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Brooklyn Bookstore Fires Employee Who Canceled Event With Progressive Jewish Author and ‘Zionist’ Moderator

Posted on by angelo
Brooklyn Bookstore Fires Employee Who Canceled Event With Progressive Jewish Author and ‘Zionist’ Moderator

The owner of a Brooklyn bookstore who sparked backlash after canceling an event featuring a Jewish author said he was not involved in the decision and is firing the employee responsible.

Daniel Power, the owner of Powerhouse Arena, told the New York Jewish Week that he would try to reschedule the event.

“It’s horrific, it’s uncalled for and it was completely unauthorized,” Power said, adding that the employee “is going to be fired today.”

The bookstore, located in Brooklyn’s Dumbo neighborhood, was scheduled to host a launch event Tuesday night for “Tablets Shattered,” a new book about American Jewish life by Joshua Leifer, a Jewish journalist who has written for a range of left-leaning publications, including Jewish Currents and +972.

But shortly before the event began, Leifer learned that the event had been canceled because its moderator, Rabbi Andy Bachman, was a Zionist. A photo from the bookstore showed a notice taped to the window saying the event was canceled “due to unforeseen circumstances.”

The bookstore “told me they wouldn’t host Andy’s conversation because they wouldn’t allow a Zionist on the premises,” Leifer wrote on X. “My biggest concern was that the synagogues wouldn’t want to host me. I didn’t think it would be the Brooklyn bookstores that would close their doors.”

The cancellation is the latest since Oct. 7, when Jews were isolated in the arts because of Israel. It is particularly striking because, although Bachman considers himself a Zionist, he and Leifer are both critics of the Israeli government. Several Jewish leaders and city officials have called the cancellation anti-Semitic.

New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, a progressive who is the city’s top Jewish official and has repeatedly called for a ceasefire in Gaza, called the decision “totally outrageous.”

“You have allowed this Zionist (i.e. me) to enter your premises on numerous occasions to buy books, but now you won’t let us speak there?” Lander wrote.

Bachman, former senior rabbi of Congregation Beth Elohim in Park Slope, said he was dismayed that the term “Zionist” had become pejorative.

“I believe that Israel should exist, that’s why I’m a Zionist,” Bachman, who now works as a consultant, said in an interview. “I think what’s happened and what’s so disturbing is that the word ‘Zionism’ has been understood only as a term that means racist, militaristic and genocidal, and I refuse to allow people to define Zionism that way, and I refuse to be defined that way myself.”

Power, the bookstore owner, acknowledged that the cancellation was a mistake and said he was not informed of the decision before it was made. He described the cancellation as the work of a rogue employee, whom he declined to identify. Power initially said in a message on X that Leifer’s publicist canceled the event after speaking with the employee.

“For reasons unknown to us, this staff member Googled the moderator and decided to say something to the publicist,” Power said. “It’s not our normal procedure to question anything once a subscription has been signed. If the events coordinator had felt that the book didn’t fit our profile, we would never have booked it for an event.”

Power said the employee did not mention Zionism when he first asked her about it, and that he confronted her again after reading about the cancellation in a New York Post article. Leifer, who did not respond to a request for comment, provided the Post with an audio recording of the encounter with the employee, who allegedly said on the recording, “We don’t want a Zionist on our stage.”

Power said: “I read it in the New York Post. I thought, ‘What the hell?’ And she said, ‘I might have said it, but I don’t remember.'”

Dutton’s publishing house, a subsidiary of Penguin Random House, did not respond to a request for comment.

Power said the employee was due to leave the bookstore next week for another job, and said she may have been motivated by “sabotage.” He noted that the bookstore has hosted Jewish and Zionist authors before, including an event in March with Naama Shefi, who writes about Jewish cooking and runs a culinary institute in Tel Aviv.

Powerhouse also has stores in Park Slope and Industry City in Brooklyn. Power said the stores have made an effort to display both pro- and anti-Israel books and discourage staff from promoting their own political views.

“We welcome people of all faiths, all ideas and all philosophies,” he said. “But we have a lot of young people who feel they have a right to express their political views in retail. I’ve worked hard since the war started, thinking, ‘We can’t do that.’”

He added: “If you go to a restaurant or a delicatessen, they will serve you no matter who you are. A bookstore is no different, but young people tend to think it is different because it is a retailer of ideas that are inside the covers of books.”

Bachman faced a similar situation in December, when he was booed at Hunter College while discussing “Israelism,” a film that contains extensive criticism of Israel.

“The Jews, like any other nation on earth with a homeland, have the right to self-determination, and that is what makes me a Zionist,” he said. “I do not agree with the policies of the current government, I do not agree with the way they are waging war. That does not mean that I disavow or deny Israel’s right to exist.”

The controversy over the war between Israel and Hamas has inflamed other literary spaces since October 7. A viral list targeting “Zionist” authors has circulated online, a Jewish sponsor of the National Book Awards withdrew from the ceremony over an attempted ceasefire call, and PEN America canceled an annual festival due to disagreements over the war.

The term “Zionist” has become a pejorative among some sections of the American left, and progressive groups, business leaders, and students actively seek to exclude “Zionists” from public spaces. Polls show that an overwhelming majority of American Jews identify with Israel.

Jewish community leaders and New York City politicians condemned the Powerhouse incident as anti-Semitic.

New York Rep. Dan Goldman said he was a friend of Bachman and called the incident “unacceptable anti-Semitism, pure and simple.”

New York Rep. Ritchie Torres, a staunch supporter of Israel, tweeted: “The far left is making ‘Zionists’ (i.e. most Jews) the exception to the anti-discrimination progressive rule.”

Rabbi Jill Jacobs, a prominent leader in the progressive Jewish community, called the cancellation “completely ridiculous.”

“It is anti-Semitic to demand that Jews disavow Israel before being allowed into your space,” Jacobs said on X.

“This is hateful, shameful and harmful behavior on the part of (Powerhouse Books),” said Mark Treyger, director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York. “Every New Yorker should be outraged by this vile and venomous anti-Semitism because it is an affront to every New Yorker.”