A man and his child were kicked out of a cafe because they were Jewish. Oakland, in 2024? Brooklyn, last week? Or Nazi Germany, 90 years ago?\u00a0<\/p>\n
Try all three.<\/p>\n
In Oakland, Abdulrahim Harara, owner of the Jerusalem Coffee House, allegedly ejected<\/a> a Jewish man and his 5-year-old son last year because they were wearing baseball caps that had a Star of David in their design.<\/p>\n But what started in Oakland didn\u2019t stop there.<\/p>\n In Brooklyn last week, Dan Goldman, a Democrat and Jewish member of Congress, and his 7-year-old daughter visited Poetica Coffee, a cafe in the tony Park Slope section of Brooklyn. That\u2019s the neighborhood where a co-op grocery store recently voted to ban Israeli products.<\/p>\n Poetica Coffee shop in Brooklyn refunded Goldman his money over his support for Israel. Gregory P. Mango for NY Post<\/p>\n After discovering that the Goldmans had been in the cafe, Poetica Coffee owner Parviz Mukhamadkulov announced on social media<\/a> that he was refunding their money and banning them from the premises because they are \u201cgenocide enablers.\u201d (That\u2019s a code word for \u201cJews.\u201d)<\/p>\n Meanwhile, a TikTok influencer known as \u201credhead heretic\u201d has been visiting<\/a> Los Angeles cafes such as Couplet Coffee<\/a> to \u201clet everyone know\u201d that the owners are Israeli citizens. In one snippet, she cheerfully calls out \u201cThank you for leaving\u201d to departing customers.<\/p>\n Tiktok\/@redheadherertic<\/p>\n Tiktok\/@redheadherertic<\/p>\n These episodes are tragically reminiscent of a darker era.<\/p>\n The Australian scholar Michael E. Abrahams-Sprod has chronicled the ways in which Jews in the town of Magdeburg, in Nazi Germany, gradually were excluded from public life in the 1930s.<\/p>\n Signs proclaiming\u00a0\u201cJews Not Served Here\u201d (Juden unerw\u00fcnscht) and \u201cJews Not Welcome Here!\u201d (Juden unerw\u00fcnscht) began appearing in stores, hotels, cinemas, public transportation, groceries, and restaurants.<\/p>\n Abrahams-Sprod\u00a0interviewed a survivor who recalled that at age 8, in 1933, such signs were posted \u201con nearly every shop and I know it was difficult for my mother to do the shopping.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\tSign up for the California Morning Report newsletter\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCalifornia’s top news, sports and entertainment delivered to your inbox every day.\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\tThanks for signing up!\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n Another survivor, Gisela Kent, told him: \u201cThere was one place in Magdeburg called \u2018Schwarzs Kaffee-Garten\u2019 [Schwarz\u2019s Coffee Garden] where [we] used to go every Sunday \u2026 my parents, my aunt, uncle and my grandparents, for quite a while, until about 1936. And then they stopped, or perhaps they were asked to stop.\u201d As the signs proliferated, \u201cyou just didn\u2019t go out.\u201d<\/p>\n Survivor Gerry Levy recounted how his aunt once took him to a Magdeburg restaurant for ice cream. When they were identified as Jews, they were \u201capproached by the manager and asked to leave.\u201d<\/p>\n Cafe exclusions were not the only way in which food was weaponized for antisemitic purposes. Ninety years before the Park Slope Co-op weaponized food against the Jews, grocery stores in Magdeburg began restricting what Jews could buy: In December 1935,\u00a0the chief of police announced that only those Jews who were deemed \u201cinconspicuous\u201d and \u201cof acceptable appearance\u201d would be allowed to purchase cases of milk.<\/p>\n By 1938, according to\u00a0Abrahams-Sprod, \u201cJews in Magdeburg were so isolated in their city that they avoided going out in public \u2026They were effectively living in a ghetto without walls, owing to the threats that surrounded them in non-Jewish spaces.\u201d<\/p>\n That description of life in 1930s Magdeburg was an eerie precursor to the horrific chants of\u00a0\u201cWe have to make them scared!\u201d by pro-Hamas demonstrators outside a Manhattan synagogue last year.<\/p>\n The Jews of Magdeburg were too scared to leave their homes. Today\u2019s antisemites have the same goal.<\/p>\n Of course, there are many important differences between the rising antisemitism in the United States in 2026 and the antisemitism gripping Nazi Germany in 1936.<\/p>\n One of the most crucial differences is the response of the authorities. The US Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against the Oakland cafe owner; the suit is pending. The DOJ has announced that it is now also investigating the Manhattan incident involving Congressman Goldman.\u00a0<\/p>\n Swift and forceful action by the authorities is vital to keeping American society from going down the slippery slope from Oakland, to Park Slope, to a reincarnated Magdeburg.<\/p>\n Dr. Medoff is founding director of The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies and author of more than 20 books about Jewish history and the Holocaust.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t