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Synagogues are joining the ‘effective altruism’ movement. Will the Sam Bankman-Fried scandal stop them?
(JTA) — A few years ago, Adam Azari was frustrated over how little he could do to alleviate suffering in the world with his modest income as a writer and caretaker for people with disabilities.
He kept thinking about a set of statistics and ideas he had encountered during his graduate studies in philosophy. For example, he remembered reading that for the price of training a guide dog for the blind in the United States, one could prevent hundreds of cases of blindness in the developing world.
This hyper-rational way of thinking about doing good was called effective altruism, and it was growing into a movement, known as E.A. for short. Some proponents were even opting to pursue lucrative careers in finance and tech that they otherwise might not have chosen so they would have more money to give away.
Azari, meanwhile, had become a believer who was stuck on the sidelines. Then, one day, he had what he calls a “personal eureka moment.” Azari would return to his roots as the son of a Reform rabbi in Tel Aviv and spread the word of E.A. across the Jewish denomination and among its millions of followers.
“It suddenly hit me that the Reform movement has this crazy untapped potential to save thousands and thousands of lives by simply informing Jews about effective giving,” he recalled.
He badgered his father, Rabbi Meir Azari, and, for a moment, thought of becoming a rabbi himself. But he abandoned the idea and focused on pitching E.A. to the Reform movement’s international arm, the World Union for Progressive Judaism. Azari found an ally in WUPJ’s president, Rabbi Sergio Bergman, and the organization soon decided to sponsor his efforts, paying him a salary for his work.
Over the past year, Azari’s Jewish Effective Giving Initiative has presented to about 100 rabbis and secured pledges from 37 Reform congregations to donate at least $3,000 to charities rated as the most impactful by E.A. advocates and which aid poor people in the developing world. Per E.A. calculations, it costs $3,000 to $5,000 to save a single life.
“Progressive Judaism inspires us to carry out tikkun olam, our concrete action to make the world better and repair its injustices,” Bergman said. “With this call we not only do what the heart dictates in values, but also do it effectively to be efficient and responsible for saving a life.”
This charitable philosophy appears to be gaining traction in the Jewish world just as one of the figures most associated with it, who happens to be Jewish, has become engulfed in scandal.
Sam Bankman-Fried built a cryptocurrency empire worth billions, amassing a fortune he pledged to give away to causes such as artificial intelligence, combatting biohazards and climate change, all selected on criteria developed by the proponents of effective altruism.
A few weeks ago, Bankman-Fried’s fortune evaporated amid suspicions of financial misconduct and revelations of improper oversight at his company, FTX, a cryptocurrency exchange that was worth as much as $32 billion before a run of withdrawals ultimately left it illiquid. The situation has drawn comparisons to the implosion of Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, and authorities investigating the situation have said Bankman-Fried could face criminal penalties over his role.
In the wake of FTX’s collapse, Bankman-Fried has suggested that his embrace of E.A. was insincere, a tactic to bolster his reputation.
But Azari and the organizer of another initiative, a growing reading and discussion group called Effective Altruism for Jews, are undaunted and don’t believe the scandal should taint the underlying principles of the movement.
“Whether you call it E.A. or just directly donating to global health and development, it doesn’t matter,” Azari said. “The basic idea is to support these wonderful charities, and I don’t think the FTX scandal changes any of that. Malaria nets, vitamin A supplements and vaccine distribution are still super cost-effective, evidence-based ways of helping others.”
Azari added that he has had several meetings with rabbis since the news about Bankman-Fried broke and that no one has asked him about it.
“I don’t think people are making the connection,” he said. “And to me, there is no connection between us and FTX.”
When talking to rabbis about why E.A. would make a good fit with their congregation’s charitable mission, Azari cites the Jewish value of tikkun olam, a mandate to “repair the world” often used to implore people to care for others. He explains that donating to charities with a proven track record is a concrete way to fulfill a Jewish responsibility.
That kind of thinking proved attractive to Steven Pinker, the prominent Harvard psychologist, who has endorsed Azari’s initiative. In a recorded discussion with Azari and others last year, Pinker recalled his Reform upbringing, which included Hebrew school, summer camp and synagogue services.
“The thing I remember most is how much of my so-called religious education was like a university course in moral philosophy,” Pinker said. “We chewed over moral dilemmas.”
As an adult, Pinker returned to Jewish teachings on charity and, in particular, those of the medieval philosopher Maimonides, examining these ideas through the lens of E.A. He began to wonder about the implications of Maimonides’ focus on evaluating charity based on the motives of the donor. That focus, he concluded, doesn’t always lead to the best outcomes for the beneficiary.
“What ultimately ought to count in tzedakah, in charity, is, are you making people better off?” he said.
Also on the panel with Azari and Pinker was the man credited with authoring the foundational texts upon which E.A. is built. Peter Singer, who is also Jewish and whose grandfather died in the Holocaust, teaches bioethics at Princeton. Starting in the 1970s, Singer wrote a series of books in which he argues for a utilitarian approach to ethics, namely, that we should forgo luxuries and spend our money to save lives. The extremes to which he has taken his thinking include suggesting that parents of newborn babies with severe disabilities be permitted to kill them.
From Bankman-Fried to Singer, the list of Jews who have either promoted E.A. or lead its institutions is long. With their estimated fortune of $11.3 billion, Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and his wife Cari Tuna have eclipsed Bankman-Fried as the wealthiest Jews in the field. There’s also popular philosopher Sam Harris and New York Times columnist Ezra Klein, who have each dedicated episodes of their podcast to the topic.
The website LessWrong, which defines itself as “a community blog devoted to refining the art of rationality,” is seen as an important early influence; it was founded by Eliezer Yudkowsky, an artificial intelligence researcher who grew up in a Modern Orthodox household but does not identify religiously as a Jew anymore. Two other Jews, Holden Karnofsky and Elie Hassenfeld, left the hedge fund world to establish GiveWell, a group whose research is considered the premier authority on which charities are deserving of E.A. donations.
The prevalence of Jews in the movement caught the attention of E.A. enthusiast Ben Schifman, an environmental lawyer for the federal government in Washington, D.C. About two years ago, Schifman proposed creating a group for like-minded individuals in hope of helping grow the movement. In an online post, he laid out the history of Jewish involvement and wrote a brief introduction to the topic of Judaism and charity.
Today, Schifmam runs a group called Effective Altruism for Jews, whose main program is an eight-week fellowship involving a reading and discussion group with designated facilitators. Schifman said about 70 people spread across 10 cohorts are currently participating. There’s also a Shabbat dinner program to bring people together for informal meetings with funding available for hosts.
Participants discuss how ideas that are popular in E.A. might relate to Jewish traditions and concepts, and also brainstorm ways to popularize the movement in the wider Jewish community, according to Schifman.
“There’s a lot of low-hanging fruit with regards to the Jewish community and sharing some of the ideas of Effective Altruism, like through giving circles at synagogues or, during the holidays, offering charities that are effective,” Schifman said in an interview that took place before the Bankman-Fried scandal broke.
Asked to discuss the mood in the community following the collapse of Bankman-Fried’s company and an affiliated charity, FTX Future Fund, Schifman provided a brief statement expressing continued confidence in his project.
He said, “While we’re shocked by the news and our hearts go out to all those affected, as an organization EA for Jews isn’t funded by FTX Future Fund or otherwise connected to FTX. We don’t expect our work will be impacted.”
Even if Schifman and Azari are right that their movement is robust enough to withstand the downfall of a leading evangelist, a debate remains about what impact E.A. can or should have on philanthropy itself.
Andres Spokoiny, president and CEO of the Jewish Funders Network, wrote about the question with skepticism in an article published more than two years ago. He argued against “uncritically importing the values and assumptions” of effective altruists, whose emphasis on the “cold light of reason” struck him as detached from human nature.
In a recent interview, Spokoiny echoed similar concerns, noting that applying pure rationality to all charitable giving would mean the end of cherished programs such as PJ Library, which supplies children’s books for free to Jewish families, that may not directly save lives but do contribute to a community’s culture and sense of identity.
He also worries that too strong a focus on evidence of impact would steer money away from new ideas.
“Risky, creative ideas don’t tend to emerge from rational needs assessments,” he said. “It requires a transformative vision that goes beyond that.”
But Spokoiny also sounded more open to E.A. and said that as long as it does not try to replace traditional modes of philanthropy, it could be a useful tool of analysis for donors.
“If donors want to apply some of E.A. principles to their work, I’d say that is a good idea,” he said. “I am still waiting to see if this will be a fad or buzzword or something that will be incorporated into the practice of philanthropy.”
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Queen Esther would want Jews to save humanity at their own expense, said Michigan’s attorney general. Would she?
Queen Esther has been name-checked not once, but twice in the last week by sitting politicians in New York and Michigan in addresses to Jewish constituents. The first reference passed largely without notice. The second caused a national Jewish uproar.
Promising better protections for the Jews of New York, Governor Kathy Hochul said Friday night during Shabbat services at Central Synagogue that she was willing to “be your Esther, every time you need me.” A bit ironic as Hochul, who is Catholic, invoked the story of a Jew in disguise, but the metaphor tracked: a leader going to bat for a vulnerable Jewish community. Central had been the site of an attack on a congregant and security guard two weeks prior.
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel took a different tack — and paid a price. Nessel, who is Jewish, has voiced concerns about antisemitism in her party. But in a speech Sunday to Jewish Democrats, Nessel suggested they follow Esther’s path and “sacrifice the comfort, safety and security and even the very future of our own people in exchange for the opportunity to save the rest of humanity.”
“What good is defending the historic homeland of our ancestors and demanding that candidates acknowledge its right to exist,” Nessel reportedly said, “if the planet upon which it rests is no longer inhabitable?”
What followed was a borderline Ahaseurus-ian backlash as Jews around the country decried Nessel’s interpretation of the Megillah. Writing in the conservative publication Commentary, Seth Mandel said Nessel had “counseled servitude and suicidality.” Ron Halber, chief executive of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington, called Nessel “an embarrassment.”
The comparison came as Michigan’s Jewish Democrats, including Nessel, navigate a tenuous political reality in the swing state following the party’s nomination of Abdul El-Sayed, a vocal critic of Israel, for Senate. Nessel had hoped both to reassure Jewish voters and rally their support in a meeting where El-Sayed also apologized for earlier comments about an attack on a Michigan synagogue.
Nessel made waves earlier last month when she said she would skip the state’s Democratic convention out of concern for her safety. Her comments Saturday seemed to cast those remarks in a new light: to many who read them, Nessel seemed to be saying that Jewish people should learn to hide, rather than rise to the occasion. (Nessel’s office did not respond to an inquiry Tuesday.)
That’s certainly not the story of the Megillah. For the uninitiated (or just forgetful): With the Jewish people in imminent danger, Queen Esther boldly (but carefully) reveals to the king her identity as a Jew, underscoring that the viceroy’s known genocidal plotting in fact affected her. As she does so, Esther repeatedly imperils herself — a standard some were eager to point out Nessel herself missed by sitting out the convention.
It’s easy to point to Nessel’s reading as an inversion of a story that seems to insist on a particularist reading. Or one could admire an ambitious attempt at universalizing the text: Maybe Nessel was saying that Esther put the needs of a nation — the Jewish nation — above her own safety, knowing that she could have lived the rest of her life in secret. The United States is the Jewish people in this analogy; Jewish Democrats, by subjugating their immediate security, are Esther. (Haman, the story’s villain, is the spectre of Republican control.)
Or maybe the Purim lesson Nessel was trying to invoke was even simpler: With great power — as Michigan’s Jewish Democrats may have in a close race — comes great responsibility. That’s Spiderman, but also Esther’s relative Mordechai, who famously helps her work up the nerve by suggesting her ability to intervene could be the very reason she was chosen for royalty in the first place.
Esther is often the subject of pop-culture fascination: 17th-century Dutch painters were obsessed, for example, including non-Jewish ones. Contemporary Christian playwrights seem to be, too, as do red-state school curriculums. Evangelicals once compared Trump to Esther — a fearless hero who would dismantle the deep state — and former Vice President Kamala Harris invoked Esther on the campaign trail in 2024.
The common thread in this history, more than anything else, is Esther’s reinvention to suit a self-serving political narrative. For the Dutch — at the time newly liberated from Spanish empire — Esther represented resilience in the face of persecution; for the Christian right, she is a flawed but valorous normie who fulfills a holy mission. For Hochul and Harris (and maybe Nessel, too), she’s a woman who meets the moment.
She’s also the title character of a helluva story — and a familiar one — which makes her as eminently useful to people today as she was to her famously insecure husband in the Megillah. If one thing seems assured, it’s that Esther will continue to feature in our own storytelling — and that she will continue to change with the times.
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She was elected the first Jewish president of the Catholic Biblical Association. Then came the hate.
When Amy-Jill Levine was elected president of the Catholic Biblical Association earlier this month, she faced vicious backlash.
Those who opposed her election couldn’t exactly point to a lack of qualifications. Levine has written dozens of books on the New Testament, taught a New Testament course at the prestigious Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome, served on the editorial board of Catholic Biblical Quarterly and spoken privately with Pope Francis three times.
Instead, her critics fixated on one trait they apparently consider disqualifying: She’s Jewish.
“Your Zionist ass doesn’t belong in our religion. Keep yourself to the Talmud and keep eating babies. STAY THE FUCK AWAY FROM CHRISTIANITY,” someone wrote in an email to Levine, which she shared with the Forward.
Levine’s Facebook page was bombarded with so much hate that she asked her daughter to moderate the comments. Online critics called Levine “anti-Christian,” denounced her as “Zionist,” and attacked her efforts to push back against antisemitic interpretations of the Bible.
On its face, a Jew at the helm of a professional association devoted to the study of Christian scripture might seem odd. After all, the Catholic Bible Association, unlike some other academic associations for the study of scripture, promotes study of the Bible “within a context of faith,” and most of the association’s presidents in its 90-year history have been priests. Levine attends an Orthodox Jewish synagogue.
Some more even-keeled critics of Levine’s presidency focused on this argument. “At some point, we have to ask: what is the word ‘Catholic’ actually doing?” Mark Lambert, co-host of the podcast Catholic Unscripted, posted to X.
Levine, meanwhile, argues that the Catholic Biblical Association is a professional society, not a church. People of all faiths are eligible for membership, as long as they hold an advanced degree in biblical studies.
“An academic society, like a hospital, museum or university, is not the same thing as being a member of the clergy,” Levine wrote in an email to the Forward.
In fact, while Levine is the first Jewish president of the Catholic Biblical Association, she is not the first non-Catholic. Several Protestants have served in the role, according to chair of the executive board Gregory Sterling.
Levine was nominated by a committee and then ran unopposed for the presidency, Sterling said. It is an unpaid, one-year position.
“She was not elected because she is Jewish, but because she is an exceptional scholar and has played a very important role in Catholic-Jewish dialogue,” Sterling and the association’s executive director, Archie Wright, wrote in a joint statement. “The vitriol of some of the comments only reinforces the need to address the problem of Anti-Semitism.”
Several Catholic clergy also wrote letters of support for Levine amid the pushback.
Levine, for her part, said she has “no interest in undermining the Church.” The 70-year-old grew up in North Dartmouth, Massachusetts, in a predominantly Portuguese Roman Catholic neighborhood, where she would occasionally go to Mass with her friends.
She preferred Mass to synagogue because “there were snacks, except you got the snacks in the church during the service, and you got the snacks in synagogue after the service,” she joked in an August interview on Nashville Public Radio.
Levine recalled that when she was 7 years old, a classmate told her she had killed Jesus — an accusation the elementary schooler had picked up from her priest. Levine, confused, went to her mother, who assured her that “God was doing just fine.”
That incident inspired Levine to attend Catholic catechism classes as a child, in addition to Hebrew School.
She went on to get a PhD in religion from Duke University and teach at Vanderbilt University as a professor of both the New Testament and Jewish Studies. Much of her scholarly work revolves around the Jewish context of Jesus and dispelling what she sees as antisemitic misinterpretations of the Bible.
“We do not need to make Judaism look bad in order to make Jesus look good,” Levine posted on Facebook after she was elected.
Catholic-Jewish relations
Sixty years ago, Levine’s election “would have been an astonishing thought,” said Philip Cunningham, director of the Institute for Jewish-Catholic Relations at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia.
Though the Catholic church has a long history of antisemitism— including violent conversion efforts and teaching the theological belief that Jews were condemned by God — that has all changed in recent decades.
In the 1960s, Pope John XXIII took on the task of modernizing the Church, convening the Second Vatican Council to produce a theological document reconsidering many teachings and practices. The resulting document, often referred to as Vatican II, is perhaps most famous for allowing priests to host Mass in the local vernacular language of their parish instead of Latin. But it also changed Catholicism’s teachings about Jews.
Nostra Aetate, the section of Vatican II most famously concerned with Jews, shifted Catholic teachings about other religions enormously; while still maintaining that the Catholic Church is the “one true religion,” it also affirmed that other religions contain a “ray of truth,” a massive theological shift from the belief that any non-Catholic religion was false or even harmful.
Nostra Aetate spends significant time on Jews, specifically, including rejecting the belief that Jews should be held collectively responsible for killing Jesus. The document calls out antisemitism both theologically and politically.
“What happened in His passion cannot be charged against all the Jews, without distinction, then alive, nor against the Jews of today,” it reads. “The Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God, as if this followed from the Holy Scriptures.”
Since Vatican II, popes have continued to advance dialogue with Jews, and with members of other religions. And the Church has forcefully rejected antisemitism, continuing to change its teachings on Judaism and Jewishness. That includes removing the term “perfidious Jews” from a Good Friday prayer, updating Catholic school classes on Judaism and even releasing statements acknowledging the legitimacy of Judaism alongside Christianity, placing Jews into a special and elevated relationship with the Church.
“The council set in motion a process of rapprochement between Jews and Catholics that took root particularly effectively in the United States, because the world’s largest Jewish diaspora community lives here and frequently alongside Catholics in cities and suburbs,” Cunningham said.
Levine, too, highlighted the importance of Nostra Aetate to her career, writing in an email that the document’s acceptance of Jews “opened the door for me to work in New Testament studies.”
But not all Catholics embraced the teachings of Vatican II. A diffuse movement often referred to as traditionalist Catholics, or tradcaths, felt that the efforts toward modernization had gone too far. Some tradcath groups simply sought to preserve the rituals of Latin Mass.
Others, however, including the recently excommunicated Society of Saint Pius X, or SSPX, take issue with the council’s teachings, believing that acknowledging the freedom and legitimacy of other religions takes away from the centrality of the Catholic Church’s teachings. In short, if the Catholic Church’s teachings are true, they argue, then no other religion can be legitimate.
The French-language account of SPPX posted to X, calling Levine an “objectively scandalous choice” and denouncing her “relativist interpretation of the texts condemning homosexuality,” as well as the fact that “a person who refuses to recognize Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior is placed at the head of an institution that claims to be Catholic.”
Despite the newer Catholic teachings about Judaism, some tradcath groups, as well as individual Catholic influencers such as Nick Fuentes, Candace Owens and Carrie Prejean Boller, have been endorsing antisemitic beliefs including supersessionism and deicide, as well as conspiracy theories about Jewish devil worship or government control. Though the Vatican has chastised these figures and repudiated their stances, they have continued to spread antisemitic dogma, including the belief that Jews hate and seek to oppress Christians and that Kabbalah endorses pedophilia. Many also endorse Christian nationalism, which the Vatican opposes.
This antisemitic subgroup within Catholicism is relatively small, but extremely visible thanks to influencers like Fuentes and Owens with millions of followers, and their understanding of Catholicism spreads to people both inside and outside the church. Their antisemitic version of Catholic ideology, as well as the conspiracy theories they spread, can be seen in some of the hate emails Levine received, such as references to eating babies, a version of the age-old blood libel that Jews used Christian children’s blood to make matzo.
Still, while the antisemitic fringe of the Catholic church is loud, the institutions are stalwart in their support for Vatican II’s acceptance of Judaism.
Levine’s election is an indication “that the changes that Vatican II sought to inspire have been happening,” Cunningham said. “That does not mean that all the issues between Jews and Catholics have been resolved — but at least amongst the much of the leadership in the Catholic community, the old stereotypes and caricatures are recognized for what they are.”
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Northeast Philadelphia says goodbye to its last Jewish deli
(JTA) — PHILADELPHIA — After running the family deli for several decades, Steve Stein says his 83-year-old legs were telling him it was time to call it quits. But it wasn’t only that.
The neighborhood has totally changed since his dad, Mike, first took over the business more than 60 years ago. Back then Northeast Philadelphia was an epicenter of Jewish life, packed with synagogues and other Jewish establishments. Most of them are gone. And now — with the close of Steve Stein’s Famous Deli and Restaurant — the area just lost its last Jewish deli.
But only after an outpouring of affection from longtime customers, who flocked to the place once news spread in the last few weeks. “It’s overwhelming,” Stein said. “The amount of people that came in here in the last 10 days, two weeks. Their comments are very touching. I knew I was liked. I didn’t know I was loved.”
To be sure, several customers told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that they’ll miss Stein, but they also bemoaned the fact there aren’t many Jewish food options left. Certainly none with prices as low as Famous.
“I’ve been going there my whole life, “ said Rebecca Asheuer, who grew up a few miles away from Famous’ current location — its third since the Steins took over the business. “I feel surprise and sadness, because it’s the last one in the Northeast.
“I think the Jewish people are moving out of the city and also the businesses used to be passed down in families. Now with the economy and other stuff, people don’t want to take over the family business anymore,” she said.
Another longtime customer mourned the closing of the deli, but also the disappearance of Jewish life in the area.
“I kind of expected it to go sooner or later,” said Aileen Owens, who remembered going to Famous when the Auspitz family ran over six decades ago. “There’s nobody around. Synagogues and all that stuff, it’s all fading out. They went to the suburbs.”
According to Steve’s account, his father Mike Stein, his brother Arnold and cousin Jack began running the produce concession at the Famous Deli in Philly’s Castor Gardens neighborhood in the late 1950s. Around 1960, they bought the deli from the Auspitz family, which had operated a chain of Philadelphia delis dating to the 1920s.
Steve and his brother Arnie eventually ran the deli together. As Jewish families moved farther into Northeast Philadelphia, the deli moved as well — first to Krewstown Road in the mid-1970s, eventually having two locations there, and then about 14 years ago to its final location at 1619 Grant Ave.
If all goes right, Steve’s 57-year-old son Lee hopes to continue the migration and resurrect the family business in the suburbs. Sort of.
“I’m looking to have a place of my own,” said Lee, who started off as an eight-year-old taking out the trash, but would occasionally try to cut the lox when no one was looking. “I have a lot of experience in this business.
“I call myself multi-talented, not just in the deli business, but in cooking and baking, I would probably downsize and not do fruit and produce like we do here. It’s just not worth, you know, the space for what you’re paying. I would do a similar situation to here. Deli, prepared foods, a little bit of bakery, a small sit down. But what I’ve told the people that come in here, ‘You’ll never, ever see some of this product again. And you’ll probably never, ever see these prices ever again.’”
Still, he wants his new venture to be affordable.
“My father always liked being a people-pleaser,” the younger Stein said. “So he tries to please people with a price. But that price affects you eventually.”
As for Steve, he wishes his son well, but knows it won’t be the same. “Lee wants to try something, but not here,” Stein said.
He added that some remaining establishments in the wider region – “they do 90% restaurant and 10% deli, I do 90% deli and 10% restaurant” – will “benefit from me not being here.”
One former competitor isn’t so sure. “I’m upset another Jewish deli has closed and he’s been in business a long time and certainly has his whole clientele,” said Michael Young, longtime owner of Ben & Irv’s, a deli restaurant in Huntingdon Valley, a suburb about 20 minutes northwest of Famous. “But it’s a different world today; a different area. So I don’t know if it will help us.”
Lee Stein said he actually tried to stay put, but needed a little help.“The real problem is the landlord never took care of the building,” said Lee, who wishes his dad had been more assertive on that front. “I tried to make it work here with them, figuring this would be an easy fix. I asked them for some renovations; to put a new roof on. The roof has several holes in it. When it rains outside, it pours in here. So, I tried to negotiate with them first before I did anything else, but that wasn’t going anywhere.”
JTA’s attempts to reach the landlord for comment were unsuccessful. Regardless, Steve Stein, who was forced to close the deli for a short while last year due to health code issues, says he is ready to turn the page.
The first thing he’ll do once things settle down is get therapy on his aching legs. And he’s excited to have more time to devote to his wife of 61 years, Sheila, along with his children, Lee and Mindy, seven grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. “But I’ll miss my customers. They’re like family.”
Already he’s feeling the difference “It’s devastating,” he said on Aug. 24, the day after the store officially closed, amid a final “blowout sale” to get rid of what little was left. “I’m usually the first one in the store.
“It’s going to be very much missed by me.”
He’s not the only one.
“Nothing lasts forever,” said one customer before heading into Famous one last time. “But it’s very sad.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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