For years, Galya Blachman and Elay Cohen lived just a few doors apart from each other in San Francisco’s Noe Valley neighborhood. They’d see each other now and then, since their kids went to the same school and were close in age, but they rarely spoke.
Just weeks after Oct. 7, 2023, that changed. A provocative anti-Israel mural appeared on 24th Street, the five-block commercial thoroughfare of Noe Valley, riling the Jewish community and upsetting Jewish residents.
The mural depicted a Palestinian family clutching each other amid a pile of rubble, cowering under a bomb that was headed toward them. An Israeli flag was painted on the bomb, with a dollar sign replacing the Magen David. Written across the top were the words “Stop the Genocide in Gaza Now!”
The reaction to the mural was visceral. “I felt afraid for the first time in my life in San Francisco,” said Cohen, who moved from Canada in 1999.
“I was horrified,” said Blachman, whose family made aliyah from South Africa to Israel when she was young; she moved to the Bay Area after getting her Ph.D.
Blachman began messaging her friends in the neighborhood, exchanging ideas on how to respond to the mural while also respecting the artist’s right to free speech.
“What bothered me were the antisemitic overtones of that imagery,” Blachman said.
Soon after, Jewish friends of friends connected with Blachman over WhatsApp, eager to get involved. Cohen was among them. The small group drafted a letter, expressing how much pain the mural brought at a time when the Jewish community was already shattered by the Hamas murder of 1,200 and the kidnapping of 251 hostages.
“They didn’t acknowledge Oct. 7 at all,” Blachman said of the mural, created by a Palestinian American artist on private property.
Blachman’s group printed out copies of the letter, and on a weekend morning with their kids in tow, they posted it on buildings, streetlights and bulletin boards, and handed them out to people along 24th Street. Some were torn down instantly, she said. The mural itself was vandalized several times.
In the end, the artist made some modifications to the mural in response to concerns raised by the group, Blachman said. It has since been removed.
In the nearly two years since the mural brought some neighbors together with a common purpose, the group has grown to more than 400 people on a WhatsApp group. Called the Noe Valley Chavurah, it functions as a community town square, with Cohen as its unofficial “CEO,” responding to messages and helping to develop subchannels based on different community interests.
What has most impressed Blachman and Cohen is the diversity of the group — encompassing a wide swath of ages and Jewish backgrounds, including Israelis, interfaith couples, secular Jews and synagogue-going Jews. The havurah hosts in-person Jewish community events every week, from Saturday morning walks to Jewish book club meetings. Members have also engaged with local elected officials, including former San Francisco Mayor London Breed, District Attorney Brooke Jenkins and state Sen. Scott Wiener.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
How did your group go from protesting the mural to becoming the Noe Valley Chavurah?
Elay: What was amazing was that we took that energy, the group, the togetherness, the chatting together digitally… we met a couple of times, and I said, we should do Shabbat. I think we transformed into a community when we held our first Shabbat. We were debating, do we do the Shabbat in the Town Square [a neighborhood community space]? Do we do it in someone’s house?
Galya: A big reason for doing it in someone’s house was that people were scared. Since then, we have started doing Shabbat in the Town Square, and people have become fine and comfortable with it. But even the first time we did it there, we had security. So there is definitely a sensitivity of being identified as a Jewish group, even in San Francisco, which is really sad.
What was that first Shabbat like?
Elay: It was early December. We did the blessings, we did the candles, we had the challah. It was a potluck and then … here’s where I got emotional … after dinner, we did a d’var Torah, and at the end someone got up and started singing “Hatikvah.” I’m still emotional.
Galya: It was so wonderful. It just felt so special after feeling so isolated. And suddenly we had this group. Now we’re kind of like an extended family. We have this cross-generational group where we can get together and feel like we can have very open discussions.
What blew me away with this whole thing was I had no idea how many Jewish people there are in Noe Valley and the surrounding area, and this real need for community. It’s amazing how quickly people have just become very good friends, coming over to people’s houses for meals, spending Saturday mornings with each other.
What other activities does the havurah do together?
Galya: We’ve got a book club, which is incredibly active. And from the book club, we’ve also developed a theater group.
Elay: There’s a main feed, and that’s where most of the conversation happens. Like when something happens [in current events], people can go there. You read about it, you cry about it, you scream about it. And then we’ve got the Shabbat, and Shabbat morning walks where you can hug it out. There’s a subgroup called the shuk.
Galya: It’s a buy-nothing group.
It sounds like the Nextdoor app, but for the Jewish community.
Galya: Nextdoor has become so big and disconnected. This is like a little shtetl. I think what makes it really special is we have this core, which holds us together. We try to have a Jewish bent to whatever we do; that really brings people together.
I’ve always grown up around Jews, but I’ve never been particularly religious, and I’ve never truly found my place.For me, that’s what makes it so special, is that you’re not put in a box. You can express your Judaism and be part of this group in any form that you want to express your Judaism.
How do you see the havurah evolving in the future?
Elay: I would love to figure out a way to help support another city, another neighborhood, create a similar thing, and then we can establish a connection.
Galya: In San Francisco, because of the school situation, where local schools are not necessarily where your kids go because of the public school lottery — for me that’s a big loss of community. So we’ve created these different age groups. My wish is that we have children who are friends, growing up together in the same neighborhood and creating lifelong friendships.
When you first started, people were afraid to have Shabbat in the Town Square. How are people feeling now about expressing their Judaism in public?
Elay: In June, after the war with Iran, I said, hey everyone, we’re going to hold off on doing the Shabbat in the Town Square. And then in real time, 10 or 15 people approach me and go, “Why? No. We have to stand up. We should not hide.” And then we ran a poll, and boom, universally, everybody wanted to be in public.
Galya: People are feeling bolder. We feel strength in numbers, and feel confident because of it. We know that there’s crazies out there, right? I think that might exemplify the difference between the world outside, which is maybe not as safe as we would like it to be, versus our world, knowing we have created a safe island for ourselves.