A Jewish bagel shop in Detroit closes after staff walk out on new ‘Zionist’ owner

By Andrew Lapin

(JTA) — DETROIT — Arad Kauf sits in the empty dining area of the bagel shop he is supposed to be managing. He’s got some new recipes proofing in the back, but they’re just sheets of raw dough. There’s no one on hand to do the baking.

Everyone on staff at the Detroit Institute of Bagels either quit or was fired last month after a conflagration centered in part on Israel, Kauf’s homeland.

“I was ashamed. I was embarrassed,” Kauf said. “I was trying to understand what I did wrong. What happened here?”

What happened at the Detroit Institute of Bagels married a long-simmering local real estate dispute to the widespread tensions over Israel and Gaza that have rippled out across the country over the past 10 months. The sale of the bagel shop to Philip Kafka, a hard-charging Jewish property developer and Kauf’s business partner, elicited protests over Kafka’s past comments supporting Israel.

“My own core beliefs do not allow me to work for a zionist,” one staffer wrote in an email to the bagel shop’s new management. “I cannot allow my creativity and work to be associated with zionism when this is something I vehemently reject, and am very vocal about.”

The first two staffers to resign also cited “the zionist political leanings of new ownership” alongside a “history of poor business practices” and “lack of transparency” as their reasons.

“I would call you a vulture, but I like vultures too much to demean their good name,” a third staffer wrote.

Kafka declined to speak with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency; so did a representative for the ex-staffers. The emails, which JTA viewed, show that the staffers’ criticism of Israel and its supporters merged with concerns about work conditions and anxieties about gentrification in Detroit. Staffers also rejected criticism that their opposition to a sovereign Jewish homeland in the Middle East makes them antisemitic.

“I believe Judaism to be a beautiful religion, and zionism to be deeply anti-semitic,” wrote the staffer who likened Kafka to a vulture.

The Detroit Institute of Bagels is hardly the first workplace to be upended by divides over the Israel-Hamas war since it began with Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel. In New York City, for example, workers at Cafe Aronne resigned after the chain’s owner demonstrated support for Israel after Oct. 7.

But the Detroit bagel drama stands out for unfolding at a business that was self-consciously Jewish, with a vision outlined by founding owners Philip and Ben Newman of bringing “Jewish comfort food” back to a city that had largely been emptied of its Jewish past.

Kauf, a Tel Aviv native, arrived in Detroit in 2021 as his wife began a medical residency in the area. He had been set to manage the Detroit Institute of Bagels before the staff resigned, and he isn’t sure they knew he was Israeli. But he said he found the outpouring of anger after the sale announcement confusing.

“Growing up, a ‘Zionist’ embodied community, culture, and a love for the land of Israel — not its government or politics, but its inherent beauty,” he said, declining to share his current political views.

Now, he fears he’ll still catch strays from the controversy — though he knows the bulk of staff anger was directed at Kafka. Since the mid-2010s the Dallas-born billboard scion has transformed this blighted but strong-willed Detroit community of Core City into an architectural playground of fanciful Quonset huts and luxury restaurants. Kafka also launched an ad campaign encouraging New Yorkers to move to Detroit.

These kinds of ventures have earned Kafka acclaim from the design community — and from Kauf, who said he moved into one of Kafka’s buildings because it looked “very exciting and futuristic.” Kauf was impressed enough with Kafka’s vision that, after a stint working for Hillel of Metro Detroit, he sought work from his landlord and wound up managing Cafe Prince, which Kafka owns. Though not explicitly Israeli or Jewish, the cafe has a mezuzah on the door and prices many of its menu items in multiples of 18, which signifies “life” in Jewish tradition.

Many locals, though, are angry with Kafka’s approach to development. Some of them have taken to calling him a “gentrifier” and a “colonizer.” It didn’t help matters when Cafe Prince, as part of a stated focus on fresh ingredients, started selling single raw, peeled carrots for $1.80 — further evidence for many that Kafka’s ventures were out of touch with the community. (Kauf still has the carrot on his menu and defends it as “a way for us to put forward our philosophy”; advertising for the carrot called it a “nude raw.”)

While Kafka and Kauf were charting one kind of path as Detroit businessmen, Newman was forging another. A metro Detroit native, he and his brother opened the Detroit Institute of Bagels’ first brick-and-mortar incarnation in 2013 in the hip Corktown neighborhood, naming it in part after the city’s beloved art museum.

The throwback business quickly became a local favorite, and fit a trend of young Jews moving back to the city decades after an earlier generation of Jewish residents — and their bagel suppliers — had fled for the suburbs. Newman said he was inspired by the Jewish delis of his youth.

Yet his business struggled, and he shut its doors in 2020 at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Reopening in Kafka’s building last year, next door to Kauf’s cafe, Newman hired a young, diverse and close-knit staff that spoke of wanting to create a “community” around the shop. Kauf himself was a big fan; he built his own menu around the bread baked at the bagel shop, and bought three loaves from them every morning.

But finances were a continuing struggle, and Newman forewent a salary for 18 months and even started looking for a second job just to support the bagel shop, he told JTA. The sale to Kafka, he said, was intended to preserve both the business and his staff’s jobs.

“Instead of selling the business to parties interested only in its parts, I chose to sign an agreement with Philip and [his] team because I thought that was the best way to keep DIB open and provide job security for our staff,” Newman said. “Philip and I wanted to keep this business operating and people employed. That’s why we transitioned ownership.”

The new owners told staff they would maintain the same staffing and pay; the plan was for Kauf to solely manage front-of-house matters and leave everything else to the team already in place. But an attempt to meet with staff members elicited frustration and questions about whether Kafka was being transparent about his plans.

Then, already angry with Kafka, staff unearthed evidence of his pro-Israel views. Kafka has published op-eds and Instagram posts expressing support for Israel and once told Jewish Insider he wanted to obtain Israeli citizenship — though at the time of the bagel shop sale last month, he hadn’t commented publicly on Israel since the last Gaza war in 2021.

For some, Kafka’s support for Israel and his interests in Detroit were linked. “It’s easy for him to sidestep the Zionist allegations, but it’s a lot easier based on his actions to point to just the straight-up colonizing,” one ex-staffer told local news site Bridge Detroit.

Newman declined to comment on his former staff citing Kafka’s “Zionism” as one reason they didn’t want to support him, or on whether Newman’s own Judaism or views on Israel ever came up in his interactions with staff. Upon their resignations, the crew posed for photos standing defiantly with folded arms outside the store’s hand-painted signage advertising “latke fries” and “matzo ball soup.”

In response to the first wave of resignations, Kafka urged, “If anyone else would like to terminate their employment based on rumors about me, our heritage, or our presumed politics, I implore you to take the same step.” More did, and Kafka promptly shuttered the store, putting remaining staff out of a job. “The business can’t operate without the key participants who have recently resigned,” he wrote by way of explanation.

In a letter to his other tenants and business partners, Kafka defended his record in the Core City neighborhood and said the staff “had preconceived notions about the new owners that they were unwilling to change.”

When the first round of staff cited his “zionist political leanings,” he wrote, “I was shocked that two people who I had only shared casual good mornings with felt that they knew what I believed about a topic as complicated and tragic as the situation in the Middle East.”

He also addressed his views on Israel, writing, “All people deserve peace, security, and safety. War and death is terrible. I support the cause of any and all people to assemble a nation whose priority is the security, safety and happiness of its citizens. However, I will never support a country whose primary objective is the destruction of its neighbor. Period. This is not the forum for further discussion on this topic.”

Kafka said that his attempts to sit down with staff to discuss the transition were rebuffed, and that “we made our best efforts to try and move forward productively until it became clear that the staff had preconceived notions about us, our work and beliefs.”

As news of the closure rippled through Detroit, Zionism became the prevailing narrative as to why it happened. The store’s Instagram page began filling up with comments accusing the new owner of being a “Zionist,” while one Reddit commenter who claimed to be an ex-staffer theorized, “He’s practicing: exploiting Detroit so he can go do illegal s**t in Palestine.” On the social network X, a Detroit-based mutual aid group called Kafka a “Zionist land baron.” One of Kafka’s non-Jewish commercial tenants, a Brazilian restaurateur whose family originated in Lebanon, told JTA his business was now on a “blacklist” of places to boycott because he rents from Kafka.

“For some reason I’ve been punished for things he was saying or believing,” Javier Bardauil said. “What do you want me to do, burn this restaurant because you don’t like my landlord? I’m employing more than 50 people in Detroit.”

Bardauil said he was especially frustrated because he doesn’t think he agrees with Kafka about the Israel-Hamas war.

“I’m pissed too about what’s going on in Palestine right now. I think war is not good for anyone,” he said. Of the protesters, he said, “The worst part is they don’t know what they’re talking about.”

Despite all the commotion, Kauf is still excited to relaunch the Detroit Institute of Bagels as part of Cafe Prince. But it was clear that the road ahead would be challenging: On Instagram, activists were starting to DM customers who shared photos from inside Cafe Prince. They were sending them local coverage of Kafka in the hopes of dissuading people from patronizing his cafe.

So even as he embarks on the new venture, Kauf is no longer sure if he and his wife want to put down roots in Detroit.

“We’re not wanted,” he said. “I’m worried about raising a child here. I fear they won’t find a community where they truly belong.”

He returned to sizing up the space. The store had been closed for days. The lights were turned off. A mezuzah still hung on the doorframe. He was still confused.

“I love all people,” Kauf said. “I don’t want any negativity in my life.”