The gathering, showing support after the disruptive protest last month, drew more than 1,000 attendees from all Jewish denominations and major groups
Rod Morata/Michael Priest Photography
Solidarity rally outside Park East Synagogue, Dec. 4, 2025
Add JewishInsider on GoogleMore than 1,000 New Yorkers braved the frigid temperatures on Thursday night, stretching across Lexington Avenue on the Upper East Side outside of the historic Park East Synagogue, surrounded by heavy police presence and voicing a unifying message: “We are proud New Yorkers, proud Jews and proud Zionists.”
“The stakes in this moment could not be higher, because how we act will define our community for years to come,” Eric Goldstein, outgoing CEO of UJA-Federation of New York, told the crowd. “We gather outside the sacred space that was targeted weeks ago, standing together to defend our rights as Jews to worship safely and to support Israel’s right to exist as our Jewish homeland.”
The scene was a sharp contrast from the one two weeks ago on that same street when a mob of anti-Israel demonstrators protested outside of the Modern Orthodox synagogue, which was hosting a Nefesh B’Nefesh event providing information on immigration to Israel, shouting chants including “death to the IDF” and “globalize the Intifada.” NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch later called the protest “turmoil.”
The solidarity gathering, organized by UJA-Federation as a response to the Nov. 19 protest, drew a diverse coalition of participating Jewish groups, including more than 70 synagogues, schools and Jewish institutions, representing a wide range of denominations and political leanings. Other major Jewish groups acted as cosponsors, including the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, the Anti-Defamation League and American Jewish Committee, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and the New York Board of Rabbis.
Members of B’nai Jeshurun, a non-denominational and progressive Upper West Side synagogue stood side by side with congregants of The Altneu, an Orthodox congregation on the Upper East Side, to condemn antisemitism; Columbia University Hillel student leaders, who have witnessed some of New York City’s worst antisemitic protests on campus, came out in solidarity, as did Yeshiva University students and high schoolers from the Modern Orthodox SAR Academy in Riverdale and Manhattan’s Modern Orthodox Ramaz School and pluralistic Heschel School. Brooklynites representing the Park Slope Jewish Center and Prospect Heights Shul crossed the river to participate, as did members of Long Island and Westchester Jewish communities.
The rally marked the first major gathering of diverse Jewish groups since the release of the remaining living hostages kidnapped during the Oct, 7, 2023, attacks and a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war in October. Throughout the war, such gatherings had become common across the U.S., with a unifying focus on bringing home the hostages.
Speakers at the hourlong event, in addition to Goldstein, were Rabbi Arthur Schneier, who leads Park East Synagogue; Hindy Poupko, UJA-Federation senior vice president of community organizing and external relations; Rabbi Joe Potasnik, executive vice president of the New York Board of Rabbis; Rabba Sara Hurwitz, spiritual leader of the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale; Rabbi Joanna Samuels, CEO of the Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan; Rabbi David Ingber, founding rabbi of the non-denominational Romemu synagogue and senior director for Jewish Life at the 92nd Street Y; NYC Comptroller-elect Mark Levine; and Mark Treyger, CEO of JCRC-NY. The gathering also featured live performances by rapper Matisyahu and the Park East Day School choir.
“We’re not going back — we’re only going forward,” said Treyger. “We’re going to work and fight to make sure that we see a day where every Jewish New Yorker, every member of our community, is safe, not just in our houses of worship but in every corner of our great city.”
Schneier, who has served as senior rabbi of Park East Synagogue for more than 50 years, told Jewish Insider that the recent protest was “meant to incite fear and intimidation.”
“Chants of antisemitism, demonizing the State of Israel and its right to exist, and calling for a global intifada. Silence and indifference are not an option. No faith community should ever be met with threats, or fear risking their life to gather and pray. This gathering sends a powerful message,” he said
Schneier called for “safety and security and immediate legislation from the city and state to ban demonstrations in front of synagogues and all houses of worship,” which has been introduced by New York state legislators in recent days.
“Let our voices be heard in solidarity — and together, we stand united against a surge of antisemitism that threatens peaceful coexistence in our city. What starts with the Jews doesn’t end with the Jews,” Schneier said, remembering his experience as an 8-year-old child in Vienna in 1938.
“I witnessed my cherished synagogue smoldering to the ground during Kristallnacht — an organized, calculated assault on the Jewish community that was meant to terrorize and intimidate. It was just the precursor of what I lived through during the Holocaust.”
Plus, lawmakers say Pentagon, Elbridge Colby icing them out
Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA), accompanied by Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD), speaks during a news conference in Statuary Hall at the U.S. Capitol Building on October 3, 2025 in Washington, DC.
Good Tuesday afternoon!
This P.M. briefing is reserved for our premium subscribers like you — offering a forward-focused read on what we’re tracking now and what’s coming next.
I’m Danielle Cohen-Kanik, U.S. editor at Jewish Insider and curator, along with assists from my colleagues, of the Daily Overtime briefing. Please don’t hesitate to share your thoughts and feedback by replying to this email.
📡On Our Radar
Notable developments and interesting tidbits we’re tracking
Election Day is underway, and voters are breaking turnout records in New York City. Already by noon today, more people had voted in the mayoral race than had voted in the entirety of the 2021 NYC mayor’s race. By 3 p.m., more than 1.4 million New Yorkers had voted in the race — more than in any NYC mayoral election since 2001, according to The New York Times — with several more hours before the polls close at 9 p.m.
President Donald Trump chimed in last night, urging New Yorkers to vote for former Gov. Andrew Cuomo. “Whether you personally like Andrew Cuomo or not, you really have no choice. You must vote for him, and hope he does a fantastic job,” he wrote on social media. Trump added in another post, “Any Jewish person that votes for Zohran Mamdani, a proven and self professed JEW HATER, is a stupid person!!!”…
One party leader not weighing in: Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who has officially made it through the mayoral race without issuing an endorsement. He had said throughout the election that he had held “conversations” with Mamdani but resisted calls to either endorse his party’s candidate or to denounce his anti-Israel views. At a press conference in the Capitol this afternoon, Schumer told reporters he himself had voted and “look[s] forward to working with the next mayor” but would not reveal who got his vote…
Leading right-wing figures continue to contend with the normalization of antisemitism within the GOP: House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) joined the list of Republicans who have publicly admonished Tucker Carlson for platforming neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes on his podcast, saying today, “Some of the things [Fuentes has] said are just blatantly antisemitic, racist and anti-American. Anti-Christian, for that matter. I think we have to call out antisemitism wherever it is. Whether it’s Tucker or anybody else, I don’t think we should be giving a platform to that kind of speech. He has a First Amendment right, but we shouldn’t ever amplify it. That’s my view.”
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) also denounced antisemitism on the right in comments today, though without naming Carlson or Fuentes. “Well, there are lots of voices, obviously, out there, but I don’t think there ought to be any — there just should be no room at all whatsoever for antisemitism or other forms of discrimination. That’s certainly not what our party is about,” Thune said…
Backlash against the Heritage Foundation for defending Carlson also continues; the National Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, a conservative coalition aligned with Heritage, changed its tune today in an email to President Kevin Roberts, a day after the task force said it would stand by the organization.
In today’s email, obtained by Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch, the NTFCA co-chairs made several demands of Roberts, including removing his controversial video defending Carlson; an apology “to those Christians and Jews who are steadfast members of the conservative movement and believe that Israel has a special role to play both biblically and politically;” a conference hosted by Heritage on the boundaries of the conservative movement; hiring a visiting fellow “who shares mainstream conservative views on Israel, Jews and Christian Zionists” to win over Gen Zers; and to host Shabbat dinners with Heritage’s interns and junior staff members to educate them about Judaism.
The task force co-chairs said in the email that if an agreement is not reached soon, their relationship with Heritage “will be irrevocably harmed.” Co-chair Luke Moon told JI, “If the terms aren’t met, we will take the NTFCA elsewhere”…
Several Jewish organizations have cut ties with the NTFCA already over the incident, including the Zionist Organization of America and Young Jewish Conservatives; today, the Coalition for Jewish Values and Combat Antisemitism Movement did so as well.
“We cannot grant legitimacy to an effort to combat antisemitism operated by the Heritage Foundation while Heritage is validating antisemitism and giving it a platform,” CJV wrote. “Although our target” on the task force “was and remains primarily a left-wing cause, ‘no enemies on the right’ was always liable to be proven false.”
CAM, in its resignation letter to Roberts, affirmed its support of free speech and specified that “the genesis of this letter is our deep concern with how you, Mr. Roberts, on behalf of the Heritage Foundation, have chosen to exercise your rights” [emphasis original]…
Bipartisan lawmakers expressed frustration with the Pentagon for not properly briefing them on national security issues at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing today, after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced a new rule last month requiring all Pentagon staffers to get approval before interacting with members of Congress.
Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-AK) called out Elbridge Colby, under secretary of defense for policy, specifically, saying it was even harder to contact him than Hegseth or Trump. “Man, I can’t even get a response, and we’re on your team,” Sullivan said…
The Trump administration is pushing Congress to repeal the Caesar Act sanctions on Syria ahead of Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa’s first visit to the White House on Monday, urging lawmakers to include it in the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act. The Senate already approved the repeal in its version of the NDAA last month, but the House version does not include a similar provision…
⏩ Tomorrow’s Agenda, Today
An early look at tomorrow’s storylines and schedule to keep you a step ahead
Keep an eye on Jewish Insider tomorrow morning for an interview with Republican Kentucky Senate candidate Nate Morris, who is seeking to take the seat of retiring Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), and for a reflection on the late Vice President Dick Cheney’s legacy.
Tomorrow afternoon, the ADL will host a post-election briefing on the New York City mayoral race with its CEO, Jonathan Greenblatt, and Hindy Poupko, senior vice president of community strategy and external relations at UJA-Federation of New York.
Former Israeli hostage Emily Damari will appear at Temple Emanu-El in New York City tomorrow evening for her first public speaking engagement in the U.S., joined by author Noa Tishby.
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THE X FACTOR
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Good Tuesday afternoon,
This P.M. briefing is reserved for our premium subscribers like you — offering a forward-focused read on what we’re tracking now and what’s coming next.
I’m Danielle Cohen-Kanik, U.S. editor at Jewish Insider. I’ll be curating the Daily Overtime for you, along with assists from my colleagues. We hope you enjoy the inaugural edition and would love to hear your thoughts and feedback. Please don’t hesitate to drop us a line by replying to this email.
📡On Our Radar
Notable developments and interesting tidbits we’re tracking
Today, we remember Wesley LePatner, a Jewish philanthropist and Blackstone executive killed in Monday’s shooting at the firm’s Manhattan headquarters. LePatner, 43, served on the boards of the pluralistic Abraham Joshua Heschel School and the UJA-Federation of New York. The federation called LePatner “extraordinary in every way” in a statement, saying she “lived with courage and conviction, instilling in her two children a deep love for Judaism and the Jewish people.” Hindy Poupko, deputy chief planning officer at UJA, said in remarks at the Israel on Campus Coalition’s National Leadership Summit in Washington today that there was a second Jewish victim of the shooting, Julia Hyman. Hyman, a Cornell graduate, worked for Rudin Management in the Midtown skyscraper…
Concerns among Democrats about the humanitarian situation in Gaza and Israel’s role in it are intensifying. On Capitol Hill, the majority of Senate Democrats, led by a group including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV), sent a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff calling the humanitarian crisis in Gaza “unsustainable” and saying that the Israeli- and American-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation has “failed” to properly deliver aid…
One Democrat standing up for Israel is Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY), who said at the ICC summit today, “We have to remind the world that, despite the amnesia, Hamas was the central cause of the war in Gaza. … Hamas is morally responsible, principally responsible for the war in Gaza.” Read more on Torres’ speech in JI’s Daily Kickoff tomorrow…
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), who did not sign the Senate Democrats’ letter, jumped into the fray by introducing another resolution to block an arms transfer to Israel — his third since November 2024. In a novel twist, this resolution would block the sale of $1 million worth of assault rifles to Israel’s police force overseen by far-right Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir, potentially opening the door for more Democrats to vote in favor, given Ben-Gvir’s less-than-favorable reputation within the party…
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, applying pressure of his own, announced today that the U.K. will recognize a Palestinian state at the U.N. General Assembly in September — matching France’s timeline, announced last week — unless Israel takes “substantive steps to end the appalling situation” in Gaza, reaches a ceasefire with Hamas and commits to reviving the possibility of a two-state solution and not annexing the West Bank. President Donald Trump, who met with Starmer in Scotland yesterday, told reporters that the British PM didn’t discuss the move with him and that he has no view on it, but that the U.S. is “not in that camp”…
On the home front, UCLA settled a lawsuit with Jewish students who alleged that the university permitted antisemitic conduct during the campus’ anti-Israel encampments in spring 2024. According to the agreement announced today, the university cannot allow or facilitate the exclusion of Jewish students, faculty or staff from UCLA programs or campus areas. Notably, the agreement specifies that Jews cannot be excluded “based on religious beliefs concerning the Jewish state of Israel.” Also getting a windfall in the settlement: UCLA agreed to pay over $2.3 million combined to UCLA Hillel and Chabad, the Anti-Defamation League, the Academic Engagement Network and other Jewish organizations combating antisemitism on campus…
⏩ Tomorrow’s Agenda, Today
An early look at tomorrow’s storylines and schedule to keep you a step ahead
Keep an eye on Jewish Insider later this week where we’ll feature an interview with Jeanine Pirro, interim U.S. attorney for D.C., who spoke with JI about the ongoing prosecution of the assailant responsible for the deadly May shooting at the Capital Jewish Museum. We’ll also cover Rep. Mike Collins’ (R-GA) record on antisemitism as he jumps in the race to challenge Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA), and report on Harvard’s overtures to the Jewish community while it gears up for a settlement with the federal government.
We’re staying tuned for how President Donald Trump may react as some of the U.S.’ closest allies gear up to recognize a Palestinian state, a policy the U.S. has rejected as unhelpful to peace efforts for decades. Though he said today he has “no view” on the matter, as the U.N. General Assembly nears, will Trump take a tougher line on his European partners?
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PODCAST POLITICS
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DAY 8: “A week of raids and arrests, but no hard lead to the kidnappers” by Avi Issacharoff:“The terrorist group that was able to kidnap the three Israeli teens from the Alon Shvut hitchhiking stop last Thursday will likely go down in the annals of the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) and Israeli intelligence forces as one of the most dangerous and sophisticated cells to have been active in the West Bank in recent years.“To disappear for more than a week with the entire Israeli army and intelligence force in hot pursuit is no easy task. Clearly, much thought and many resources were dedicated to it. Which begs the question: could it be that all this was a local initiative by a local Hamas cell acting of its own accord? Or was it a case of a few terrorists who instigated an attack under explicit orders from the political leadership of Hamas or, alternatively, its senior military leadership?” [ToI] (more…)