(JTA) — The tale sounded almost too heartwarming to be true: A kosher bagel store, just down the road from a few synagogues, was owned by an Arab American who had grown to be beloved by the local Jewish community.
For decades, that was the story of Nick Sammoudi and the Jews of Philadelphia’s Main Line. As a longtime employee-turned-proprietor of New York Bagel Bakery, Sammoudi, a Jordanian of Palestinian descent, was a familiar face to the Jewish denizens of the suburb of Lower Merion and its surroundings. He was the go-to caterer for Yom Kippur break-fast, Saturday afternoon luncheons and, of course, many a bris. Jewish teens from the community would work in his store.
As relations ruptured between Jews and cultural establishments nationwide after Oct. 7, 2023, the friendship between Sammoudi and his Jewish neighbors remained intact — until it all came crashing down.
Now, a group of local Jews are calling to cancel the bagel store’s kosher certification — accusing Sammoudi of celebrating the murder of Israelis and leading a “double life.” A petition to that end has garnered more than 2,000 signatures in a little over a week. Some locals are already boycotting the store they patronized for years.
And after circulating in area forums for months, the controversy is now in the national Jewish eye — spreading through pro-Israel WhatsApp and Facebook groups, where the outrage has extended far beyond the Main Line.
“It feels horrible,” said a local community member who, like several others who spoke to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency about Sammoudi, asked to remain anonymous. “It feels like someone I really trusted betrayed my trust. I felt conflicted about telling anyone, because how could I ruin this person who I cared about?”
Sammoudi insists that he does not hate Jews and said he sold the bagel store months before this controversy erupted. He says no synagogue has yet boycotted the store, and he still has allies in the community — including Keystone-K, the Pennsylvania kosher certification agency, which has rebuffed calls to drop the bagel store’s certification.
But there is one thing Sammoudi shares with his critics: a feeling of betrayal. After feeding the Jewish community for more than 20 years, he said, some people he felt close to have stopped taking his calls.
“It’s sad, very sad, disappointing. I lost all these people I consider my friends,” he said in an interview. “For the last 27 years I served them, helped them, did some extra stuff for them. Really, it’s sad.”
An online controversy
Like so many controversies, it all began on Facebook.
On Oct. 6, 2024, the eve of the one-year anniversary of Hamas’ attack on Israel, the local community member was scrolling through Facebook and noticed that the algorithm was recommending a profile with an Arabic name. The community member and the Arabic profile had one mutual friend: Nick Sammoudi, the bagel-maker the community member had known since childhood.
The community member clicked on it — and came to believe that this profile also belonged to Sammoudi. It was under the name Nasser Irsen, which Samoudi said is his first and middle name, and at least one photo posted on it in 2017 was identical to one posted on Sammoudi’s own Facebook page. Another from two years earlier showed him posing with the employees of New York Bagel, all wearing matching yellow-and-blue T-shirts.
Since Oct. 7, 2023, many of the posts have had a different focus, showing destruction in Gaza and children there suffering. Some of the posts — in the view of the community member and other local Jews — condemn Israel or celebrate Hamas’ attack.
The day after the Hamas massacre, one post quoted the Quran, from a chapter about the ancient Israelites, who the text says had grown arrogant.
“When the first of the two warnings would come to pass, We would send against you some of Our servants of great might, who would ravage your homes,” the quote said. “This would be a warning fulfilled.”
Above the quote, he wrote, “The truth of God is great.”
Other posts condemned Palestinian leaders who have cooperated with Israelis. One says Israeli soldiers are devoid of moral values. Above the photos of Palestinian leaders with Israelis, he wrote, “Know your enemy.”
Alarmed, the community member met with a small group of people from the local Orthodox community to discuss the posts, and reached out to Keystone-K, which had a representative at the meeting. The agency monitors the store frequently to ensure it complies with kosher dietary practices.
One member of a local Orthodox synagogue who was present at the meeting, Scott Friedman, spent hours reading the Arabic Facebook posts as well as the comments below them, all in automated translation. He then said he sent the posts to a friend of his who worked for the FBI, who in turn sent them to an Arabic speaker for confirmation. He wanted to be certain about what he was seeing before pushing for action.
“I’m not saying you have to sit there and say you love the Jews, but you don’t have to post that they should be killed or kicked out of Israel,” Friedman said. “If that’s what it is, you don’t have to have a kosher bagel store… When you have something this egregious, we don’t have the benefit of saying, ‘Maybe this is OK.’”
The conversations were playing out in the midst of the fall Jewish holiday season. The initial meeting took place days before Yom Kippur, and soon afterward, Rabbi Yonah Gross, a senior official at Keystone-K, met with Sammoudi to discuss the posts.
Gross declined to comment to JTA, but he issued a statement on Nov. 8, following the meeting, that the agency was “aware of information that has recently surfaced regarding the Facebook page of an employee at New York Bagels.” The statement did not name Sammoudi or detail the concerns that prompted the statement.
“The matter has been investigated extensively, and numerous law enforcement agencies, as well as professionals with varying expertise surrounding this issue, have been consulted,” Gross’ statement said. “New York Bagels will continue to be certified kosher (Pas Yisroel) under the supervision of Keystone-K.”
At that point, those concerned by Sammoudi’s posts had decided to air their concerns in Jewish communal forums. One of them compiled a PDF with screenshots of some of the posts in translation and began to circulate it. It was titled, “Nick and Hamas,” and called the posts “troubling and horrifying,” saying they constitute “a sickening glorification of killing Jews.”
Speaking to JTA this week, Sammoudi acknowledged that the Arabic Facebook profile belonged to him, and that he used it to communicate with friends in the Middle East, which he left in 1990. Regarding the posts, he said at different times that most of them were by him, but also that he had been hacked and had not written some of them despite their appearing under his name.
He said he could not exactly recall the Oct. 8, 2023, post.
He also said that he had sold the bagel store, though he would not name the new owner or say how he knew them. He said he still comes in occasionally as an adviser.
“I know where I am, in the bagel shop in the middle of the Jewish community, and I’m not that stupid to put things like this in my Facebook,” he said regarding the posts. “If I want to do that stuff I would lock my page so nobody can go there.”
But in October 2024, around the time of his meeting with Gross, he had already begun to address the accusations publicly — on his English-language Facebook profile.
“No comment at this moment,” he wrote on Oct. 16. “Everything you heard is a lie and slander.”
Later that day, he wrote in a separate post, “Sad moments when this relationship that lasted 26 years ended.” Two weeks later, he followed up, lamenting “unfounded rumors that question our stores [sic] loyalty. We have been here for 26 years and our patriotism is 100% to America and 100% to our jewish friends.”
Less than two weeks later, on Nov. 10, he posted a lengthier explanation, disavowing the posts and saying he did not support the Oct. 7 attack.
“I would like to make it very clear that I do not stand with terrorism or the killing of innocent civilians. I am a part of both communities, it hurts to see innocent lives be taken and held hostage,” he wrote.
“I acknowledge and take accountability for my past facebook posts, however, would like to make it known that not all of the posts circulating are mine, not all of the translation is correct, and I do not stand with every post that is circulating throughout our community,” he added.
Sammoudi repeated those sentiments to JTA, calling himself a critic of the Israeli government, Hamas and the Palestinian Authority alike who desires one state in the territory now encompassing Israel and the Palestinians. He said it isn’t important to him if the state were Israeli or Palestinian.
He likewise said he wanted to keep politics out of his store, which precluded gestures like hanging an Israeli flag or posters of hostages held in Gaza.
“I condemned Oct. 7 absolutely, I told that to everyone, because I knew what’s going to happen,” he said. “It’s just going to come back at civilians and innocent people in Gaza. That’s what’s happened since Oct. 7.”
For months, the issue appeared to die down. The store kept its certification, and Keystone-K’s statement was the most significant communication from communal leaders.
It bubbled up again recently in online forums, but Jewish leaders in Lower Merion still appear keen to avoid discussing it. Five local rabbis declined to comment on the record to JTA for this story, or did not respond to requests for comment.
Communal leaders who spoke anonymously said the controversy put them in a difficult position — requiring them to address the legitimate fears and concerns of constituents who may be responding to Facebook posts they may not fully understand.
“We are in this world where it feels like if you say the wrong thing you’re going to have angry hordes at your door from one side or another, and that has become an uncomfortable and untenable place to be,” one said. “And it means you have to find the perfect moral stance on the local bagel place.”
Another, who has taken calls from dozens of constituents over the issue, brought up that Jewish organizations have a long track record of opposing the movement to boycott Israel — which makes starting a boycott in their own backyard somewhat awkward.
“I’m also mindful that for the Jewish community in this day and age to start a boycott campaign would have collateral damage either now or down the road,” the leader said. “And that doesn’t take away from the very justified anger and fear and concern of this moment. I question whether that is the most productive way to answer that question.”
Those raising awareness of the Arabic Facebook posts feel no such inhibition. They have now focused their campaign on the kosher agency and communal leaders who, they say, have acted cavalierly toward a risk to the community.
The petition, which went up on March 10, was written by Sylvan Garfunkel, a local who was unaware of the controversy until February. It accuses the Keystone-K statement of “a blatant and disingenuous whitewashing of the facts.”
“This decision is not only inexplicable but also a profound betrayal of our community’s safety and trust,” it said regarding New York Bagel’s continued certification. “Here, at our front door, was the easiest opportunity to back up our words with actions and demonstrate to the world that anyone who chooses to celebrate the murder, rape, mutilation and kidnapping of our people cannot be accepted by our community.”
The petition demands the withdrawal of the kosher certification and clearer communication about Sammoudi’s posts.
“We were shocked,” Garfunkel told JTA. “This is someone who’s been part of the Jewish community for so long and trusted, and apparently living a lie. More shocking to us was — where was the strong response from our community to this?”
Keystone-K has not responded to the petition. But if the petition sought a broader conversation, that’s what it’s getting.
The text of the petition has spread across WhatsApp group chats, a popular mode of communication among Israelis as well as Orthodox Jews. On Monday night, it was posted to the Facebook group Great Kosher Restaurant Foodies, a forum for discussion and debate over kosher cuisine with more than 120,000 members.
“Disturbing stuff coming out of Philly…. Kosher restaurant owner of NY Kosher Bagels in Philadelphia has ties to anti-zionist and anti-semetism,” wrote the group administrator, Elan Kornblum. “So in the interest of community awareness and requests of the locals, I am sharing this.”
A stream of comments ensued arguing over the posts — and whether kosher certification can be pulled over a restaranteur’s views, however disturbing. Kornblum eventually shut off comments on the post.
Friedman shares the uncertainty over whether Judaism permits withdrawing certification over Sammoudi’s views — but said he’s also wary of being deceived.
“How can it make sense to continue to give a certification for kashrus to somebody who by definition has not been trustworthy, has not been honest, who had a dual identity that he hid?” he said. “We have learned over and over that just because you think you know who someone is doesn’t mean you do.”
Sammoudi, perhaps ironically, feels the same way. He had Shabbat dinners at the homes of his customers — how could they now not trust him?
“They should know better than that,” he said. “They know who I am.”
Soon, it may matter less. He said that once he handles a health issue, he plans to leave not just the bagel shop but the United States. He’s moving back to Jordan.
In the meantime, he has continued to interact with local Jews — in a private Facebook group for members of the Lower Merion Jewish community. On March 11, according to a screenshot shared with JTA, one group member posted a message that appeared to endorse Garfunkel’s petition but also raised questions about it.
It drew at least 16 reactions. One was from Sammoudi. He liked the post.