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How the CEO of New York’s largest food bank is inspired by Jewish values
(New York Jewish Week) — At the Food Bank for New York City, one of the largest food banks in the country, the holiday season is crucial to ensuring New Yorkers have enough food to be able to live with dignity.
Since its founding in 1983, the organization has provided over one billion meals to New Yorkers in need — as well as offering free SNAP assistance, tax preparation services and financial literacy programs to low-income residents.
“Our central mission is that we feed people for today, but we have made significant investments in programming that truly helps to lift people out of poverty,” president and chief executive officer Leslie Gordon told the New York Jewish Week. “Because the reason why people are food insecure to begin with is a resource problem. It’s an inability to get connected to networks or resources, because of racist systems or policy issues.”
Gordon, who is Jewish, has helmed the organization since 2020, and in some ways, rose to the role in a way that seemed inevitable. As a child, she loved to watch her grandfather sell meat, produce and other goods from the grocery store he owned in Tarrytown, New York, and deliver food donations to the needy. Her mother, who also grew up at the store, was the executive director at the Hunts Point Produce Market, the country’s largest wholesale produce market.
Prior to joining Food Bank for New York, Gordon held leadership roles at Feeding Westchester, a food bank network in Westchester County and City Harvest, which helps make fresh, nutritious food accessible around New York. Starting her job at the beginning of the pandemic, Gordon has overseen a doubling of the Food Bank for New York’s annual food distribution across the city from 70 million pounds to 150 million pounds.
A fourth-generation Tarrytown resident, Gordon has been a member of the Conservative congregation Temple Beth Abraham her entire life. She lives in the same house that she, her grandfather and her mother grew up in, with her wife, two dogs and two cats.
The New York Jewish Week chatted with Gordon about her background, her favorite parts of the job and the Jewish family values that got her here.
This interview has been lightly condensed and edited for length and clarity.
After leadership roles at two other food banks, Gordon took over the top position at Food Bank for New York City in March 2020. She credits her Jewish family values for helping guide her. (Courtesy)
New York Jewish Week: How have your Jewish values guided you as the CEO of Food Bank for New York?
Leslie Gordon: The thing about my connection to Judaism at the Food Bank is really a personal responsibility around doing tikkun olam. It’s an ever-present, everyday commitment to making the world more just and equal through social action, which is what we do every day at Food Bank — helping New Yorkers across the five boroughs to have the resources they need to be able to have a stable, healthy life where they can thrive and look forward to working on achieving their dreams.
Food is culture. Food is love. Food is history. Food has always been a big part of my personal Jewish experience — whether through holidays or through historical explorations. My grandfather was a butcher. He grew up in a small Jewish enclave in Rockland County called Pot Cheese Hollow [now Spring Valley], which is a sort of a European framing for all things cottage cheese.
You started this job right at the beginning of the pandemic. What was that like, and what was the path that led you to working at Food Bank?
I’ll never forget this: My first day was March 30, 2020. It was a little crazy to be the humble leader of one of the nation’s largest food banks at a time when the need was historically outsized and quickly escalated. It was a little bit of a challenge and, frankly, has been for most of my tenure.
Again, it goes back to my Jewish familial roots. I am carrying on a family legacy of feeding people: My grandfather, Norman Goldberg, was the son of European immigrants. When they came over [to America], and in his growing up years in that enclave in Rockland County, they were really, really poor. One of their biggest assets, believe it or not, was a dairy cow — no running water, no indoor plumbing. He would tell stories as kids that sometimes the only thing he ate in the course of a day was an apple that he picked off a neighboring farmer’s tree.
Fast forward many years into the future, he was a successful businessman, between a grocery store, a butcher store and a wine and liquor store, amongst other pursuits. He never forgot where he came from and he would talk to us about the importance of connecting people with food, and again doing tikkun olam. They would get phone calls from the rabbi at Temple Beth Abraham in Tarrytown, where they lived, because food banks and food pantries didn’t exist back then — the World War II era all the way through the 1950s, ’60s, and even ’70s. They would get a list of people in the community who needed help and [my grandfather] would take my mother by the arm and they would go to the local grocery store and shop. Frequently, as my mom tells it now, they’d end up in a local fourth-floor walk-up apartment building, ring the bell, drop the groceries and go, because you wanted to preserve the dignity of those whom you are helping.
That really made an impression on me. My grandfather was also an avid backyard gardener and was famous for leaving those little brown lunch bags full of excess produce from his backyard garden on people’s stoops.
My mother became the head of the world’s largest wholesale produce terminal, which is based in the Hunts Point section of South Bronx. I caught the bug on logistics and operations in food and really the romanticism of the food system. I’m still of that generation where I feel very connected to my local food system and farmers. I had a very unique growing up experience, where I got to see train cars full of broccoli or potatoes or other amazing produce that traveled through small towns and cities across the United States to land up in the South Bronx. So, I’ve been in the arena of food banking for about 15 years. I couldn’t have predicted it, I call it a happy accident. Of the 10 food banks in New York State, I’ve had the pleasure and honor of leading three of them.
What type of outreach do you do to New York’s Jewish community?
We’re a city of about 8.4 million people, and 1.6 million of them, give or take, are people who just don’t know where their next meal is coming from or what it will be. Ask yourself: Have you ever been hungry for a long period of time during the day? How do you deal with that? Imagine if that was your every day. That is compounded, potentially, by other struggles that you have. People don’t live single-issue lives. So, typically, when you’re food insecure, there are a lot of other issues that you’re grappling with — could be housing issues, could be mental health issues, could be employment or underemployment issues. There’s just a lot going on in the mix. New York City is a particularly expensive place to live. It’s a tough environment.
We’re the heart of a network of about 800 on-the-ground partners across the five boroughs. On nearly every street in nearly every neighborhood, our partners are food pantries, community kitchens, senior centers, shelters, community-based organizations like New York City Housing Authority or a Boys and Girls Club. In the case of the Jewish community, we have relationships with more than 40 on-the-ground agencies that specifically serve observant Jews. Organizations like Masbia, Alexander Rapoport’s restaurant-style soup kitchen that he’s now famous for.
We’re serving one of the nation’s largest kosher observant populations in the U.S. right here in New York City. We’re committed to making sure that kosher-observing communities in Williamsburg, Midwood, Crown Heights, Coney Island, Lower East Side, etc., have access to good kosher food that they can feel good about. The number of Jews in New York City who struggle is just astounding. We have a very large Jewish population, obviously. And so, you know, it’s something that’s on my mind a lot. I’ve had the opportunity to work with the Jewish community in New York now for over 15 years. Studies tell us that more than 10% of Jewish adults, and Jewish adults with kids in New York are food insecure. It’s serious. You’d be astounded, probably, to learn that more than 20% of adults in Jewish households in New York are at the poverty line.
What is your favorite part of the job?
A job as a food bank leader is very, very unique. In the course of a day, I can work on operations, I can work on marketing and communications, I can meet with donors, I can be on the phone with one of our agencies or food pantries on the ground, or I can be working on policy or advocacy. So it’s a really varied position. The most fun part about my job is the people and the stories. It’s the people who we serve who just have really big hearts and deep and interesting personal stories, and they’re just like you and me — moms and dads and families and kids who are trying to live their best life. We take the opportunity to be able to help them along the way pretty seriously.
For me, it starts internally with our Food Bank family. I take that really seriously. The culture in the organization is really important to me. I want people to feel supported and have all the resources they need to do their job, to be excited and energized about the ability and opportunity they have to impact people’s lives. At the end of the day, it’s always the people.
I’m a bit of a builder, and a fixer. It’s just who I am. Why I’m that way, I have no idea. My mother tells me that I’m my grandfather’s granddaughter. I just have a particular affinity for how things work and systems and processes and making things better and more efficient. It’s just part of my DNA, I guess. That is a skill set that really fits well with what’s required to run a food bank.
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The post How the CEO of New York’s largest food bank is inspired by Jewish values appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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They traveled to the U.S. as Jewish teens. Here’s how these 4 Israelis see America now.
As the U.S. celebrates the 250th anniversary of its founding, some past participants in the Bronfman Fellowship, which for three decades has brought a cohort of 17-year-old Israelis to the United States for two weeks each summer, looked back on how their visits — and what they learned about the American experiment — shaped their lives. Here are their stories as told to Talya Zax and Sage Lattman, edited and condensed for clarity.
Oz Bin Nun
Oz is a combat veteran of the Egoz Unit, a former Jewish Agency emissary and co-founder of the “Reserve Duty Servants Forum,” leading strategic advocacy for reservists’ rights.
My first time in the U.S. was through Bronfman, and the most honest way to describe it was life changing. I grew up in a very, very Israeli family — all of my grandparents were born in Israel, which is pretty rare, and my parents don’t really speak English, which is not very common in Israel. I didn’t think I’d be in the U.S. in the future even, so Bronfman for me was the first time that I found myself there.
I’m trying to find the U.S. that I met during my Bronfman journey, but I’m not sure it really exists.
Back then I thought the U.S. was a magical place, but it was also the whole Bronfman idea: you’re driving around, you have the best speakers, you speak with the most interesting people, in a very open-minded, curious and friendly way — more than friends, kind of like allies to your journey. All that framework created a pretty magical experience, and when I got back to Israel I was like, ‘Wow, it really changed something inside me.’ But I came back in 2016, which was also the rise of Trump and a lot of things that I didn’t see in 2015, and I guess a lot of Americans didn’t see as well.
When I think about the U.S., the first thing is some specific smell that Americans aren’t really aware of — something wet in the air, and a lot of things are very green. And almost immediately after that is the sense of room. There is enough room. When you’re going there, you don’t feel that someone else is taking your place, or stepping on your toes. In Israel there is a sense that there is no room; everything is so crowded, and not just physically. There is something about just driving until the horizon — it’s a sense of awe and a sense of freedom.
My wife and I lived for two years in Madison, Wisconsin, not in the classic places, not on the coasts, and to some extent we saw the real America — the beautiful things in it and the problematic things in it. Once you’re driving through America, America makes much more sense. You drive for six or eight or 10 hours and around Southern Illinois, St. Louis, Arkansas you see the signs flip, and the best coffee in Mobile, Alabama has a pride flag. I feel like a citizen of two worlds — and it’s rare to be a citizen of two of the biggest Jewish communities in the world, specifically in a time when they’re spreading apart, and it’s harder and harder to find a common ground.
Alex Rif
Alex is an Israeli-Russian social activist and poet, who is currently a candidate on behalf of the ‘Yashar!’ party with Gadi Eisenkot. She is the founder and former CEO of One Million Lobby, the first and only Israeli non-profit that promotes a better social, economic, state-religious and cultural reality for the 1.2 million Israelis from the former Soviet Union states (IFSU).
I went to the U.S. in 2003, more than 20 years ago, when I was in 11th grade — and I want to jump to the end, which is that yesterday I joined a political party, with Gadi Eisenkot, as a candidate. A lot of the things that Bronfman gave me led me to that, specifically the visit to the U.S., because it was the first time I actually met different communities of Jews.
I come from Soviet Jewry — we came after 70 years of our Jewish culture, stories, heritage, religion being erased — and I didn’t feel connected in Israel to the Israeli Orthodox mainstream. Visiting the U.S. was the first time I saw that there are many ways of being Jewish, and they are all beautiful and profound and meaningful and deep. That was an enormous discovery for me. From the other side, I learned the importance of the connection between Israel and outside of Israel.
I made Aliyah when I was 5, from Ukraine, and like a lot of immigrants I tried to be more Israeli than the Israelis. This trip changed my perspective: there’s a big Jewish peoplehood, and Israel is not the only place. It may be the shelter, the biggest center, but it’s not the only place. It shaped my professional path — for the past 10 years I’ve dedicated my life to the Russian-speaking community in Israel, to issues like conversion and the grandchild clause, which we have to guard, because it’s the only law that gives people who intermarried the chance to come back in a time of need, when antisemitism rises, as we see now in New York.
One of our meetings during the fellowship was with candidates for Congress and people who worked in government — the first time I met high-ranked elected people, and I saw how much good they can do and how much power they have in their hands. It felt like it was in the touch of my hand: if I can meet them, I can be them. It was really empowering, even before I met Israeli officials. I have a picture of myself standing in a meeting room with a U.S. flag, in a very warm coat, at the speaking point, proud and excited — it opened something in my mind.
For me the U.S. is a sister country. Part of my heart is being ripped apart and lives in the U.S. now, with friends who’ve left. The U.S. is the best friend we ever had, and probably ever will have, and we have to do everything we can to save this friendship and this alliance.
Lior Soroka
Lior is a freelance journalist and screenwriter based in Tel Aviv. He reports for The Washington Post, covering the conflict in the Middle East. He is currently writing a play for the Haifa Theatre and co-writing a television series.
It was pretty long ago — back in 1999. I was a teenager then, in 11th grade, and it was a very unique experience going to meet the Jewish communities in the States. In Israel the boundaries of Judaism are very clear: there is a clear boundary whether you’re secular, or religious, or ultra-Orthodox. It felt like in the States there are more possibilities to experience your Jewishness. Part of it, I think, is because in Israel, Judaism and the state are intertwined. You feel that in recent years, even the tension between the different denominations is growing, and I felt it less while I visited the States.
As a Jewish person who lives in Israel, I always felt this deep connection between Israel and the diaspora. It always felt like Israel can be a safe place for Jews, and the Jewish community abroad is also there to support Israel from afar. But recently, since the war broke out, I think a lot of things have changed. Many Jews abroad and in Israel are asking about the path that Israel is taking in the last years, and how it influenced this unique relationship between Israel and the diaspora. Israel needs to remember it, so it won’t lose this strong ally we have with the Jews who live in the States — because some of them are saying they don’t want anything to do with Israel now. It’s becoming harder to identify yourself as a Zionist or pro-Israeli. We don’t need to take this relationship as granted, because we can really lose it.
As a journalist, the main thing is to be curious, and my visit taught me a lot about how things work in the States — it was a first glimpse into American politics and the connection between Jews and the United States. We visited D.C. and met some Congress people, we went to the Holocaust Museum, we met different denominations in New York. It’s better when you see things with your own eyes.
The most meaningful part was a meeting at Congregation Beit Simchat Torah, the LGBTQ+ community in New York. As a teenager in the closet at 17, to see how Judaism and being gay can go together was very meaningful. A couple of years afterward I came back by myself for a huge Yom Kippur service, thousands of LGBTQ Jews gathering together. In Israel you hear people like Bezalel Smotrich saying these things cannot go together — and in the States, you see how it can work, and does work.”
Hadas Semo
Hadas, 20, studied at Ulpana Tzvia Afula. After national service at Amal High School in Ashdod, she began working in the field of education as a youth counselor.
It was about January 2023, and it was just a wonderful experience. I’d never been abroad before. Everything about the program made it more special, because it was all about our identity as Jews. At the meetings with the people who were from America and were Jews — I was mesmerized most of the time. That’s what stood out to me the most.
Before, I didn’t really think about what the U.S. meant to me; I felt like it was something not connected to me in any way. But when I came there, I felt connected, because I saw the Jews there — it’s not only Israel that has this special energy and this special history. That was the first time I felt like this and saw it with my own eyes, and I feel the connection now. I saw New York as this big city from the movies, so I was very excited, and everything just felt magical.
In my experience as an Israeli Ethiopian, a Black Israeli, I had some thoughts and conflicts being in the program. It’s one thing to be Black in the world and another to be Black in Israel itself, because of all the difficulties we have with racism and fitting into society. When I came to Bronfman I was myself, I sometimes felt a little unconnected to the people, because everyone was a specific type of energy, the way they grew up, and a little white. It was always in my head: I’m a Black Ethiopian in this group. I was the only one — you can tell just by looking. I started wondering who I would be in the U.S., whether I’d just be seen as a Black person there — what they see is what they see, nobody knows I’m a Jew.
In the U.S., the manager of the fellowship arranged a meeting for me with a former fellow who’s biracial, and she told me about her experience as a half-Black Jew in America — the conflicts, the things that come with it. I felt like I needed someone who was like me, who understood me. We had so much fun, and something clicked. It helped me accept who I am and where I am, and understand that no matter what and who and how I am, I’m good as I am — it doesn’t matter the color, or where I came from, or what happened to me before.
The post They traveled to the U.S. as Jewish teens. Here’s how these 4 Israelis see America now. appeared first on The Forward.
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Why I yelled at God on Kol Nidre
Last Kol Nidre, I yelled at God.
My husband was in the hospital. He had been since the day after Rosh Hashanah. I sat in services and thought of a friend of mine’s interpretation of the binding of Isaac: that it had been a test that Abraham had failed, because the whole point was that Abraham was supposed to argue back, and that’s why Abraham and God don’t speak after that moment. “You want me to argue back? Fine,” I snapped in my head to the God I otherwise think of as a metaphor. “Give him back to me.” I choked back tears as the congregation prayed to be inscribed in the Book of Life.
I had really been looking forward to those High Holidays. More specifically, I was looking forward to filling out the little prompts that Reboot sends out every year during the Days of Awe encouraging you to reflect on the year that was and the year that is to come. The year before last, I had written a lot about how badly I wanted a baby. Last year, I had one. My husband and I had welcomed our wonderful son into the world several weeks prior. And unlike most things in life, having a baby was as good as I thought it would be. Better, even. Some days I thought I would crack in half from so much happiness. Not all day, every day, of course. In week 10, in a little postpartum discussion group I’d brought him to, I cried at how much he cried. But the overwhelming mood was one of unbelievable happiness and gratitude. I was looking forward to taking stock of, and basking in, my joy over the course of those 10 days.
On Rosh Hashanah, we brought him to a service for babies and small children. I came home and drank tea with honey and cuddled him and watched the little video I had taken of him cooing as I encouraged him to “say” “Shanah Tovah” and he smiled.
In the next room, my husband was in pain. That night, he was sick. The next day, he went to the hospital. We thought he’d be home that afternoon. Instead, he was there for three weeks. The last of those was largely spent in the ICU, which is where we celebrated our five year wedding anniversary and our son turning three months old. The latent kidney issues we’d always known he had had were now acute. He would be on dialysis and would need a kidney transplant.
For the first couple of months, this seemed strangely manageable. He went to dialysis but he also still went to the office for work. We could still go up and back to New York City from our home in Washington, DC to see our families. We spent Thanksgiving and the holidays with them. We still talked about things like buying a bigger place and going on vacation to different countries and having a second baby.
Then, in the winter, his eyes became yellow. After several months and a genetic test we learned that he had a rare genetic mutation. It was responsible for his diabetes and his kidney issues and, we learned in the spring, for his liver issues, too. He would need not a kidney transplant from a live donor but a kidney and liver transplant from a deceased one.
It took several additional hospital stays to get that answer. Each time, he lost more weight and developed health complications even as the doctors aimed to solve the big ones. I wrote my little articles at various bedsides. I sometimes feel powerless in writing about antisemitism and illiberalism, but that was nothing next to the frustration I felt at my failure to move him through medical morass more quickly, or to magically make him well again.
I made compromises in my head. I would give up this or that. I would take on more of the childcare or housework or whatever else by myself because he couldn’t. I pushed my book deadline back. I pushed it back again. Fine. Take it. Just let me keep my family.
In all of this, our son did not remain a crying 10-week-old. He became, despite everything, a very happy baby, and his every little development—crawling and clapping and cruising—made me happy, too. I watched as he played with his toy cars and flipped through his board books, giggling to himself, and as he grabbed his stuffed Grover in his little hands with dimples on the knuckles. Once, while I was putting him down to sleep, he grinned then blew a raspberry at me. I blew one back. We went on like that, quietly in the dark, making funny noises with our lips and tongues. My husband was in one of his many hospital stays that night and I marveled at how this moment of perfect wonder could be happening amidst my despair.
Our son made everything easier to navigate: I had a purpose and also a daily package of the affirmation of life and mischief. The contrast also made everything hurt. Our baby was so good. Why couldn’t everything be?
I made myself ask for, and accept, help. One friend accompanied my husband to medical appointments when I couldn’t be there. Others babysat our son. Another took our dog to the animal hospital one morning so that I could take our baby to his music class. People baked challah and cooked dinners and sent money for groceries and I hated saying yes but was so grateful that there was so much to say yes to. It won’t always be like this, my husband told me. He said that one day one of our friends will need help and we will know how to be there for them. I tried to remember that it would not be us asking for help forever, and that, in any case, asking for and receiving help was also part of what it meant to have built and be part of a community. That this, too, was what it meant to have a life that is part of a larger whole.
Various people mentioned the Book of Job to me. In some ways, I felt strangely jealous of Job, who at least has the opportunity to argue with the power responsible for his misfortune. If God appeared before me to taunt me, I wouldn’t just sit there and take it, I said. Someone told me that was the whole point. No one was showing up to take the blame because part of what was frustrating was that there was no one, really, to blame. Lots of people told me how unfair this all was. Of course it was. But so what? It wasn’t fair and that was that. Lots of things aren’t fair. Our situation was still more fair than many. The country and the world felt like they were falling apart. I wasn’t special. Lots of people yell at God on Kol Nidre and every other day. Or ask or beg God. And the universe and genetics and their husbands’ doctors, too.
The other thing about the Book of Job, I realized, is that Job had been happy. Did that past happiness make it more painful for him to sit there and listen to God talk about how He, and not Job, had made the oceans? Who cares who made the oceans? Job loved his wife and his children and then they were gone. Some people told me that all of this would make me appreciate what I had. But I had appreciated my little family.
What I had failed to appreciate, despite worrying theoretically about health as much as I did during pregnancy, was how little I had had to think about health in a terrifying and tangible way. An Uber driver on one of my seemingly countless trips to the hospital (why hadn’t I learned to drive?) told me that you have 1000 problems until you get sick, and then you just have one. I wanted to call my other 999 problems back. I missed them. I wished I could go back to when I thought there were books besides the Book of Life.
When he was finally listed for his transplant, we were told it would be a matter of weeks, soon, any day now. Days came and days went and he did not get the call. He ended up in the hospital for a week at a time, twice, for relatively minor complications. The doctors told us how sorry they were that he was there. I thought, but did not say, that the more time he spent in the hospital for reasons that weren’t a transplant and recovery, the harder it was to believe that things would ever get better.
On one of those hospital evenings, we asked each other how much more of this we could take. We wondered aloud whether he would ever get his transplant. And then, hours later, he got the call. About a day later, he had his surgery. Eleven hours after the procedure started, the surgeon told me that it was over and that my husband was fine.
For the first week, I waited every day for some surprise piece of bad news to come. The first week turned into a second week, at the end of which he came home. The first few days were very hard — recovery is a long and arduous process — but I watched my husband work his way back into walking again with a cane at one end of the room while, at the other, our son, armed with only a toy lion in each hand and evolutionary instinct, started to take wobbly steps.
I know this is not the end of the story, and I may never stop expecting things to once again become perilous. We are still in the middle and I don’t know how it will end and nobody can tell me. But I also know now that it is no small thing that a story gets to continue.
I have such grief for the year I thought I was going to have and didn’t. I have such jealousy toward people who get to be parents of babies and not have to think about medical crises. And I feel such joy when I think of our son’s playfulness and curiosity and even his stubborn streak and how he gets it from his father.
I don’t really know what I will take with me from this year into the next, but I know that, as we near these High Holidays, I’ve been thinking of the other story of the season: not Abraham and Isaac, but Jonah. I understand the story differently now.
Often people told me that they didn’t know how I was keeping it together. They wouldn’t be able to, they said. But I knew that they would. They would for the same reason I was able to: I had no other choice. I had to for my husband and my son and, yes, for myself. For as long as you’re alive, you have to keep it together, keep pressing forward, keep pushing, pushing, pushing, heaving yourself out of the belly of the giant fish. “You may not like cold water,” my mother told me the night before my husband had his surgery, “But if your boat is sinking, you need to jump and swim.”
We swim. We try to hold onto light in the dark and we wait for joy to come in the morning. Some days, the joy is just that there is another morning. It hurts so much. But to hold onto yourself and each other and jump and swim is also, I think, what it means to be in love, and to care and be cared for. It is, in other words, what it means to be inscribed in the Book of Life.
The post Why I yelled at God on Kol Nidre appeared first on The Forward.
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Adidas apologizes for campaign with Israeli veteran amputee after calls to boycott
(JTA) — Adidas has apologized for featuring an Israeli former soldier and amputee in a campaign advertising its service for people with missing legs, which sparked calls for a boycott.
Shalev Biton, who lost his left leg during the 2021 Israel-Gaza conflict, appeared in a promotional video for the sportswear company’s Single Shoe service. The program was introduced in Europe earlier this year to allow amputees to buy just one shoe.
The campaign, filmed in Hebrew, showed Biton trying on a single sneaker at a store in Israel and running outside. It did not mention his army service or how he lost his leg. Biton was in a military vehicle that was hit by a missile while on a protective patrol of villages on the Israeli side of the Gaza border, according to Israel’s Channel 12.
After the video circulated widely online, pro-Palestinian activists called for a boycott of Adidas, referencing Gaza’s high number of amputees created by Israeli attacks since October 2023.
Adidas apologized for the campaign on Monday in a statement on the Adidas Arabia Instagram account.
“We recognize that an image used in a recent local activation has raised concerns and strong reactions,” the company said. “It was never our intent to cause offence, and we apologize for anyone affected. We acknowledge the concerns that have been raised and are taking the feedback seriously.”
The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), part of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, said the apology from Adidas was insufficient and demanded that the company “immediately remove the Israeli soldier from all Adidas promotional material and channels.”
“Those ‘affected’ are millions of Palestinians living under Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, its illegal military occupation of Palestinian territory, and its decades long settler-colonial apartheid regime,” PACBI said in a statement.
Biton said on his Instagram account that he received “an insane wave of hate” over recent days. In an appeal for support, he told viewers, “I want to feel that you are here with me.”
Gaza has recorded over 5,000 limb amputations due to traumatic injuries, according to a May report from the World Health Organization. The United Nations reports that it has the highest number of child amputees per capita in the world.
Adidas weathered another controversy in 2024 for advertising sneakers based on a model first released during the 1972 Munich Olympics, when 11 Israeli athletes were killed by a Palestinian terrorist group. The company faced backlash from Israel and various Jewish groups for choosing Bella Hadid, a Palestinian-American model and vocal pro-Palestinian advocate, to front the campaign. Adidas subsequently dropped Hadid, prompting criticism from pro-Palestinian voices.
Adidas and Biton could not immediately be reached for further details.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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