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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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US Senators Urge Secretary of Homeland Security to Secure Northern Border From Gaza Refugees
US Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) speaking at a press conference about the United States restricting weapons for Israel, at the US Capitol, Washington, DC. Photo: Michael Brochstein/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect
Six US senators sent a letter to US Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas this week requesting that he increase security measures along the northern border in response to Canada accepting an influx of refugees from Gaza, the Palestinian enclave ruled by the terrorist group Hamas.
The six Republican lawmakers — Sens. Marco Rubio (FL), Ted Cruz (TX), Joni Ernst (IA), Tom Cotton (AK), Mike Braun (IN), and Josh Hawley (MO) — said they were “deeply concerned” that refugees from Gaza could sneak into the United States. The senators warned that allowing unvetted Palestinian refugees to cross the border poses a serious national security threat.
“On May 27, 2024, the Government of Canada announced its intent to increase the number of Gazans who will be allowed into their country under temporary special measures,” the senators wrote. “We are deeply concerned and request heightened scrutiny by the US Department of Homeland Security should any of them attempt to enter the United States at ports of entry as well as between ports of entry.”
After arriving in Canada, the Palestinian refugees will be given a “Refugee Travel Document,” which serves as a valid form of identification, the letter claimed, adding that US Citizenship and Immigration Services recognizes these documents as a valid substitute for a passport. The senators warned that “individuals with ties to terrorist groups” could potentially enter into the United States.
The letter argued that the US should maintain “common-sense terrorist screening and vetting” for any individual attempting to enter its borders from a foreign country. The lawmakers lamented that the Biden administration’s “”ax border enforcement” has rendered the country vulnerable to potential terrorist attacks. From April 1, 2023 to March 31, 2024, the US Customs and Border Protection’s Office of Field Operations intercepted over 233 suspected terrorists at the northern border, according to the letter.
“[T]he possibility of terrorists crossing the US-Canada border is deeply concerning given the deep penetration of Gazan society by Hamas,” the senators wrote. “It would be irresponsible for the US to not take necessary heightened precautions when foreigners attempt to enter the United States.”
On Oct. 7, Hamas launched the ongoing war in Gaza with its Oct. 7 invasion of and massacre of 1,200 people across southern Israel. The Palestinian terrorist group also kidnapped over 250 hostages.
In response, Israel launched defensive military operations in Gaza with the aim of freeing the hostages and permanently dislodging Hamas from the neighboring enclave.
The vast majority of Palestinians in Gaza, as well as the West Bank, still support Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel that started the ongoing war, and they would prefer a “day after” scenario in which Hamas remains in control of Gaza rather than the Palestinian Authority, which governs in the West Bank, or other Arab countries, according to recent Palestinian polling. The same polling found that, when asked about support for Palestinian political parties and movements, a plurality chose Hamas.
US lawmakers are split along party lines as to whether the United States should accept refugees from Gaza. Republicans are largely opposed to importing refugees from Gaza, arguing that individuals from the war-torn enclave present “a national security risk” to the United States.” In May, Ernst and Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) sent US President Joe Biden a letter, urging him not to accept any refugees from Gaza.
In June, however, a group of 70 Democratic lawmakers sent Mayorkas a letter, requesting he create “pathways” for more refugees of the Israel-Hamas war to resettle in America.
The post US Senators Urge Secretary of Homeland Security to Secure Northern Border From Gaza Refugees first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Video of Masked Man Vowing ‘Rivers of Blood’ at Paris Olympics Over Israel Support Appears to Be Fake, of Russia Origin
Screenshot of a widely circulated video published on social media showing a masked man vowing that “rivers of blood will flow” at the 2024 Paris Olympics due to France’s support for Israel. According to reports, the video appears to be fake and of Russian origin.
A widely circulated video published on social media this week showing a masked man vowing that “rivers of blood will flow” at the 2024 Paris Olympics due to France’s support for Israel appears to be fake and of Russian origin, according to reports.
The video — published on Tuesday on social media networks including X/Twitter and Telegram — featured a keffiyeh-clad man with his face covered, delivering an Arabic-language address threatening France with violence due to the country’s alleged support for Israel amid its ongoing war with Hamas in Gaza.
Addressing “the people of France” and “French President [Emmanuel] Macron,” the masked individual said, “You supported the Zionist regime in its criminal war against the people of Palestine. You provided Zionists with weapons; you helped murder our brothers and sisters, our children.”
“You invited the Zionists to the Olympic games. You will pay for what you have done!” continued the man, who wore a shirt adorned with a Palestinian flag. “Rivers of blood will flow through the streets of Paris. This day is approaching, God willing. Allah is the greatest.”
The video, published on X/Twitter by the account @endzionism24 and retweeted by Palestinian activist Ihab Hassan, ended with the speaker holding a prop severed head complete with fake blood up for the camera.
He is not a Palestinian:
A video clip has surfaced showing an individual wearing a keffiyeh and a Palestinian flag badge, threatening France with a “river of blood” at the Olympic Games.
It is glaringly obvious to any Arabic speaker that this person is not Arab; his dialect… pic.twitter.com/rwWGkkbiAi
— Ihab Hassan (@IhabHassane) July 23, 2024
Hassan and other social media users immediately noted that the man speaking was clearly not a native Arabic speaker, citing his reasonably fluent but awkward and occasionally incorrect pronunciation.
Many social media users aware of the mispronunciations seemed to blame Israel for the video, implying the clip was a false flag meant to fearmonger and demonize Palestinians and Muslims. They did not address the fact that Israel has access to hundreds of thousands of native Palestinian Arabic speakers who would sound far more convincing than the man in the video.
On Wednesday, French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said that “French secret services and their partners have not been able to authenticate the veracity of this video.”
According to researchers at Microsoft, however, the video appears to be part of a Russian-linked disinformation campaign meant to disrupt the Olympics, which began with the opening ceremony on Friday.
The researchers from Microsoft’s Threat Analysis Center told NBC News that the clip appears to have come from a Russian disinformation group known as Storm-1516, an outgrowth of Russia’s Internet Research Agency.
The latest clip was linked to a similar disinformation video falsely alleging that Ukraine had sent arms to Hamas — a claim for which there is no evidence. According to the researchers, the more recent video appears to be part of a Russian scare campaign meant to disrupt the Olympics.
The video came just days before France’s rail infrastructure was hit on Friday, ahead of the start of the Olympics, with widespread acts of vandalism including arson attacks, paralyzing travel to Paris from the rest of France and Europe just hours before the opening ceremony of the Olympics. French authorities described the acts as “criminal” and “malicious.”
Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said that the sabotage of France’s high-speed rail network was directed by Iran, which Western intelligence agencies have for years labeled as the world’s foremost state sponsor of terrorism.
“The sabotage of railway infrastructure across France ahead of the Olympics was planned and executed under the influence of Iran’s axis of evil and radical Islam,” Katz wrote on X/Twitter. “As I warned my French counterpart [Stéphane Séjourné] this week, based on information held by Israel, Iranians are planning terrorist attacks against the Israeli delegation and all Olympic participants. Increased preventive measures must be taken to thwart their plot. The free world must stop Iran now — before it’s too late.”
Katz was referring to a letter he sent on Thursday to Séjourné raising alarm bells about what he described as a plan by Iran to attack Israel’s Olympic delegation.
Darmanin and French National Police both announced previously that they are taking increased security measures to ensure the safety of Israel’s Olympic delegation while they are in Paris amid mounting threats. These measures include providing them with round the clock security from French police. The Israeli delegation will also receive additional security details from Israel’s Shin Bet security agency during the Olympics.
The post Video of Masked Man Vowing ‘Rivers of Blood’ at Paris Olympics Over Israel Support Appears to Be Fake, of Russia Origin first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Top St. Louis Newspaper Endorses US Rep. Cori Bush’s Opponent, Argues Incumbent’s Israel Stance Is ‘Disqualifying’
US Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO) raises her fist as US Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) addresses a pro-Hamas demonstration in Washington, DC. Photo: Reuters/Allison Bailey
The editorial board of The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the largest daily newspaper in Missouri, has endorsed the opponent of US Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO), pointing to the incumbent congresswoman’s lack of legislative accomplishments and stance on the Israel-Hamas war.
The Post-Dispatch argued that Bush’s position on Israel and the Gaza war should be “disqualifying” for any elected representative. The outlet took umbrage with Bush for equating a close democratic ally of the US with a genocidal terrorist organization.
“Israel’s conduct of the war has been far from perfect, but it remains a democracy fighting for survival against an evil terrorist organization. Bush’s tendency to equate both sides — and even to side with the terrorists, as when she cast one of just two House votes against a resolution to bar Hamas members from the US — should in itself be disqualifying for re-election,” the editorial board wrote.
Bush has established herself as one of the most vocal critics of Israel in the US Congress. Only nine days after Hamas’ Oct. 7 slaughter of roughly 1,200 people in southern Israel, Bush called for an “immediate ceasefire” between Israel and the Palestinian terrorist group. As the war dragged on, Bush’s rhetoric toward Israel sharpened, with the congresswoman accusing the Jewish state of committing “genocide” in Gaza and “apartheid” in the West Bank. Bush has also accused Israel of inflicting a “famine” in Gaza without providing evidence.
Bush seems more interested in pandering to the far-left fringes of the progressive movement than serving her constituents, the Post-Dispatch argued. Bush’s membership in “The Squad” — a clique of far-left progressive, anti-establishment lawmakers in the House of Representatives — has rendered her completely incapable of “accomplishing anything” in the halls of Congress, according to the newspaper.
The editorial board urged its readers to vote for Wesley Bell, pointing to his moderated approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as an example of his pragmatism and moral clarity.
“On Israel, Bell offers an appropriately measured stance, acknowledging the need to protect Gazan civilians and work toward a two-state solution, while supporting America’s closest ally in the Middle East,” the outlet wrote.
In contrast to Bush, Bell has expressed more sympathy to Israel’s military operations in Gaza, emphatically rejecting the notion that Israel’s actions in Gaza constitute “genocide” or “ethnic cleansing.”
Moreover, Bell has strengthened his ties with the Jewish community over the course of his campaign. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the foremost pro-Israel lobbying group in the US, donated a reported $5 million to Bell’s campaign through its United Democracy Project super PAC. A group of 30 St. Louis-area rabbis penned a letter endorsing Bell, accusing Bush of a “lack of decency, disregard for history, and for intentionally fueling antisemitism and hatred.” Bell also brought about an official “director of Jewish outreach” to increase turnout among the Jewish community.
A poll commissioned by McLaughlin & Associates and sponsored by the CCA Action Fund, a pro-Bell super PAC, showed Bell with a commanding 56 percent to 33 percent lead over Bush.
Supporters of Israel see the primary race as a prime opportunity to oust another opponent of the Jewish state from the halls of Congress. Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY), a progressive lawmaker, lost his primary race to a pro-Israel challenger on June 25. Over the course of his reelection campaign, Bowman accused Israel of committing “genocide” and enacting “apartheid” against Palestinians. Bowman’s comments incensed Jewish constituents in the leafy suburbs of Westchester County, New York.
Furthermore, observers are looking to the race as a potential indicator of the Democratic electorate’s position on Israel. Opinions of the Jewish state among Democrats have soured in the months following Oct. 7, calling into question whether anti-Israel views are still a liability with American liberals.
The post Top St. Louis Newspaper Endorses US Rep. Cori Bush’s Opponent, Argues Incumbent’s Israel Stance Is ‘Disqualifying’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.