Philly Jews and their allies buried a bike protest under a mountain of takeout orders and street heckling Sunday, turning an attempted boycott of Jewish restaurants into a massive show of solidarity on the eve of Kristallnacht’s anniversary.
Pro-Palestinian cyclists from Philly Bike On Your Left and allied groups rolled into Rittenhouse Square targeting spots including Mac Mart, Goldie, Dizengoff, K’Far, Huda and Schlesinger’s Deli. Flyers screamed, “No business for Zionists” and branded owners “disgusting humans.” Organizers insisted it was purely about Israel, not Jews, and denied picking the date on purpose. Police put the bike contingent at roughly 200, with total protesters around 300.
Hundreds of counterprotesters and customers from across the East Coast showed up in response. Lines snaked around blocks for hours. Customers waited 90 minutes or more just to grab a bowl of mac and cheese or a falafel. Supporters waved Israeli flags, flipped off the riders, and shouted, “This is America, not Nazi Germany” and “Shame!” One New Yorker who drove down called the boycott “the biggest bust” imaginable and joked the protesters had turned the restaurants into “rock stars.”
Jewish organizations led the charge. The ADL urged people to eat at the targeted spots. The Jewish Federation pushed a food crawl and told people to spend money rather than argue. Synagogues placed big group orders. Billboards from JewBelong told the city to “boycott the boycott ride.” Local rabbis, the AJC, StandWithUs and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum all condemned the ride as straight-up Jew-hatred.
Owners felt the love. Mac Mart’s Marti Lieberman said the outpouring was overwhelming and that everyone remains welcome. Huda’s Yehuda Sichel explained why the boycott hit close to home.
It’s pretty personal to me. Not okay. My grandfather witnessed [Kristallnacht] as a 10-year-old child in Germany … people singling out Jewish businesses, using Zionism as a euphemism to attack Jewish people is not okay.
The timing was impossible to ignore. November 9-10 marks the 88th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the 1938 Nazi pogrom across Germany and Austria. After a Jewish teenager shot a German diplomat in Paris, Nazi leaders used the killing as the excuse for a coordinated night of terror. Mobs burned more than a thousand synagogues, smashed the windows of roughly 7,500 Jewish businesses, ransacked homes and schools, and killed at least 91 Jews. Some 30,000 Jewish men were rounded up and shipped to concentration camps. The broken glass littering the streets gave the night its name. It was the open declaration that legal discrimination was giving way to organized violence, a clear step toward the Holocaust.
In Philly, the opposite happened. A boycott meant to cost Jewish restaurants business instead filled their registers and filled the streets with people who refused to look away.
Three people were arrested during a pro-Palestinian bicycle protest in Philadelphia on Sunday.
The boycott was organized by Philly Bike On Your Left, and it targeted several Jewish and Israeli-owned businesses around Center City, according to a flyer on social media. The… pic.twitter.com/Znp417zVfy
— CBS News (@CBSNews) November 9, 2026
Wow 🤩 – look at the lines outside of the Jewish owned eateries being boycotted today by the “Free Palestine” crowd in Philadelphia!
Am Israel Chai. pic.twitter.com/xJtxYLjRQm
— StopAntisemitism (@StopAntisemites) November 8, 2026
Philly 'Kristallnacht' protests at Jewish-owned businesses drowned out, shouted down by huge crowds https://t.co/XcNBMGFHNT pic.twitter.com/Md9VDYrrTs
— New York Post (@nypost) November 8, 2026
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