Hymie’s Deli in Merion Station, Pennsylvania. Photo by Hannah Beier for The Washington Post via Getty Images

By Lauren Markoe October 23, 2024

Sheva Golkow, 67, has been eating at the Philadelphia-area Jewish deli since she was a ninth-grader, and used to sneak out of Jewish day school to get a “big sour pickle or toasted bagel.”

But after watching a new ad for Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump filmed at the restaurant — one scripted to appeal to Jews — she’s no longer a customer.

“I will never set foot there again,” said Golkow, a retired IRS employee, mentioning Trump’s ties to antisemites and support for Jan. 6 rioters. “This is opening your restaurant to promote someone who promotes hate and division everywhere, but particularly aimed at Jews.”

Other Philadelphia Jews — many of them longtime customers of the homey Jewish deli — are also abandoning Hymie’s. Some are upset that it would serve as the backdrop for an ad for a candidate they feel has abetted antisemites and targeted Jews. Others accuse the admakers of trafficking in stereotypes of Jewish women.

Rachel Ezekiel-Fishbein said she cancelled her plans to eat at Hymie’s on Friday night after she saw the ad. She said it presented Jewish women as caricatures, with their Yiddish inflections, sighs of “oy vey” and references to Ivy League students beleaguered by campus antisemitism. And she accused the RJC of fear mongering.

“It’s a shonda for Jews to frighten other Jews,” said Ezekiel-Fishbein, 60, who works in public relations and lives a short drive from Hymie’s.

The comments on social media, from Jews and others offended for them, abound.

“I am a very, very hard to offend Jew and this thing makes me rage,” someone with the handle liog2step wrote on Reddit.

“Boycott,” wrote a woman on X (the platform formerly called Twitter). 

Fans of the ad, including Republican Jews, said it captures anxieties in the Jewish community which Trump will address as president.

Paid for by the Republican Jewish Coalition’s Victory Fund, the ad features three women discussing rising antisemitism and concluding that Trump will keep Jews in the U.S. and Israel safe.

Hymie’s, in Merion Station, home to many Jews, is owned by Louis Barson, who said he is a registered independent and undecided about who he will vote for as president. He said he’s not trying to politicize his deli, and the ad is not an endorsement of Trump.

He would have allowed an ad for Democratic nominee Kamala Harris to be filmed in his nearly 70-year-old deli too, he said, but agreed to have the Trump ad filmed there as a favor to its executive director, Matt Brooks, a friend from high school.

“It sounds like Donald Trump came into Hymie’s, sat down with me, and had a coffee with me, when that’s obviously not what happened,” Barson told the The Philadelphia Inquirer, and pushed back on his critics. “It’s troubling to me that people are that divisive. I understand what’s on the line, but I do find it a bit insane at this point.”

Barson also has many supporters, within and outside Greater Philadelphia’s Jewish community, who called efforts to boycott Hymie’s intolerant.

“We’ll start giving them more business,” wrote a woman on X who identifies herself as a “Phillly girl” who follows Jesus.

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