The Café That Finally Surrendered
Nine Saturdays of protest, and the group that started it still wants more.
Gloria Steinem died at 92. The feminist icon grew up with a Jewish father and a suffragist grandmother on Ohio's Board of Education, kept up two decades of women's seders, and said it plainly: "Wherever there is antisemitism, I identify as a Jew." 1
Trump met the Satmar grand rebbes. The two leaders of the world's largest Hasidic community sat down with the president at the White House, the first such meeting in more than fifty years, says Hasidic political operative Yossi Gestetner. Not every Trump-backing Jew was thrilled, given Satmar's anti-Zionism. 2
The House passed a bill punishing campus boycotts of Israel. The 237-169 vote pulls federal funding from schools that join commercial boycotts; 33 Democrats crossed over. Rep. Jerry Nadler voted no, calling it "a direct violation of the First Amendment." 3
Jewish security spending topped $1 billion a year. A Jewish Federations of North America study of 4,500 institutions found the bill grew from $765 million in 2024. "Every dollar our community spends on guards and cameras is a dollar not spent on Jewish education," said federation head Eric Fingerhut. 4
The café that gave in
Cafe Basimta will stop opening on Shabbat. The announcement came Thursday, after nine straight Saturdays of Haredi protest outside the Jerusalem coffee shop, escalating from window banging in July to a bag of feces at the door and superglue jammed into the locks. 56
The cafe opened at the end of May off Agrippas Street, steps from Mahane Yehuda, on a block where nothing else stays open past Friday. It's an official Jews for Jesus project, and CEO Eli Birnbaum said the decision came "after prolonged deliberation and with a heavy heart," meant to return the space to "a calm, pleasant and open place for coffee, culture and dialogue." 5
Nobody walks away clean. Jerusalem Deputy Mayor Adir Schwartz called the closure a reward for "extremists' terrorism" and said his party may open a rival cafe on the same block, open on Saturdays, out of spite. Yad L'Achim, the anti-missionary group that organized much of the picketing, isn't satisfied either. It says it will keep protesting until Basimta closes for good, not just on Shabbat. 6
Nine weekends of protest over one coffee shop, and the side that started the fight still wants more. The backstory →
Dolly Parton's "9 to 5" now exists in Yiddish, and the backstory beats the punchline. Singer Lea Kalisch recorded a translation by Ellen Cassedy, the activist who co-founded the workplace-rights group 9to5 in 1973 after a bad job at Harvard, the same organization that inspired Jane Fonda to make the 1980 movie the song was written for. Cassedy learned Yiddish later in life, after her mother died, and asked Kalisch to sing it. "I wish I could have sent it to Dolly and heard her laugh," Kalisch said. 7
Jerusalem Coffee House in Oakland closed indefinitely last month ahead of an October trial, and it took the Justice Department, the ADL, and the Brandeis Center suing together to get there. Owner Abdulrahim Harara was recorded in October 2024 harassing a Jewish father his Star of David hat was "a violent hat," pressing him on whether he was a Zionist while the man's five-year-old son cried, then followed the family outside, yelling, after police removed them. Weeks earlier the cafe had sold a drink named after Yahya Sinwar. The closing statement blamed "zionist organizations," never the two years of conduct that put three separate plaintiffs in the same courtroom. Nobody made this business stop discriminating against Jews out of decency; three lawsuits and a trial date did. That's accountability arriving slow, expensive, and three years late. 8
Mayor Mamdani spent a year taking heat from Jewish groups over how he talks about Israel, and this week he spent an afternoon in Borough Park getting a shofar demonstration and a jar of honey from Eichler's Judaica, a week before Rosh Hashanah, with a staffer walking him through Hasidic dress like a museum tour. He wished the room a "shanah tova" and thanked everyone for "conversations," plural, unspecified. Nobody there asked him what he actually thinks about anything. A staffer blew the shofar, someone handed him honey, and he knew exactly when the cameras wanted him standing next to a menorah, timed to a holiday that's supposed to be about looking inward. 9
Hero: Dave McCormick. The Pennsylvania senator told Jewish Insider at the Republican Jewish Coalition's summit that his party deals with antisemitic candidates at the ballot box: "You beat the s**t out of them. You beat them in elections." He pointed to Rep. Randy Fine's blowout win over a neo-Nazi primary opponent as proof, and said it with his own party's name attached. 10
Villain: JD Vance. At the same summit, Vance was asked directly about Tucker Carlson, who helped put him on the 2024 ticket and now platforms Holocaust denial. Vance drew a hard line at Nick Fuentes and never said Carlson's name. Conservative host Mark Levin spelled out what a real answer sounds like: "I will not tolerate those who say antisemitic things and promote Jew-hatred, and that includes Tucker Carlson and his ilk." Vance had the same microphone and used it to say less. 1011
Send this to the one who'll argue about it at Shabbat dinner.
Shabbat shalom.