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On a Wednesday afternoon early last month, Emily Winston — founder and CEO of Boichick Bagels — walked outside the California chain’s mothership branch in Berkeley and found that the words “Israel Baby Killer” had been spray-painted on the ground.
“This is someone who knew how we operated,” Winston, who is Jewish, told Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM) Editor-in-Chief Barney Breen-Portnoy in an interview this week, noting that graffiti was stenciled in a spot facing where patrons line up to enter the store.
Winston quickly went to buy cleaning materials and scrub the graffiti away. She also reported the incident to local police as a hate crime.
“They took all the information, I wasn’t expecting anything to happen with it, but I wanted it on the record,” she said.
Winston subsequently learned that another nearby Jewish-owned business had been similarly targeted.
“My shop is not only Jewish-owned, it’s Jewish-themed,” she noted. “It’s a very New York-style bagel shop, with a mezuzah on the door, and we put up a menorah for Hanukkah.”
“A friend suggested not saying anything, but I felt strongly that I wanted to let people know that this had happened,” Winston said. “Antisemitism has gotten really intense here in Berkeley after October 7th, and it’s frightening. As a business, we’ve made no political statements, we don’t have an Israeli flag, yet there are people calling for a boycott of us, saying, ‘Eating Boichick Bagels is supporting genocide, so don’t eat there.’”
“My job is to sell bagels and not attempt to solve the Middle East,” Winston emphasized. “A lot of it is people are mad I’m not out waving the Palestinian flag. They’re like, ‘You’re Jewish, but you should be pro-Palestine, and if you’re not, then you’re supporting genocide and you’re evil and we should boycott you.’ But I’m not going to do that.”
Winston, who was born and raised in New Jersey before later moving to California, opened Boichick Bagels four years ago. She said last month’s incident was the first time she had directly experienced antisemitism.
“I grew up in a pretty privileged liberal bubble,” she said. “Suddenly, it feels like the Left has gotten extremely intolerant, which has been a very concerning new thing.”
“On my Instagram post, there was a whole firestorm of responses,” Winston recalled. “It was deeply disturbing just to watch the comments roll in. A lot of people said really ugly things. It feels very bullying here, like ‘Oh, if you don’t wave the Palestinian flag, it’s not ok and you’re a bad Jew. But if you wave a Palestinian flag, then it’s ok and it’s not antisemitism, because it’s not that we dislike you because you’re Jewish, but because you’re not pro-Palestine.’”
Winston said she has also received messages of support, but they have been “more quiet” in comparison.
“What’s been visible here has been people putting up Palestinian flags and messages,” she said. “And anyone who doesn’t agree with that basically keeps quiet, because otherwise you get cancelled and harassed.”
“This all has toughened me up even more,” Winston continued. “When people start throwing nasty words around on Instagram, being the target of it is a learning experience. It’s been deeply unpleasant. I feel like my whole world here has changed since October 7th. The whole gestalt of the Bay Area feels not the same as it did, absolutely. Apparently, it’s been brewing at UC-Berkeley and Berkeley High Schools for some time, but I’ve been entirely unaware of it, so this has all been very new to me.”
Winston’s employees at Boichick Bagels have also been impacted by the incident.
“It has stressed my staff out, and I have some young and radical staff, so they’ve been feeling kind of conflicted,” she said. “Some of them were pretty pissed at me, because we’ve been pretty vocally progressive in the past, because I’m queer, we’re based in Berkeley, and I’ve considered myself a progressive person, up until now, when I feel like I’ve kind of been kicked off the progressive bus. And it’s so pervasive here, especially among the high school and college set, that to be a morally good person is to wave the Palestinian flag right now.”
This was not the first occurrence of anti-Israel vandals targeting businesses in the San Francisco Bay Area in the aftermath of October 7th. In late October, for example, the Smitten Ice Cream branch in San Francisco’s Mission District had its front windows broken and “Free Palestine” scrawled on its walls.
“That was really terrifying and I expected that to happen to us,” Winston said. “Honestly, I’m surprised we didn’t get it worse and sooner.”
Asked whether she had bolstered security at Boichick Bagels, Winston said, “We already have security cameras. People have told me to hire private guards, but this is crazy. We’re a bagel shop. I really don’t think we need to get armed.”
