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An Ethiopian-born, Israeli-raised chef who has made Harlem her home was recently spotlighted on a Newsmax Israel Update segment — a reminder that American neighborhoods still thrive when immigrants bring grit, faith, and an entrepreneurial spirit to Main Street. Chef Beejhy Barhany, long the face of Tsion Café in Sugar Hill, blends Ethiopian, Israeli, and Jewish culinary traditions into a welcoming neighborhood spot that refuses to be defined by the media’s tired narratives. Her story isn’t the victim script the left prefers; it’s the immigrant success story America was built on.
Barhany’s journey — fleeing Ethiopia, growing up in Israel, serving in the Israel Defense Forces, and ultimately settling in New York — is a living rebuke to the smug elites who treat identity as a grievance rather than a gift. She has turned hardship into culture, teaching New Yorkers about Beta Israel traditions while running a kosher, vegan-friendly café that doubles as a cultural hub. That kind of resilience deserves to be celebrated, not canceled.
Her cookbook, Gursha, which collects Ethiopian-Jewish recipes and stories, is the kind of cultural bridge-building that strengthens both Israel and America by showing how faith and family traditions feed communities. In an era when so much of our culture industry is devoted to tearing down rather than building up, Barhany’s work reminds us that food is a noble and timeless way to pass on values — hospitality, industry, and devotion to family. It’s exactly the kind of modest, real-world patriotism that the coastal elites never seem to notice.
Newsmax’s own Israel coverage, led by correspondent Jodie Cohen, paired that Harlem story with a look at food traditions back in the Jewish state — including the slow-cooked stews that have fed generations and now appear in modern Israeli eateries. Cholent, or hamin, is no novelty; it’s an ancient, Sabbath-rooted stew that has found new life in Israeli restaurants and Thursday-night cholenterias from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv. That revival of tradition in everyday life is a powerful counterpoint to the fashionable contempt for religion and heritage we see so often in our media.
What’s striking is how these two scenes — a Harlem café run by an Ethiopian-Israeli and crowded cholent joints in Israel — both embody the same truth: people want food that connects them to family, faith, and place, not ideological lectures. While Washington fights over where to ship taxpayer dollars and which virtue signal will trend next on cable, real communities are being built by people who open restaurants, write cookbooks, and keep traditions alive for their children. Conservatives should celebrate that kind of bottom-up nation-building.
If the media truly cared about uplifting stories, they would spotlight entrepreneurs like Barhany more often — not to tokenize her, but to showcase what happens when freedom, faith, and hard work meet. Support your local small businesses, stand with Israel’s cultural renaissance, and remember that the foundations of both nations were laid by people willing to risk everything to build something lasting. In a time of chaos, that stubborn, kitchen-table patriotism is the cure we need.
