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How the Lower East Side has changed since the 1988 rom-com ‘Crossing Delancey’
(New York Jewish Week) — The classic and very Jewish 1988 film “Crossing Delancey” is one of those movies that feels both extremely of its time and also completely timeless.
Director Joan Micklin Silver’s film has all the classic rom-com trappings: A woman who’s torn between two men (and to that end, two worlds); complaints about how hard it is to meet a man in New York City (as true in 1988 as it is in 2022), and a “mother” figure who knows better (here, a Jewish grandmother known as Bubbe, and in this case, she actually does know better). You could pluck all these specifics and drop them into a present-day film — and, if told with the heart and care of “Crossing Delancey,” still have a pretty good movie.
Yet there’s one thing about the “Crossing Delancey” that fully anchors it in the past, and that is its late-1980s Lower East Side setting. While our heroine, Izzy (Amy Irving), lives and works on the Upper West Side, she pays frequent visits to her Bubbe (Yiddish theater actress Reizl Bozyk), her grandmother, downtown. From the moment that Izzy steps off the train at Delancey Street, she’s transported to another world: a bustling Jewish enclave with market-goers shopping for produce, friends and neighbors in the streets kibbitzing and a Hasidic child sitting outside the subway, enjoying a treat from a local bakery.
This dichotomy between the “Old World” of the Lower East Side and the “New World” uptown is the central conflict of the film: Izzy’s inability to reconcile her Jewish roots with her desire to live a secular, intelligentsia lifestyle, as represented by her two love interests (Sam the Pickle Man and Anton, the self-important author).
However, rewatching the film in the present day, I can’t help but wonder: Would Izzy run from the shtetl if she knew that in a few years, it wouldn’t exist anymore? That due to rising rents and a shift in population, many Jewish businesses would meet their end — or, somewhat ironically, be part of the flight to Brooklyn that began in the early-to-mid 2000s? In some ways, 1988 itself was the beginning and the end: It marked the opening of the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, an effort to preserve the neighborhood’s immigrant past, and it was the very same year that Mayor Koch created a new redevelopment proposal for the Seward Park Extension, a canary in the coal mine for the sea change of development the city would see over the next 30 years.
Re-watching the film in 2022, it struck me how the Lower East Side’s bustling Jewish enclave — the same place where my grandparents were born and raised — has since been lost to time, gentrification and re-zoning plans. These days, the neighborhood paints a different picture entirely: giant buildings hog entire city blocks, with construction promising even more sky-high buildings. There’s no specific character to the neighborhood, no story to tell, few places more integral to the city’s fabric than the Delancey-Essex McDonald’s.
Of course, if you’ve lived in the city long enough, you know there’s no getting comfortable. New Yorkers have to, in essence, harden their hearts. We must accept that the local business you love that’s here today very well could be gone tomorrow — even if that business is a Duane Reade. The Lower East Side of today is not the neighborhood of 1988, or 1968 or 1928.
But amongst all of the present-day residential developments, upscale clothing stores and fast food chains, old-school Jewish businesses like The Pickle Guys, Kossar’s Bagels and Bialys and Yonah Schimmel’s Knish Bakery are still thriving. (And, I’d like to think that if you look hard enough, you’ll find some meddling but well-meaning bubbes and yentas, too.)
While we might not be able to fully experience the Lower East Side as the cast and crew of “Crossing Delancey,” here are four places from “Crossing Delancey” that you can still visit, and four that are sadly gone forever.
What Remains Today
Bubbe’s Apartment
154 Broome Street
The interior shots of Bubbe’s apartment, where Izzy fulfills all of her granddaughterly duties, like singing with her grandmother in Yiddish and plucking her chin hairs, were filmed at 154 Broome Street. The 181-unit building sits at the mouth of the Williamsburg Bridge — which is why Bubbe has that spectacular view — and is part of the New York City Housing Authority’s Seward Park Housing Extension. So while you still can visit the exterior of Bubbe’s apartment building today, don’t linger too long — it might weird out the current tenants.
Essex Market
108 Essex Street
This one is a little complicated. The original Essex Market, where Bubbe shows off her Korean-language skills, still stands today. (If you get off at the subway at Delancey Street, you can’t really miss it.) But that iteration of the market closed its doors in 2019 — in order to relocate to a building across the street so big and so glassy it would make Michael Bloomberg blush. In addition to apartments, office space and a movie theater (it’s a truly mixed-use building for our modern times!), Essex Market does boast local, independent vendors, such as Essex Olive & Spice, Porto Rico Importing Co. and Puebla Mexicana food. Per the New York Times, only one of the market’s vendors decided to forgo the move, opting instead for retirement. But you might want to pay a visit to the original Essex Market while you still can — even if only to give it one last look. Following the move, Essex Market initially housed some avant-garde art installations, but it has since seemingly closed its doors for good. According to Gothamist, it’s to be razed to create — what else? — more condos.
Seward Park Handball Court
Essex Street between Grand and Hester Streets
From the moment Sam and Izzy meet, he makes no effort to hide his ardor. In fact, I’d say he uses every weapon in his arsenal to demonstrate his interest — even going so far as to try to impress her with his handball skills when she unexpectedly drops by the court. (You might also clock his CUNY sweatshirt, as I most certainly did.) The handball court is still there, should you decide you want to play a pickup game, but sadly the court’s colorful mural depicted in the film has since been painted over.
Bonus: Gray’s Papaya
2090 Broadway
While this article is focused on the film’s Lower East Side locations, and with good reason, we’d be remiss if we didn’t point out that one important New York institution Izzy visits triumphantly remains: The Upper West Side Gray’s Papaya. There, Izzy celebrates her birthday with a friend and a hot dog — the right way to do it, in my opinion — when a woman bursts in singing “Some Enchanted Evening,” for everyone and no one in particular. It’s one of many of the film’s classic New York moments.
What’s Been Replaced
Steinberg’s Dairy
21 Essex Street
When Izzy emerges from that train at Delancey Street, director Silver takes great care to immerse us in this world. The camera stays on Izzy as she walks from the subway to Bubbe’s apartment, passing a host of local businesses along the way. Among them is Steinberg’s Dairy, which once lived at 21 Essex Street. Steinberg’s Dairy, which also had an Upper West Side location, offered staples like herring, egg salad and vegetarian chopped liver for less than a dollar back in 1941. Today, if you’re in the area, you can grab a drink at the punk rock bar Clockwork, which opened in 2013.
Zelig Blumenthal
13 Essex Street
Izzy also takes us by Zelig’s Blumenthal (also known as Z & A Kol Torah), where three older women sit outside, enjoying the sights and sounds around them. Once a popular Judaica store, it unexpectedly closed its Lower East Side doors in 2010 after 60 years in business. At the time, then-owner Mordechai Blumenthal made the decision to relocate the store to Flatbush due to a dwindling Orthodox population and foot traffic in the area, and a landlord who made clear he “wanted him gone.” It’s unclear if the Flatbush location remains open today, but a vintage clothing store called Country Of has taken up its original spot.
Posner’s Pickles (AKA Guss’ Pickles)
35 Essex Street
Posner’s Pickles, as run by Sam the Pickle Man in the film, was never exactly a real place to begin with. Filming took place at the world-famous Guss’ Pickles, which first opened on Hester Street in 1920, before relocating to Essex Street, where there were once over 80 pickle vendors for locals to choose from. After a stint on Orchard Street, Guss’ Pickles followed in the footsteps of so many others by then, leaving Manhattan to open up shop in Brooklyn’s Dekalb Market in 2017. While Guss’ Pickles is today based out of the Bronx, their delicious pickles are available to order no matter where you are in the country, via Goldbelly. Today, 35 Essex Street is home to Delancey Wine — appropriately named, but doesn’t offer possibilities for a slogan like “a joke and a pickle for only a nickel,” as Posner’s Pickles did in the film.
Schapiro’s Kosher Wines
124 Rivington Street
For 100 years, Schapiro’s Kosher Wines proudly served the Jewish community as the only kosher winery in New York City. It’s where Bubbe chides Izzy for her lack of interest in Sam, and while today the pair couldn’t have this conversation outside Schapiro’s, they could grab brunch at the restaurant Essex. Home to New York City’s “longest-running Brunch Party,” Essex salutes its Lower East Side roots with dishes like potato pancakes and Israeli couscous.
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The post How the Lower East Side has changed since the 1988 rom-com ‘Crossing Delancey’ appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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This isn’t just a dance group; it’s a model for what coexistence could look like
There are three of them onstage. Arielle Rosales, a Mexican Puerto-Rican Jew from the Lower East Side, is dancing flamenco. Amanda Castro, a Brooklyn-born Puerto-Rican from New Haven, is tapping. And Brinda Guha, a Bengali-Indian from New Jersey, is doing Kathak — a form of Indian classical dance. They’re three performers raised in different artistic traditions who became a trio a decade ago.
But as Soles of Duende, these artists never wanted to create a “fusion” that blurs or erases their identities, cultures, dance styles, or legacies. Nothing is stripped of its history or blended beyond recognition.
“We’re not trying to make a smoothie. We’re trying to make a fruit salad,” Rosales told me. “We want you to be able to pick up the pineapple and pick up the watermelon and pick up the mango.”
Together, the women move. They vocalize. They invent rhythms and songs with their feet. The sounds of Castro’s taps, Rosales’s heels, and Guha’s ghungroos — multi-tiered strings of bells that wrap from the ankles up toward the shins and calves — are just as much a part of the music played by their three counterparts in their band: a percussionist, an electric guitarist and a trumpeter.
You can hear these percussive dance forms and you can feel them, too, mingling and building, filling the air and shaking the room in rehearsals.
‘Carrying the blessing and burden of tradition’
The collaboration started as a one-off project. Rosales and Guha were friends, their paths having crossed at Broadway Dance Center, a popular New York City studio where Rosales taught flamenco and Guha ran what was then called the International Student Visa Program. In 2016, they applied to create a short piece and participate in a show together.
“We wanted to do a trio of three different percussive styles,” said Rosales. “We wanted a third sound.” They found it in Castro, who wowed Guha with a tap solo she performed at a competition.
“I was so enthralled with the fact that there were other women percussive dancers making space for other women percussive dancers,” Castro said. “There are still people who think percussive dance is a less-than art form,” she said. “It is something that never gets the flowers that it deserves.”
What started with an eight-minute piece at an experimental theater on the Lower East Side led to a year-long residency that culminated in a full-length production. The question explicit in its title “Can We Dance Here?” reflects the challenges they faced finding rehearsal spaces. Practitioners of percussive forms often find themselves in a perpetual search for floors they can dance on and spaces that will welcome, or at least tolerate, them.
“It was about permission,” Guha said, both literal and philosophical. Not just can we use this floor, she said, but: “Do we have permission to mess with tradition like this? Do we have permission to [have a] dialogue with each other and change a couple of rules?”
Over time, their questions evolved, Guha added: “How far can we go with this thing? How close to our humanity can we get through the form of percussive dance?” They stopped asking for permission as much, though they continue to seek a balance between honoring established practices and pushing them forward.
“All three of us are both carrying the blessing and burden of tradition,” said Guha, who started learning Kathak from her mother, an immigrant from Kolkata, India, at the small dance school she ran out of their garage. “I grew up with lots of students in the house. I grew up with ghungroos, our bells, literally jingling in our house all day long.”
Guha went on to study with other teachers, including in India, much as Rosales inherited the traditions of flamenco not only in New York City, but also in flamenco meccas in Spain and New Mexico. Castro learned about tap legacies and lineages in bits and pieces, from Fred Astaire movies to classes with icons like Jason Samuels Smith.
“The three of us are really open to breaking a lot of rules,” Guha said, “as long as we know what rules we’re breaking and why.”
They bonded fast, not only as artists with shared sensibilities, Rosales said: “We became family pretty quickly.”
‘We’re doing it in each of our own ways”
Two hours into rehearsal, Soles of Duende is floating in and out of choreography, trying steps, checking cues with the musicians, chatting and smiling, making jokes and scat singing rhythms for each other. You can see them through a glass storefront in East Harlem, an unassuming studio tucked between a corner laundromat and a stoop draped with a Puerto Rican flag, under which a few men gather around a card table.
Here at the Rhythmic Arts Center, they’re rehearsing sections from “The Kitchen,” a full-length production the group is currently developing. The show pays homage to the traditions and cultures that shaped them — all of which value gathering around food — and explores family dynamics, celebration, ritual, hardship, and connection. The kitchen, Castro said, looms large as a communal place where families show up, break bread, fight at the table, announce big news, and meet new people.
“We also have a deep, deep love of food,” Guha said, explaining that the three dancers and the band often eat together, whether they’re going out during tour dates, cooking for each other, or hanging out and talking about cooking shows on TV. “We gather around food at all times. When we’re sad, when we’re mad, when we’re creative, when we’re stuck.”
Indeed, inside the rehearsal space, there’s a plate of fruit set out on a bench. The floor vibrates, knocking over the phone Castro set up to film one of their final runs before the next day’s performance. She scurries over to prop it back up, then gives up. It’s no match for them as they dance for and with each other.
“The Kitchen” is about “nostalgia and culture and all of that, but it’s not just that,” Rosales said. “Each of our sounds, each of our instruments is an ingredient, and when you let it simmer, we literally are cooking up something live.”
Watching them close up, it’s striking to pick out moments when these three dancers are performing a phrase seemingly in unison, only to notice that they are each executing slightly different steps using distinct dance vocabularies. If the common thread for a particular step is bringing both arms up overhead and then back down to rest by the sides of the body, they have to ask themselves: What would that look like in tap, flamenco, and Kathak?
The result often looks so smooth — a 2022 New York Times review called their show “a treasure and a triumph” and they graced the March 2024 cover of Dance Magazine — that it belies the struggle it takes to compose coherent, polished choreography out of three different cultural forms and artistic languages.
“We get a lot of people that think they see the quote-unquote product and say, ‘Oh you guys you work so well together!’ And that’s true,” Rosales said. But the ultimate cohesion rarely comes easily. Sometimes they’ll spend a three-hour rehearsal choreographing just one minute of new material. “It is so hard to come up with these things, and it comes with a lot of blocks,” she said, “a lot of friction and sometimes arguments.”
They’ve learned along the way when they need to put an idea in the “parking lot” to deal with later, when they need to sit down and talk, when they need to admit their brains are mush, when they need to explain or understand something about one of their dance forms, and when they need to remember their shared goals.
“We’ve named the idea Greta,” Castro said. “So when we are not on the same page, we say, ‘Greta, what is the answer? … What does the work need?’ Then our feelings can’t get in the way.”
At about 9 p.m., it’s time to call it quits. The dancers, musicians, and Greta all seem satisfied. They’re ready for their show the following evening.
‘Talk to each other and with each other’
First they argue about rice. In an excerpt from “The Kitchen” they perform the next day, the three women congregate over an invisible pot. With all these cooks in the kitchen, Castro tells the audience, “you can imagine that each of them thinks that their pot of rice is the best pot of rice.”
“This is burnt!” one exclaims. Another slaps a hand away: “Get your hand out my pot.”
On this particular evening in August, Soles is the opening act on the opening night of the Battery Dance Festival. The annual event is held on an outdoor stage in a waterfront park at the southern tip of Manhattan, next door to the Museum of Jewish Heritage.
“Part of the mission of the festival is to break down barriers between people, between cultures, introduce new forms of dance to the audience members, and to bring people together,” said Battery Dance’s executive director Emad Salem. “They perfectly embody that mission,” he said, “coming together in this seamless way.”
Though the sky is gray and heavy with the threat of rain, the amphitheater-style seats are packed. And while it started drizzling earlier during the group’s tech rehearsal — leading to a scramble to cover equipment and altering the sound of the wooden flooring onstage — the audience is none the wiser.
Standing behind the last row of seats, Curtis Thomas can’t help but dance along as he cheers and applauds. “It’s just so vibrant. All of the energy comes right at you,” said Thomas, who is a dancer himself. “It immediately opens you up somehow. And I love the way it’s just so multidisciplinary and the way that all of the styles and forms of dance and music talk to each other and with each other.”
The symbolism of the scene is almost too much. Dancing against the backdrop of the Hudson River flowing into New York Harbor, with the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island visible in the distance, Soles of Duende demonstrates in dance what might be possible outside of it. At a time of entrenched polarization, they show you, Castro said, “what the dreamscape could be or a current reality could be.”
“When people see us performing, it really is a true example and testament to coexistence,” Rosales said. Whether they’re onstage or off, they can converse without changing who they are or how they speak. No one has to dim or diminish themselves. And “just like any musical form, we have to listen to each other.”
The post This isn’t just a dance group; it’s a model for what coexistence could look like appeared first on The Forward.
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Tidbits: This Jewish couple gives homeless dogs a free makeover
Tidbits is a Forverts feature of easy news briefs in Yiddish that you can listen to or read, or both! If you read the article and don’t know a word, just click on it and the translation appears. Listen to the report here:
אַ גרויסער בלאָער משׂא־פֿור האָט זיך אָפּגעשטעלט אויף אַ גאַס אין סקיד־ראָו, אַ באַקאַנטער אָרעמער געגנט אין לאָס־אַנדזשעלעס, פֿאַר אַ היימלאָזן מענטש מיט אַ הינטל.
„אײַער הינטל וויל אפֿשר מע זאָל אים צופּוצן אַ ביסל?“ האָט דער מאַן אינעם אויטאָ געפֿרעגט. לכתּחילה האָט דער היימלאָזער אויסגעזען צעטומלט. דערנאָך האָט ער געגעבן אַ קוק אויף זײַן הינטל, וואָס ער האָט שוין ווער ווייסט ווי לאַנג נישט געבאָדן אָדער אָפּגעשוירן, און צוגעשאָקלט מיטן קאָפּ.
מיט אַ שעה שפּעטער איז דאָס הינטל אַרויס פֿונעם משׂא־פֿור, אויסזעענדיק ווי אַ גאָר אַנדער הינטל. זײַן פֿעל, וואָס איז פֿריִער געווען שמוציק און פֿאַרפּלאָנטערט, האָט מען אויסגעוואַשן, צוגעשוירן און געבערשט ביז ער איז געוואָרן ווייך און גלאַנציק. איידער ער איז אַרויס פֿון אויטאָ האָט מען אים געגעבן אַ נאַש, וואָס ער האָט פֿריילעך אײַנגעשלונגען.
די אָרגאַניזאַציע וואָס האָט אויסגעבאָדן דאָס הינטל, „האָליוווּד מאָביל גרומינג“, באַלאַנגט צו טשאָק און יעל רובין. במשך פֿון די פֿאַרגאַנגענע 11 יאָר, האָבן זיי און זייערע מיטאַרבעטער גערייניקט בערך 5,000 הינט פֿרײַ פֿון אָפּצאָל.
דאָס פּאָרפֿאָלק, וואָס האָט אימיגרירט פֿון ישׂראל, האָט אין 2001 לאַנצירט אַ געשעפֿט וואָס ברענגט אַ לוקסוס־ספּאַ צו פֿאַרמעגלעכע אייגנטימער פֿון הינט. אָבער דערנאָך האָבן זיי באַשלאָסן אַז זיי ווילן אויך העלפֿן די מענטשן מיט הינט, וואָס קענען נישט באַצאָלן דערפֿאַר: סײַ הינט וואָס געפֿינען זיך אין אַ מיקלט פֿאַר חיות, סײַ הינט וואָס וווינען מיט זייערע אייגנטימער אויף דער גאַס.
„אַ מאָל האָבן די אייגנטימער מורא אונדז איבערצוגעבן די הינט, אַפֿילו אויב זיי קענען וואַרטן אין דרויסן,“ האָט יעל געזאָגט. „מיר לאָזן זיי אַרײַנקומען און זען וואָס מיר טוען. די הינט פֿילן זיך אויך בעסער. מע קען זען וויפֿל זיי האָבן הנאה פֿון דער באַהאַנדלונג און ווי עס שפּאַנט זיי אויס. דו ווײַזט זיי ליבע, גיסט זיי אַ נאַש, וואַסער צו טרינקען, און זיי באַצאָלן דיר מיט זייערע קושן.“
אויף דער פֿראַגע, צי זיי זאָרגן זיך נישט, וואָס וועט זײַן ווען די הינט גייען צוריק צו די האַרבע באַדינגונגען פֿון דער גאַס, האָט טשאָק באַטאָנט עטלעכע זאַכן: „זייערע אייגנטימער זענען תּמיד מיט זיי און פּאַסן אויף אויף זיי וויפֿל זיי קענען נאָר. די הינטלעך זענען זייערע ׳קינדער׳. עס זענען אויך דאָ אַ סך אָרגאַניזאַציעס וואָס באַזאָרגן זיי מיט עסן אומזיסט און אַנדערע זאַכן. זיי פֿאַרמאָגן ווייניק, אָבער זיי טוען דאָס בעסטע אויפֿצופּאַסן אויף זייערע הינט.“
צו לייענען וועגן דעם אויף ענגליש גיט אַ קוועטש דאָ.
To read about this in English click here.
The post Tidbits: This Jewish couple gives homeless dogs a free makeover appeared first on The Forward.
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The tech worker campaigning for ‘Antisemite of the Week’ doesn’t want to talk about antisemitism
After accusations of discrimination led his San Francisco Tech Week event to be pulled from the schedule, a tech worker has decided to embrace his newfound notoriety.
Mostapha Benhenda cited security reasons last week when he denied an Israeli programmer admission to his AI hackathon event, explaining that he didn’t want the Israeli army to make participants’ electronics “explode in their faces and injure them.”
The Israeli tech worker — a former Israeli soldier named Adam Levi — posted the message online, leading sponsors to pull funding for the event. In the days since, Benhenda has begun openly campaigning for an “Antisemite of the Week” award from pro-Israel watchdog group StopAntisemitism.
“I am a competitor, I play to win, this prize will be my Ballon d’Or,” Benhenda said in a message to the Forward, referring to the annual prize for the world’s best soccer player.
Running this week through Sunday, San Francisco Tech Week draws tens of thousands of tech industry workers to hundreds of panels, competitions and parties across the Bay Area.
The saga began Sept. 29 when Levi posted a screenshot of Benhenda’s messages rejecting his RSVP to the event, called “Build Your Agentic Investment Bank Hackathon.” A page for the hackathon on the digital invitation platform Partiful claimed it had been co-sponsored by Tech Week and the convention’s founder, venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.
Levi’s post was reshared on X more than 1,000 times, leading to the event’s de-listing by Tech Week organizers, who said on X that the event had violated the program’s terms of service.
Levi told The Algemeiner that Andreessen Horowitz told him the company had removed its sponsorship.
Benhenda, whose LinkedIn says he attended college in France, declined to participate in phone interviews. But in messages to the Forward, his response to accusations of antisemitism appeared to shift over a manner of days from defensiveness to bemusement.
When first reached for comment, Benhenda denied that his rejection of Levi was antisemitic at all. He said he banned Levi because his LinkedIn indicated service in the Israeli military’s secretive Unit 8200 during September 2024, when the intelligence unit was linked to the simultaneous detonation of thousands of pagers owned by Hezbollah operatives across Lebanon. (Levi declined to be interviewed, but said on X that “building explosive pagers was never my thing.”)
“I understand Adam’s disappointment, and his resulting emotional accusation of antisemitism, but he perfectly knows it’s unfounded,” Benhenda wrote Sept. 29, adding, “I hope that over the next weeks he will get more clarity about this.”
However, after StopAntisemitism posted about Benhenda on X, he seemed to lose interest in contesting the claim — and began leaning into it instead.
On Saturday, Benhenda shared StopAntisemitism’s post about him with a request.
“I am competing for the ‘Antisemite of the Week’ award at the San Francisco Tech Week,” he wrote. “Can you show your support/hate with a retweet?”
Founded in 2018 by a social media influencer who goes by Liora Rez, StopAntisemitism.org frequently bestows its “Antisemite of the Week” awards to public figures — a mix of elected officials, civic leaders and celebrities — who antagonize Israel.
Recent recipients of the award — which is not actually awarded weekly — have included actor Javier Bardem and Rama Duwaji, the wife of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
Last month, StopAntisemitism sponsored an event where a speaker was later criticized for Islamophobic rhetoric. (Rez did not respond to a request for comment on that story, or for this one.)
Benhenda said in messages to the Forward on Monday afternoon that he did not know very much about the organization, but that he was pining for its distinction, given the group’s 350,000 followers on X.
“What matters isn’t the label, but who puts it,” he added. “Go big or go home, that’s the game in the Silicon Valley.”
Later, though, Benhenda insisted that he still did not understand the accusations of antisemitism against him. His refusal of Levi, he said, had been solely due to Levi’s involvement in the Israeli military.
Meanwhile, he is forging ahead with the hackathon, hosting it Tuesday on the streaming platform Discord for nearly 200 registered participants.
Benhenda blamed the “tremendous lobbying from the Zionist lobby” for the change. But the venue where he had initially planned to host the event indicated there was no change. The supposed host, a coworking space called Frontier Tower, said in an email it had never booked Benhenda’s event to begin with.
The post The tech worker campaigning for ‘Antisemite of the Week’ doesn’t want to talk about antisemitism appeared first on The Forward.
