24 | AUGUST 22 • 2024 

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 “commu-
nity” 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 sup-
port 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 frus-
tration and questions about whether 
Kafka was being transparent about his 
plans. 
Then, already angry with Kafka, 
staff unearthed evidence of his pro-Is-
rael views. Kafka has published op-eds 
and Instagram posts expressing sup-
port for Israel and once told Jewish 
Insider he wanted to obtain Israeli cit-
izenship — 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 advertis-
ing “latke fries” and “matzo ball soup.”

In response to the first wave of res-
ignations, Kafka urged, “If anyone else 
would like to terminate their employ-
ment 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 

SCREENSHOT

DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

LEFT: An Instagram post from 
Philip Kafka, a Jewish real 
estate developer in Detroit, 
posing in a jacket with Israeli 
patches on May 23, 2021. Kafka 
would come under fire three 
years later from bagel shop staff 
accusing him of being “Zionist.” 
BELOW: (L-R) Arad Kauf in 
Cafe Prince; Detroit Institute 
of Bagels original owner Ben 
Newman in 2023.

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