{"id":605132,"date":"2026-09-04T01:48:18","date_gmt":"2026-09-04T01:48:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/605132\/"},"modified":"2026-09-04T01:48:18","modified_gmt":"2026-09-04T01:48:18","slug":"even-steven-spielberg-ordered-our-coffee-inside-new-yorks-proudly-israeli-caffe-a","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/605132\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Even Steven Spielberg ordered our coffee\u2019: Inside New York\u2019s proudly Israeli Caff\u00e8 A"},"content":{"rendered":"

Aaron Dahan is the owner of Caff\u00e8 Aronne on New York\u2019s Upper East Side. Two flags hang outside the caf\u00e9: one Israeli, one American. Inside, stickers bearing the faces of fallen Israeli soldiers share space. Dahan has no intention of removing the Israeli symbols, despite an employee revolt in recent years and repeated harassment targeting the business.<\/p>\n

Dahan, whose father is a Lebanese Jew who immigrated to the United States, began his coffee career in 2018, running coffee stands at events after deciding that New York\u2019s coffee scene was missing something. \u201cEven if you went to a $100,000 wedding, it was the same coffee,\u201d he says. \u201cWe started with a small machine, and it grew and grew until we began working with big companies.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\u05e7\u05e4\u05d4<\/a>\"\u05e7\u05e4\u05d4<\/p>\n

Cafe Aronne; the Hebrew prayer ‘Modeh Ani’ is displayed on the wall <\/p>\n

(Photo: Lior Ben Ari)<\/p>\n

\"\u05e7\u05e4\u05d4<\/a>\"\u05e7\u05e4\u05d4<\/p>\n

Caff\u00e8 Aronne; Jewish and Israeli imagery adorns the caf\u00e9 walls <\/p>\n

(Photo: Lior Ben Ari)<\/p>\n

One day, a man called asking whether Dahan could provide coffee on very short notice for the final day of a movie shoot. The request was for four hours of coffee service as a way of thanking the crew. <\/p>\n

Only after the call did Dahan realize who had placed the order: Steven Spielberg. \u201cI told my father, \u2018You won\u2019t believe who called! It\u2019s Steven Spielberg!\u2019 And my Lebanese father said to me, \u2018Who is that?\u2019\u201d Dahan recalled, laughing. The production was Spielberg\u2019s \u201cWest Side Story.\u201d<\/p>\n

From there, the business grew. \u201cThat\u2019s how it started,\u201d Dahan said. \u201cThen we opened a caf\u00e9 in the West Village. At first, it was all about the coffee. Today, it\u2019s become about much more than that, and involves Zionism, Judaism and creating a fully kosher space.\u201d<\/p>\n

The West Village location was eventually sold to one of the company\u2019s clients, who continues to operate it. Dahan\u2019s family now owns the Upper East Side caf\u00e9, opened another location on the Upper West Side about a month ago and plans to open a third in Midtown Manhattan.<\/p>\n

The Upper East Side location opened in December 2022, less than a year before the October 7<\/a> Hamas attack on Israel. “After the attack, we began raising money for Magen David Adom<\/a> (Israel\u2019s national emergency medical service). Caff\u00e8 Aronne donated $1 from every drink sold and placed a QR code in its window so even passersby who did not enter the caf\u00e9 could donate.”\"\u05e1\u05d8\u05d9\u05d1\u05df<\/a>\"\u05e1\u05d8\u05d9\u05d1\u05df<\/p>\n

Steven Spielberg, Aaron Dahan\u2019s most famous customer <\/p>\n

(Photo: Jordan Strauss\/Invision\/AP)<\/p>\n

Photos of the hostages held in Gaza were also placed in the windows. \u201cAt the time, people would put up hostage posters and within an hour or two someone would come and tear them down,\u201d Dahan said. \u201cI said that if we put the posters inside the caf\u00e9 windows, behind the glass, people couldn\u2019t just come in and take them. And that\u2019s what we did.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then came a confrontation with his own employees. After about a month of fundraising, Dahan said staff members arrived in the morning and replaced the caf\u00e9s\u2019 menus with protest messages, including one reading \u201cblood of Palestinian babies.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know what they thought would happen. It was coordinated across all three locations, and at the time we had 17 employees.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite the anger and disruption, Dahan said he ultimately viewed the incident differently. \u201cI actually thank them for what they did, because it blew up and people learned from it about October 7,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\"\u05e7\u05e4\u05d4<\/a>\"\u05e7\u05e4\u05d4<\/p>\n

Caff\u00e8 Aronne; an Israeli flag and a hostage poster, placed behind the window so they could not be torn down <\/p>\n

(Photo: Aaron Dahan)<\/p>\n

\"\u05e7\u05e4\u05d4<\/a>\"\u05e7\u05e4\u05d4<\/p>\n

Caff\u00e8 Aronne; an Israeli flag in the caf\u00e9 window alongside a pro-Palestinian protest sticker; members of the staff joined the revolt against Dahan <\/p>\n

(Photo: Aaron Dahan)<\/p>\n

Following the revolt, Dahan and his family closed their locations for several days while trying to recruit new staff. Finding replacements proved difficult in the West Village and at the High Line location, he said. But on the heavily Jewish Upper East Side, the response was markedly different.<\/p>\n

People contacted the family and even walked into the caf\u00e9 offering to work. One Jewish owner of another neighborhood caf\u00e9 came to Dahan with an even broader offer of support. \u201cMy staff is your staff,\u201d Dahan recalled him saying. \u201cI\u2019ll even pay them.\u201d<\/p>\n

The support extended beyond the Jewish community. \u201cEven the company we ordered our cups from called and said they were willing to donate cups,\u201d Dahan said. \u201cWe didn\u2019t ask for money, but people wanted to be part of it. That was very meaningful and moving, because most of the people we work with aren\u2019t Jewish.\u201d<\/p>\n

The caf\u00e9s have continued to draw hostility. In another incident, vandals defaced the windows and wrote \u201cGaza\u201d in red. Dahan said the people responsible had previously worked for him. \u201cThey had once been part of our staff,\u201d he said. \u201cThat was hard.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dahan is married and has a child, and the coffee business is a family operation. He speaks fluent Hebrew, which he attributes to his mother\u2019s side of the family. Growing up, he said, the family visited a kibbutz in northern Israel every summer. His grandmother was born in Tel Aviv in 1941 and spoke only Hebrew with the family.<\/p>\n

\"\u05e7\u05e4\u05d4<\/a>\"\u05e7\u05e4\u05d4<\/p>\n

‘Gaza’ graffiti scrawled across an Israeli flag at Caff\u00e8 Aronne <\/p>\n

(Photo: Aaron Dahan)<\/p>\n

His father\u2019s story begins in Lebanon. \u201cMy father was born in Lebanon in 1967,\u201d Dahan said. \u201cThey lived in Beirut and later moved to Jounieh, farther north. When he was 16, he was called up to the Lebanese army. My grandmother objected, and within 24 hours she put my father and my uncle on a flight to Paris, and from there to New York.\u201d<\/p>\n

Six years ago, Dahan said, the family bought tickets to finally visit Lebanon. A week before the planned trip, his grandfather died.<\/p>\n

\"\u05d0\u05d4\u05e8\u05d5\u05df<\/a>\"\u05d0\u05d4\u05e8\u05d5\u05df<\/p>\n

Aaron Dahan; his mother is Israeli and his father is Lebanese <\/p>\n

(Photo: Private album)<\/p>\n

Lebanon maintains a boycott law that prohibits contact and business dealings with Israelis. Dahan\u2019s family, however, is Jewish-American and has maintained connections with people in Lebanon over the years. Dahan himself also knows people and customers who have visited the country.<\/p>\n

Today, the Israeli and American flags outside Caff\u00e8 Aronne have become a kind of filter. Some people see them and enter, even if only to buy a bottle of water and feel that they are taking part. Others stay away. <\/p>\n

The flags also prompted a break with one employee who, Dahan said, gave him an ultimatum: her or the flags. He chose the flags. Another employee, he said, told him that the business received far more affection than hostility because of them.<\/p>\n

Dahan does not see displaying them as an act of particular courage. \u201cI don\u2019t think we\u2019re doing anything special by displaying the flags,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re not heroes. We\u2019re doing here what every caf\u00e9 in Israel does.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t need courage, you need insurance,\u201d he said. \u201cOurs renews on September 1. Two weeks ago, I upgraded it to \u2018terrorism insurance,\u2019 because when you have a mayor talking about a global intifada, that\u2019s what happens.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Aaron Dahan is the owner of Caff\u00e8 Aronne on New York\u2019s Upper East Side. Two flags hang outside…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":605133,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[146,85,46],"class_list":["post-605132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=605132"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605132\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/605133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=605132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=605132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=605132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}