From New York Jewish Week
February 5, 2025
The Pink Peacock, the anarchist, queer-friendly kosher Yiddish café that operated in Glasgow, Scotland for three years, is looking to reopen in Brooklyn this summer.
The cafe, which opened in 2020, generated serious buzz for likely being the only queer, Yiddish, anarchist and vegan pay-what-you-can café in the world. In 2023, it closed after its owners suffered from burnout, citing an “astonishing amount of antisemitic vitriol” during its three years of operation from other “self-described leftists.”
But now, according to Pink Peacock co-founders Moishe Holleb and Miles Grant, who are both American and independently wound up back stateside, the cafe hopes to find lasting success in New York City’s hippest borough.
“We saw that there was no anti-Zionist, queer, anarchist Jewish spaces in New York City, and where there’s a gap, we realized that this needs to continue to exist,” Grant said.
As for how they ended up looking in Crown Heights, Grant said it “just happened,” while they scoped out Jewish neighborhoods in New York. “There’s a good intersection between being the Jewish community, and also a lot of other communities who are in that same area,” he said. “And I think that’s really important to us, sort of saying, ‘we’re all connected, and there’s a lot of overlapping struggles,’ and I think that’s what spoke to us a lot.”
At least one local Jew is excited about the forthcoming venture. For Abby Stein, the ex-Hasidic transgender rabbi and activist, the prospect of a queer, Yiddish, anti-Zionist café not too far from her Park Slope home “seems really cool.”
“I mean, it’s queer Yiddish,” Stein said. “It’s some of my favorite stuff!”
“My favorite thing about New York Judaism is that it’s a buffet, and you can literally get anything and everything you’re looking for,” Stein added. “We don’t need another generic New York Jewish space.”
Crown Heights is home to large Caribbean, African-American and Jewish populations, though they tend to inhabit different pockets of the neighborhood.
“We see the same needs here: our communities are hungry for a Jewish anti-Zionist space which is accessible to Orthodox queer Jews, and unfortunately people are also literally hungry,” Holleb said. “We envision a community space that is centered around meeting these needs but open to everyone, with an ethos of solidarity and coalition building. We’re still in the very early stages, but hoping to open in the summer.”
The name of the café, which also goes by its Yiddish name, “Di Rozeve Pave,” is inspired by “di goldene pave,” or the golden peacock, a mythical symbol from Yiddish literature — though the color was changed to pink out of solidarity with the LGBTQ community. Yiddish — a language that has become increasingly popular among anti-Zionist Jews as an alternative to Hebrew — is sprinkled across the cafe’s menu, which refers to “tunah” for tuna, and “shmir” for shmear.
Like the Glaswegian original, Brooklyn’s Pink Peacock will also be an anti-Zionist prayer and community space that will host activities such as art exhibitions, interfaith events, Yiddish choir practice and holiday celebrations like a Shavuot anarchist book fair and a drag Purim spiel.
During their three-year run in Scotland’s most populous city, the Pink Peacock was no stranger to controversy, having once sold universal handcuff keys ahead of a major climate conference protest. The café, which shuttered for good a few months prior to Oct. 7, had a Palestinian flag on display, as well as a poster with the slogan “Jews and Queers for a Free Palestine.”
For several months in 2020-2021, a tote bag was displayed in the window with the words “f— the police,” which led to Holleb being charged with committing a breach of the peace — a criminal offense in Scotland. At one point, the cafe also displayed a flyer for a Yom Kippur Ball “in the Jewish anarchist tradition,” to be held on the somber holiday.
In New York City, anti-Zionism is “a missing voice,” Grant said. “Jewish New Yorkers definitely have a much wider stream of opinion than is represented in a lot of Jewish institutions in New York. So we think it’s important that we’re clear in our values and that we also provide a home for people who share those values.”
“It makes sense that this unique Jewish voice should exist in a place where there’s other Jewish voices as well,” said Grant, who is also a climate activist. “We’re not, just, in the middle of nowhere in Scotland. We’re actually sort of among other Jewish communities here.”
Glasgow’s Jewish community is quite small, numbering around 9,000. New York City’s Jewish community, by contrast, numbers nearly 1 million, and the borough of Brooklyn is home to the most Jews in the area at 462,000.
Many of Brooklyn’s Jews are Orthodox or Hasidic — particularly in Crown Heights, which is home to the global headquarters of the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic movement. Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the last Lubavitcher rebbe, believed any Israeli concession of land to the Palestinians would endanger the Jewish people, and the vast majority of Chabad adherents are pro-Israel.
However, the Pink Peacock doesn’t have a lease signed yet, and it’s possible the café won’t be located within the Chabad-oriented part of the neighborhood.
“In my mind, there’s a lot of people, even from my community, who live in not the Chabad part,” Stein said, referring to local indie Jewish groups like Minyan Atara, which is an independent egalitarian prayer community, and Brooklyn Shabbat Kodesh, an anti-Zionist minyan, as well as individuals associated with Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, which has its headquarters in the borough. “I think [the Pink Peacock] fits in perfectly in that way.”
Comments
Is there pay-it-forward tho?
anonymous (not verified) Wed, 02/12/2025 - 19:59
Is there pay-it-forward tho?
Two quick comments
GiggyMantis Thu, 02/13/2025 - 07:50
1. Why is the Yiddish romanization here so fucking terrible? What the fuck is "Di Rozeve Pave"? Just write it as "de." Also where did the h come from in "tunah"?
2. If it's a vegan cafe, why are they mentioning tunah on the menu?
tl;dr
anonymous (not verified) Thu, 02/13/2025 - 09:15
In reply to Two quick comments by GiggyMantis
tl;dr
I believe #2 is a pun. like…
anonymous (not verified) Thu, 02/13/2025 - 10:16
In reply to Two quick comments by GiggyMantis
I believe #2 is a pun. like nah-it-aint-fish. maybe?
if so, it's even worse than a typo--it's clever marketing! :scream:
Instead of poo-pooing it as …
tunarchist (not verified) Thu, 02/13/2025 - 10:44
In reply to I believe #2 is a pun. like… by anonymous (not verified)
Instead of poo-pooing it as "clever marketing" (at a pay-what-you-can anarchist space) why not see it as a creative and decidedly principled labeling?
Y'all both fucks need to relax.
Hell yea! If that's indeed…
anonymous (not verified) Thu, 02/13/2025 - 12:01
Hell yea! If that's indeed the case, donation-based or pay-what-you-can cafés/diners are the best anarcho-business scheme. Not only it's structurally anarchistic but also makes it easier to counter government policing. Plus, it usually WORKS.
"It actually WORKS"
anonymous (not verified) Thu, 02/13/2025 - 12:35
In reply to Hell yea! If that's indeed… by anonymous (not verified)
Citation needed.
Ask your mom. We'll be done…
anonymous (not verified) Thu, 02/13/2025 - 13:41
In reply to "It actually WORKS" by anonymous (not verified)
Ask your mom. We'll be done soon.
A pay-what-you-can anarcho…
anonymous (not verified) Thu, 02/13/2025 - 14:17
In reply to Hell yea! If that's indeed… by anonymous (not verified)
A pay-what-you-can anarcho-business scheme?
Lmao
How do yall pay the rent and your employees? Btw there's a precedent for this ridiculous nonsense, the former Anarchist Café on Jarvis st in Toronto which had to shut down within a year of opening because it's anti capitalist "pay what you can" ethos couldn't generate the funds to keep the fucking lights on.
Here, bitch:
https://www.reddit.com/r/nottheonion/comments/13jp3th/anarchist_coffee_…
Anarchists thinking they can do capitalism better than capitalists is like the right wing thinking they can do idpol better than the identity politicians. Just stick to throwing newspaper boxes in the street or something
However, I will concede one thing
anonymous (not verified) Thu, 02/13/2025 - 14:24
In reply to A pay-what-you-can anarcho… by anonymous (not verified)
Genderqueer yuppie baristas tend to make the best cappuccino, at least in the US.
Genderqueer" sez nothing on…
anonymous (not verified) Fri, 02/14/2025 - 10:39
In reply to However, I will concede one thing by anonymous (not verified)
Genderqueer" sez nothing on the kinds of transactions and economic relations you get at cafés, duh.
So true, moroncop! Coz one…
anonymous (not verified) Fri, 02/14/2025 - 11:06
In reply to A pay-what-you-can anarcho… by anonymous (not verified)
So true, moroncop! Coz one single anarchist business crashedwz after one year, the entire design just can't work! But by default if you start a capitalist business at fixed price you're sure to see it succeed the first year... coz like Adam Smith sed so, or something.
Srsly tho... your piss-poor source, a thread aimed as a "gotcha" post, is questionable as we only can read comments about it; the source article is gone. But as one of the comments said, plenty of mainstream capitalist businesses also don't make it past the first year... where Year One is also commonly held in the small business world as the survival test. Which means that many are also crashing for a reason or another.
Those donations-based businesses are still goin after lasting for years tho:
https://www.everybodyeats.nz/ (not just one just THREE diners)
https://www.peoplespotato.com/
That well-known chaint that lasted for over 20 years before getting shut down due to Covid: https://blog.studyanywhere.com.au/pay-as-you-feel-restaurants-in-austra…
Also what kind of fucking chump-ass normie uses www.reddit.com instead of the old Reddit interface? It sucks balls, it's sluggish and doesn't even show all the comments.
Lmao the mothafuckin peoples potato?
anonymous (not verified) Fri, 02/14/2025 - 12:48
In reply to So true, moroncop! Coz one… by anonymous (not verified)
It only took 2 seconds of digging to see that thats a UNIVERSITY/GOVERNMENT SUBSIDIZED INSTITUTION, yet here you are trying to pass it off as a legit business operating in the open market, you fucking bullshittin lyin sonuvabitch.
Like ya no shot, anyones shitty vegan business would float if it was supported by a tuition lmaoooo
Try again, hoe!
It's Miss Reading on ADHD! …
anonymous (not verified) Fri, 02/14/2025 - 16:04
In reply to Lmao the mothafuckin peoples potato? by anonymous (not verified)
It's Miss Reading on ADHD!
Hey there... No one here has said People's Potato is anarchist or even anarchistic. The discussion went about donation-based or pay-what-you-can diners & cafés, and how they are a more consistent model for anarchist business that can just work.
Projects funded by government and/or university got huge issues including the stupid limitation to cycles of student semesters. Which is why in other countries or contexts there are more interesting projects being funded by a plethora of private donators, like those NZ & Australia projects.
I also used to work for a pay-what-you-can vegan restaurant that managed to stay up and running for years just on direct donations by visitors, despite having a steep rent. Instead of hiring employees there affinity-based teams of cooks and baristas pooling revenues into monthly expenses and equally sharing the tiny bits of profit. It's no "rocket science", damnit. Way easier than starting a mainstream restaurant, which surely requires a degree in management if you wanna have it done.
Anarchist Café in Toronto did not shut down
smarter than you (not verified) Sat, 02/15/2025 - 09:25
In reply to A pay-what-you-can anarcho… by anonymous (not verified)
You could go there, right now, and get a coffee: https://www.yelp.com/biz/the-anarchist-toronto?osq=anarchist+toronto
A bunch of right-wing hacks got clicks off the story that the Anarchist was closing, obviously, because that's what looked like what was happening. But there was a groundswell of support, because people like the space, and it kept going. No one wrote any article about that I guess, lol
Funny how one of these right…
anonymous (not verified) Sat, 02/15/2025 - 10:19
In reply to Anarchist Café in Toronto did not shut down by smarter than you (not verified)
Funny how one of these right-wing hacks apparently ended up on this site to post a "link" to this fake news. Color me surprised...
Shite
Weegie (not verified) Wed, 02/19/2025 - 13:23
There was never an "astonishing amount of antisemitic vitriol", Pink Peacock was run and operated by wankers, who put shit through the letterbox of local businesses that were started by people from Govanhill (the area where Pink Peacock also was) because they were "gentrifying the area", when that's literally what PP did itself. Nobody liked you guys because you were dicks. And also your little stunt with the "fuck the police" bag attracted more cops to an area where lots of marginalized people and racial minorities live.
Please stay across the ocean.
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