Berlin has seen many doors close in its long and troubled history. In this sharp opinion piece for The Media Line, Rabbi Abraham Cooper and Daniel Schuster argue that the quiet closing of one restaurant should make Germany stop and look hard at itself.
The restaurant was Gila & Nancy, opened in Berlin in September 2025 by Israeli chef Eyal Shani. By April 2026, it was gone. Cooper and Schuster write that the business did not fail because diners stayed away or critics turned against it. It closed after months of protests, harassment, threats, graffiti, and pressure directed at staff and patrons. In their telling, the restaurant was not merely shuttered; it was driven out.
The writers warn against treating the closure as just another flashpoint connected to the Gaza war, now months into a ceasefire. They see it as part of a wider German and European pattern: open antisemitic intimidation, public hate symbols, Jewish events being canceled, and Jewish communities growing less visible because visibility itself has become risky.
The piece points to police investigations into “Kill all Jews” graffiti in Berlin and the recent public display of a swastika in Cottbus. These are not isolated ugliness, the writers argue, but signs of a society allowing intimidation to reshape public life. A 2026 assessment of Jewish communities in Germany, they note, found that a majority say life has become less safe since October 7, 2023, while only 13% see a positive Jewish future in the country.
Cooper and Schuster make their strongest appeal not to Jews, but to non-Jews—especially Germans. Condemnations of antisemitism are no longer enough, they argue, if intimidation still succeeds. The real danger is not only hateful slogans or online venom, but the silence of neighbors, the apathy of mainstream institutions, and the failure to hold perpetrators accountable.
Read the full opinion piece because its warning reaches beyond one Israeli restaurant. Cooper and Schuster are asking whether Germany will defend Jewish public life before the message spreads further: Intimidation works.