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The Ripped Bodice, Brooklyn’s new romance-only bookstore, reflects the values of the Jewish sisters who own it
(New York Jewish Week) — Just a few minutes after entering The Ripped Bodice, a new romance bookstore in Park Slope, Rose Cohen, a woman in her early 20s, already had two books in hand.
Armed with a list of coveted romance books on her iPhone notes app, Cohen, who lives an hour outside the city, had dragged her best friend Emma on the train all the way into Brooklyn to visit the borough’s newest bookstore, with its bubblegum pink exterior, walls and ceilings decorated in an impressive display of classic romance novels — and of course rows and rows of her favorite genre.
A huge romance fan, she already knew The Ripped Bodice would have all the books she was looking for; she had been following The Ripped Bodice’s evolution at its first location in Los Angeles for years and was eager to visit the Brooklyn store on Thursday afternoon, as she wasn’t able to make it for opening weekend earlier this month.
The Ripped Bodice, a bookstore that only sells the one genre, is owned by Jewish sisters Leah and Bea Koch. They opened the first location in Culver City, California, in 2016 with funds from a Kickstarter campaign. Seven years later, the business was successful enough for them to make the leap to the East Coast.
“We ship all over the country and outside of California, the most common place we were shipping to was New York,” Leah Koch said. Plus, New York is home both to family — the sisters’ father, stepmother, brother, sister-in-law and nephews all live in Brooklyn — and to the historical center of the publishing industry.
After living in Los Angeles for the last 12 years, Leah, 31, has relocated to New York to run the Brooklyn location while her sister Bea, 33, will stay behind and helm the flagship. Having to split up after working together for nearly a decade “is my least favorite part” of opening the Brooklyn store, said Leah, but Bea has already been back and forth several times to help get the store open and has more trips planned in the near future. On the flip side, Leah said, being based in New York opens the door for some of her favorite activities — including seeing Broadway shows and celebrating Shabbat and Jewish holidays with her family.
Originally from Chicago, the sisters were raised in what they described as a culturally Jewish household. Growing up, “my parents had such an emphasis on education and reading and books,” Leah Koch said. “I think that was directly influenced by their understanding of Judaism as a culture that values education, curiosity and questioning.”
As business owners, those Jewish values and traditions influence the way the Koch sisters run their stores. During the holiday season in Los Angeles, they host an annual drive for menstrual products called “Eight Crazy Nights of Tamponukkah.” They also raised money for abortion clinics in Mississippi.
“I’m not very religious, so my value system is how I interpret Judaism and I don’t believe in the separation of my personal values and my business,” Leah Koch said. “My business is a way for me to put those values into practice — we are able to contribute to causes that we care about and that are directly related to what we sell.” If those more progressive stances might alienate customers, she said, “I don’t really care.”
When it opened, The Ripped Bodice was touted as the country’s first romance-only bookstore.
“The number of people who are crazy enough to want to open a brick-and-mortar bookstore is really small. Within that, the number of people who want to focus only on one genre is even smaller,” Koch said.
But since, several others have opened amid a boom in romance sales among younger readers, driven in part by TikTok’s #BookTok.
Koch said she has been drawn to romance her whole life — at first because “the weight and importance that was put on ordinary people’s emotional lives,” and later on, because it offered a respite. “It’s a genre of hope and joy,” she said. “When life gets bleak, I continue to find comfort in a guaranteed happy ending.”
Jean Meltzer, a romance author whose characters and stories are Jewish, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in 2021 that she had turned to the genre as an antidote to most storytelling about Jews.
“I wanted to write a book for Jews where the heroes were sexy, where the men were strong, where the women were beautiful, where they got their happy ending,” said Meltzer, whose third book, “Kissing Kosher,” comes out this month. “I wrote this book primarily for myself, but it was really out of a desire to sort of just create a different type of Jewish story.”
Meltzer’s books are featured at The Ripped Bodice, and Koch said she thought the author was right that romance can be meaningful for Jewish readers. “It’s true for so many different types of people, but Jews specifically,” she said. “[Romance novels] are particularly valuable for people who very rarely see themselves portrayed like that.”
The walls of the store are decorated with open romance novels and pictures of the sisters and their family throughout their lives. (Julia Gergely)
At 1,900 square feet, The Ripped Bodice bookstore has plenty of room to carry all the Jewish romance novels. Cohen suggested “Weather Girl” by Rachel Lynn Solomon. Koch mentioned Meltzer and Stacy Agdern, who write contemporary romance, along with Felicia Grossman, who writes Jewish historical romance set during the Regency period in England.
Along with Jewish romance, they carry stories dealing with all kinds of religion, disability, race, gender and sexuality, as well as some nonfiction about women’s health and sexuality from traditional and indie publishers. They even carry self-published books. “If it exists, we will find it,” Koch said.
The store also sells original merchandise, greeting cards and homemade tea blends named after tropes of the genre — such as an Earl Grey called “There’s Only One Bed” and a lemon ginger named “Can You Zip Me Up?”
Business is already booming in Brooklyn, Koch said. She wasn’t shocked at how many people showed up for the opening, which she guessed was over 1,000. But she said it’s been a welcome surprise at how many have come in the weeks since — on Thursday afternoon, dozens of customers rotated through.
And at least for Cohen, the store has lived up to the hype. “It’s everything and more,” she said.
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The post The Ripped Bodice, Brooklyn’s new romance-only bookstore, reflects the values of the Jewish sisters who own it appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Experts, Lawmakers Suggest Same Hateful Ideology That Motivated New Orleans Attack Also Behind Pro-Hamas NYC March
Palestinian Youth Movement protesters speaking in Times Square, New York City, NY, USA on Jan. 1, 2025. Photo: Ethan Johnson/SIPA USA via Reuters Connect
Some experts and lawmakers are drawing a link between the Islamist ideology that seemingly motivated the New Year’s Day terrorist attack in New Orleans and the pro-Hamas demonstration in New York City that took place hours later.
On Wednesday, hours after a US Army veteran who pledged allegiance to Islamic State (ISIS) drove a truck into a crowd of New Year’s Day revelers in New Orleans and killed at least 14 people, protesters marched through New York City, chanting slogans condemning both America and Israel.
Hundreds of anti-Israel demonstrators descended upon the streets of Manhattan, sporting signs calling to “End Zionism,” “End all US aid to Israel,” and for “No War With Iran.” Many of these activists also carried Palestinian flags and bellowed slogans such as “intifada revolution!” — a slogan that many consider to be a call for violence against Israelis, Jews, and Westerners more broadly.
“We’re sending you back to Europe, you white b–ches,” a protester yelled at participants of a pro-Israel counter-demonstration. “Go back to Europe! Go back to Europe!”
The demonstration was organized by the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), a group that plans anti-Israel demonstrations across the United States. PYM has repeatedly praised Hamas’s invasion of and massacre across southern Israel last Oct. 7.
US lawmakers were quick to slam the anti-Israel demonstrations, accusing them of fomenting unwarranted hatred toward the United States and the Jewish state.
“These protesters in New York City are marching not to condemn the ISIS terrorist attack against their own country but to falsely accuse their own country, as well as Israel, of terrorism,” wrote Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY), one of the most strident allies of Israel in the US Congress.
“The hatred for America and Israel far exceeds the hatred for actual terror, apartheid, and genocide in the world,” Torres continued. “For an ideologue, ideology has more reality than reality itself.”
Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY), another stalwart ally of Israel, also linked the New Orleans terror attack to the New York City demonstrations, saying that “hours after a jihadist sympathizer killed 10 Americans, pro-Hamas agitators are marching through New York City calling for a global intifada.”
“The governor and the mayor must put an end to this nonsense — now,” Lawler added. “Silence is not an option.”
Israeli diplomat Yaki Lopez similarly linked the two incidents, posting on social media that “pro-Hamas demonstrators chanted ‘intifada revolution’ in New York City while jihadist terrorists carried out a deadly attack in New Orleans, killing over a dozen Americans.”
“There’s little distinction between the actions of [the suspect in] New Orleans, who used a truck as a weapon and terrorist attacks in the West Bank where cars are used to run over Israelis,” added Joe Truzman, a senior research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and editor of its Long War Journal. “It’s terrorism, yet there are people in this country who support ‘resistance’ and ‘intifada.’”
US federal agencies have established a link between domestic anti-Israel protests and foreign actors. Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said in July that the Iranian regime has organized “influence efforts” to undermine trust in American institutions, adding that “actors tied to Iran’s government” have encouraged and provided financial support to rampant anti-Israel demonstrations. Haines also said that Iran has weaponized social media against the Jewish state and America, spreading misleading propaganda regarding the ongoing war in Gaza.
Meanwhile, experts have warned of a rising global terror threat in the year following Hamas’s Oct. 7 atrocities. Last May, experts explained to The Algemeiner that “lone wolf” terrorists inspired by ISIS and al Qaeda could carry out attacks on US soil, incensed by the ongoing war in Gaza and inspired by terrorist violence abroad.
“As I look back over my career in law enforcement, I’m hard-pressed to come up with a time when I’ve seen so many different threats, all elevated, all at the same time,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said in April.
The post Experts, Lawmakers Suggest Same Hateful Ideology That Motivated New Orleans Attack Also Behind Pro-Hamas NYC March first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Florida Man Arrested for Alleged Plot to Attack AIPAC Office
The 2018 AIPAC Policy Conference in Washington, DC. Photo: Guatemala Presidency / Handout via Reuters.
The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) stopped an apparent plot to attack an office of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in Plantation, FL, according to court documents filed earlier this week.
Law enforcement apprehended Forrest Kendall Pemberton, a 26-year-old resident of Gainesville, FL, on Dec. 25, the first night of Hanukkah, after he traveled to Plantation in search of the local AIPAC office, local and national media outlets reported.
Prosecutors alleged in their filings that Pemberton was in a rideshare vehicle carrying multiple firearms, including an AR-15 rifle, and ammunition when law enforcement officers stopped and arrested him.
AIPAIC, the foremost pro-Israel lobbying organization in the US, seeks to foster bipartisan support for a stronger US-Israel relationship.
The court documents reportedly did not specifically name AIPAC as the target. However, an FBI affidavit described an organization with the same mission statement as AIPAC and referenced identical language from the group’s website. The suspect’s search engine history also included queries for AIPAC and its former Plantation office, believing it was the current local office.
According to law enforcement, Pemberton initially scoped out the premises of the Florida site for entry and exit points before later attempting to return with weapons.
Suspicions first arose surrounding Pemberton’s whereabouts after his father reported him missing to the police on Dec. 23. The father said he found a “concerning” note in his son’s backpack that “espoused anti-authority sentiments.” His father added that Pemberton often “espoused antisemitic views.”
An AIPAC spokesperson issued an identical statement to multiple outlets thanking the FBI for its work and saying the pro-Israel organization will not be intimidated.
“We take these threats very seriously and we are working closely with law enforcement concerning this matter,” the spokesperson said. “We will not be deterred by extremists in pursuing our mission to strengthen the relationship with America’s valued ally, Israel. We are deeply appreciative of the FBI’s work to stop this individual.”
Pemberton faces a federal stalking charge and is accused of traveling to AIPAC with the intent of “killing, injuring, harassing, and intimidating” people with the organization.
The post Florida Man Arrested for Alleged Plot to Attack AIPAC Office first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Antisemitic Hate Crimes in Massachusetts Reach Eight-Year High
The Boston skyline stands behind the Tobin Bridge and the city of Chelsea as seen from Everett, Massachusetts, US. Photo: Brian Snyder via Reuters Connect.
The US state of Massachusetts saw more antisemitic hate crimes in 2023 than at any time since government officials began tracking such data eight years ago, according to a report issued by its Executive Office of Public Safety and Security (EOPSS).
A striking 119 antisemitic hate crimes were reported to law enforcement agencies, EOPSS said, a total which, in addition to eclipsing 2015’s total of 56 incidents, amounts to a 70 percent increase over the previous year. Antisemitic hate crimes also constituted 18.8 percent of all hate crimes reported in 2023, a figure which trails only behind the percentage of hate crimes which targeted African Americans.
The report added that 68.9 percent of the antisemitic incidents involved property destruction or vandalism, a total of 82, while another 19 percent involved intimidation. Some physical assaults, six, were recorded or reported to the police.
EOPSS’s numbers fall somewhat below other figures reported by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) in spring 2024, when the civil rights group said 440 antisemitic incidents occurred in the state in 2023, a 189 percent increase over the previous year. However, the discrepancy may be due to differences in methodology, as ADL reports include all antisemitic incidents, while EOPSS’s tally considers those which fit the legal definition of a crime and were brought to the attention of law enforcement.
The ADL has said, however, that their numbers and EOPSS’s are mutually inclusive.
“This report mirrors what sadly we’ve been tracking and responding to on a daily basis. There has been a marked increase in antisemitic hate incidents in the Bay State and in fact across the country,” Peggy Shukur, vice president of the ADL’s East Division, told The Algemeiner on Thursday. “The local increase reflects national trends. Our data showed that over 10,000 antisemitic incidents were recorded in the US since Oct. 7, 2023, an over 200 percent increase compared to incidents reported to us during the same period a year before.”
She added, “Behind every one of these numbers are people who have experienced the harm, fear, intimidation, and pain that reverberates from each of these incidents. The fact that numbers increase by 70 percent is a grim reminder that antisemitism continues to infect our communities in real and pervasive ways.”
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, antisemitism in Massachusetts has been an acute problem on college campuses, one to which school officials have allegedly hesitated to respond.
“I’ve become traumatized,” Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) student Talia Khan told members of the US House Committee on Education and the Workforce in March. “MIT has become overrun by terrorist supporters that directly threaten the lives of Jews on our campus. Members of the anti-Israel club on our campus have stated that violence against Jews who support Israel, including women and children, is acceptable. When this was reported to president [Sally] Kornbluth and senior MIT administration, the issue was never dealt with. Then, administrators pleaded ignorance when we reminded them that no action had been taken, saying that they either forgot about it or missed the email.”
Allegations of neglect have prompted civil lawsuits, including one against Harvard University which was recently cleared to proceed to discovery. Filed by the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law (Brandeis Center), the suit centers on several incidents involving Harvard Kennedy School professor Marshall Ganz during the 2022-2023 academic year.
Ganz allegedly refused to accept a group project submitted by Israeli students for his course, titled “Organizing: People, Power, Change,” because they described Israel as a “liberal Jewish democracy.” He castigated the students over their premise, the Brandeis Center says, accusing them of “white supremacy” and denying them the chance to defend themselves. Later, Ganz allegedly forced the Israeli students to attend “a class exercise on Palestinian solidarity” and the taking of a class photograph in which their classmates and teaching fellows “wore ‘keffiyehs’ as a symbol of Palestinian support.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Antisemitic Hate Crimes in Massachusetts Reach Eight-Year High first appeared on Algemeiner.com.