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Her ancestors were expelled from Spain. Now she’s bringing bagels to Madrid.
(JTA) — MADRID — Until recently, a Jew could wander all day in Madrid without finding a bagel.
But now, in a sea of tomato toasts and potato omelettes, a trail of people hovers every weekend outside the Mazál bagel restaurant. Behind it is Tamara Cohen, a Philadelphian who became Spanish through a law granting citizenship to Sephardic Jews whose ancestors were expelled during the 1492 Inquisition.
When Cohen moved to Madrid, she could not track down the bagels she craved from home. Since opening Mazál in 2020, she has seen the distinctly Jewish food grow more familiar to Madrileños, with other new bagel shops following suit — but none, so far as she knows, that are also run by Jews.
“I like to think we started it,” she said.
Cohen, who is 34, didn’t have a business plan or a culinary background when she arrived in 2015. She was a recent college graduate unsure about what to do next. She had never been to Europe and decided to teach English in Spain, thinking she would take the chance to travel and study the native language of her mom, a Cuban Sephardic Jew. (Her dad is American-born Ashkenazi.)
Soon after Cohen arrived, her mom alerted her to Spain’s new Sephardic ancestry law. Between 2015 and 2019, the measure awarded citizenship to descendants who could prove their medieval Sephardic origins. Some 72,000 people have obtained citizenship this way, most of them from Latin America.
Cohen’s mom quickly applied, not to move to Spain herself, but to affirm a lineage treasured in her family for centuries. She had documents showing her family’s travels from Spain to Turkey to Cuba, along with death certificates of ancestors buried in Sephardic cemeteries. She also had tapes of her parents singing in Ladino, the nearly extinct language that Sephardic exiles carried with them to the Middle East, North Africa, Latin America and other corners of the world.
After her mom received citizenship, Cohen followed. In the process, she discovered threads that tied her to what had seemed like a foreign land. Some 300,000 Jews lived in Spain before the Inquisition, constituting one of the largest and most cultivated Jewish communities in the world. After 1492, they were forced to convert to Catholicism, flee or be killed. Between 40,000 and 100,000 went into exile.
By the early 20th century, a small community of Jews had returned to Spain. About 6,000 lived there at the dawn of the Spanish Civil War in 1936, including prominent intellectuals such as Max Aub and Margarita Nelken. Many fell on the Republican side of the war, forcing them to flee when the Nationalists led by Francisco Franco prevailed. Franco rooted his regime in Catholicism, banning Jewish rites, shuttering synagogues and sending expressions of Jewishness into hiding.
A new era of Sephardic life began to take shape only in the 1960s. In 1967, Spain passed a religious freedom law that allowed non-Catholic communities to practice in public. Meanwhile, Middle East tensions surrounding the 1967 Arab-Israeli War drove a wave of Jews from Arab countries to Europe, according to Esther Bendahan, a writer and cultural director of the Centro Sefarad-Israel in Madrid. Her family arrived from Morocco in the 1960s.
“The return is complex, because it is the only European country where Jews do not have a long history, since it was interrupted,” said Bendahan.
Remnants of Sephardic history, like the Jews themselves, are still resurfacing. As recently as 2024, restoration work on the Santa Maria la Blanca church in Seville exposed a medieval synagogue ark behind the altarpiece. In 2023, archaeologists uncovered a 14th-century synagogue beneath a nightclub in the Andalucían city of Utrera, one of only five such buildings in Spain. And in 2012, the construction of a sewer in Segovia revealed a Jewish cemetery from 500 years ago.
“Whenever we travel to a small town and there’s a judería, I always feel like we have to see it,” said Cohen, using the word for the historic Jewish quarters that once dotted Spain.
“We have to go and stand there — even if there’s nothing to see — go and stand there, and I feel a connection to it,” she added. “Spain had a huge population of Jews, and you say, ‘Wow, they’re all gone. But look, I’m back. I have a passport. I can stay here forever if I want to.’”
Sephardic memory traveled down Cohen’s family line, as in many others, through food. Her mom sustained Sephardic recipes and traditions, like making rice on Passover. But even as Cohen identified traces of her family’s Sephardic past, she missed American and Ashkenazi foods.
She was hosting a Thanksgiving dinner with her roommates when she realized that she couldn’t find a pumpkin pie. So she made one — and then she made more. She listed her pies, cakes and cookies on a website for people to buy. Then she started making bagels.
“I basically used this website as a platform to make and sell foods that I love but that I couldn’t find here,” said Cohen. “And so I made bagels, because I grew up in a bagels-on-the-weekend family.”
Thus Mazál was born, and with it appeared a new world of Jews in Madrid — a living, breathing and eating one. Local visitors who knew little about Jewish food flocked to Mazál for its “American” menu, listing pastrami and buffalo chicken along with bagels. But just as quickly came the diners who knew the word “mazal,” or “luck” in Hebrew.
Cohen discovered how many Jews had been waiting for Mazál through her challah sales. She didn’t know how many would be sold, only that she wanted to recreate “the warmth of family” on Shabbat. Roughly 15,000 Jews live in Madrid out of 45,000 in the whole country. (Both Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews eat challah, while bagels are not part of Sephardic tradition.)
“We have sold challah every single Friday for our entire existence,” she said. “When we first opened, we had something like 10 challahs a week. Now we make 90 to 150 challahs a week. We’re sold out.”
No haven for Jews in Spain has been unaffected by the country’s intense scrutiny of Israel since 2023. The Spanish government is one of Europe’s most outspoken about Israel’s killing of Palestinians in Gaza, with Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez becoming the most senior European leader to say that Israel was committing genocide last year. In 2024, Spain joined Norway and Ireland in recognizing a Palestinian state.
At times, the anti-Israel sentiment in Spain has turned on local Jews. Spain saw a 60% increase in antisemitic hate crimes in 2024, despite a drop in overall hate crimes, according to the Ministry of the Interior.
Cohen has family members in Israel. After the Hamas attack on Oct. 7, 2023, she raised money for Israeli humanitarian organizations through the delivery apps Uber and Glovo, calling the push “Bagels for Israel.” But after a few months, as Israel’s campaign in Gaza intensified and Spanish sentiment hardened against the country, she shut it down.
Now she is wary of exposing Mazál to the fall-out from anger against Israel. In 2025, she had to paint over a swastika and other graffiti sprayed on the restaurant’s shutters.
“I’m more tense about saying anything about Israel,” she said. “We’re actually opening a new bakery in the next couple of months, and the plan is it’s going to be an Israeli, Middle Eastern bakery. But when people ask, ‘What is it going to be?’ I’m like, ‘You know, Middle Eastern.’”
She wants Mazál to remain a place where Jews like her feel comforted. There are pieces of her life in the bagels, the challah and the American classics. On Thanksgiving, she sells “Mom’s sweet potato casserole,” her own mom’s recipe. And a staple on the menu is “Allen’s pancakes,” named for her dad.
“Mazál, to me, feels like my little corner of Judaism here in Madrid,” said Cohen. “It’s a way to create a home for people who are looking for that. It’s not kosher, and we’re open all year, but it’s my type of Judaism — bagels on Sunday morning, challahs on Shabbat.”
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Providence voters pass ballot initiative that could lead to divestment of city funds from Israel
(JTA) — Voters in Providence, Rhode Island, have approved a ballot measure that could result in the city divesting public funds from Israel, according to local media, in a major victory for the Israel boycott movement.
In a major victory for the Israel boycott movement, voters in Providence, Rhode Island, have approved a ballot measure that could result in the city divesting public funds from Israel, according to local media.
With 81 of 82 polling locations partially reported, the Rhode Island Board of Elections tallied 75% voting to approve the measure versus 25% rejecting. Both the Rhode Island Current and the Boston Globe report the measure was approved.
“We are overjoyed that the city of Providence has voted — by more than a 3 to 1 margin — to divest our collective dollars from support for genocide and ethnic cleansing,” Lex Rofeberg, who runs the alternative Jewish engagement network Judaism Unbound and was an organizer with the Providence divestment initiative, told JTA. “This historic moment can serve as an example for other cities around the country hoping to align their investments with their values.”
The ordinance calls for the capital city to refrain from investing in “foreign countries conducting ethnic cleansing, apartheid, illegal military occupation, or genocide.” Though the ballot language does not mention Israel by name, it was heavily supported by local pro-Palestinian groups and opposed by some Jewish and pro-Israel groups.
A representative for the Jewish Alliance of Greater Rhode Island previously told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that the group would explore legal options to challenge the ballot measure in the event that it passed.
The vote makes Providence the largest municipality yet to vote in favor of some form of Israel divestment, following the lead of Somerville, Massachusetts, whose voters approved a nonbinding divestment measure last year. Providence is home to an estimated 15,000 Jews, or around 7% of its population. Progressive Jewish groups, including the local chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace, were among the ballot measure’s advocates.
The city’s mayor, Brett Smiley, a pro-Israel Democrat who converted to Judaism while in office, lost his primary to a democratic socialist, an early indicator of which way the divestment vote would go.
Activist initiatives to challenge U.S. financial aid to Israel have picked up steam in the years since the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attacks and ensuing Gaza war. On the morning of Election Day, President Donald Trump, who described aid to Israel as a political liability, announced the U.S. would end nearly $4 billion in annual military aid to Israel by the end of the year.
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Republican Lawler concedes to Democrat Conley in fierce battle for Jewish vote in NYC suburbs
(JTA) — Republican congressman Mike Lawler has conceded to Democratic challenger Cait Conley, a former national security official, after competing fiercely for Jewish voters in the lower Hudson Valley of New York.
Lawler has been a staunchly pro-Israel member since joining Congress in 2023, and was endorsed by the Republican Jewish Coalition and the pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC.
Conley was endorsed by the pro-Israel group Democratic Majority for Israel, and has said she supports Israel while opposing the Benjamin Netanyahu government.
Lawler, who is Catholic, has deep ties to the district’s large Orthodox Jewish population, and touted their support recently when asked about the neck-and-neck polling.
Both Lawler and Conley have tried tying their opponent to polarizing figures in their respective parties. Lawler has asserted that Conley, a moderate, will not separate herself from the progressive wing of the Democratic Party and particularly New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who has a lower favorability rating outside the city. Conley denounced Mamdani’s statement on the three-year anniversary of the Oct. 7, 2023 attack after Lawler challenged her to do so during a debate.
Conley, meanwhile, has tied Lawler to President Donald Trump, accusing him of being a rubber stamp for Trump’s legislative priorities.
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In early LA mayoral results, Karen Bass holds slim lead over Nithya Raman, who sparred with DSA on Israel
Early returns in the Los Angeles mayoral election showed incumbent Karen Bass with a slim lead over Councilmember Nithya Raman, whose comments on Israel became a flashpoint in the race.
The first batch of results — totaling about 500,000 votes — showed Bass leading Raman, 50.8% to 49.2%.
The final outcome may not be known until Wednesday or later, a common occurrence in tight California races due to the preponderance of mail-in ballots. Nearly 90% of California voters did so by mail in the June primary.
But if the primary results are any indication, Bass’ lead may evaporate as more votes are counted.
In the June 2 open primary — a system in which the top two vote-getters from any party advance to a runoff — Raman trailed a Republican, Spencer Pratt, by eight points for second place behind Bass. She won the ensuing batches of mail-in ballots, but did not pass Pratt until June 7. She ultimately surpassed him by more than four percentage points.
Raman, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, has clashed with the organization — and frustrated many of her Jewish constituents — while trying to strike a balance on Israel. She has called the war in Gaza a genocide, but declined to adopt the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions platform — a stance that led the DSA to consider expelling her.
Bass, a mainstream Democrat who served six terms in Congress before running for mayor in 2022, entered the race as a historically unpopular incumbent, largely thanks to her response to the 2025 Los Angeles wildfires. Raman endorsed Bass prior to declaring her own candidacy on the last day to enter the race, a move Bass has characterized as a personal betrayal.
The polls swung back and forth in the weeks leading up to the election. Bass, who won most labor endorsements, was leading until September, when one poll sponsored by the Los Angeles Times showed Raman ahead by 11 points with a third of voters still undecided. A follow-up poll by the Times last week showed the two in a dead heat.
Unlike many other DSA candidates up for election across the country on Tuesday, Raman, an urban policy wonk who immigrated to the U.S. from India when she was 6, never made Israel a focal point of her campaign. Instead, she focused more on housing, homelessness and budget policy.
But her membership in the DSA, an interview she granted Hasan Piker during the primary and the genocide comments dogged her anyway, especially among Jewish Angelenos.
Raman, after publicly condemning the DSA’s anti-Israel statements after Oct. 7, sponsored a resolution for a ceasefire and return of hostages in March 2024, disappointing mainstream Jewish groups who called the motion one-sided. Then, during the primary, Raman told Piker she believed the Gaza war was a genocide and that Israel was an apartheid state. She also said she would not seek the endorsement of pro-Israel Democratic party groups as she had in 2024.
Her record on Israel seemed likely to come up when Raman participated in the candidate forum for Jewish voters Sept. 29. But Raman struggled to get through answers about the DSA, Piker and especially genocide and BDS — which she called a “legitimate form of peaceful protest” — leading to loud audience groans. During Bass’ turn on stage, the mayor said she did not support BDS and did not believe the war in Gaza was a genocide.
Mail-in voters historically skew to the left, and the primary vote may offer a preview of the margin Raman might need.
In that election, about 58% of the total votes were tallied election night, when Bass led Raman 36.5% to 21%. Raman got the biggest share of the ensuing ballot batches, beating Bass by about five percentage points.
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