”
Describing Mittel as “a decent, good, kind, thoughtful and honorable person who has been placed in a difficult situation,” Ben-Shimon added that the local Jewish community “is blessed to have a wide array of opinions, ideologies and beliefs” and said he sees the federation’s role as working “to continue to strive for tolerant, respectful dialogue and discourse.”
In a follow-up correspondence from the federation, published by the New Jersey Jewish News, Ben-Shimon wrote, “We sincerely regret that our actions have caused divisiveness in our community as our aim is to bring the variety and richness of our many constituents together.”
Mittel told JTA that he has spoken to Ben-Shimon since the story was published, and that the two had a positive conversation. Saying that his bakery has been visited by “obnoxious” people since news of the cancellation came out, he said it was he and not LGBTQ people who had become victim to intolerance.
“I don’t think it’s good for the Jewish community to be adversarial to each other,” Mittel said. “There’s no need for that. We have enough people disliking us without us causing strife to each other.”
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The post A kosher baker rejected a synagogue’s order for rainbow Pride treats. The firestorm has been fierce. appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Attempted Arson at Same Paris Kosher Market Which Was Attacked in 2015
Shoppers enter the Hyper Cacher in the 20th arrondissement of Paris, Jan. 7, 2019. Photo: Stephen Caillet / Reuters.
An arson attack occurred on Thursday outside a kosher shop in Paris—the same market where four Jews were murdered in 2015—amid an ongoing surge in antisemitic incidents in France.
The incident occurred around 3 a.m. outside the Hyper Cacher store after unidentified individuals set fire to nearby dumpsters.
While no injuries were reported and the interior of the shop remained unharmed, the fire damaged the exterior of the establishment, leaving a side wall covered in soot, according to the French newspaper Le Figaro.
Local police have opened an investigation for “willful damage by fire” and are treating the case as an act of vandalism, but have not indicated any suspicion of an antisemitic motive.
In 2015, a jihadist terrorist murdered four Jews at the Hyper Cacher, just days after his accomplices murdered 12 people at the offices of the Charlie Hebdo magazine.
Since then, annual commemorations are held outside the shop — the facade of which remained undamaged in the fire — to honor the victims of the attack.
After the attack this week, the European Jewish Congress (EJC) issued a statement that did not label the incident as antisemitic, but described it as “yet another reminder of the persistent threats Jewish communities face.”
EJC is “deeply troubled by the arson attack on the Hyper Cacher supermarket in Paris, a site forever marked by the tragic 2015 hostage crisis,” the statement reads. “Authorities must ensure that those responsible are swiftly brought to justice.”
This assault comes amid a recent rise in antisemitic incidents across France. Earlier this month, a man was attacked after being insulted with antisemitic slurs, while a woman on her way to Hebrew class was also physically attacked.
Both of the incidents happened in Villeurbanne, which is home to the second-largest Jewish community in France.
In response to the rise in antisemitism, the city’s mayor, Cédric Van Styvendael of the Socialist Party, strongly condemned the attacks and expressed his support for the victims.
Both victims have filed complaints, and there are ongoing investigations into these attacks. Local police have yet to identify the person responsible for the attack on the woman. She was physically assaulted by another woman wearing a veil, who called her a “dirty Jew” while walking to her Hebrew class.
As for the attack on the man, a suspect was arrested following the release of city surveillance footage. Local police have launched an investigation into the incident for “aggravated violence” and “antisemitic comments.”
According to the victim’s report, the attack occurred after a traffic accident. The assailant physically assaulted him, hurling antisemitic insults, calling him a “zionist,” a “dirty Jew,” and blaming him for the “massacre in Gaza.”
Based on hospital records, the victim suffered a triple fracture in his arm and multiple bruises.
Antisemitism in France continued to surge to alarming levels across the country last year, with 1,570 incidents recorded, according to a report by the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF) – the main representative body of French Jews.
The total number of antisemitic outrages last year was a slight dip from 2023’s record total of 1,676, but it marked a striking increase from the 436 antisemitic acts recorded in 2022.
The post Attempted Arson at Same Paris Kosher Market Which Was Attacked in 2015 first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez Sit Down With Social Media Personality Who Defended Hamas, Hezbollah
US Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and US Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) are seen before a press conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on March 21, 2024. Photo: Craig Hudson/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect
Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-VT) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) raised eyebrows on Thursday by agreeing to participate in an interview with controversial anti-Israel media personality Hasan Piker.
Ahead of a joint appearance at a public rally, the duo sat with the political Twitch streamer to discuss issues affecting the pro-Palestinian movement in the United States. Piker suggested that the Trump administration has stifled the free speech rights of anti-Israel advocates, pointing to the recent deportation attempt of former Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil.
Piker has an extensive history of repudiating Israel as an “apartheid state” and defending atrocities committed against its civilians. In a 2024 livestream, Piker minimized sexual assaults committed against Israeli women at the hands of Hamas, saying “it doesn’t matter if rapes f—ing happened on Oct. 7.” He has defended violence from the Hamas and Houthi terrorist groups as legitimate “resistance.” He has also said he doesn’t “have an issue with” the Hezbollah terrorist group, which had pummelled Israel with an unremitting barrage of missiles and rockets from the southern Lebanon border in the immediate aftermath of Oct. 7.
Piker accused the Trump administration of mirroring tactics by Nazi Germany through engaging in censorship of those critical of the ongoing war in Gaza. He also blasted the White House over its attempt to “take control” of Columbia University’s Department of Middle Eastern Studies by placing it under an academic receivership. He warned that the Trump administration could use the “Palestine conversation” as an “entry point” to expand censorship across the United States.
In the immediate aftermath of the October 2023 massacre of roughly 1200 people throughout southern Israel by the Hamas terrorist group, Columbia University erupted in protest. Many student organizations issued statements placing blame on Israel for the terrorist attacks. Protesters called for the US to stop providing military aid to Israel and for Columbia University to divest from Israeli interests. In addition, Jewish students reported intimidation, harassment, and isolation on campus.
In a letter issued to Columbia earlier this month, the Trump administration directed the Ivy League university to establish a formal definition of antisemitism, prohibit masks “intended to conceal identity or intimidate,” and place its departments of African Studies, South Asian, and Middle Eastern studies under “academic receivership,” which would place them under independent oversight.
Ocaio-Cortez (AOC), one of the most strident opponents of Israel in Congress, defended Khalil, arguing that his raucous protests on Columbia’s campus were an example of “free speech.” She added that there is “profound money and interest that remains dedicated on both sides of the aisle” attempting to “conflate criticism of Israel as antisemitism.”
AOC has an extensive history of using her platform to criticize Israel. In the 17 months following the Oct. 7 attacks, the firebrand progressive has accused Israel of committing a “genocide” against Palestinians and practicing “apartheid.” She has repeatedly called for the implementation of a full “arms embargo” against Israel, which would deprive the Jewish state of weapons needed to complete its military objectives in Gaza. Nonetheless, AOC has come under fire from progressive organizations such as the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) for supporting a House resolution which affirmed Israel’s “right to exist.”
The post Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez Sit Down With Social Media Personality Who Defended Hamas, Hezbollah first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Why Deportation of Dr. Rasha Alawieh Is Justified
Demonstration in support of Dr. Rasha Alawieh, Monday, March 17, 2025, at the Rhode Island State Capitol Building. Green banner on right with white Arabic lettering reads, “From Gaza to Beirut, the Intifada Will Never Die!” Photo: Screenshot
The US Department of Homeland Security on Monday issued a simple statement of the “commonsense security” considerations that led to the deportation of Dr. Rasha Alawieh, a kidney transplant nephrologist in Brown University’s Division of Kidney Disease.
“Last month, Rasha Alawieh traveled to Beirut, Lebanon, to attend the funeral of Hassan Nasrallah — a brutal terrorist who led Hezbollah, responsible for killing hundreds of Americans over a four-decade terror spree,” the statement read. “Alawieh openly admitted to this to CBP (Customs and Border Patrol) officers, as well as her support of Nasrallah. A visa is a privilege, not a right — glorifying and supporting terrorists who kill Americans is grounds for visa issuance to be denied. This is commonsense security.”
Multiple media outlets that were given access to Alawieh’s immigration proceeding documents have elaborated on her fawning admiration of Nasrallah — the long-time leader of the Iran-backed, Lebanon-based jihad terrorist group Hezbollah who called for the annihilation of Jews — as a “spiritual leader.” Alawieh, a Shiite Muslim, reportedly declared, “If you listen to one of his [Nasrallah’s] sermons, you would know what I mean. He is a religious, spiritual person … His teachings are about spirituality and morality.”
I was a very active clinical kidney transplantation researcher who worked for almost 20 years in the Brown University Division of Kidney Disease. Moreover, as a recognized scholar of jihadism and Islamic antisemitism, I have studied Nasrallah’s alleged “spirituality and morality” and, understatedly, found it wanting.
Invoking antisemitic references from the Qur’an, Nasrallah characterized Jews as “apes and pigs” (Qur’an 5:60) and as “Allah’s most cowardly and greedy creatures” (Qur’an 2:96; 4:53; 59:13–14). He elaborated these themes into an annihilationist animus against all Jews, not merely Israelis”
Anyone who reads the Qur’an and the holy writings of the monotheistic religions sees what they did to the prophets, and what acts of madness and slaughter the Jews carried out throughout history … Anyone who reads these texts cannot think of co-existence with them, of peace with them, or about accepting their presence, not only in Palestine of 1948 but even in a small village in Palestine, because they are a cancer which is liable to spread again at any moment … There is no solution to the conflict in this region except with the disappearance of Israel … If we searched the entire world for a person more cowardly, despicable, weak and feeble in psyche, mind, ideology and religion, we would not find anyone like the Jew. Notice, I do not say the Israeli … [I]f they [the Jews] all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide [emphasis mine].
Nasrallah’s recent funeral in Beirut — which Alawieh attended, in reverence — was punctuated by the enormous throng of tens of thousands bellowing “death to America” and “Death to Israel.”
The Department of Homeland Security acted appropriately in deporting Alawieh, and I wholeheartedly endorse that decision. Particularly as a non-citizen visa holder, there is no place for Alawieh’s support of a vicious advocate of jihad terror, and mass-murdering Jew-hatred, in the US, let alone in American medicine.
I also denounce those feckless, morally blind medical “academics” who are seeking Alawieh’s return to the US and reinstatement at Brown University. A scene pathognomonic of their willful ignorance unfolded Monday evening, on the steps of Rhode Island’s State Capitol building. While Alawieh’s supporters including, sadly, former colleagues, stood enraptured facing the speaker’s location, adjacent to it, a group of women in hijabs held a green banner with white Arabic lettering that read, “From Gaza to Beirut, the Intifada Will Never Die!” The “Intifada” is synonymous with lethal jihad violence that targets non-combatant Israeli Jews, in fulfillment of Nasrallah’s “spiritual” Shiite Islamic religious ideology.
Finally, I am thoroughly disgusted with a recently retired colleague of 30 years, and former chief of the Brown Division of Kidney Disease, Dr. Douglas Shemin, who hired Alawieh and would not state categorically he would not have hired her had he known she was a disciple of Nasrallah!
Andrew G. Bostom, MD, MS, is a retired Brown University academic internist and clinical epidemiologist, who is also the author of The Legacy of Jihad: Islamic Holy War and the Fate of Non-Muslims, The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism: From Sacred Texts to Solemn History, Sharia versus Freedom: The Legacy of Islamic Totalitarianism, and other books and essays on Islam. His non-medical research focus has been on the impact of Islamic conquest, colonization, and governance on non-Muslims.
The post Why Deportation of Dr. Rasha Alawieh Is Justified first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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