In back-to-back-to-back-to-back events, from Brooklyn to San Francisco to Portland, Ore., the past two weeks have seen the concerted ostracizing of American Jewish civic life, seemingly pushing all but the most fringe members of the community out of polite society. 

This began last week with New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani — who has seemingly become the poster child of the movement to reject the beliefs and concerns of the vast majority of American Jews — took the stage at a pre-election rally in Brooklyn and decried the American Israel Public Affairs Committee as “monsters.” Despite pushback and criticism of dehumanization from even some of his Jewish allies, Mamdani stood by his description.

The next day, Poetica Coffee in Brooklyn, a cafe that boasted of offering “unconditional dignity” to anyone who came through its doors, posted on social media to denounce Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY), who had earlier visited one of the shops with his daughter. In the since-deleted post, the coffee shop decried Goldman, a liberal Democrat, as a “genocide enabler” and said that it had returned the money that Goldman had spent on a cup of coffee, which he said he’d purchased as a courtesy for the cashier allowing his daughter to use the toilet.

At the end of last week, California state Sen. Scott Wiener — who has drawn stark criticism from much of the Jewish community for calling Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza a “genocide” — was repeatedly harassed, first at a bar where someone berated him until he said “Free Palestine,” and then again at a trans pride parade where he was cursed at and accused of having “Zionist handlers” and “Israeli masters.” 

And then came the Portland, Ore., coffee shop. 

In an extended social media post, the owner of the city’s Heretic Coffee, Josh White, wrote that two weeks prior it had received “a grant check from The Jewish Federation,” which the cafe called “blood money” and said it was “ripp[ing] up” and throwing in the trash because of the federation system’s emergency fundraising for Israel in the wake of the Oct. 7 terror attacks. “We are not interested in being funded by, or associated with, any organization that materially supports the military currently bombing Gaza,” wrote White, whose coffee shop started distributing food to people who receive SNAP benefits after funding cuts went into effect last November. 

As the social media post spread, garnering nearly 12,000 “likes” on Facebook, many who had seen it reached out to the local Jewish Federation of Greater Portland for explanation. How did this nonprofit coffee shop come to receive such a grant without applying for it? 

The answer was a combination of misunderstanding and ignorance.

The check that the coffee shop had received did not, in fact, come from Portland’s Jewish federation. It came from the Jewish Federation Bay Area, and it was not a grant in the common understanding of the word. The funds came from the holder of a donor-advised fund that the San Francisco federation operates. (As White bills himself as a journalist, these answers should not have been too hard to find.) 

“We still don’t know why they sent us this check or what their intent was,” White wrote in his post.

The intent, of course, was to feed hungry people.

According to the Bay Area federation, the DAF holder, whose name has not been released, had learned of Heretic Coffee’s work providing food to those in need and wanted to support it. 

“We are deeply disappointed to learn that a well-intentioned donation from one of our donor-advised funds was declined by Heretic Coffee, as it was made by a compassionate donor inspired by their work addressing food insecurity,” Joy Sisisky, president and CEO of the Jewish Federation Bay Area, told eJewishPhilanthropy yesterday. “The Jewish Federation Bay Area is deeply committed to the values of tzedakah and tikkun olam — principles that compel us to support both Jewish and non-Jewish organizations working to strengthen communities and care for those in need.”

In a message to his stakeholders, Marc Blattner, the CEO of the Portland Jewish federation, lamented the coffee shop’s decision, saying that its description of the Jewish federation system as being “complicit in ‘genocide’… is unacceptable and crosses a line for us at the Jewish Federation!” 

He also noted that the money raised post-Oct. 7 was “raised specifically for social service needs across the country — not for the government nor military purposes.”

Offering to meet with the coffee shop owners, Blattner asked if the cafe would also reject donations from all donor-advised funds — from Fidelity, Charles Schwab or community foundations — that have donated to Israeli causes. Presumably not. 

Speaking with eJP yesterday, Blattner said he was not interested in getting into a public fight with the coffee shop but felt compelled to respond given how many calls — mainly supportive of the federation — that his office had been receiving. 

“We wanted to clarify, as best we could, what happened, what it was about and that we were not involved,” he said. “But also, we didn’t appreciate the words and the language that [the coffee shop had used].”

Each of the incidents represents just one piece of anecdotal evidence but taken together, they indicate a trend in which all Jewish figures and organizations are inherently suspect and subject to litmus tests that others are not. They also reveal the increasingly toxic view that many in the progressive space have of the core American Jewish community, a situation that, left unaddressed, could further push Jewish civic life to the margins of American society.