Willie and David Zabar

The frenetic pace of New York City provides ample opportunity for mini-empires to rise and fall. But on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, one iconic mainstay has managed to weather it all. Since 1934, Zabar’s has been a focal point for the city’s food culture, helping usher in such groundbreaking revolutions as drip coffee. On this week’s episode of Jewish Insider’s “Limited Liability Podcast,” co-hosts Richard Goldberg and Jarrod Bernstein were joined by David and Willie Zabar, a father-son duo who represent the third and fourth generations of proprietors.

New release: A new book, Zabar’s: A Family Story with Recipes, chronicles the history of the store and the family behind it. The book is a product of the research and writing done by Lori Zabar, David’s sister, who died in February after a five-year battle with cancer. With the release of Zabar’s, the story of the family behind the famous store is gaining new attention.“I think it is going to make customers feel just much closer to the store and the family knowing more about it,” David said, concluding, “It’s a great way to honor my sister.”

Backstory: The original Zabars, Lillian and Louis, came from families in Ukraine with extensive retail experience. Like many Jews, they fled during the pogroms of the 1920s. While much of that story was known to the family, Lori, who spent much of her final years researching the family’s history, uncovered new details. “A lot of that information, which I really read about for the first time, is family members that were killed in pogroms, and why my grandfather really had to leave town — because he was being pursued because he had fought back,” David explained on the podcast.

Family business: “There’s always been family members involved. All of my children, and my niece and nephews have worked in the store at one point,” David said, adding that, while some have gone on to other careers, “the experience of working here is part of their growing up and livelihood.” In the Zabar family, exposure to the family business begins as early as high school. “There was this idea that at any given summer, you have to be doing something. If you got a job or an internship; you’re doing a program somewhere else, that’s fine. But if you’re not, you’ve got to be working at the store.” Willie recalled. “At the time, I felt like that was kind of a drag. But looking back, I’m actually really glad to have had that experience.”

Read more here and listen to the full podcast here.

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Rep. Ted Deutch (D-FL)

Activists who are hostile to Israel “don’t want to talk about” the “changing nature of the Middle East,” Rep. Ted Deutch (D-FL) said on Wednesday, pointing to the Abraham Accords as a “perfect example” of Israel forming alliances in the region, Jewish Insider’s Melissa Weiss reports.

Regional shift: “It’s no longer a question of being critical. It is an outright hostility to Israel… They don’t want to talk about the fact that more and more countries want to align themselves with Israel and everything Israel has to offer,” Deutch said at a conference in Washington, D.C., hosted by The Jewish Federations of North America. “The Abraham Accords will grow. I have no doubt there will be more countries to join there, as people look at what we know as the modern miracle, the modern State of Israel.”

Doubling down: Last June, the Florida congressman decried comments from far-left House members, linking domestic antisemitism to the previous month’s conflict between Israel and Hamas. On Wednesday, Deutch doubled down on the comments he made on the House floor last year, during which he accused some legislators of making antisemitic comments. “When your position is that the only state in the world that shouldn’t exist is the one Jewish state, we have an obligation to make sure that people understand that that’s antisemitism,” he told Jewish communal leaders on Wednesday. “We need other people to understand that as well.”

Going global: Deutch was asked about the recent decision by a Lufthansa crew to bar a group of Jewish travelers in Frankfurt, Germany, from continuing on to their destination, after some in the group had not worn masks on the prior leg of their flight. The congressman, who co-chairs the Congressional Study Group on Germany, called for “accountability” over Lufthansa’s actions. “I reached out and will engage more directly with them to understand. I don’t want to rely just on what I’ve read. But what I read is terrible… the singling out of people because they appear to be Jews. And I think we need to get to the bottom of it.”

Read more here.

Bonus: In a prerecorded video message to conference attendees, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) doubled down on his call to fund the Nonprofit Security Grant Program at $360 million.

Jonathan Greenblatt, ADL CEO & national director, speaking at the Anti-Defamation League’s National Leadership Summit in Washington, D.C.

In The New Yorker, staff writer Isaac Chotiner and Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt debate whether anti-Zionism is antisemitism, an argument Greenblatt made in an address to the organization’s National Leadership Summit earlier this month.

Chotiner: Many Jews in America have been saying something for a long time, which is do not treat us as Israelis. Do not commit hate crimes against Jews in America because you don’t like the policies of the Israeli state. Do not accuse us of having dual loyalty and looking out for the interests of Israel. Is there any danger in equating anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism so strongly that in some ways it’s doing the work of the people who want to equate those two things: Jews as a whole with Israel and Zionism?

Greenblatt: I wish I didn’t have to have this conversation with you or with anyone… Anti-Zionism is a new hue of a very old color. Jews have been delegitimized for centuries. For thousands of years. Judaism isn’t a real religion. The Jews aren’t a real people. The Jews don’t really deserve rights. We have heard this throughout time. Today, the subject of derision is the Jewish state, not the Jewish people. But it is an old practice. It’s like old wine in a new bottle.

To answer your question, we have fought against dual loyalty, against that canard. There’s nothing wrong with having a passion for your homeland. Italian Americans have that, Irish Americans have that, Chinese American people have that. There’s nothing wrong with having a strong identification, but Zionism, a desire to go back to Jerusalem, the longing for Zion, isn’t something that David Ben-Gurion came up with. It isn’t something that Theodor Herzl came up with. It has been embedded in the faith and the traditions of Judaism for thousands of years. You can’t open a Torah on a Saturday morning for your daily prayer, you can’t go through a holiday, without seeing these references.

So you’re right, there are maybe more young Jewish people today who identify as progressive and think anti-Zionism is part of their progressive identity, but if you peel back the layers in anti-Zionism, it is a historic form of delegitimization targeting Jews. It may have a different veneer today, a different façade, but it’s the same architecture of intolerance that’s been there for centuries.

Chotiner: But you would also agree that the debate over Zionism has not necessarily had this “anti-Semitic veneer” for centuries, right? There are a lot of Jews who were anti-Zionists before—

Greenblatt: Give me a—Isaac. Sure, there were Jews who were worried that it would create more anti-Semitism directed against them in America. When you ask me these questions, it suggests to me that you’re coming at this from a particular editorial perspective. To compare the fear that existed in the Jewish community in the nineteen-thirties — that wasn’t anti-Zionism in the way that we have it today. The Jewish people in America or in Europe who were concerned about the prospect of creating a state of their own were terrified of the literal annihilation of their people that was taking place around them. Don’t liken the American Jewish leaders from the nineteen-thirties who had deep questions about what Zionism would mean to the people writing the charter for Hamas today.

Read the full conversation here.