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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

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