Tonight marks the anniversary of Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass. Eighty-eight years ago, in 1938, mobs across Germany and Austria burned more than 1,400 synagogues, smashed and looted thousands of Jewish-owned shops, and desecrated our holy books while police and neighbors looked on. In the days that followed, some 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and sent to concentration camps.
We often describe Kristallnacht as the moment the persecution of German Jews turned openly violent, but it is worth remembering that it did not begin there – it began five years earlier, on April 1, 1933, with a boycott. Storm troopers stood outside Jewish stores, painted Stars of David on the windows, and told their neighbors not to shop there.
This year, that history came uncomfortably close. Yesterday, on the eve of the anniversary, a cycling group in Philadelphia held a “Boycott Ride” around Rittenhouse Square that targeted six Jewish-owned restaurants – Goldie, The Mac Mart, Dizengoff, K’Far, Huda, and Schlesinger’s Deli. Their flyer showed the restaurants’ names circled in red and crossed out, under the words “These Zionist establishments must go.”
For one of those restaurant owners, this history is not abstract. Yehuda Sichel, the chef who owns Huda, has shared that his grandfather witnessed Kristallnacht as a ten-year-old boy in Germany. Sichel kept his doors open yesterday, and he said plainly that using Zionism as a cover to attack Jewish people is not acceptable. The only documented ‘offense’ among the six was a day of sales, more than three years ago, donated to United Hatzalah – a volunteer emergency medical service caring for the wounded after October 7 – hosted by the group that owns three of the restaurants. Marti Lieberman, proprietor of The Mac Mart, has said she keeps politics and her business separate – but since she wears a Jewish star, organizers assumed she supports Israel (even though her restaurant sells macaroni and cheese, not Jewish or Israeli food).
Philadelphia in 2026 is not Berlin in 1938. No windows were smashed, no synagogues burned, and there were no mass arrests – but the parallels are obvious. When a list of Jewish-owned businesses is circulated and people are told those businesses must go, the target is not a government or a policy. The target is Jews.
But the most significant difference is in how Philadelphia and the greater Jewish community answered. Hundreds of people lined the streets, waving Israeli flags and chanting “Am Yisrael Chai.” The lines outside the targeted restaurants wrapped around city blocks. Michael Balaban, who leads the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia, put it best when he said that when people come to attack the Jewish community, “we want to meet those attacks tenfold, a hundredfold with people.” The organizers have said they plan to ride again this coming Sunday, which means Philadelphia’s Jews will need their neighbors to show up again.
Our tradition and our teachers have a great deal to say about moments like this one.
Rabbi Joachim Prinz served as a rabbi in Berlin during the early years of Nazi rule until he was expelled in 1937. Speaking at the March on Washington in 1963, just before Dr. King, he said that what he learned in Germany was that “bigotry and hatred are not the most urgent problem. The most urgent, the most disgraceful, the most shameful and the most tragic problem is silence.”
So this week, I am asking three things of our community:
- Remember. Learn more about Kristellnacht here. Light a candle and honor the memory.
- Show up. Support Jewish-owned businesses in Philadelphia and locally, join us for Shabbat, and put our Chanukah community events on your calendar.
- Wear it with pride. Robert Weltsch, the editor of a Berlin Jewish newspaper, looked at the Stars of David painted on Jewish shop windows and wrote, “It was intended as dishonor. Jews, take it up, the Shield of David, and wear it with pride!” Weltsch understood that the people who try to mark us do not get to decide what our Jewishness means. Let your Magen David, your mezuzah, and your Jewish life be seen. We do not hide.
Eighty-eight years ago, they tried to break us with broken glass. We are still here, we are still building, and we are still singing. Am Yisrael Chai.
– Rabbi Rebeccah Yussman
