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Meet the real Jewish Republican of color being floated to replace George Santos, the fake one
(JTA) — Last Friday, as George Santos completed his second week in Congress, Mazi Melesa Pilip was contemplating the relief Shabbat would bring — and also the sting of the betrayal she felt by her fellow Long Island lawmaker.
Among the welter of falsehoods that Santos scattered throughout the byways of the Great Neck area in northern Long Island he and Pilip both represent — Santos in Congress, Pilip as a Nassau County legislator — Santos has pitched himself as a Jewish and Black Republican who overcame hardship to earn multiple degrees.
All lies, but as it happens those descriptors apply to Pilip, an Ethiopian Jew who won’t count out a run for Congress if Santos ever accedes to demands, including from fellow Republicans, to resign. (Santos says he intends to serve out his two-year term.)
“I’m not going to lie to you, people are definitely asking me to run,” she told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in an interview as she drove while shopping for Shabbat. “That doesn’t mean nothing.”
Pilip said her journey into American politics was propelled by her experience advocating for fellow Ethiopian immigrants in Israel — where she moved as a child through the Operation Solomon airlift and lived until marrying her American husband — and by her children’s experience with antisemitism in their Long Island schools.
“I am a strong believer, if you see something’s not working well for your community, or for yourself, you have to be involved,” she said. “You can’t just complain from outside.”
A Politico reporter, Olivia Beavers, reported on Twitter last week that Pilip was one of two Republicans the Nassau County Party is considering running should Santos step down. (The other is Jack Martins, a state senator; both he and Pilip ousted Democrats in a recent Republican sweep of Nassau County.)
Right now, Pilip said, she is focusing on serving her constituents through the Nassau County legislature. Any decision about replacing Santos, she said, is up to Joseph Cairo, the GOP chairman in Nassau County.
“The only person who can make a decision on who’s going to run will be the chairman,” Pilip said. “Time will show — it’s too early to say anything to be honest. I will continue to serve my residents and I love serving the people. I want to be a voice for the people, and anything I can do to help more people, I will definitely consider it.”
Cairo has not said yet who he would like to run to replace Santos, but two things are clear: He wants Santos to go, and he likes Pilip, a lot.
Cairo convened a press conference last week of leading Nassau County Republicans calling on Santos to step down because of the multiple lies he told while running and because he faces multiple criminal investigations. In unrelenting reporting since last month, reporters have detailed how Santos lied about his education, his job experience, his charitable giving and his family background.
“Today, on behalf of the Nassau County Republican Committee, I’m calling for his immediate resignation,” Cairo said at the press conference.
Cairo had led an effort to diversify GOP candidates on the island, and a year ago, at Pilip’s swearing-in ceremony, he explained why: He was an Italian American whose parents favored Republican ideals but felt unwelcome in the GOP until they helped integrate it themselves, in New Jersey and then on Long Island. It had become his mission to bring more minority candidates into the fold, and he recruited several of them to run in the 2021 local elections.
Pedram Bal, a Persian Jew and the mayor of Great Neck, told Cairo he should look at Pilip, an Ethiopian-Jewish immigrant who was active in efforts to revitalize Great Neck, and who had been vice president of her synagogue, Kol Yisrael Achim. It was an easy sell, Cairo said, and it paid off.
“An Orthodox Jewish woman, a religious refugee from Ethiopia is elected as a Republican to the Nassau County legislature!” he marveled at the inauguration.
Of the many lies Santos has told about himself, the Nassau County Republicans at the press conference seemed especially offended by his claims of descent from Holocaust survivors.
“For him to make up this story, that his parents were Holocaust survivors is beyond the pale. It is simply tragic and outrageous, and disgusting,” said Bruce Blakeman, the Nassau County executive who is the first Jew elected to the position. “He is a stain on the House of Representatives. He’s a stain on the Third Congressional District.”
Pilip calls for the prosecution of the alleged assailant in the violent attack on a Jewish New Yorker in 2021, at a press conference, in Mineola, N.Y., Jan. 29, 2023. (Office of Mazi Melesa Pilip)
Jewish Republicans have been at pains to call on Santos to quit: The Republican Jewish Coalition said he will not be welcome at its events. With much fanfare, the RJC had presented Santos and Max Miller, a freshman Republican from Ohio, as the next generation of Republican Jewish leaders at its annual conference in Las Vegas in November. Miller last week also called on Santos to resign, saying in a statement that Santos sought to “benefit from the murder of millions of Jewish people.”
When Pilip spoke at the press conference, she did not address his lies about his heritage. “I’m also paying for the lies told by Congressman George Santos,” she said. “People trusted him, people campaigned for him, including me, as a county legislator. At this point, the trust is no longer there. Therefore, he should resign.”
In her interview with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Pilip said she found the fact of Santos’s compulsive lying more offensive than the lies themselves, including about his heritage. She had put her reputation on the line campaigning for him last year.
“I trusted him and I told people to vote for him. I campaigned with him. And so when you do something like this, and then keep every day there’s something new coming about him,” she said. “It’s making you feel uncomfortable because people asking, you know, what’s, what’s going on, Mazi, what happened with this guy?”
Pilip campaigning for the legislative seat in 2021 had bonded with her constituents. Speaking to local media she described how much she enjoyed the hustle of campaigning.
“I was going from synagogue to synagogue, bringing out the vote,” she told Five Towns Jewish Home last year.
“Sometimes I would leave Friday night to go to a shul and I would sleep at someone’s house on Friday night because I’m shomer Shabbat and I couldn’t walk back home,” she told the local magazine for Orthodox Jews. “And then I would go to another synagogue the next day, on Shabbat, to spend time there and talk to people. Only when Shabbat was over would I go home. I did this for two months. It was intense but it was worth it. I met a lot of people. I would go to train stations and park events — any event, large or small, I was there.”
She became a local celebrity, giving birth to twin daughters — her sixth and seventh children — just weeks before the election.
Pilipl, 43, said in her interview with JTA that her involvement in politics was almost inevitable, after she had migrated to Israel on Operation Solomon, the 1991 airlift, when she was 12.
“I have always been very active, even as a child in Israel,” advocating for the opportunities she saw that Israelis just a few years older than her were enjoying. Over her father’s objections, she enlisted in the paratroop division of the Israel Defense Forces (she says he is now proud of her service). While at university, she led the Ethiopian Student Union for two years. She has a degree in occupational therapy from the University of Haifa and a degree in diplomacy and security from Tel Aviv University.
“I was a voice of so many young kids who wanted equal opportunity and really my main focus was especially education, because I do believe through education, you can achieve a lot and you can integrate into the society,” she said. “So we were encouraging younger-generation [Ethiopian immigrants] my age to go to higher education. Because we came, you know, from nothing, and we came without any education.”
She met her husband, an American medical student at the Technion, while she was at the University of Haifa. They moved to the United States, where she became active speaking about Israel for Jewish federations and other Jewish groups. Her Instagram handle couples the U.S. and Israeli flags. Her husband, Adalbert, who was born in Ukraine, and whose mother is the child of Holocaust survivors, was especially offended by Santos’s Holocaust lies, Pilip said.
“Why would you use this painful history and create something like this and tell people that his grandparents survived just for the political benefit of it?” she said.
Pilip said her political interests were revived two years ago when her oldest son was preparing for bar mitzvah and he told her about antisemitic comments he endured from a classmate in the Great Neck Public Schools system. “He said, ‘Mom, you know, this child told me, I wish Hitler would kill you all,’” she recalled. She said that perhaps the child had been bullied, and was acting out against others, but it rattled her that he was resorting to antisemitism. “That a 12-year-old child would talk like this? It’s bad.”
So when Bal, the Great Neck mayor, approached her about running for elected office, she was game.
She campaigned on reviving Great Neck’s downtown, but also acting as a bridge in troubled times among the multiple minority communities in the area.
“Promoting understanding, education of cultures, religions and systemic hate has to be addressed from our young people on up,” she said in a candidate’s statement before her election.
Last Friday, however, she was looking forward to a little respite from the Santos follies.
“I’m going to pick up a couple of things from the grocery,” she said “I have to cook for my kids for Shabbat. Shabbat is starting early. So I think I’ll just spend time with my family, my kids. Just a very relaxing time.”
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The post Meet the real Jewish Republican of color being floated to replace George Santos, the fake one appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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A play about racism in America was a hit in Warsaw in 1935
„מיסיסיפּי“ פֿון לײב מלאך האָט געבראַכט די אַמעריקאַנער ראַסע־פּראָבלעם אױף דער ייִדישער בינע אין פּױלן
סקאָטסבאָראָ, אַ שטעטל אין אַלאַבאַמע, איז אין די 1930ער יאָרן באַקאַנט געװאָרן איבער דער גאַנצער װעלט צוליב דעם געריכט־פּראָצעס איבער נײַן אַפֿריקאַנער־אַמעריקאַנער יונגע לײַט, װעלכע זײַנען פֿאַלש באַשולדיקט געװאָרן אין פֿאַרגװאַלדיקן צװײ יונגע װײַסע פֿרױען.
די געריכט־פּראָצעסן האָבן זיך געצויגן פֿון 1931 ביז 1937 און האָבן אַרויסגערופֿן אַ סך אױפֿמערק צוליב זײערע אױסגעשפּראָכן ראַסיסטישע פּניות. ייִדישע ליטעראַטן האָבן געװידמעט דעם דאָזיקן ענין אַ היפּשע צאָל אַרטיקלען, רעפּאָרטאַזשן און ליטעראַרישע װערק.
צװישן די קינסטלערישע אָפּקלאַנגען אױף דעם סקאָטסבאָראָ־ענין איז געװען די דראַמע פֿון לײב מלאך (אַריה לײב זאַלצמאַן, 1894־1936) „מיסיסיפּי“, װאָס דער באַרימטער פּױליש־ייִדישער רעזשיסאָר מיכאל װײַכערט האָט אױפֿגעפֿירט אינעם װאַרשעװער „יונג־טעאַטער“ אין 1935.
דער טעקסט פֿון דער פּיעסע איז פֿאַרעפֿנטלעכט געװאָרן נאָך מלאכס טױט אין לאָס־אַנדזשעלעס אין 1949. איצט איז „מיסיסיפּי“ אַרױס אין דער ענגלישער איבערזעצונג פֿון עלען פּערעצמאַן און אַליסע קװינט, אונטער דער רעדאַקציע פֿון אַליסע קװינט.
קװינטס גרונטיק געפֿאָרשטער הקדמה דערצײלט די געשיכטע פֿון דער דאָזיקער מערקװירקידער אױפֿפֿירונג.
„מיסיסיפּי“, האַלט קװינט, איז אינטערעסאַנט הײַנט ניט אַזױ װי אַ װערק פֿון קונסט נאָר װי אַ „װערק פֿון דער הומאַניסטישער עמפּאַטיע“ און די ערשטע פּיעסע װעגן אַמעריקאַנער ראַסיזם אױף דער פּױלישער (ניט נאָר ייִדישער) בינע.
אָבער װײַכערטס טעאַטראַלישע אױפֿפֿירונג איז טאַקע יאָ געװען אַ װיכטיקע טעאַטראַלע דערשײַנונג. די 1930ער יאָרן זײַנען געװען די בלי־תּקופֿה אין דער ייִדישער טעאַטער־געשיכטע, װען דער ייִדישער טעאַטער איז געװען אָפֿן צו אַנדערע קולטורן, דערקלערט קװינט. דעמאָלט האָט מען אױפֿגעפֿירט אױף ייִדיש דראַמאַטישע װערק פֿונעם אַמעריקאַנער דראַמאַטורג יודזשין אָ׳ניל, דעם פֿראַנצױזישן שרײַבער ראָמען ראָלאַן, דעם דײַטשישן מחבר פֿרידריך װאָלף און אַנדערע.
לכתּחילה איז װײַכערט ניט געװען זיכער, אַז דער ענין פֿון ראַסיזם אין אַמעריקע װעט געפֿינען אַן אָפּקלאַנג בײַם פּױליש־ייִדישן עולם. אָבער ער האָט געגלױבט, אַז זײַנע „פּראָגרעסיװע צושױער“ װעלן דערקענען אין די אַפֿריקאַנער־אַמעריקאַנער פּערסאָנאַזשן פּשוטע מענטשן און אַרבעטער גלײַך װי די פּױלישע ייִדן.
„מיסיסיפּי“ האָט װײַכערט אױפֿגעפֿירט אינעם סטיל פֿון אַװאַנגאַרד. די פּיעסע האָט העכער װי 30 פּערסאָנאַזשן, װאָס זײַנען געטײלט אין צװײ גרופּעס, שװאַרצע און װײַסע. די פּױליש־ייִדישע אַקטיאָרן האָבן געשפּילט אין „בלעקפֿײס“, מיט שװאַרץ־געשמירטע פּנימער.
הײַנט באַטראַכט מען אַזאַ שטיק װי אַ סימן פֿון ראַסיזם, אָבער עס װאָלט געװען ניט קאָרעקט צו משפּטן דעם ייִדישן טעאַטער אין פּױלן אין די 1930ער יאָרן לױט די איצטיקע השׂגות.
מען האָט געשפּילט דעם ספּעקטאַקל אױף דרײַ רונדע בינעס, געשטעלט אין דער מיט פֿונעם זאַל. די צוקוקער האָבן געדאַרפֿט פֿאָלגן דאָס ליכט, װאָס האָט באַשײַנט אײן בינע נאָך דער צװײטער, װוּ פֿאַרשײדענע גרופּעס אַקטיאָרן האָבן געשפּילט עפּיזאָדן פֿון דער דראַמע. דער עולם האָט זיך געפֿילט אין דער מיט פֿון די געשעענישן, װאָס האָבן זיך אַנטפּלעקט אַרום זײ.
די דאָזיקע בינע־אַראַנזשירונג האָט באַטאָנט דעם קאָנטראַסט צװישן דער „װײַסער“ און דער „שװאַרצער“ װעלט. אין אײן עפּיזאָד זעט מען װאָס ס׳קומט פֿאָר אױף דער באַן צװישן די אַפֿריקאַנער־אַמעריקאַנער און די װײַסע פֿרױען, דערנאָך װערט מען איבערגעטראָגן אין דער דירה פֿון די פֿרױען, װוּ זײ באַדינען זײערע װײַסע מאַנצבלישע „קליענטן“; װײַטער רוקט זיך די האַנדלונג אינעם געריכטזאַל, און אַזױ װײַטער. יעדער עפּיזאָד האָט אַן אײגענע דראַמאַטישע אינטריגע, װאָס האַלט די צוקוקערס געשפּאַנט.
מלאך איז געװען אַ געניטער זשורנאַליסט און האָט געשריבן רעפּאָרטאַזשן פֿון פֿאַרשײדענע לענדער פֿון אײראָפּע, אַמעריקע און פֿון ארץ־ישׂראל. ער האָט אָנגעזאַמלט מאַטעריאַלן װעגן דעם סקאָטסבאָראָ־ענין, װאָס איז צו יענער צײַט נאָך ניט געהאַט פֿאַרענדיקט געװאָרן.
מלאך האָט באַשלאָסן ניט צו שרײַבן קײן „דראַמאַטישן רעפּאָרטאַזש“ און האָט אױסגעטראַכט אײניקע פּרטים, װאָס האָבן אים דערלאָזט דערקלערן דעם אַמעריקאַנער פּאָליטישן און געזעלשאַפֿטלעכן קאָנטעקסט פֿאַרן פּױליש־ייִדישן עולם.
אין דעם שײכות קאָן מען זיך דערמאָנען אָן אַן אַנדער פּיעסע פֿון די 1930ער יאָרן אינעם זשאַנער פֿון געריכט־רעפּאָרטאַזש, אַלטער קאַציזנעס „שװאַרצבאַרד“. פֿאַר זײַן פּיעסע האָט קאַציזנע גענוצט מאַטעריאַלן פֿונעם פּאַריזער משפּט איבער שלום שוואַרצבאַרדן — דעם ייִדישן זייגערמאַכער, וועלכער האָט דערהרגעט דעם אוקראַיִנישן נאַציאָנאַליסט סימאָן פּעטלוראַ כּדי זיך נוקם צו זײַן פֿאַר די בלוטיקע פּאָגראָמען בעתן בירגערקריג אין אוקראַיִנע אין 1918־1919. דער פֿראַנצױזישער געריכט האָט אים דערקלערט פֿאַר אומשולדיק.
אין 1934 האָט די פּױלישע מאַכט פֿאַרװערט צו שפּילן „שװאַרצבאַנד“ אין װאַרשע װײַל מען האָט מורא געהאַט פֿאַר אוקראַיִנישע נאַציאָנאַליסטן אין פּױלן. אין דער געשפּאַנטער פּאָליטישער אַטמאָספֿער פֿון די 1930ער יאָרן האָט מען געדאַרפֿט זײַן אָפּגעהיט, און מלאך און װײַכערט האָבן אױסגעקליבן אַ „פּאַרעװען“ קעפּל, „מיסיסיפּי“. דאָס װאָרט סקאָטסבאָראָ איז צו יענער צײַט באַלאָדן געװאָרן מיט לינקע פּאָליטישע אַסאָציאַציעס.
סך־הכּל האָט מען געשפּילט „מיסיסיפּי“ בערך 200 מאָל אין פֿאַרשײדענע שטעט אין פּױלן. די ייִדישע פּרעסע פֿון כּלערלײ פּאָליטישע שאַטירונגען אױף ייִדיש און פּױליש האָט מיט התלהבֿות געלױבט דעם ספּעקטאַקל. דער קריטיקער משה קאַנפֿער האָט געשריבן, אַז „ייִדן און אַפֿריקאַנער־אַמעריקאַנער זעען אין זיך אַ קעגנזײַטיקע אָפּשפּיגלונג פֿון אײנעם אינעם צװײטן“.
די ענגלישע איבערזעצונג איז זײער פֿליסיק. די רײד פֿון די פּערסאָנאַזשן קלינגט װי די אַמעריקאַנער שמועסשפּראַך פֿון די 1930ער יאָרן, װאָס איז גוט באַקאַנט לױט די דראַמאַטישע װערק פֿון יענער צײַט. כּדי אָפּצוהיטן דעם צײַטגײַסט האָט די איבערזעצערין באַשלאָסן צו נוצן די װערטער װי „נעגראָ“ און אַפֿילו דאָס „נ־װאָרט“, װאָס זענען הײַנט װי באַלײדעװדיקע נעמען פֿאַר אַפֿריקאַנער־אַמעריקאַנער.
אַן אַנדער פּראָבלעם פֿאַר דער איבערזעצונג האָט צו טאָן מיט די ענגלישע װערטער, אַזעלכע װי „מיס“, „קאָנדאָקטאָר“, „באָי“, מיט װעלכע מלאך האָט באַפֿעפֿערט זײַן טעקסט כּדי צו שאַפֿן אַן אַמעריקאַנער קאָלאָריט. אין דער איבערזעצונג זײַנען די דאָזיקע װערטער באַצײכנט געװאָרן מיט שטערנדלעך.
דער ענין פֿון ראַסע און ראַסע־באַציִונגען איז אין די לעצטע פּאָר צענדליק יאָר געװאָרן אַ װיכטיקע טעמע אין ייִדיש־פֿאָרשונג. דאָס איז אַ ניצלעכער מעטאָדאָלאָגישער קוקװינקל, װאָס לאָזט פֿון דאָס נײַ באַטראַכטן די מאָדערנע ייִדיש־קולטור. אָבער ביז הײַנט האָט מען דער עיקר באַהאַנדלט דעם אַמעריקאַנער מאַטעריאַל.
די פּובליקאַציע פֿון „מיסיסיפּי“ איז אַ װיכטיקער בײַטראָג אין דער דאָזיקער בראַנזשע פֿון ייִדיש־פֿאָרשונג. זי באַװײַזט, אַז די פּראָבלעם פֿון ראַסיזם אין אַמעריקע האָט געהאַט אַן אָפּקלאַנג אױך בײַ ייִדן אין מיזרח־אײראָפּע.
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Nithya Raman, LA mayoral candidate who clashed with DSA on Israel, wins their endorsement
Ever since Councilmember Nithya Raman’s last-minute entry into the Los Angeles mayoral race, questions have loomed about her relationship with the Democratic Socialists of America — and whether her stance on Israel would chill the group’s support for her underdog campaign.
Raman, a dues-paying DSA member, had criticized the group for a statement the national organization made after Oct. 7. In 2024, she was censured by the LA chapter for courting a pro-Israel group in her campaign for re-election to city council.
But following weeks of debate in the local chapter, Raman won its official endorsement Wednesday, paving the way for the leftist group to organize for her campaign to unseat incumbent Mayor Karen Bass.
The endorsement, which reportedly came with the support of more than 60 percent of some 1,400 voting members, vindicated Raman’s breaking with the group on Israel and other issues. It also comes after the councilmember stated definitively that she believed the war in Gaza constituted a genocide — a basic litmus test inside the hardline anti-Zionist group.
Raman, 45, seemed to allude to the conflict in a statement thanking the organization.
“This endorsement means something because of what it represents: a coalition of people who don’t always agree on every question, but who agree that LA needs real change,” Raman wrote on Instagram, adding. “It’s not about everyone thinking alike. It’s about building power together toward the same goal.”
The contentious endorsement process around Raman, one of the group’s national success stories and its first member to win citywide office in Los Angeles — three more have since joined her on city council — underscored the fierce ideological commitments in the DSA. Yet its outcome may not be entirely in her favor, as mainstream Jewish groups have come to hold DSA and its candidates in contempt.
Raman has rarely fit neatly into the group’s political conventions. On Oct. 7, 2023, when more than 1,200 people were killed in Israel, the national DSA club publicly blamed Israel for incurring the Hamas-led attack. Raman — whose district included heavily Jewish neighborhoods like Hancock Park and Sherman Oaks — had quickly issued a statement standing with her Jewish and Israeli constituents. A few days later, she also disavowed the DSA response, calling it “unacceptably devoid of empathy.”
Her positions on the Middle East frustrated Israel’s supporters, too. In June 2024, she helped pass a resolution calling for a ceasefire and release of hostages, infuriating the local Jewish federation and other Jewish groups, which said she was selling out Israel’s ability to defend itself.
Nevertheless, she earned the backing of Democrats for Israel-Los Angeles in her run for re-election that year, with the president of the liberal Zionist group crediting her statement that Israel had a right to exist and her general engagement with Jewish constituents. Outraged, DSA’s members voted to censure her.
In the runup to June’s mayoral primary, Raman joined the livestream of leftist firebrand Hasan Piker, telling him she agreed that it was committing genocide in Gaza. But DSA did not endorse any candidate in the June 2026 primary — even as Raman was locked in a tight race with the conservative reality star Spencer Pratt for a spot in the November runoff. (Another DSA candidate, Rae Huang, placed a distant fifth.)
Asked whether she believed Israel was an apartheid state, Raman said, “Yeah, I think that they’re treating people unfairly, that they’re not treating people equally, and I’m critical of that.”
Israel is not the only wedge issue for Raman in DSA. She split with the group — and her democratic socialist peers on city council — on a local “mansion tax,” saying that it discouraged new multifamily housing construction. And she was one of only two councilmembers who railed against a controversial multibillion-dollar expansion of the LA convention center — even as the other DSA members, who have strong backing from the building trades unions, voted for it.
The debate within DSA was framed as ideological purity versus political pragmatism. Bass, a historically unpopular incumbent whose tenure included the most catastrophic wildfire the city had seen in decades, has governed as a centrist Democrat; though Raman is broadly aligned with DSA policy, some of the group’s members who opposed the endorsement wrote in a communist magazine this week that it should not be “rewarded based on ideological proximity.”
The DSA’s endorsement was the second major pickup for Raman in the last week; the powerful hospitality workers union, Unite Here Local 11, officially threw its support behind Raman Tuesday, though organized labor still largely backs Bass.
Now a new question emerges: whether the endorsement of a group with a few thousand members came too late. Peer-to-peer betting markets currently have Bass as a roughly 2-to-1 favorite.
Sean Wakasa, co-chair of the Los Angeles DSA chapter, told The New York Times the group was warming to the challenge.
“We have thousands of members who are ready to organize, talk to their neighbors, knock on doors and build power to shake up Los Angeles and build a brighter future,” Mr. Wakasa said.
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Why is this chef opening a kosher Israeli restaurant in LA right now?
How do you explain Malka, the new kosher Israeli restaurant in Beverly Hills?
I’m not talking about the food — I haven’t eaten there yet — I’m talking about the fact that it’s opening at all. Why would Eyal Shani — many of whose restaurants worldwide have faced protests, vandalism and physical attacks — dare to open another restaurant at this particularly fraught time?
“The whole situation is leading me to open more, more, more,” Shani told me when we met last week. “That is my reaction as a Jewish man. If they are trying to kill you, you should make a lot of children. And these are my children.”
We were sitting in the empty restaurant on the ground floor of the boutique SIXTY Hotel. Shani, who is 67, wore a T-shirt and dark khakis. With his stubbly beard and unruly gray hair, he could pass for an intense, very post-grad philosophy major. He put a plate of farmers market green grapes between us.
The night before, at a pre-opening event for journalists, influencers and, it seemed, models, the same space was packed. Piles of fresh raw vegetables — a Shani signature — filled the long bar counter along with perfect rectangles of toasted focaccia topped with either steak tartare or smoky eggplant caviar. The crowd swelled, the music blared, trays of mojitos and palomas disappeared. It was signature Shani — a frolic of nature, noise and Israeli food.
Now, the large, modern space — a rare high-end restaurant in Los Angeles’ ever-struggling kosher restaurant scene — was quiet. Shani leaned back into an earth-toned banquette and reflected for a moment on how those two words, “Israeli food,” have become so toxic, especially following Oct. 7.
Demonstrators accuse Israeli chefs of passing Palestinian food off as Israeli and of being complicit in their government’s actions. Shani’s business partner, Shahar Segal, did engage in marketing work with the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, the controversial U.S.-Israeli organization established to feed Gazans. But Israeli restaurants around the world with no such involvements have faced similar protests, as have Jewish-owned restaurants with no ties to Israel.
Malka’s opening follows the closure of Shani’s restaurants Miznon in Melbourne and Gila & Nancy in Berlin, both targeted by mobs chanting anti-Israel slogans.
The rioters in Melbourne entered MIznon, threw chairs, chanted “Death to the IDF!” and only stopped when the two owners of a nearby pizza place — both Lebanese — confronted them.
“In the end, they succeeded to kill the restaurant,” Shani said. “They almost killed our staff there.”
Shani happened to be at the restaurant in Berlin when dozens of protesters surrounded it, shouting, “Stop feeding genocide!”
He raced into the kitchen, put together some food platters and went outside to offer the demonstrators the opportunity to eat and talk.
“They didn’t want to eat,” he said. To them, he added, “Eating from an Israeli is like eating from Satan.”
Shani rejected the charge commonly leveled at Israeli chefs — that they have stolen Palestinian foods and recast them as Israeli.
“I always declare that I took a lot of inspiration from the Palestinians,” he said.
In 1989, Shani opened his first restaurant, Oceanus in Jerusalem. He was 29 and, he said, he knew nothing about food except that he loved bringing people together around it. He wanted to make something like the fresh focaccia an Italian Jewish neighbor once served him. The closest thing to it was the Arabic laffa Shani would buy from a closet-sized bakery in West Jerusalem.
“I had a cook, a Palestinian man from Hebron, a very talented man,” Shani said. “I loved him. He said, ‘Eyal, no problem, my grandmother makes it every day.’ He showed me.”
Shani brushed the finished bread with olive oil and showered it with fresh rosemary.
I told Shani that I ate at the now-closed Oceanus at the tim and to this day remember being served, when we sat down, fragrant sheets of his focaccia-laffa.
“It was a hybrid,” Shani said, “Palestinian, Italian and new Israeli. Each one is getting influenced by the other. You can’t do it with just one brain.”
Malka, a strictly kosher restaurant, presents a different kind of challenge to Shani, who is not an observant Jew. His Michelin-starred Manhattan restaurant Shmone offers, for instance, “A mountain of grilled calamari, okra, tomatoes and yogurt.”
But the chef who turned flour, yeast and water into a hybrid Palestinian-Israeli-Italian flatbread revels in facing constraints like kashrut.
“Each culture leads with its limitations,” he said. “These limitations are a blessing — they’re shaping your creation.”
The kosher stricture against cooking meat together with dairy products didn’t faze him.
“Take me off dairy, put a beautiful bottle of olive oil in front of me — what are the limitations?” he said. “And if there would be no olive oil anymore in the world, I would quit, I would not cook.”
Beyond the kitchen, Shani said he wanted to reach more Israelis with his food. About 70% of Israelis are strictly kosher or prefer it.
“So how can it be that we’re only cooking for the hipsters in Tel Aviv?” Shani said. “It’s unfair.”
The marketplace has rewarded Shani’s ability to combine local ingredients and techniques with creativity and showmanship. The chef has around 70 restaurants — neither he nor his publicist knew the exact number — including Malka’s in Tel Aviv, Miami and New York.
And the backlash isn’t close to stopping him. Shani just announced a new restaurant project in, yes, Melbourne.
“It doesn’t make me frightened,” he said. “It’s the way my personality reacts. I think it’s the instinct of survival. You just keep going.”
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