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Why a liberal Zionist rabbi isn’t taking to the streets over Israel’s judicial reform plan
(JTA) — Israel’s 75th anniversary was supposed to be a blowout birthday party for its supporters, but that was before the country was convulsed by street protests over the right-wing government’s proposal to overhaul its judiciary. Critics call it an unprecedented threat to Israel’s democracy, and supporters of Israel found themselves conflicted. In synagogues across North America, rabbis found themselves giving “yes, but” sermons: Yes, Israel’s existence is a miracle, but its democracy is fragile and in danger.
One of those sermons was given a week ago Saturday by Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch of Manhattan’s Stephen Wise Free Synagogue, expressing his “dismay” over the government’s actions. Hirsch is the former head of ARZA, the Reform movement’s Zionist organization, and the founder of a new organization, Amplify Israel, meant to promote Zionism among Reform Jews. He is often quoted as an example of a mainstream non-Orthodox rabbi who not only criticizes anti-Zionism on the far left but who insists that his liberal colleagues are not doing enough to defend the Jewish state from its critics.
Many on the Jewish left, meanwhile, say Jewish establishment figures, even liberals like Hirsch, have been too reluctant to call out Israel on, for example, its treatment of the Palestinians — thereby enabling the country’s extremists.
In March, however, he warned that the “Israeli government is tearing Israeli society apart and bringing world Jewry along for the dangerous ride.” That is uncharacteristically strong language from a rabbi whose forthcoming book, “The Lilac Tree: A Rabbi’s Reflections on Love, Courage, and History,” includes a number of essays on the limits of criticizing Israel. When does such criticism give “comfort to left-wing hatred of Israel,” as he writes in his book, and when does failure to criticize Israel appear to condone extremism?
Although the book includes essays on God, Torah, history and antisemitism, in a recent interview we focused on the Israel-Diaspora divide, the role of Israel in the lives of Diaspora Jews and why the synagogue remains the “central Jewish institution.”
The interview was edited for length and clarity.
Jewish Telegraphic Agency: You gave a sermon earlier this month about the 75th anniversary of Israel’s founding, which is usually a time of celebration in American synagogues, but you also said you were “dismayed” by the “political extremism” and “religious fundamentalism” of the current government. Was that difficult as a pulpit rabbi?
Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch: The approach is more difficult now with the election of the new government than it has been in all the years of the past. Because we can’t sanitize supremacism, elitism, extremism, fundamentalism, and we’re not going to. Israel is in what’s probably the most serious domestic crisis in the 75-year history of the state. And what happens in Israel affects American Jewry directly. It’s Israeli citizens who elect their representatives, but that’s not the end of the discussion neither for Israelis or for American Jews. At the insistence of both parties, both parties say the relationship is fundamental and critical and it not only entitles but requires Israelis and world Jews to be involved in each other’s affairs.
For American Jewry, in its relationship with Israel, our broadest objective is to sustain that relationship, deepen that relationship, and encourage people to be involved in the affairs in Israel and to go to Israel, spend time in Israel and so forth, and that’s a difficult thing to do and at the same time be critical.
American Jews have been demonstrating here in solidarity with the Israelis who have been protesting the recent judicial overhaul proposals in Israel. Is that a place for liberal American Jews to make their voices heard on what happens in Israel?
I would like to believe that if I were living in Israel, I would be at every single one of those demonstrations on Saturday night, but I don’t participate in demonstrations here because the context of our world and how we operate is different from in Israel when an Israeli citizen goes out and marches on Kaplan Street in Tel Aviv. It’s presumed that they’re Zionists and they’re speaking to their own government. I’m not critical of other people who reach a different perspective in the United States, but for me, our context is different. Even if we say the identical words in Tel Aviv or on West 68th Street, they’re perceived in a different way and they operate in a different context.
What then is the appropriate way for American Jews to express themselves if they are critical of an action by the Israeli government?
My strongest guidance is don’t disengage, don’t turn your back, double down, be more supportive of those who support your worldview and are fighting for it in Israel. Polls seem to suggest that the large majority of Israelis are opposed to these reforms being proposed. Double down on those who are supportive of our worldview.
You lament in your book that the connections to Israel are weakening among world Jewry, especially among Jewish liberals.
The liberal part of the Jewish world is where I am and where the people I serve are by and large, and where at least 80% of American Jewry resides. It’s a difficult process because we’re operating here in a context of weakening relationship: a rapidly increasing emphasis on universal values, what we sometimes call tikkun olam [social justice], and not as a reflection of Jewish particularism, but often at the expense of Jewish particularism.
There is a counter-argument, however, which you describe in your book: “some left-wing Jewish activists contend that alienation from Israel, especially among the younger generations, is a result of the failures of the American Jewish establishment” — that is, by not doing more to express their concerns about the dangers of Jewish settlement in the West Bank, for example, the establishment alienated young liberal Jews. You’re skeptical of that argument. Tell me why.
Fundamentally I believe that identification with Israel is a reflection of identity. If you have a strong Jewish identity, the tendency is to have a strong connection with the state of Israel and to believe that the Jewish state is an important component of your Jewish identity. I think that surveys bear that out. No doubt the Palestinian question will have an impact on the relationship between American Jews in Israel as long as it’s not resolved, it will be an outstanding irritant because it raises moral dilemmas that should disturb every thinking and caring Jew. And I’ve been active in trying to oppose ultra-Orthodox coercion in Israel. But fundamentally, while these certainly are components putting pressure on the relationship between Israel and Diaspora Jewry, in particular among the elites of the American Jewish leadership, for the majority of American Jews, the relationship with Israel is a reflection of their relationship with Judaism. And if that relationship is weak and weakening, as day follows night, the relationship with Israel will weaken as well.
But what about the criticism that has come from, let’s say, deep within the tent? I am thinking of the American rabbinical students who in 2021 issued a public letter accusing Israel of apartheid and calling on American Jewish communities to hold Israel accountable for the “violent suppression of human rights.” They were certainly engaged Jews, and they might say that they were warning the establishment about the kinds of right-wing tendencies in Israel that you and others in the establishment are criticizing now.
Almost every time I speak about Israel and those who are critical of Israel, I hold that the concept of criticism is central to Jewish tradition. Judaism unfolds through an ongoing process of disputation, disagreement, argumentation, and debate. I’m a pluralist, both politically as well as intellectually.
In response to your question, I would say two things. First of all, I distinguish between those who are Zionist, pro-Israel, active Jews with a strong Jewish identity who criticize this or that policy of the Israeli government, and between those who are anti-Zionists, because anti-Zionism asserts that the Jewish people has no right to a Jewish state, at least in that part of the world. And that inevitably leads to anti-Jewish feelings and very often to antisemitism.
When it came to the students, I didn’t respond at all because I was a student once too, and there are views that I hold today that I didn’t hold when I was a student. Their original article was published in the Forward, if I’m not mistaken, and it generated some debate in all the liberal seminaries. I didn’t respond at all until it became a huge, multi-thousand word piece in The New York Times. Once it left the internal Jewish scene, it seemed to me that I had an obligation to respond. Not that I believe that they’re anti-Zionist — I do not. I didn’t put them in the BDS camp [of those who support the boycott of Israel]. I just simply criticized them.
Hundreds of Jews protest the proposed Israeli court reform outside the Israeli consulate in New York City on Feb. 21, 2023. (Gili Getz)
You signed a letter with other rabbis noting that the students’ petition came during Israel’s war with Hamas that May, writing that “those who aspire to be future leaders of the Jewish people must possess and model empathy for their brothers and sisters in Israel, especially when they are attacked by a terrorist organization whose stated goal is to kill Jews and destroy the Jewish State.”
My main point was that the essence of the Jewish condition is that all Jews feel responsible one for the another — Kol yisrael arevim zeh bazeh. And that relationship starts with emotions. It starts with a feeling of belongingness to the Jewish people, and a feeling of concern for our people who are attacked in the Jewish state. My criticism was based, in the middle of a war, on expressing compassion, support for our people who are under indiscriminate and terrorist assault. I uphold that and even especially in retrospect two years later, why anyone would consider that to be offensive in any way is still beyond me.
You were executive director of ARZA, the Reform Zionist organization, and you write in your book that Israel “is the primary source of our people’s collective energy — the engine for the recreation and restoration of the national home and the national spirit of the Jewish people.” A number of your essays put Israel at the center of the present-day Jewish story. You are a rabbi in New York City. So what’s the role or function of the Diaspora?
Our existence in the Diaspora needs no justification. For practically all of the last 2,000 years, Jewish life has existed in the Diaspora. It’s only for the last 75 years and if you count the beginning of the Zionist movement, the last 125 years or so that Jews have begun en masse to live in the land of Israel. Much of the values of what we call now Judaism was developed in the Diaspora. Moreover, the American Jewish community is the strongest, most influential, most glorious of all the Jewish Diasporas in Jewish history.
And yet, the only place in the Jewish world where the Jewish community is growing is in Israel. More Jewish children now live in Israel than all the other places in the world combined. The central value that powers the sustainability, viability and continuity of the Jewish people is peoplehood. It’s not the values that have sustained the Jewish people in the Diaspora and over the last 2,000 years, which was Torah or God, what we would call religion. I’m a rabbi. I believe in the centrality of God, Torah and religion to sustain Jewish identity. But in the 21st century, Israel is the most eloquent concept of the value of Jewish peoplehood. And therefore, I do not believe that there is enough energy, enough power, enough sustainability in the classical concept of Judaism to sustain continuity in the Diaspora. The concept of Jewish peoplehood is the most powerful way that we can sustain Jewish continuity in the 21st century.
But doesn’t that negate the importance of American Jewry?
In my view, it augments the sustainability of American Jewry. If American Jews disengage from Israel, and from the concept of Jewish peoplehood, and also don’t consider religion to be at the center of their existence, then what’s left? Now there’s a lot of activity, for example, on tikkun olam, which is a part of Jewish tradition. But tikkun olam in Judaism always was a blend between Jewish particularism and universalism — concern for humanity at large but rooted in the concept of Jewish peoplehood. But very often now, tikkun olam in the Diaspora is practiced not as a part of the concept of Jewish particularism but, as I said before, at the expense of Jewish particularism. That will not be enough to sustain Jewish communities going into the 21st century.
I want to ask about the health of the American synagogue as an institution. Considering your concern about the waning centrality of Torah and God in people’s lives — especially among the non-Orthodox — do you feel optimistic about it as an institution? Does it have to change?
I’ve believed since the beginning of my career that there’s no substitute in the Diaspora for the synagogue as the central Jewish institution. We harm ourselves when we underemphasize the central role of the synagogue. Any issue that is being done by one of the hundreds of Jewish agencies that we’ve created rests on our ability as a community to produce Jews into the next generation. And what are those institutions that produce that are most responsible for the production of Jewish continuity? Synagogues, day schools and summer camps, and of the three synagogues are by far the most important for the following reasons: First, we’re the only institution that defines ourselves as and whose purpose is what we call cradle to grave. Second, for most American Jews, if they end up in any institution at all it will be a synagogue. Far fewer American Jews will receive a day school education and or go to Jewish summer camps. That should have ramifications across the board for American Jewish policy, including how we budget Jewish institutions. We should be focusing many, many more resources on these three institutions, and at the core of that is the institution of the synagogue.
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Queen Esther would want Jews to save humanity at their own expense, said Michigan’s attorney general. Would she?
Queen Esther has been name-checked not once, but twice in the last week by sitting politicians in New York and Michigan in addresses to Jewish constituents. The first reference passed largely without notice. The second caused a national Jewish uproar.
Promising better protections for the Jews of New York, Governor Kathy Hochul said Friday night during Shabbat services at Central Synagogue that she was willing to “be your Esther, every time you need me.” A bit ironic as Hochul, who is Catholic, invoked the story of a Jew in disguise, but the metaphor tracked: a leader going to bat for a vulnerable Jewish community. Central had been the site of an attack on a congregant and security guard two weeks prior.
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel took a different tack — and paid a price. Nessel, who is Jewish, has voiced concerns about antisemitism in her party. But in a speech Sunday to Jewish Democrats, Nessel suggested they follow Esther’s path and “sacrifice the comfort, safety and security and even the very future of our own people in exchange for the opportunity to save the rest of humanity.”
“What good is defending the historic homeland of our ancestors and demanding that candidates acknowledge its right to exist,” Nessel reportedly said, “if the planet upon which it rests is no longer inhabitable?”
What followed was a borderline Ahaseurus-ian backlash as Jews around the country decried Nessel’s interpretation of the Megillah. Writing in the conservative publication Commentary, Seth Mandel said Nessel had “counseled servitude and suicidality.” Ron Halber, chief executive of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington, called Nessel “an embarrassment.”
The comparison came as Michigan’s Jewish Democrats, including Nessel, navigate a tenuous political reality in the swing state following the party’s nomination of Abdul El-Sayed, a vocal critic of Israel, for Senate. Nessel had hoped both to reassure Jewish voters and rally their support in a meeting where El-Sayed also apologized for earlier comments about an attack on a Michigan synagogue.
Nessel made waves earlier last month when she said she would skip the state’s Democratic convention out of concern for her safety. Her comments Saturday seemed to cast those remarks in a new light: to many who read them, Nessel seemed to be saying that Jewish people should learn to hide, rather than rise to the occasion. (Nessel’s office did not respond to an inquiry Tuesday.)
That’s certainly not the story of the Megillah. For the uninitiated (or just forgetful): With the Jewish people in imminent danger, Queen Esther boldly (but carefully) reveals to the king her identity as a Jew, underscoring that the viceroy’s known genocidal plotting in fact affected her. As she does so, Esther repeatedly imperils herself — a standard some were eager to point out Nessel herself missed by sitting out the convention.
It’s easy to point to Nessel’s reading as an inversion of a story that seems to insist on a particularist reading. Or one could admire an ambitious attempt at universalizing the text: Maybe Nessel was saying that Esther put the needs of a nation — the Jewish nation — above her own safety, knowing that she could have lived the rest of her life in secret. The United States is the Jewish people in this analogy; Jewish Democrats, by subjugating their immediate security, are Esther. (Haman, the story’s villain, is the spectre of Republican control.)
Or maybe the Purim lesson Nessel was trying to invoke was even simpler: With great power — as Michigan’s Jewish Democrats may have in a close race — comes great responsibility. That’s Spiderman, but also Esther’s relative Mordechai, who famously helps her work up the nerve by suggesting her ability to intervene could be the very reason she was chosen for royalty in the first place.
Esther is often the subject of pop-culture fascination: 17th-century Dutch painters were obsessed, for example, including non-Jewish ones. Contemporary Christian playwrights seem to be, too, as do red-state school curriculums. Evangelicals once compared Trump to Esther — a fearless hero who would dismantle the deep state — and former Vice President Kamala Harris invoked Esther on the campaign trail in 2024.
The common thread in this history, more than anything else, is Esther’s reinvention to suit a self-serving political narrative. For the Dutch — at the time newly liberated from Spanish empire — Esther represented resilience in the face of persecution; for the Christian right, she is a flawed but valorous normie who fulfills a holy mission. For Hochul and Harris (and maybe Nessel, too), she’s a woman who meets the moment.
She’s also the title character of a helluva story — and a familiar one — which makes her as eminently useful to people today as she was to her famously insecure husband in the Megillah. If one thing seems assured, it’s that Esther will continue to feature in our own storytelling — and that she will continue to change with the times.
The post Queen Esther would want Jews to save humanity at their own expense, said Michigan’s attorney general. Would she? appeared first on The Forward.
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She was elected the first Jewish president of the Catholic Biblical Association. Then came the hate.
When Amy-Jill Levine was elected president of the Catholic Biblical Association earlier this month, she faced vicious backlash.
Those who opposed her election couldn’t exactly point to a lack of qualifications. Levine has written dozens of books on the New Testament, taught a New Testament course at the prestigious Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome, served on the editorial board of Catholic Biblical Quarterly and spoken privately with Pope Francis three times.
Instead, her critics fixated on one trait they apparently consider disqualifying: She’s Jewish.
“Your Zionist ass doesn’t belong in our religion. Keep yourself to the Talmud and keep eating babies. STAY THE FUCK AWAY FROM CHRISTIANITY,” someone wrote in an email to Levine, which she shared with the Forward.
Levine’s Facebook page was bombarded with so much hate that she asked her daughter to moderate the comments. Online critics called Levine “anti-Christian,” denounced her as “Zionist,” and attacked her efforts to push back against antisemitic interpretations of the Bible.
On its face, a Jew at the helm of a professional association devoted to the study of Christian scripture might seem odd. After all, the Catholic Bible Association, unlike some other academic associations for the study of scripture, promotes study of the Bible “within a context of faith,” and most of the association’s presidents in its 90-year history have been priests. Levine attends an Orthodox Jewish synagogue.
Some more even-keeled critics of Levine’s presidency focused on this argument. “At some point, we have to ask: what is the word ‘Catholic’ actually doing?” Mark Lambert, co-host of the podcast Catholic Unscripted, posted to X.
Levine, meanwhile, argues that the Catholic Biblical Association is a professional society, not a church. People of all faiths are eligible for membership, as long as they hold an advanced degree in biblical studies.
“An academic society, like a hospital, museum or university, is not the same thing as being a member of the clergy,” Levine wrote in an email to the Forward.
In fact, while Levine is the first Jewish president of the Catholic Biblical Association, she is not the first non-Catholic. Several Protestants have served in the role, according to chair of the executive board Gregory Sterling.
Levine was nominated by a committee and then ran unopposed for the presidency, Sterling said. It is an unpaid, one-year position.
“She was not elected because she is Jewish, but because she is an exceptional scholar and has played a very important role in Catholic-Jewish dialogue,” Sterling and the association’s executive director, Archie Wright, wrote in a joint statement. “The vitriol of some of the comments only reinforces the need to address the problem of Anti-Semitism.”
Several Catholic clergy also wrote letters of support for Levine amid the pushback.
Levine, for her part, said she has “no interest in undermining the Church.” The 70-year-old grew up in North Dartmouth, Massachusetts, in a predominantly Portuguese Roman Catholic neighborhood, where she would occasionally go to Mass with her friends.
She preferred Mass to synagogue because “there were snacks, except you got the snacks in the church during the service, and you got the snacks in synagogue after the service,” she joked in an August interview on Nashville Public Radio.
Levine recalled that when she was 7 years old, a classmate told her she had killed Jesus — an accusation the elementary schooler had picked up from her priest. Levine, confused, went to her mother, who assured her that “God was doing just fine.”
That incident inspired Levine to attend Catholic catechism classes as a child, in addition to Hebrew School.
She went on to get a PhD in religion from Duke University and teach at Vanderbilt University as a professor of both the New Testament and Jewish Studies. Much of her scholarly work revolves around the Jewish context of Jesus and dispelling what she sees as antisemitic misinterpretations of the Bible.
“We do not need to make Judaism look bad in order to make Jesus look good,” Levine posted on Facebook after she was elected.
Catholic-Jewish relations
Sixty years ago, Levine’s election “would have been an astonishing thought,” said Philip Cunningham, director of the Institute for Jewish-Catholic Relations at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia.
Though the Catholic church has a long history of antisemitism— including violent conversion efforts and teaching the theological belief that Jews were condemned by God — that has all changed in recent decades.
In the 1960s, Pope John XXIII took on the task of modernizing the Church, convening the Second Vatican Council to produce a theological document reconsidering many teachings and practices. The resulting document, often referred to as Vatican II, is perhaps most famous for allowing priests to host Mass in the local vernacular language of their parish instead of Latin. But it also changed Catholicism’s teachings about Jews.
Nostra Aetate, the section of Vatican II most famously concerned with Jews, shifted Catholic teachings about other religions enormously; while still maintaining that the Catholic Church is the “one true religion,” it also affirmed that other religions contain a “ray of truth,” a massive theological shift from the belief that any non-Catholic religion was false or even harmful.
Nostra Aetate spends significant time on Jews, specifically, including rejecting the belief that Jews should be held collectively responsible for killing Jesus. The document calls out antisemitism both theologically and politically.
“What happened in His passion cannot be charged against all the Jews, without distinction, then alive, nor against the Jews of today,” it reads. “The Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God, as if this followed from the Holy Scriptures.”
Since Vatican II, popes have continued to advance dialogue with Jews, and with members of other religions. And the Church has forcefully rejected antisemitism, continuing to change its teachings on Judaism and Jewishness. That includes removing the term “perfidious Jews” from a Good Friday prayer, updating Catholic school classes on Judaism and even releasing statements acknowledging the legitimacy of Judaism alongside Christianity, placing Jews into a special and elevated relationship with the Church.
“The council set in motion a process of rapprochement between Jews and Catholics that took root particularly effectively in the United States, because the world’s largest Jewish diaspora community lives here and frequently alongside Catholics in cities and suburbs,” Cunningham said.
Levine, too, highlighted the importance of Nostra Aetate to her career, writing in an email that the document’s acceptance of Jews “opened the door for me to work in New Testament studies.”
But not all Catholics embraced the teachings of Vatican II. A diffuse movement often referred to as traditionalist Catholics, or tradcaths, felt that the efforts toward modernization had gone too far. Some tradcath groups simply sought to preserve the rituals of Latin Mass.
Others, however, including the recently excommunicated Society of Saint Pius X, or SSPX, take issue with the council’s teachings, believing that acknowledging the freedom and legitimacy of other religions takes away from the centrality of the Catholic Church’s teachings. In short, if the Catholic Church’s teachings are true, they argue, then no other religion can be legitimate.
The French-language account of SPPX posted to X, calling Levine an “objectively scandalous choice” and denouncing her “relativist interpretation of the texts condemning homosexuality,” as well as the fact that “a person who refuses to recognize Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior is placed at the head of an institution that claims to be Catholic.”
Despite the newer Catholic teachings about Judaism, some tradcath groups, as well as individual Catholic influencers such as Nick Fuentes, Candace Owens and Carrie Prejean Boller, have been endorsing antisemitic beliefs including supersessionism and deicide, as well as conspiracy theories about Jewish devil worship or government control. Though the Vatican has chastised these figures and repudiated their stances, they have continued to spread antisemitic dogma, including the belief that Jews hate and seek to oppress Christians and that Kabbalah endorses pedophilia. Many also endorse Christian nationalism, which the Vatican opposes.
This antisemitic subgroup within Catholicism is relatively small, but extremely visible thanks to influencers like Fuentes and Owens with millions of followers, and their understanding of Catholicism spreads to people both inside and outside the church. Their antisemitic version of Catholic ideology, as well as the conspiracy theories they spread, can be seen in some of the hate emails Levine received, such as references to eating babies, a version of the age-old blood libel that Jews used Christian children’s blood to make matzo.
Still, while the antisemitic fringe of the Catholic church is loud, the institutions are stalwart in their support for Vatican II’s acceptance of Judaism.
Levine’s election is an indication “that the changes that Vatican II sought to inspire have been happening,” Cunningham said. “That does not mean that all the issues between Jews and Catholics have been resolved — but at least amongst the much of the leadership in the Catholic community, the old stereotypes and caricatures are recognized for what they are.”
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Northeast Philadelphia says goodbye to its last Jewish deli
(JTA) — PHILADELPHIA — After running the family deli for several decades, Steve Stein says his 83-year-old legs were telling him it was time to call it quits. But it wasn’t only that.
The neighborhood has totally changed since his dad, Mike, first took over the business more than 60 years ago. Back then Northeast Philadelphia was an epicenter of Jewish life, packed with synagogues and other Jewish establishments. Most of them are gone. And now — with the close of Steve Stein’s Famous Deli and Restaurant — the area just lost its last Jewish deli.
But only after an outpouring of affection from longtime customers, who flocked to the place once news spread in the last few weeks. “It’s overwhelming,” Stein said. “The amount of people that came in here in the last 10 days, two weeks. Their comments are very touching. I knew I was liked. I didn’t know I was loved.”
To be sure, several customers told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that they’ll miss Stein, but they also bemoaned the fact there aren’t many Jewish food options left. Certainly none with prices as low as Famous.
“I’ve been going there my whole life, “ said Rebecca Asheuer, who grew up a few miles away from Famous’ current location — its third since the Steins took over the business. “I feel surprise and sadness, because it’s the last one in the Northeast.
“I think the Jewish people are moving out of the city and also the businesses used to be passed down in families. Now with the economy and other stuff, people don’t want to take over the family business anymore,” she said.
Another longtime customer mourned the closing of the deli, but also the disappearance of Jewish life in the area.
“I kind of expected it to go sooner or later,” said Aileen Owens, who remembered going to Famous when the Auspitz family ran over six decades ago. “There’s nobody around. Synagogues and all that stuff, it’s all fading out. They went to the suburbs.”
According to Steve’s account, his father Mike Stein, his brother Arnold and cousin Jack began running the produce concession at the Famous Deli in Philly’s Castor Gardens neighborhood in the late 1950s. Around 1960, they bought the deli from the Auspitz family, which had operated a chain of Philadelphia delis dating to the 1920s.
Steve and his brother Arnie eventually ran the deli together. As Jewish families moved farther into Northeast Philadelphia, the deli moved as well — first to Krewstown Road in the mid-1970s, eventually having two locations there, and then about 14 years ago to its final location at 1619 Grant Ave.
If all goes right, Steve’s 57-year-old son Lee hopes to continue the migration and resurrect the family business in the suburbs. Sort of.
“I’m looking to have a place of my own,” said Lee, who started off as an eight-year-old taking out the trash, but would occasionally try to cut the lox when no one was looking. “I have a lot of experience in this business.
“I call myself multi-talented, not just in the deli business, but in cooking and baking, I would probably downsize and not do fruit and produce like we do here. It’s just not worth, you know, the space for what you’re paying. I would do a similar situation to here. Deli, prepared foods, a little bit of bakery, a small sit down. But what I’ve told the people that come in here, ‘You’ll never, ever see some of this product again. And you’ll probably never, ever see these prices ever again.’”
Still, he wants his new venture to be affordable.
“My father always liked being a people-pleaser,” the younger Stein said. “So he tries to please people with a price. But that price affects you eventually.”
As for Steve, he wishes his son well, but knows it won’t be the same. “Lee wants to try something, but not here,” Stein said.
He added that some remaining establishments in the wider region – “they do 90% restaurant and 10% deli, I do 90% deli and 10% restaurant” – will “benefit from me not being here.”
One former competitor isn’t so sure. “I’m upset another Jewish deli has closed and he’s been in business a long time and certainly has his whole clientele,” said Michael Young, longtime owner of Ben & Irv’s, a deli restaurant in Huntingdon Valley, a suburb about 20 minutes northwest of Famous. “But it’s a different world today; a different area. So I don’t know if it will help us.”
Lee Stein said he actually tried to stay put, but needed a little help.“The real problem is the landlord never took care of the building,” said Lee, who wishes his dad had been more assertive on that front. “I tried to make it work here with them, figuring this would be an easy fix. I asked them for some renovations; to put a new roof on. The roof has several holes in it. When it rains outside, it pours in here. So, I tried to negotiate with them first before I did anything else, but that wasn’t going anywhere.”
JTA’s attempts to reach the landlord for comment were unsuccessful. Regardless, Steve Stein, who was forced to close the deli for a short while last year due to health code issues, says he is ready to turn the page.
The first thing he’ll do once things settle down is get therapy on his aching legs. And he’s excited to have more time to devote to his wife of 61 years, Sheila, along with his children, Lee and Mindy, seven grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. “But I’ll miss my customers. They’re like family.”
Already he’s feeling the difference “It’s devastating,” he said on Aug. 24, the day after the store officially closed, amid a final “blowout sale” to get rid of what little was left. “I’m usually the first one in the store.
“It’s going to be very much missed by me.”
He’s not the only one.
“Nothing lasts forever,” said one customer before heading into Famous one last time. “But it’s very sad.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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