ami magazine story on ows

8/3/2019 AMI magazine story on OWS

1/8

42 A M i M A g A z i n e / / n o v e m b e r 9 , 2 0 1 1 / / 1 2 c h e s h va n , 5 7 7 2

It was a nice sunny day, a little cool, but it seemed likejust the right weather to occupy Wall Street. At least or a couple ominutes. So o I went.

The anti-bank movement known as Occupy Wall Street beganon September 17, when protesters ooded Lower Manhattan andtook over Zuccotti Park, at the intersection o Broadway and LibertyStreet. Since then, similar protests have broken out across the coun-try and around the world, and have earned both cheers and jeersrom politicians, pundits, and regular citizens. Violence has brokenout in several cities, most notably Oakland, Caliornia, where pro-testers and police have clashed several times. What the eventualeects o the OWS movement will be remains an unknown.

I wasnt headed to Lower Manhattan to make a political state-ment or protest anything. Even i I would be o the personal and

political inclination to do so, that would o course be questionableor a journalist, as two liberal employees o National Public Radioand Public Radio International recently ound out when they werecanned by their respective employers or taking part in the Occupy

Wall Street protests. (O course, i I were inclined to take part inOWS, I wouldnt be working orAmi to begin with.)

I was heading down, instead, to answer some questions. The ma-jor one was, What kind o nutty olks were these, sleeping out inpublic in New York City? I knew that the most likely answer wasthe obvious one: regular old nutty people. But going down to seewould be the clearest way to tell.

Another question: Was there rampant anti-Semitism, as somenews reports and commercials placed by conservative groups hadclaimed? Would I be grabbed and clubbed and spit on and may-

OccupyWall Street

Our reporter heads outto fnd out whats up inLower Manhattan


2/8

1 2 c h e s h v a n, 5 7 7 2 / / n o v e m b e r 9 , 2 0 1 1 / / A M i M A g A z i n e 43

be even insulted i I showed up in my black hat and suit, lookingobviously Jewish? Would I be called a banker? (I guess, knowingthe state o my suit, the answer to that last question was obviousrom the outset. Even crazy people could hardly mistake me or abanker.)

There was one fnal question that I was interested in answering.I had seen pictures o a large gathering or Kol Nidrei and had readabout people putting up sukkahs in Zuccoti Park, the site o the OWSencampment in New York City, as well as at other sites around thecountry. That these people were making Judaism a visible part oOccupy Wall Street was something that made me, as well as manyother people I knew, nervous. Who were these people? What was itthat they were espousing in the name o Judaism and, by extension,the Jews? Werent they somewhat worried about being attached to a

movement that was attacking capitalists (read Jews)?So I had some things to fnd out.

And, as I said, it was such a nice day.

I came, I SaW, I OccupIed

Wall Street was defnitely occupied when I arrived, but not byprotestors. The police had barricades running down streets and thepassageways between buildings, and they were yelling at people tokeep moving.

Sheep that I was, I kept moving.Not protester material at all.

When I fnally located Zuccotti Park, I realized that only in NewYork would they call it a park.

Back in the West, where I come rom, or even in the suburbs othe East, we wouldnt call a stretch o grass that extends only oneblock in either direction a park, even i it had some trees. Especiallynot i it was located in between a number o huge skyscrapers.

As things stood, Zuccotti Park was no longer looking like any-

ones conception o a park. Covered in tents o various sizes, therewas hardly any green visible.

Rings o tourists were circling the park slowly, and I ell in stepwith them. Scruy-looking people were sitting on or in ront o thewall surrounding the park, holding signs, reading selections romtracts aloud, or shaking collection tins and plates. Some were stand-ing on top o the wall, loudly expostulating to no one in particular.

I passed a group that was using the inamous OWS human mi-crophone. Since amplifcation is not allowed in the park, the crowdrepeats the words o anyone who is speaking so that all can hear.

I stopped to watch.Mike check! the man in the center yelled.Mike check! yelled the crowd.I want! he yelled.I want! repeated the crowd.to welcome! he said.to welcome! came the crowds yell.our riends! he yelled.our riends! the crowd repeated.rom the Bronx! he fnished.rom the Bronx! the crowd roared.I walked on. I could hear the human microphone going strong

behind me, but I wasnt interested.

By Yossi Krauz


3/8


Had I been in the crowd, I would have probably yelled back,Welcome them yoursel! Have something better to say i Im going

to repeat it!Not protester material. I told you.I skirted a ew hot dog stands, ducked around a news team that

was busy flming someone, passed an older woman knitting uri-ously, and headed or the west side o the park. I could hear thedrums. The constant drum circle that had been a fxture in the parksince the beginning was becoming a real irritant to residents o thesurrounding area, and there had been reports that the general as-sembly that theoretically was running the protest site had beenunable to stop nighttime drumming.

The west side o the park was rather noisy. A young man on onecorner was reciting rom a book, holding a sign that indicated whohe was quoting. It was unclear whether anyone could really hearhim.

The drums were going strong. Several unkempt men were bang-ing away with sticks. What the point was I couldnt tell.

On the ar corner, two men with hand-lettered signs were dar-shaning to the crowd. One o the mens signs seemed to indicate thatany number o conspiracies were at ault or the worlds fnancialtroubles. I scanned it quickly to see i he pointed out that the Jewswere behind them all. I didnt really see anything, but that mighthave been the subtle subtext. On the other hand, severe mental ill-ness might have been the subtext. I really couldnt tell.

I saw a cop, leaning against a barricade, watching the park.More interesting than some other parts o town, I guess, I o-

ered.He laughed. Its not that bad, he said. But he looked like he

wasnt particularly pleased to be watching the goings-on.By the time I had made my way back to the east side o the park,

I had seen a large clutch o other weird olk, as well as the bicyclegenerators. The fre department had removed the encampmentsgas generators more than a week beore, claiming that they were frehazards. So the group had brought in electric generators poweredby bicycle. Two people were pedaling away as I passed. In theircycling clothing, they looked considerably less like vagabonds thanmost o the other people I had seen. Even the obviously hipster-types looked greasy, especially with the ski-caps that they seemedto avor on. Ski-caps make anyone look like theyve been living ina park or weeks.

Now I needed a picture o mysel in the encampment. Every tour-ist in New York needs some souvenir. I didnt have a camera. Butthere were plenty o people wandering around with proessionallooking equipment.

I had been on the outskirts o the park until now, a bit intimi-dated by the occupiers. But I saw a man with a camera in the parkitsel, so I wandered down the path leading inside and toward him.

There were tents o all sizes inside the park, a majority o whichwere regular camping tents, not the jerry-rigged things I had ex-pected. Many had their openings tied down, presumably so thatstrangers did not occupy the owners tents. Apparently there were

limits to the collectivism avored by some o the occupiers.The photographer I had seen was taking a video o a tall man

with orange dreadlocks, who was crooning some song. I fgured Idwait until he was done. As I waited I realized that he was singingin Hebrew. I noticed a ew signs in Hebrew letters on the oor next

to his silver-colored tent that looked like it had been made out oscrap material.

I introduced mysel to the photographer and asked him i hewould take my picture. He assented in a British accent, and thentold me his Jewish name, which I promptly orgot. (Sorry.) The frsttwo people I had run into had coincidentally turned out to be Jews.

Can I take a picture with you? I asked the man with the dread-locks.

Sure, he said.We set up a nice shot o him giving me a pamphlet. (Looking at

it later, I saw that I was looking rather disheveled rom the subwayride. The other gentleman in the picture looked much more put-together than I did, dreadlocks notwithstanding. I looked like I hadcome or the occupation.)

I quickly gave my new dread-locked riend a mini-interview. Hisname was Leo, he was originally rom Tel Aviv, and he had been in

America or 11 years. What was he pushing?Arvut, as he put it, asociety in which people elt responsibility or one another.

I just grinned at this rather nave-sounding utopian idea. Ater all,I was in the middle o a park ull o utopian thinkers. I didnt wantto know what they would do to people who might disagree.

Did he encounter any anti-Semitism? Not really, he told me.I people are angry about various things, he said, that just

the drumS Wer


4/8

1 2 c h e s h v a n , 5 7 7 2 / / n o v e m b e r 9 , 2 0 1 1 / / A M i M A g A z i n e 45

shows that there are things that need to be fxed.Yes, I thought. But I wouldnt personally like to be caught in an

occupied park, somewhere among the tents, with any sort o angrypeople.

the OrganIzerI had gotten a eel or the Occupy Wall Street movement in my

little perambulation around the park. I had even met a ew Jewishrepresentatives o the group. Then I met Daniel Sieradski. I hadound out, by searching news stories and blogs, that he was theorganizer behind the Kol Nidrei and sukkah at Occupy Wall Street.I fgured he would be a good guide to what Jews had been doingin the movement.

Daniel turned out to be a 32-year-old man, slightly shorter thanaverage height, with a ull beard and a bald head covered by a ski-cap with a sort o baseball-cap brim jutting out o it in ront.

We ound a place to talk, and I ound that he was exceptionallyarticulate.

I frst asked him about his background.It turned out that he was rom an originally chassidic amily.

When my amily stopped beingfrum, I stopped going to yeshiva.That was when I was about 10.

It became clear rom the ensuing conversation that he was stillairly conversant with Jewish terminology. He sometimes used Ash-kenazi pronunciation and sometimes Modern Hebrew pronuncia-tion, which made sense or someone who had grown up in a ye-shiva environment and then moved to a liberal, non-Orthodox one.

Ive been working in the Jewish community or the last 10 years,

doing digital strategy and online marketing or Jewish non-profts.Ive been working as a community activist, mostly around the Israe-

li-Palestinian conict.The chassidic group his amily originally came rom is anti-Zi-

onist. Ironically, his transormation into a liberal let him an anti-Zionist, although his description was a bit complex.

The way I describe mysel is that Im religiously anti-Zionist, Imideologically post-Zionist, Im pragmatically progressive Zionist,and i you back me into a corner, Im a Kachnik. I run the gamut.

I believe in the two-state solution because I believe that Israelisand Palestinians will kill one another i theyre together, but ideallyId like to see a redeemed world, where people live side by side inpeace.

Redeemed world. The religious-sounding terms that I knew werepopular among a certain set o Jewish liberals were starting. (To hiscredit, he never mentioned tikkun olam, the usual bywords o liberalirreligious Jews.)

So thats the cause that drives you personally? I asked.No, he said. The cause that drives me personally is the re-

demption o the world. Geula.So Ive been involved in a lot o activist causes over the years,

because I believe that the way that you walk in the world as a Jewis to see the divine in everyone. I you go with Yeshayahu, thatmeans breaking the bonds o wickedness, clothing the unclothed,eeding the hungry, helping the homeless. Caring or the orphan,the widow, and the stranger. And not only in our communityinall mankind. A person who honors all creation and has kavod orall briyot.

This was, o course, very loty language, and more than a bit in-

correct, religiously speaking. I was about to ask him a slightly moredown-to-earth question about his involvement, when he got therehimsel.

Personally, my mother and ather are going through bankruptcyand oreclosure, like hundreds o thousands o other Americans.They had stocks, and they had a nice house, and an investmentproperty. When the market went down, they lost their jobs, theylost all their investments, now theyre losing their home, and theycant aord to pay or insurance, so now they cant pay or my dadsmedication, and he needs that to live.

The day that the bank came down to assess my parents assetsin their home, to pay o their bank bills, I was so livid and enragedthat I wanted to throw a newspaper box through a bank window.Here were these people who had violated all the ethical rules o,well, human beings, and or those among them who were Jews,oYiddishkeit. They created toxic assets that were dangerous to beon the market, and knowing ull well about the danger, they betagainst them, knowing that they would tank and they could flltheir own pockets with the money.

Then they go into the community and give charity to help thepeople who they just put in the poorhouse, when they could have

just not put them in the poorhouse to begin with, and then theywouldnt need their charity.

gOIng StrOng.


5/8


So I really eel that thats something I need to stand up against tofght, and I got involved in what was going on down on Wall Streetto express my anger at the corruption in the system. I saw it as a

way to express my Jewish values, as well.Im also involved with other Jews who are going back into our

communities and saying that we are doing in our own communitieswhat we are criticizing Wall Street or doing. The richest and mostpowerul people are in control, and they make all the decisions, andthey do so in a way that disadvantages other people.

I you have the cash to get your seat in the boardroom, then youget your say.

Unortunately, most wealthy Jews diverge ideologically rom themajority o American Jews, particularly on the subject o Israel, andthey push through an agenda, and everyone else doesnt eel rep-resented.

Ah. The anti-Zionism his chassidic orebears might have ap-proved o. The rest o his spiel? Not likely.

dOWn tO the prOteSt, up WIth the Sukkah

I started going down to the protests to see what was going on.I was skeptical to begin with. My riend had been at the originalorganizing meeting, and it hadnt been well-organized. He wasntcertain that it was serious.

But then I had other riends who started going when they actu-ally took Wall Street. I started going mysel, and I became ond othe movement. I wanted to join, but I wasnt sure how to.

I used to be an anti-war activist; I used to be an anti-globaliza-

tion activist; I used to be a member o an afnity group, which asmall activist group o people who used to do things like layingdown in trafc and chaining ourselves to buildings and hanging

banners rom bridges, in opposing the war in Iraq or opposing thepolicies o the World Bank, which impoverished Third-World na-tions so they could exploit their resources.

But when I went away to Israel or a ellowship program in 2004,I ell out o touch with that activist community. I didnt have anyties with that community. Instead what I had was the Jewish com-munity, where I had been working and active and had made a nameor mysel. I had great relationships and riendships, particularlywith a ton o observant Jews who were really progressive, orwardin their outlook, and cared about social action and social justice.

I had actually spaced out at this point, thinking about him chain-ing himsel to something.

I fgured that I should mobilize those people.The frst thing I did, the Shabbos ater Rosh Hashana, was to or-

ganize a Shabbos there, a potluck. I put out an [electronic] call ErevYom Tov, and 30 people showed up. My wie cooked a cholent, andwe had a nice Shabbos meal.

I didnt ask about the details o the Shabbos potluck. Beside thekashrus questions, there is no eruv I know o in Lower Manhattan.But that wasnt a conversation I was interested in getting into.

I thought, This is nice. Were down here, with 30 people, show-ing our solidarity with the movement and our Jewish values. Shab-bos, or example, is a day when workers get a day o rest rom theirservitude, and their rights are respected under Jewish law. Beyondthat, the idea o taking one-seventh o the GDP out o the economyevery week is interesting.

A ew days later I got an e-mail rom a [non-Orthodox] rabbi I

know. I told him about the Shabbos potluck, and he told me, Weshould do something or Yom Kippur. I told him, Youre crazy; itsin three days. Yom Kippur? Youre crazy?

But Daniel decided to try it anyway. He sent out an electronicmessage announcing the Yom Kippur service. He planned to takethe plaza across rom Zuccotti Park without a permit, against thelaw, and, as he put it, daven in solidarity with the protest.

The frst day, 100 people had signed up. A ew hours later, therewere 300. The next day, 600 had signed up.

Right beore Yom Tov, I thought, Yeah, 600 people, sure. Thanksor showing support, guys.

He didnt think many would show up.Instead, over 1,000 people showed up or Kol Nidrei.No shul in New York City got the turnout that we got.

When I fInally lOcated zuccOttI

park, I realIzed that Only In neW

yOrk WOuld they call It a park.


6/8

7 1 8 .2 3 2 .8 4 6 6 | 5 1 6 .5 6 8 .4 2 8 42 0 1 .8 6 2 .0 2 8 8

www.mendelmeyers.com

photography and video

The very best in fine

Those who ofciated were all non-Or-thodox rabbis. Beside the lack o an eruv, atleast one woman served as a chazzan, and

there was no separation between men andwomen in the main crowd, though Danielarranged an area that was reserved or menand women to daven separately.

David ound that many people were in-spired by the Yom Kippur davening.

People came up to me and told me, Ihavent been in shul or years. There still isa line o people coming up to me telling methat it was the most meaningul Jewish ex-perience o their lie.

Obviously, the act that a non-halachic Yom Kippur davening was so meaningulto these people came rom ignorance anda lack o attunement to a true Yom Kippurdavening.

Daniel decided to set up a sukkah in Zuc-cotti Park. He called a Chabad riend whogot him a popup sukkah.

It was illegal to have any kind o structurein Zuccotti Park. The police were breakingdown any tents that had been constructed.

We came with legal observers and thepress and a mob o Jews and a klezmerband. The cops came over and asked whatwe were doing, and we said, This is a suk-kah. Its a Jewish ritual structure that Jews

sleep in on the holiday, and they said, Oh,religious? Were not messing with that.

So the sukkah stayed up, and Daniel sleptin it every night.

The next morning, the police were goingto do a cleanup o the park, assumedly sothat they could keep people rom re-enter-ing the park aterwards. David was plan-ning to remain in the sukkah and orce thepolice to ace the possibility o dragging a

Jew out o a sukkah on Yom Tov. In the morn-ing, 5,000 people showed up, including anumber o people with lulavim who enteredthe sukkah. The police decided not to at-tempt the cleanup.

The popup sukkah broke ater severaldays, and Daniel went to Crown Heights tobuy an expensive sukkah.

Twelve cities around the country andthree in oreign countries had sukkahs.

In Seattle, Denver, and Oakland, the po-lice destroyed the sukkahs and arrested thepeople inside. So there was a pogrom in the

United States, where cops violently arrestedpeople in their sukkahs and destroyed theirsukkahs.

Ill admit; I didnt bother to challenge theridiculousness o this statement.

Others began making structures andclaiming that they were sukkahs. Mostly, thepolice tore them down. (In one case, the po-lice told them, Thats not a kosher sukkah,as they broke it apart.)

They got many visitors to the sukkah.Daniel was there 15 hours a day, and he tiedthe ideas o Sukkos into the Occupy WallStreet idea.

Ill leave that to your imagination.During the week, a medical tent was put

up. The police came to take it down, andthey also suddenly decided that the suk-kah had to go. Protesters surrounded bothstructures to keep them rom being takendown.

Suddenly, Jesse Jackson showed up outo nowhere and told the cops that theywould have to arrest him to take down thetent and the sukkah. So he saved the suk-kah.

(While the nausea associated with think-ing about Jesse Jackson saving a sukkah isdying down, I may as well point out the re-cent denunciation o Jesse Jackson by Mar-

tin Luther King, Jr.s niece, who lambasted Jackson or suggesting that Occupy WallStreet is a continuation o Kings legacy. Al-veda King said that her uncles movementwas peaceul. This movement is not peace-ul.)

Ater the medical tent stayed, everyoneelse began to set up tents. The organizerscredited Daniel with causing that.

There was a large Simchas Torah gather-ing, as well. Some o it was copied rom Re-orm services, involving what Daniel calledthings that frum Jews get really nervousabout.

Daniel spent so much time at the en-campment that he quit his main job, buthe wont be going to Occupy Wall Streetregularly or much longer. He told me thathe and his wie are moving to Upstate New

York in the near uture.

SOme queStIOnS

Ater he had described his time at OWS, I


7/8


had some things to ask him.Number one, was there anti-Semitism at OWS, as had been re-

ported by some?The only people who yelled at us or being Jewish were right-

wing Jews, he told me. They told us that we were with socialistsand Nazis, and that we were sel-hating Jews.

This other night we had a Shabbat dinner, and this person cameand had our grape juice, had our challah, had our kugel, and thenhe started yelling at us, Youre a bunch o kapos!

You come to my Shabbat dinner, and then you call me a Nazi, agrandchild o our Holocaust survivors?

I asked Daniel about the propriety o supporting Occupy WallStreet when a recent survey by the Anti-Deamation League showedthat 19 percent o Americans believe that Jews have too much inu-ence in Wall Street. Arent you reinorcing a movement that inevi-tably paints Jews as being in charge o the economy and corrupt?I asked.

Its true. Conversations about these sort o subjects can easilylead toward anti-Semitic views being expressed. I think that a lot owhat we experience as anti-Semitism is just ignorance. Its comingrom people whove never met any Jews and who dont know any

Jews. They just say things that are ignorant.Then there is a pernicious culture o seething anti-Semites: neo-

Nazis, white supremacists. Theyre 15 percent o society. Theyreout there; they exist.

But Occupy Wall Street is an anti-ascist movement and an anti-oppression movement. I youre racist, youre not supposed to bethere, and i you do, people scream at you to go away.

This guy [with anti-Semitic signs] who was being trumpeted asa sign o the anti-Semitism o Occupy Wall Streethes a drunkhomeless guy who was hanging around Wall Street or months be-

ore there was Occupy Wall Street, holding that sign. People standaround him holding signs that say, This guy doesnt speak or Oc-cupy Wall Street. Or Hes an idiot. And people scream at him toleave, but the cops say, I you have the right to be here, he has theright to be here, and they wont allow us to get rid o him.

What I ound, instead [o anti-Semitism], was that, easily, 20percent o the people down there are Jewish.

I asked him what the point o an encampment was. Why not justhave an organization without a physical presence?

Its all about the values o the encampment itsel. Its a villagethats organized in a totally dierent way than the rest o society.Everything that happens there happens through anarchy, whichmeans the absence o hierarchy. That doesnt mean chaos, thatdoesnt mean disorder, that doesnt mean conusion. No rulers, nomasters, no bosses.

He went on, discussing the sanitary committees, the ree kitchen,the ree medical care, and so on.

Its all being done by volunteers, without anyone bossing any-one else around. You have a ully unctioning anarchist village rightthere.

A ully unctioning anarchist village. Hmm.The point o the encampment is to demonstrate that possibility.

Its geula. Its messy and its imperect and bad things happen, but

theyre not going to stop until they get it right.I made what I thought would be a simple objection.Is it really an example i, when people look at it, theyre seeing

a tent city that looks like a cross between a homeless shelter and a

hippie commune?I can say that I see that, too, and I like it. But i you dont show

up and get involved in a working group and attend a general as-sembly and camp out there, you know nothing. All you know iswhat you read in the newspapers. Democracy means using yourown brain.

Im not sure that really answered the question.Will Occupy Wall Street survive the winter? I asked him.I think so. I hope so. The only thing that worries me is that only

the most hardcore, rugged people will be able to survive the winter.Im araid that the politics o those people are more radical than therest o the 99%, and theyll be let to represent the movement. Atthe same time, I think in the spring it will come back with such aorce that it aint gonna matter.

I asked him what he would say to readers o the magazine whohave more conservative political views than his. (Im assuming thataccounts or most everyone.)

I would tell them that 40 percent o Jews in New York arebelow the poverty line, and most o them are charedim. Thesepeople are suering, and theyre largely suering because o theorganization o the economy, the way it benefts the people atthe top o the ood chain. I they care about those people, Imnot going to say to ully, willy-nilly, support this movement, butI will say that you should think about how the policies you sup-port and the party you support is contributing to the wideningo the gap.

I understand real libertarianism, but I dont understand Repub-

lican conservatism. They say that they are all about policies thatsupport the ree market, but then they put in place policies thatbeneft only certain industries.

I just think that afrum Republican is an oxymoron. We used tohave kehilla taxes.

I thanked Daniel and grabbed a subway ride back home. Thatthe Jews had such an eect on the Occupy Wall Street encampmentwasnt something I had known. That wasnt necessarily a positivething either.

The thin silver lining in it was that Jews who were estranged romnormative Judaism ound some sort o meaning, however twisted,in Jewish practice. Daniel himsel is certainly not a sel-hating Jew,as some had reerred to him as. Nave and conused Jew, yeah. Butwith a respect or Jews and some orm o Judaism. Perhaps one dayhe and the other OWSers might fnd the meaning they are lookingor in real Judaism.

I let unconvinced, to say the least, o Daniels general thesis. Theencampment at Zuccotti Park, to my eyes, looked like a homeless/hippie/hipster campground, not an example o what society mightone day grow to become. And Im unconvinced that their move-ment will cause lasting change, or good or bad.

But I am tempted to buy some drums. l


8/8

1 2 c h e s h v a n , 5 7 7 2 / / n o v e m b e r 9 , 2 0 1 1 / / A M i M A g A z i n e 49

According to their own website, Occupy Wall Street is sup-

posed to be working or a better quality o lie or the 99 percent.

The government, it insists, only cares about the rich and powerul,

instead o helping regular olks fnd jobs.

Many businesses around Manhattans Zuccotti Park, epicenter o

the OWS movement, have been adversely aected by the barri-

cades that have been set up by police, eectively cutting o access

to their establishments. While pedestrians are technically allowed to

pass through the blockades, getting anywhere involves navigating a

maze o tents and detours.

One such business is the Milk Street Ca, owned by Marc

Epstein o Boston, Massachusetts. The Milk Street Ca is unique

in the act that it has

separate meat, dairy,

and pareve kitch-

ensall under the

supervision o the

Orthodox Union. The

restaurant has seven

dierent ood sta-tions, and maintains

strict separation o

each category o

ood. Fronting an

outdoor pedestrian

mall, it can seat 150

people. The Milk

Street Ca is a large

operation with many

employees, 21 o

whom were recently

let go because o

the protests.

What was beauti-

ul is now ugly, Mr. Epstein said recently, reerring to the ongoing

disruption. Founding the Milk Street Ca was my lielong dream,

he explained. I invested a lot o money, time, and eort to provide

a unique kosher dining experience. When the protesters frst started

camping out, the police put up metal barricades. While that severely

limited the number o customers, I fgured it would last or a ew

daysa week tops. Little did I know it would still be going on six

weeks later! I had no choice but to let go o 21 excellent workers,

ranging rom busboys to kitchen sta. Business was limited to

select times during the day, so I was trying to do more catering. But

I could not continue to lose money. I was araid I might have to shut

down entirely i it continued.Several Milk Street Ca employees

have publicly voiced their criticism o the OWS movement. Shamil

Cepeda was one worker who lost her job. I support their reedom

o speech, but the whole thing is hypocritical i it makes people

lose their jobs, a tearul Cepeda, 23, said. I asked Mr. Epstein to

comment on the obvious irony. The irony is greater than you can

imagine, he said. Everyone needs to understand that actions have

consequences. Thats the real issue. We are now in the third year

o a terrible recession, and you can react to a recession in many

dierent ways. Here

I went and borrowed

money in order to

create a new busi-

ness in the heart o

New York City, to put

people o all back-

grounds to work. Ijust wonder whether

the protesters have

internalized the result

o their actions. Is

that really the right

way to deal with

adversity? Banging

on drums and taking

over a park doesnt

create any jobs.

Amazingly, those

barricades may turn

out to be the best

thing that ever hap-

pened to Mr. Epstein. Ater local business owners complained, the

police fnally removed most o the barriersincluding those block-

ing o the Milk Street Ca. Public reaction has been very sympa-

thetic to Mr. Epsteins plight, and in recent days more customers

have begun requenting his establishment. Coupled with the added

media exposure, Mr. Epstein may end up more successul than

beore.

Occupy that!

By NesaNel GaNtz

Occupy Wall Street prOteSt FOrceS

KOSher caF tO lay OFF WOrKerSJewish restaurateur scos at their purported goal o job creation

ami magazine story on ows

Documents