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By: Hadassa Kalatizadeh
Even juice is becoming a political thing.
Reut Levi, co-owner of Tamar Juice Bar, in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant shared an Instagram post criticizing singer Bjork for sharing misinformation about the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
As reported by the NY Post, the next day employees from a neighboring coffee shop saw Levi’s post and slammed the juice bar owner for “promoting racism and [supporting] genocide.” The coffee shop owner encouraged her followers to boycott the Juice bar, causing business to dip. “In a matter of minutes, all my Instagram was Palestine flags,” said Levi, who co-owns the store together with Michal Mualem, who is also Israeli. She said that within hours, people were passing by the shop just to record videos and to urge passersby to stay away. She says she speedily stripped the walls of all Israeli décor and locked herself in the store and called the police.
“The first two days, I was scared,” Levi said, noting that on social media people kept tagging the Bat Yam native and pushing their followers to boycott the “white Zionist-owned business.” She even found that her storefront had been added to a Google Map titled “Zionist Restaurant – NYC.” Levi told the Post that the juice bar’s regular clientele all but disappeared in a matter of just days, leaving her worried about the future of her business, which just opened up this past June. “I tried to bring something good, I gave so much effort to people and then in one day, they just erase you,” she said.
That’s when the Jewish community found out about the Boycott on Tamar Juice bar, which had resulted from Levi’s post defending Israel. The Jewish community started to rally behind the store. Rabbi Yossi Eliav, director of Chabad of Clinton Hill and Pratt University, came in and bought 10 orange juices for police officers at the 79th Precinct.
The Rabbi recorded his own social media video and spread the word about the boycott, asking people to support the business. People she had never seen before showed up at her store with big orders. Soon, orders were coming in not only from locals, but from as far as Texas and California for juices and smoothies, and tripling daily. Levi delivered the juices to the local precinct, a nearby school, and to a homeless shelter.
“Look what anti-Semites got us to do — we’ve never spent so much on fresh squeezed juice,” Eliav laughed kindly. He said the support seen from the Jewish community is “an unbelievable sign of people showing up, for being proud of who they are and saying we’re not going to hide in the shadows.” Jews traveled from all parts of Long Island to support the store. One afternoon, a half-dozen Jewish customers crowded the tiny storefront, from Long Island and Queens to buy smoothies and acai bowls.
Per the Post, the patrons started singing the Hebrew solidarity song “Am Yisrael Chai,” or “the people of Israel live,” and dancing the Hora. “If I have friends who feel alone, I want them to know you’ve got a brother right here,” said Bentzy Weingot, 34, who drove to Brooklyn from Rockaway Beach to show support. “What I’m learning from this is not to underestimate the power of community.”
The news comes as New Yorkers face a surge in anti-Semitism. A new Siena College poll found that some 73 percent of Jews in NY state said they are experiencing a great deal of or some anti-Semitism.
