I have known Jon Hirsch since we attended high school together, and for as long as I can remember, he wore baseball caps. Often, they were vintage ones that looked as though they had seen better days. But that was the charm of Jon’s caps. Each one seemed to tell a story.
Last year, Hirsch, whose maternal grandparents were Holocaust survivors, was researching Jewish orphans as a means of looking into his family history when he saw a banner ad featuring a replica of a Hebrew Orphan Asylum 1938 vintage ballcap. With its unique shape and Star of David embossed on the front, the cap seemed to tell a story.
Hirsch soon learned that The Hebrew Orphan Asylum, which was located on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, was more than a venerable Jewish charity; its second purpose — famous at the time — was to serve as host of Negro League baseball games, and that included the Negro National League’s New York Black Yankees. He bought the hat instantaneously.
On Oct. 26, Hirsch, who grew up in Los Angeles, and his five-year-old son walked into Oakland’s Jerusalem Cafe to buy his wife a latte. Hirsch was wearing his vintage ballcap with the Star of David on it.
While they waited for their order, father and son played chess in the back of the cafe. It was then that the North Oakland coffee shop’s co-owner, Abdulrahim Harara, approached Hirsch and his son and began demanding that they leave.
“Are you a Zionist?” Harara repeatedly demanded to know, as captured on video by Hirsch. Hirsch refused to answer because, as he told me, he understood that the question should have no bearing on whether someone can remain in a coffee house.
“This is a violent hat and you need to leave,” declared Harara.
“This is a violent hat?” Hirsch pushed back.
The tension worsened and Hirsch’s young son began to cry. The co-owner called the police and Harara and other staff claimed Hirsch was harassing them. Hirsch and his son were eventually forced to leave, but not before Harara followed them into the street and screamed an expletive at the little boy, shouting, “Your dad’s a b—.”
I asked Hirsch if he knew about the one-year-old cafe’s controversy this past year: On its menu, two of its drink offerings featured Hamas’ infamous, inverted red triangle, which marks Israeli targets. One of those drinks was named “Sweet Sinwar” and the other, “Iced In Tea Fada.” Harara, whose family is from Gaza, has denied that “Sweet Sinwar” was named after Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas terrorist mastermind behind Oct. 7, which marked the largest slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust.
Hirsch had heard about the controversy, but he didn’t know that he and his son had entered the same cafe. And in his experience, Muslims and Jews sharing space does not have to “equate with conflict. That same morning, I was sitting in a Yemeni cafe and reading Hen Mazzig’s book, ‘The Wrong Kind of Jew,’ and had a nice conversation with one of the workers there,” he said.
But Hirsch is far from naive. Last year, he and his son, who was four years old at the time, entered an Oakland comic book shop. While perusing comics, his son returned to his father and asked, “Abba, what is ‘bloodthirsty’?”
“Since Oct. 7, we have had to teach our son the word, ‘prejudice,’ after he told me that he heard some people at the comic book store say that Israelis are bloodthirsty,” recalled Hirsch. Never one to back down at such a moment, Hirsch took his son by the hand and spoke loud enough for the bigoted people to hear him. “I told my son loudly that what they’re doing is called prejudice,” Hirsch told me.
“Since Oct. 7, we have had to teach our son the word, ‘prejudice,’ after he told me that he heard some people at the comic book store say that Israelis are bloodthirsty.” – Jon Hirsch
The impact of the antisemitic incidents on Hirsch’s now five-year-old son still remains. The child has asked his father if they are allowed to speak Hebrew in stores. He has also asked Hirsch to roll up the windows in the car when he plays Sephardic music. “He asked me if the police are going to take me to Alcatraz,” said Hirsch, who moved to Oakland with his wife and children three years ago.
In my view, nearly every aspect of the cafe incident seemed hostile to Jews, and that includes how the police handled matters. Oakland police told Hirsch that he was trespassing. A female police officer was holding Hirsch’s driver’s license and writing down his information, and she did not stop Harara from taking a video of his license, which, of course, included his home address. “I tried to pull the clipboard to the other side when she allowed him to film my license and she pulled it away from me,” said Hirsch.
At one point, the owner of the cafe told him that he wouldn’t have been asked to leave the cafe if he had not entered wearing the cap. She then wrongly informed him that establishments have the right to deny customers service for their religion or sexual orientation. Hirsch couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He described how Harara attempted to defend his action to remove him and his son by telling the property owner that Hirsch “knew where he was at. He knew where he was coming.”
Until this past year, Hirsch had mostly viewed Oakland as an inclusive city. I asked him if he had ever been targeted with antisemitism there before, especially when he had worn the ballcap. “Nine out of 10 interactions about my hat are wonderful and encouraging, and not just from Jews,” he said. “Sometimes, a driver screams ‘Free Gaza,’ or someone whispers something under their breath.”
In one disturbing case, Hirsch recalled that two volunteers who were canvassing for a ballot initiative approached him, took one look at his cap, and one woman told the other, “Don’t talk to him. All he cares about are the millionaires, the racists, and the conservatives.”
The irony was amazing: For as long as I have known him, Hirsch has proudly remained a bleeding-heart liberal. “I’m probably one of the most active Democratic volunteers you’ve ever met in your life,” he said. “But those are three things she thought she knew about me.”
The Jewish Community Relations Council Bay Area is working closely with Hirsch to offer support, and Hirsch stressed that he and his family “have received support in every direction. There isn’t a single other Jewish family on our street, but our neighbors have been here to talk to us.” At school, his son’s kindergarten teacher has decided to teach about the upcoming holidays early. Hirsch’s son will be able to teach the class about Hanukkah himself “so he can have a moment of feeling proud and Jewish in front of his peers,” said Hirsch.
On X, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank) condemned the incident and offered his support to Hirsch and his family. A spokesperson for California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) told Jewish Insider, “No one should be discriminated against for their religious beliefs. Businesses in California are prohibited from discriminating on the basis of religious identity or beliefs. Hate has no place in our state.”
What happened on Oct. 26 “changed my son’s perception of the world” Hirsch lamented. Recently, he showed his son Schiff’s tweet. “I said, ‘This is our next senator, and he said that what happened to us was wrong. It was the biggest smile of his I’d seen since all this started. After I left his room, I cried for a long time. I’m indebted to Adam Schiff.”
Hirsch is currently pursuing legal options. “My wife asked me, ‘Do you regret buying me a latte?’ But then she said, ‘Every other person I know would have simply left [the cafe]. But this happened to the right person, because you are immovable,’” he said. When asked if he will stay in Oakland, Hirsch responded, “It’s a great question. The answer is that I don’t know. I want to stay. But at a certain point, my principles have to give away to my kids’ needs, and if we have to cut our losses and say this city isn’t safe for us, we will.”
After speaking with Hirsch, I was moved to recognize three takeaways from this revolting incident: First, the fact that Hirsch is a secular Jew is irrelevant; the co-owner of that cafe saw a Star of David on a dark blue baseball cap and immediately identified him as a “violent” Jew whose presence was intolerable. The grandson of a former New York Black Yankees player could have walked in wearing that hat as a tribute to the Hebrew Orphan Asylum and he still would have been accosted for wearing a “violent hat.”
Second, the fact that a cafe called Jerusalem Coffee House opened in Oakland last year and has yet to be attacked, vandalized or defaced truly says something: Apparently, in America in 2024, the only way you can name a cafe after Jerusalem is if you’re known among locals for despising Israel and naming drinks after terrorists. Harara is Palestinian and opened the Jerusalem Coffee House, which claims to celebrate Palestinian culture. Would an Israeli ever attempt to open a cafe in Oakland named after Hebron, home to the Caves of the (Jewish) Patriarchs, and celebrate Jewish culture?
And third, I am reminded that what is experienced early in life always cuts deeper. “That cap became a staple in my wardrobe after the comic book shop incident,” said Hirsch. “I was raised in L.A. by two Holocaust survivors. I wanted my son to see me as an example of wearing that Star of David in public. If I could have it tattooed on my head, I would.”
Tabby Refael is an award-winning writer, speaker and weekly columnist for The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles. Follow her on X and Instagram @TabbyRefael.
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