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Shalom, Slurpee: Israel gets its first 7-Eleven in convenience store chain’s planned wave
(JTA) — Yoav Silberstein, 16, waited an hour and a half to get into 7-Eleven’s new flagship — and so far only — store in Israel. Located in the heart of Tel Aviv in Dizengoff Center, the store opening on Wednesday attracted throngs of mostly teenagers hoping to get a taste of America in the shape of a gallon-cup carbonated slushy called a Slurpee.
Silberstein was disappointed, though, to discover that the largest size on offer was a 650 ml (21 oz) cup. He has fond memories of Slurpees from visits with relatives in the United States, where the largest option is twice as big.
“I overheard people in the line calling it ‘barad,’” he said, using the Hebrew word for Israel’s version of slushies. “They have no idea about any of this.”
7-Eleven is the largest convenience store chain in the United States, with nearly 10,000 locations. But it is in some of its overseas markets where the chain really stands out — especially in Japan, where the more than 20,000 7-Elevens serve up everything from banking services to clothing essentials to high-end fresh and prepared foods. There, they can function as a person’s primary shopping destination.
With the store opening this week, Israel became the 19th country to welcome the megachain, and the first in the Middle East, after Electra Consumer Products inked a franchise deal in 2021. Thirty more stores are slated to open by the beginning of 2024; the company says several hundred will follow.
“It’s revolutionary,” Israel’s 7-Eleven CEO, Avinoam Ben-Mocha, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “It’s more than a mini-market, it’s also a pizzeria, cafe and fast food restaurant all under one roof.”
The new stores will join more than 10,000 convenience stores already operating in Israel. In some big cities, including Tel Aviv, convenience stores that resemble New York’s bodegas can be found on every street corner, many of them open around the clock offering anything from cigarettes to diapers.
But the standard convenience stores known as makolets don’t serve coffee and hot food and are intended, like their American counterparts, for buying items in between larger shops at regular supermarkets. The am/pm chain of small-scale grocery stores gives off a 7-Eleven aesthetic but also does not serve fresh coffee or food. The closest things currently to a 7-Eleven in Israel are gas station stores that offer coffee and a range of sandwiches, salads and pastries, in addition to basic groceries.
At the new 7-Eleven, customers serve themselves Slurpees, Big Gulps and soft-serve ice cream (called American ice cream in Israel) as well as coffee from touchscreen machines that offer oat and soy milk alternatives at the same price. At 9 NIS ($2.60), the price is competitive locally but is still more than other 7-Elevens around the world, including the United States — reflecting Israel’s notoriously high cost of living.
In another innovation, the store’s cups have a barcode that allows customers to check themselves out. A mobile app, currently in a pilot phase, is meant to make it even easier for customers to grab and go.
Gabi Breier, one of only a few older customers at the store’s opening, hailed the self-serve, self-checkout policy.
“I’m walking around with this ice cream tub and wondering when someone is going to come and stop me and demand that I pay,” Breier said.
“It’s a new thing, this trust given to the customer. In the end, people will like it more than other places. It makes you feel like you’ve been invited.”
Asked if he thought an Israeli market might take advantage of this rare show of autonomy, Ben-Mocha was equanimous.
“Most of the kids here are getting it, but I’ve seen a few walk out of here with unpaid items and no one has stopped them,” he said. “But it’s part of the process and we’re on a learning curve too. Look, when you give the customer your trust, they will honor that.”
Israel has been an inhospitable home to some other foreign chains, notably Starbucks, which lasted less than two years before shutting its doors in 2003. Could the 7-Eleven venture be destined for the same fate?
“The problem with Starbucks was that they didn’t bother to understand the local taste profile,” Ben-Mocha said. “They just came with their own concept and tried to force it onto a market it wasn’t suited to.”
“Adapting to the local market is an inherent part of 7-Eleven’s DNA,” he said.
Israeli and American candies share the shelves at Israel’s new 7-Eleven, while the high-tech coffee stations are a novelty in the country. (Deborah Danan)
In Israel, that adaptation includes tweaks to the company’s signature operating hours — the “7” in the name refers to how many days per week the store is open — and to the way food is heated. The company initially said its Israeli stores would be closed on Shabbat, a requirement for food-service establishments that want to be certified as kosher. The Tel Aviv store’s fresh food is not kosher — it serves foods made with milk and with meat, heating them in the same ovens — but other branches will be, according to the company.
Out of around 2,000 products, just 80 are 7-Eleven branded products. Others reflect local tastes: Alongside 7-Eleven hot-food classics such as pizza, hot dogs and chicken nuggets, Israeli customers can also enjoy zaatar-and-spinach pastries and mini-schnitzels. In the candy aisle, American classics like Twizzlers and Mike and Ikes are juxtaposed with Israeli treats like fan favorite Krembo and Elite’s recently resurrected cow chocolate. And one striking import is that donuts will be sold year-round — a concept alien to Israelis, who typically only get to enjoy the fried dough confection when it’s sold around Hanukkah time.
It isn’t enough for everyone though.
“I hate this 7-Eleven, it’s totally fake,” said 16-year-old Moti Bar Joseph, who immigrated three years ago from the Bronx, in New York City. “It doesn’t have any of the real 7-Eleven feeling. There are no Lucky Charms, no Jolly Ranchers. It’s an Israeli bootleg version.”
Yuya Shimada, a Japanese national working in Tel Aviv, was more generous. Shimada came to the opening because he was familiar with the brand from his hometown of Nagoya. Asked if he was reminded of home, Shimada laughed. “No, not a bit. But this store is very stylish. I give it 8 out of 10.”
Asked whether his visit had been worth the wait, Silberstein, the teenager, said that it’s “always special to be first to something.”
He added, “But I stood four hours for the opening of the Lego store across the road so I’m probably not the right person to ask.”
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The post Shalom, Slurpee: Israel gets its first 7-Eleven in convenience store chain’s planned wave appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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He sold a house to Justin Bieber. Now this LA investor has given Chabad $100M to build one of the world’s largest Jewish centers.
(JTA) — A Los Angeles real estate investor known for selling homes to celebrities has donated a $100 million office tower to Chabad, the global Orthodox Jewish outreach movement, to create what is slated to become one the world’s largest Jewish centers.
Alon Abady and his wife, Monique, transferred the 16-story, 300,000-square-foot complex at 9911 W. Pico Blvd. to Chabad of California, which plans to transform it into the Chabad Campus for Jewish Life.
The property sits in the Pico-Robertson neighborhood, the heart of Jewish Los Angeles, down the street from the Museum of Tolerance and near the Simon Wiesenthal Center, Fox Studios and, since 2023, the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies, a Conservative movement seminary.
Chabad officials say the building was appraised last fall at $103 million, making it one of the largest single gifts ever to a Jewish organization. The new campus is expected to serve as a regional hub for Jewish religious life, social services and education, as well as a global center for the Lubavitch movement’s worldwide network of emissaries.
The campus will include a synagogue, life-cycle venues, youth and senior programs, mental-health and social services, museums and support for Jewish students on college campuses, along with facilities for large communal and international gatherings.
“It will be an epicenter of Jewish life,” said Rabbi Chaim Nochum Cunin, one of the leaders of West Coast Chabad. “It will transform the landscape of Jewish life in Los Angeles and throughout the world.”
Abady, who works as a managing partner of Waterfall Bridge Capital, paid $35 million for the property in 2023 with plans to redevelop it. The current market value of $103 million reflects an appraisal by Partner Valuation Advisors conducted in September, according to Rabbi Motti Seligson, director of public relations for Chabad’s headquarters in Brooklyn.
Abady is best known for high-profile real estate deals in Los Angeles, including the $96 million purchase of the Sofitel Beverly Hills hotel in 2021. He has also been involved in a series of widely noted residential transactions, including buying and later selling Simon Cowell’s former Beverly Hills home and selling a property to Justin and Hailey Bieber.
The campus will rank among the largest Jewish institutions in the world. It will be smaller than Chabad’s 538,000-square-foot Menorah Center in Dnipro, Ukraine, but larger than most Jewish community centers in North America and comparable in scale to New York’s 92nd Street Y, which also includes residential and non-Jewish cultural facilities.
Abady said his gift reflects a long-standing relationship with Chabad that dates back to his family’s arrival in Los Angeles in the 1970s, when they were assisted by Rabbi Baruch Shlomo Cunin, Chabad’s West Coast director.
“This is a lifelong dream that also allows me to honor my parents and my children,” Abady said in a statement. “When my family immigrated to Los Angeles in the 1970s, Chabad was there for us. That was never forgotten.”
The announcement comes at a moment when many Jewish institutions are under financial strain. In Los Angeles, it follows the recent sale of the American Jewish University’s historic Bel Air campus. The 22-acre hilltop property was transferred in 2024 to Milken Community School, its neighboring Jewish middle and high school, and AJU’s rabbinical school, Ziegler, moved to Pico-Robertson.
While the final purchase price was not publicly disclosed, the sale was widely reported to be in the roughly $60 million range, allowing Milken to expand its campus as AJU consolidated its operations.
The post He sold a house to Justin Bieber. Now this LA investor has given Chabad $100M to build one of the world’s largest Jewish centers. appeared first on The Forward.
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Houston Texans linebacker Azeez Al-Shaair wears ‘stop the genocide’ eye black
(JTA) — In his postgame interview on Monday night, Houston Texans linebacker Azeez Al-Shaair said the things you’d expect to hear, like crediting his teammates for a dominant playoff win and praising his coach.
But on the Pro Bowler’s eye black was a message that you don’t see every day on ESPN: “STOP THE GENOCIDE.”
Al-Shaair, who is Muslim, has long been a vocal pro-Palestinian advocate.
In December 2023, as a member of the Tennessee Titans, Al-Shaair chose to support the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund through the NFL’s “My Cause, My Cleats” program.
“Given the recent events in Israel and Gaza, this nonprofit provides medical aid and essential supplies to children injured and left homeless by the bombings in Gaza,” he said in his entry about the charity.
Al-Shaair supported the same charity in 2024 and 2025 as a member of the Texans, and has worn cleats that read “FREE” on one side, referring to the “Free Palestine” movement, and “Surely to Allah we belong and to him we will all return” on the other. The cleats also featured the text, “AT LEAST 41,788 Palestinians killed, 10,000+ estimated to be under the rubble, 96,974 wounded.”
Al-Shaair has also signaled criticism for Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel that triggered the war in Gaza, about which he’s become an outspoken advocate on and off the field.
“I feel like it’s something that’s trying to be silenced,” Al-Shaair told the Houston news site Chron in 2024. “On either side, people losing their life is not right. In no way, shape or form am I validating anything that happened, but to consistently say that because of [Oct. 7] innocent people [in Gaza] should now die, it’s crazy.”
Al-Shaair was one of two active NFL players who signed onto the “Athletes for Ceasefire” letter, which called on President Joe Biden to call for a ceasefire in February 2024.
The Texans named Al-Shaair as their club winner for the 2025 Walter Payton Man of the Year Award, which recognizes “players who excel on the field and show exceptional dedication to uplifting their communities with consistent, positive impact.”
A post on the Texans’ website details Al-Shaair’s charitable work including support for homeless youth and adults, hosting a movie night at NRG Stadium for HYPE Freedom School students, and providing free tickets and food for students from the Muslim Organization of Sports, Socials and Education. His pro-Palestinian advocacy is not mentioned in the post.
While the linebacker has been vocal about his pro-Palestine views, Monday night’s postgame interview with Scott van Pelt — during which he said nothing about Israel or Gaza, but had an eye black message big enough to read during his close-ups — may have been his loudest form of advocacy yet, as it came shortly after a nationally televised playoff game on ESPN. Video of the interview has circulated on social media and drawn praise from pro-Palestinian activists.
“This is how you use your platform. Proud of you brother,” wrote Omar Suleiman, an imam and activist with over 1 million followers.
According to the NFL rulebook, players are “prohibited from wearing, displaying, or otherwise conveying personal messages either in writing or illustration, unless such message has been approved in advance by the League office.” The rule also states that the league “will not grant permission” to players displaying a message “to political activities or causes, other non-football events, causes or campaigns, or charitable causes or campaigns.”
The most notable case of political activism in the NFL in the last decade came when Colin Kaepernick, protesting police brutality, refused to stand for the national anthem. Kaepernick was not issued a fine or suspension by the NFL, though no teams signed him as a 29-year-old free agent, leading to debate over whether he was blackballed by the league for his stance.
Players have previously been fined for wearing eye black with personal messages, though they had not gotten league approval before their games. Al-Shaair has not been issued a fine.
The post Houston Texans linebacker Azeez Al-Shaair wears ‘stop the genocide’ eye black appeared first on The Forward.
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What the ‘synagogue of Satan’ slur tells us about Christian antisemitism
The man charged with arson in the burning of Beth Israel Congregation in Jackson, Miss., called the institution a “synagogue of Satan” in an interview with authorities, according to an FBI affidavit.
The phrase, originating in the New Testament book of Revelation, has been used in recent years to attack Jews, making its way into graffiti on Jewish institutions, antisemitic conspiracy theories and in far-right commentator Candace Owens’ criticism of Jewish figures.
But its meaning is not necessarily consistent: “Synagogue of Satan” has been used to refer to a supposed Jewish conspiracy to control the U.S. government, as a broad indictment of Jewish people as Satanic and as a narrow critique against Jewish people perceived as behaving badly. It has been used by Christian nationalists and by Nation of Islam leaders.
It remains unclear how the term made its way into the vocabulary of Stephen Spencer Pittman, who was arrested the day of the attack. Pittman, 19, followed dozens of Instagram accounts that share motivational Bible quotes and created a website promoting “scripture-backed fitness.” But his public social media activity apparently only turned antisemitic on Jan. 10, when he shared an antisemitic cartoon and confessed to setting fire to Beth Israel.
Origin of a slur
The book of Revelations, the last book of the New Testament, uses the phrase twice in a message of comfort to Jesus’ followers facing persecution, castigating “the synagogue of Satan who say that they are Jews and are not.” The implication is that the early Christians’ persecutors are perverting the meaning of Judaism to further their ends.
Christian scholars note that the author of Revelations was likely Jewish. Nevertheless, the phrase has come to serve as a catch-all to justify antisemitism by claiming that Jews are inherently Satanic, or out of favor with God’s plans for the world.
Its popularization as an antisemitic term may originate in the Christian Identity movement, a group of white evangelical extremists who believe that the true descendants of Adam are the white race, and the Jews are descendants of Cain — who in their view, is the offspring of Eve and Satan. The Christian Identity movement, which dates back to the early 20th century, peaked in the 1980s and 1990s, but it left a lasting impression on far-right theology.
The influential Evangelical leader Rev. Billy Graham — known as “America’s pastor” for his ubiquitous TV presence — infamously used the phrase in a 1973 conversation with then-President Richard Nixon, who at the time was complaining about Jews purportedly controlling the US media. (Graham apologized for his comments nearly 30 years later, after a recording of the conversation became public.)
Graham’s use of the term underscored a key connection between Christian Zionism and antisemitism. He told Nixon in that recorded conversation that while he supported Israel, Jewish people didn’t understand his real feelings about them, which is that there were two types of Jews: conservative ones who supported Graham and his ministry, and the “synagogue of Satan” — liberal-minded ones and especially Jews who worked in media.
Fuel on the fire
In recent years, the term has come to be applied more creatively. Controversial rapper Jay Electronica used it in a song in 2014. Nation of Islam leader Abdul Haleem Muhammad blamed the synagogue of Satan in 2016 for a supposed plot to de-masculinize American black men through marijuana. A group of neo-Nazi agitators that has flyered neighborhoods around the country with propaganda draped a banner over a Los Angeles freeway with the phrase in Oct. 2022.
If the term can be said to have a “power user” today, it would be Owens, the far-right commentator who has promoted a range of antisemitic conspiracy theories, including Frankism and the notion that Israel was behind Charlie Kirk’s assassination.
Owens has accused Jewish conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, and “radical Zionists” of being members of the synagogue of Satan.
But Owens is merely one of a slew of right-wing agitators who have accelerated use of the term in recent months.
Andrew Torba, the chief executive officer of the far-right social media hotbed Gab, posted an entire essay last fall — titled “Naming the Synagogue of Satan” — saying Christendom was under threat because the US had been captured “with AIPAC donations” and “Hollywood propaganda.”
As recently as Dec. 2025, a far-right podcaster in Colorado called for the execution of Gov. Jared Polis and other Jewish state democrats, referring to them as “Synagogue of Satan Jews.”
Just a few weeks later, Beth Israel Congregation, the oldest synagogue in Mississippi, was slapped with the moniker the day it went up in flames.
The post What the ‘synagogue of Satan’ slur tells us about Christian antisemitism appeared first on The Forward.