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DETROIT — Arad Kauf is sitting in the empty dining room of the bagel shop he’s supposed to run. You have a few new recipes to check out in the back, but they’re nothing more than sheets of raw dough. There is no one to make the dough.
All members of Detroit’s Bagel Institute resigned or were fired last month after a conflagration centered in part on Israel, Kauf’s homeland.
“I was embarrassed. I was embarrassed,” Kauf said. “I’m trying to figure out what I had done wrong. What happened here?”
What happened at Detroit’s Bagel Institute has linked a long-running local dispute over real estate to the widening tensions over Israel and Gaza that have spread across the country over the past 10 months. The sale of the bagel shop to Philip Kafka, a genuine Jewish real estate developer and business partner of Kauf’s, sparked protests against Kafka’s comments beyond Israel.
“My fundamental ideals do not allow me to paint for a Zionist,” one painter wrote in an email to the bagel shop’s new address. “I allow my creativity and my paintings to relate to Zionism when it’s something I vehemently reject. “and communicate very openly. ”
The first two members to resign also cited as reasons “the Zionist political leanings of the new owners,” as well as a “history of bad business practices” and a “lack of transparency. “
“I would call you a vulture, I love vultures too much to belittle their reputation,” a third staffer wrote.
Kafka refused to speak to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency; He also a representative of the former workers. Emails reviewed through JTA show that staff complaints toward Israel and its supporters are combined with considerations about enforcement situations and concerns about gentrification in Detroit. Staff members also rejected the complaint that their opposition to a sovereign Jewish homeland in the Middle East would make them anti-Semitic.
“I believe that Judaism is a beautiful faith and that Zionism is deeply anti-Semitic,” wrote the worker who compared Kafka to a vulture.
Detroit’s Bagel Institute is not the first office to be rocked by divisions over the war between Israel and Hamas since it began with Hamas’ attack on Israel on Oct. 7. In New York, for example, workers at Café Aronne resigned after the chain’s owner filed in Israel after October 7.
But the Detroit bagel drama stands out for the fact that it took place in an intentionally Jewish business, with the vision laid out by founding owners Philip and Ben Newman to bring “Jewish prepared foods” back to a city that had been largely empty. of his Jewish past. . .
Kauf, originally from Tel Aviv, arrived in Detroit in 2021 when his spouse started a medical residency in the area. He intended to run Detroit’s Bagel Institute before the staff resigned, and it’s unclear if they knew he was Israeli. But he said he found the outburst of anger after the sale announcement disconcerting.
“Growing up, a ‘Zionist’ embodied community, culture and love for the land of Israel, for its government or its politics, but also for its inherent beauty,” he said, declining percentages of his existing political views.
Today he fears being a victim of controversy again, although he knows that most of the staff’s anger is directed against Kafka. Since the mid-2010s, the Dallas-born scion of billboards has reshaped this run-down but disposed network of central Detroit into an architectural playground of whimsical Quonset cottages and upscale restaurants. Kafka also started a publicity crusade encouraging New Yorkers to move to Detroit.
This kind of venture earned Kafka praise from the designer network paintings, and from Kauf, who said he moved into one of Kafka’s buildings because it looked “very exciting and futuristic. “Kauf was inspired enough through Kafka’s vision that, after running for Hillel in Metro Detroit, he sought out paintings with its owner and ended up managing the Kafka-owned Café Prince. Although not explicitly Israeli or Jewish, the café has a mezuzah on the door and costs many of its menu pieces in multiples of 18, meaning “life. “” in the Jewish tradition.
Many citizens, however, are not satisfied with Kafka’s development strategy. Some of them have started calling it a “gentrifier” and a “colonizer. ” He didn’t help people when Café Prince, as part of an advertisement for new ingredients, began selling raw, peeled carrots for $1. 80, further proof to many that Kafka food companies were offline. (Kauf still has carrot on his menu and defends it as “a way to emphasize our philosophy”; carrot advertising refers to it as “raw. “)
While Kafka and Kauf charted one kind of path as Detroit entrepreneurs, Newman charted another. Originally from the Detroit metropolitan area, he and his brother opened the first physical incarnation of the Detroit Bagel Institute in 2013 in trendy Corktown, naming it after the city’s beloved art museum.
The returning business has temporarily become a local favorite and has become part of a trend of young Jews returning to the city decades after a past generation of Jewish citizens, and their bagel purveyors, fled to the suburbs. Newman said he cheered through Jewish delicatessen. of his youth.
However, his business struggled and closed its doors in 2020, at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Reopened last year in the Kafka building next to the Kauf café, Newman hired a young, varied and close-knit team that he said he was looking to create a “community” around the store. Kauf himself is a big fan; She created her own menu around the baked bread at the bagel shop and bought 3 loaves of bread from them each morning.
But finances were an ongoing problem and Newman gave up his salary for 18 months and even began looking for a temporary job only at the bagel shop, he told JTA. The sale to Kafka, he said, was intended to maintain the company and the tasks of his staff.
“Rather than promote the business to stakeholders only in its parts, I chose to sign an agreement with Philip and [his] team because I feel it’s the most productive way to keep the DIB open and provide job security for our staff,” Newman said. . . « Philip and I wanted to keep this business running and keep other people employed. That’s why we transferred ownership.
The new owners told staff they would maintain the same grades and salaries; The plan was for Kauf to only deal with the painting issues and leave everything else to the team that was already in his place. But an attempt to meet with staff members raised frustration and questions about whether Kafka was being transparent about his plans.
Then, already angry at Kafka, the staff unearthed evidence of his pro-Israel views. Kafka posted op-eds and Instagram posts expressing support for Israel and once told Jewish Insider that he was seeking Israeli citizenship, though at the time of the bagel shop sale last month, he had not commented publicly on Israel since the last Gaza war in 2021.
For some, Kafka’s interests in Israel and his interests in Detroit were intertwined. “It’s easy for him to avoid Zionist accusations, but it’s much easier, given his actions, to point the finger only at the declared settlers,” said a former employee of the local news site Bridge Detroit.
Newman declined to comment on whether his former assistants cited Kafka’s “Zionism” as one of the reasons they did not need him, or whether Newman’s Judaism or his perspectives on Israel were ever discussed in his interactions with staff. After they quit, the team posed for photos, defiantly with their arms crossed in front of the store’s hand-painted signs advertising “latke fries” and “matzah ball soup. “
Reacting to the first wave of resignations, Kafka said: “If someone else wants to fire their job based on rumors about me, about our heritage, or about our so-called politics, I implore them to do the same. Others did, and Kafka temporarily closed the shop and put the rest of the staff out of work. ” The company cannot function without key players who have recently resigned,” he writes by way of explanation.
In a letter to his other tenants and business partners, Kafka defended his record in the Core City community and said he “had preconceived notions about the new owners that they were unwilling to change. ”
When the first campaign organization cited his “Zionist political leanings,” he wrote: “I was surprised that two other people with whom I had only shared occasional morning chats felt that they knew what I thought about such a confusing and tragic issue as the situation. in the Middle East. “
He also expressed his perspectives on Israel, writing, “All peoples deserve peace, security, and protection. War and death are terrible. I am the cause of all peoples to create a country whose priority is the safety, security and happiness of its citizens. . However, I will never accept a country whose number one goal is the destruction of its neighbor. This is not the forum to talk more about this topic.
Kafka said his attempts to talk to employees about the transition were rejected and that “we did everything we could to try to move forward productively until it became clear that employees had preconceived ideas about us, our work and our beliefs. “
As news of the shutdown reverberated in Detroit, Zionism became the dominant narrative explaining the reasons for the shutdown. The store’s Instagram page began to fill with comments accusing the new owner of being a “Zionist,” while a Reddit commenter who claimed to be a former worker theorized, “He’s training — he’s exploiting Detroit so he can work illegally in Palestine. “On the social network X, a Detroit-based self-help organization called Kafka a “Zionist land tycoon. “One of the non-Jewish tenants of Kafka’s ad, a Brazilian restaurateur whose family is from Lebanon, told JTA that his company is now on a “blacklist” of boycotters because it rents from Kafka.
“For some explanation as to why I punished him for things he said or believed,” Javier Bardauil said. “What do you need me to do, burn this place to eat because you don’t like my owner?” I employ more than 50 people in Detroit.
Bardauil said he was frustrated because he does not plan to stand with Kafka on the war between Israel and Hamas.
“I’m also going through what’s happening in Palestine right now. I don’t think war is smart for anyone,” he said. Of the protesters, he said, “The worst thing is that they don’t know what they’re doing. “we are talking. “
Despite all the fuss, Kauf is still excited to relaunch Detroit’s Bagel Institute as part of Café Prince. But it’s clear that the road forward would be difficult: On Instagram, activists were starting to send direct messages to consumers sharing photos of the inside of Café Prince. They would send them a local cover of Kafka in hopes of discouraging other people from frequenting their café.
Even as he embarks on this new adventure, Kauf is no longer sure if he and his spouse will put down roots in Detroit.
“We are not wanted,” he said. I’m afraid to raise a child here. I’m afraid they may not find a network they belong to.
He measured the space again. The store had been closed for days. The lights were off. A mezuzah still hung from the door frame. He’s still confused.
“I love everyone,” Kauf said. “I don’t have any negativity in my life. “
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