22 | AUGUST 22 • 2024 J
N
A
rad Kauf sits in the empty
dining area of the bagel shop
he is supposed to be manag-
ing. He’s got some new recipes proof-
ing 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 embar-
rassed,” 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-sim-
mering 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 proper-
ty developer and Kauf’s business part-
ner, 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
antisemitic,” wrote the staffer who lik-
ened 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.
AN OVERTLY JEWISH
ENTERPRISE
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 architectur-
al playground of fanciful Quonset
huts and luxury restaurants. Kafka
also launched an ad campaign encour-
aging 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 — fur-
ther 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.”)
‘PRECONCEIVED NOTIONS’
While Kafka and Kauf were charting
one kind of path as Detroit business-
men, Newman was forging another.
A Metro Detroit native, he and his
brother opened the Detroit Institute of
Bagels’ first brick-and-mortar incar-
nation 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
Bagel Drama
ANDREW LAPIN/JTA
A Jewish bagel shop in Detroit closes after
staff walk out on new ‘Zionist’ owner.
ANDREW LAPIN JTA
OUR COMMUNITY
The closed storefront
of the Detroit Institute
of Bagels in Detroit
after staff walked out
in protest of the store’s
new “Zionist” owner on
July 31
continued on page 24