A bike ride against six restaurants

Eisenkot has 67 recommendations. Herzog decides Sunday. Factions totaling 67 of 120 Knesset members recommended Yashar leader Gadi Eisenkot for prime minister Thursday, against 46 for Netanyahu. President Isaac Herzog called the result "clear" but will assign the mandate Sunday, after more talks. United Torah Judaism declined to recommend Netanyahu, and Ra'am backed Eisenkot without meeting his condition that partners call Hamas a terrorist group. ¹ The backstory →

A kosher bakery in Montreal burned down. Mimimelon, in the Saint-Laurent neighborhood, was hit by two suspected arsons in 48 hours. The second, early Wednesday, destroyed it. Nobody was inside. In September a masked man walked in and shouted "All the Jews will burn." Police say they have no evidence yet of an antisemitic motive and put the hate crimes and arson units on it. "It's complete destruction," said co-owner Jennie Volfson. ²

Harmeet Dhillon is leaving the Justice Department. The assistant attorney general for civil rights, whose division sued Harvard and UCLA and settled with Columbia, Cornell, Brown and Northwestern over antisemitism, submitted her resignation Thursday. She told Fox News Digital the White House asked her to wait until after the midterms. ³

On Sunday, activists plan a bike ride in Philadelphia's Rittenhouse Square under the slogan "No business for Zionists." It targets six places: the Israeli restaurants Dizengoff, Goldie and K'Far Cafe, the sandwich shop Huda, Schlesinger's Deli, and the Mac Mart kiosk. Organizers didn't name a single complaint about any of them. Their flyer says "these Zionist establishments must go," and their statement told riders to show "these Zionist business owners that we see them for the disgusting humans they are." ⁴⁵

The organizers are five local groups, among them No Appetite for Apartheid and Boycott CookNSolo. The date, Nov. 8, is the eve of the 88th anniversary of Kristallnacht. ⁴⁵

A spokesperson for Gov. Josh Shapiro called it "blatant antisemitism designed to intimidate and drive Jewish businesses out of our communities." Attorney General Dave Sunday and Sens. John Fetterman and Dave McCormick also condemned it. Mayor Cherelle Parker, who first deferred to a city commission, said Thursday that "singling out businesses because their owners are Jewish is unacceptable and has no place in our city," and ordered more police for the ride. State Rep. Amen Brown said: "Jewish Philadelphians are not outsiders." ⁴⁵⁶

The organizers' answer, Wednesday: any business backing Zionism "is subject to boycott and has no place in our city." ⁵

The Jewish Community Relations Council is organizing a Friday lunch at one of the targeted restaurants. ⁴

Larry David's biographer asked about Judaism. He got nothing. Blake J. Harris got years of phone and Zoom calls for Emperor of Nothing: The Making of Larry David, out last month, with a George Costanza-style move: promise no questions about the shows, talk Yankees instead. David still declined to discuss the American Jewish comedy tradition. He was born at Brooklyn Jewish Hospital in 1947, the same week as Richard Lewis. Hebrew school kept sending him to the rabbi's office. NBC executives worried Seinfeld was "too New York," which JTA notes was often code for "too Jewish." ⁷

Abdul El-Sayed beat Mike Rogers 53% to 45%, and the Michigan Jewish institutions that mostly opposed him now have a senator. ⁸ Our view: work with him, on specifics, the way the ADL started to when it listed "serious concerns" and offered a path forward. ⁹ His campaign cites a PAC analysis showing he lost only 1.3% across 72 heavily Jewish precincts that went for Elissa Slotkin in 2024. ⁹ It's the campaign's number, so take it with salt, but if it holds, the Jewish swing to Rogers never came, and the groups that predicted one should say so. The other side has homework too. Mehdi Hasan's election-night "cry more," aimed at the ADL's Jonathan Greenblatt and others, is what you say when you want the split to last. ⁸ The senator-elect can say he doesn't.

Hanukkah starts at sundown Dec. 4, four weeks from now. ¹⁰ Kveller already reports Target can't keep Hanukkah Barbie in stock. ¹¹ Last year Michaels sold a dreidel garland with a chet on it, a letter that isn't on any dreidel, then blew up a backwards photo of it for the store displays. This year Michaels teamed up with Jonathan Adler, and the aisle improved: an acrylic hanukkiyah, dreidel bowls with the correct shin. It also includes gelt in acrylic and in metal, which Kveller's reviewer flags as "not chocolate." ¹² The holiday has exactly one snack that is also money, and someone has finally produced a version that is neither.

Hero: Rabbi Capers Funnye. Funnye died Monday at 74. He led Beth Shalom B'nai Zaken Ethiopian Hebrew Congregation in Chicago from 1985 and served as chief rabbi of the International Israelite Board of Rabbis from 2015. He condemned the openly antisemitic groups often called Black Hebrew Israelites, ordained Tamar Manasseh in 2021, and with Rabbi Baruch Yehudah became the first Israelite rabbis admitted to the New York Board of Rabbis. He was Michelle Obama's cousin and was known as "Obama's rabbi." ¹³

Villain: Marshall Rawson. Rawson, 34, won Florida's 10th state House district this week by about 36 points. Talking Points Memo reported he marched at the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville carrying a League of the South flag; the ADL calls that group white supremacist. Rawson says he went to protest a Confederate monument's removal and didn't expect violence. TPM contacted 28 current and former Republican officials, 22 of whom had endorsed him. None publicly denounced his Charlottesville march. ¹⁴

Parashat Chayei Sara; Friday is 26 Cheshvan 5787. ¹⁵ The portion opens with Sarah's age at death, 127. ¹⁶ In the Zohar, Rabbi Yosi points out that "no other woman's days and years were specified as they were for Sarah." ¹⁷

Send this to the one who'll argue about it at Shabbat dinner.

Shabbat shalom.