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.”
The mayor-elect’s statement comes as he also sought to distance himself from anti-Israel protesters who demonstrated outside the synagogue event
Selçuk Acar/Anadolu via Getty Images
Anti-Israel demonstrators gather at 'No Settlers on Stolen Land' protest against a Nefesh b'Nefesh event at the Park East Synagogue in Manhattan in November 2025.
Zohran Mamdani, the mayor-elect of New York City, distanced himself from a widely criticized demonstration outside a prominent synagogue in Manhattan on Wednesday night, where anti-Israel protesters were heard chanting “Death to the IDF” and “Globalize the intifada,” among other slogans, even as he suggested that the event, which provided information on immigrating to Israel, violated international law.
“The mayor-elect has discouraged the language used at last night’s protest and will continue to do so,” a spokesperson for Mamdani, Dora Pekec, said in a statement to Jewish Insider on Thursday. “He believes every New Yorker should be free to enter a house of worship without intimidation, and that these sacred spaces should not be used to promote activities in violation of international law.”
The protest, organized by an anti-Zionist group, took place outside Park East Synagogue, a historic Modern Orthodox congregation, at which an event was being held by Nefesh B’Nefesh, a nonprofit that assists in Jewish immigration to Israel from North America.
Asked to clarify the concluding caveat from Pekec’s statement, Mamdani’s team said it “was specifically in reference to the organization’s promotion of settlement activity beyond the Green Line,” which “violates international law.”
Mamdani’s election has alarmed many Jews in New York City concerned with rising antisemitic activity and how he will respond to such incidents as mayor. He has called for increasing city funding to counter hate crimes as well as boosting police protection at Jewish institutions, vowing to protect Jewish New Yorkers.
But while he has said he would discourage the slogan “globalize the intifada,” which critics see as a violent provocation against Jews, Mamdani has not condemned the slogan himself, provoking questions about his tolerance for such rhetoric as he prepares to take office.
The comment from his spokesperson on Thursday was the first instance in which his team responded to unrest related to an anti-Israel protest, many of which he himself attended before he launched his campaign a year ago. A day after he was elected, the mayor-elect condemned vandalism at a Jewish day school that was defaced with swastika graffiti.
For his part, outgoing Mayor Eric Adams, who is now traveling outside of the country on a multiday tour that included a stop in Israel, also weighed in on the demonstration in a social media post, where he denounced the chants as “vile” and the protesters as “sick and warped.”
He said he would be “stopping at Park East to show” his “support” after he returns from his international excursion.
“Pray for our city,” he said. “Today it’s a synagogue. Tomorrow it’s a church or a mosque. They come for me today and you tomorrow. We cannot hand this city over to radicals.”
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, who endorsed Mamdani, also condemned the protest. “No New Yorker should be intimidated or harassed at their house of worship,” she said on social media. “What happened last night at Park East Synagogue was shameful and a blatant attack on the Jewish community. Hate has no place in New York.”
Plus, Ted Cruz turns up the heat on Tucker Carlson
Jason Fochtman/Houston Chronicle via Getty Images
Gov. Greg Abbott announces his reelection campaign for Texas governor in Houston, Sunday, Nov. 9, 2025.
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
After their bilateral meeting in the Oval Office today, President Donald Trump and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman announced progress on a U.S.-Saudi defense pact and revealed details about Riyadh’s purchase of F-35 fighter jets, Jewish Insider’s Matthew Shea reports.
Trump said the F-35s being sold to Riyadh are “going to be pretty similar” to the advanced F-35I Adir model that Israel flies. “This [Saudi Arabia] is a great ally, and Israel’s a great ally. I know they’d like you [MBS] to get planes of reduced caliber, but I don’t think that makes you too happy. … As far as I’m concerned, [both countries are] at a level where they should get top of the line.”
The U.S. has granted Israel customization rights and operational freedoms with the F-35 that other countries do not have, which contribute to its qualitative military edge. With Saudi Arabia now the only other country in the Middle East besides Israel to obtain the fighter jet, questions remain around which model and allowances Riyadh will receive.
Trump also announced the two countries have “reached an agreement” on a defense pact, without offering further details, and said he expects them to reach a civil nuclear agreement as well…
MBS’ meeting with a bipartisan group of senators on Capitol Hill tomorrow has been canceled, Punchbowl News reports, after the Saudis were reportedly very selective about which senators could attend. His meeting with House lawmakers is still on the books, and he may still meet with individual senators…
The deals keep coming: Humain, the artificial intelligence company backed by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, is set to announce a “slew” of agreements with U.S. businesses tomorrow, Semafor scooped, including data center construction in collaboration with Amazon, AMD, xAI and GlobalAI…
Elsewhere in Washington, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) upped the ante in his public dispute with Tucker Carlson, JI’s Gabby Deutch reports, telling the Jewish Federations of North America’s General Assembly this morning that calling out antisemitism from Carlson and his Republican allies is necessary to defend American values.
Cruz warned that many people are not fully grasping the scope of the problem, describing a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this year where, he said, Netanyahu tried to push back on the idea that right-wing antisemitism was a threat.
“I’ll tell you, he actually was a little dismissive of that. He said, ‘No, no, no, that’s Qatar, that’s Iran, that’s bots,’” Cruz said. “My response: ‘Mr. Prime Minister, yes, but no. Yes, that’s happening. Yes, there are millions of dollars being spent to spread this poison. Yes, that’s happening online. But it is real and organic’”…
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott designated the Muslim Brotherhood and Council on American-Islamic Relations as foreign terrorist groups and transnational criminal organizations today, JI’s Marc Rod reports, prohibiting them from buying land in Texas and allowing the AG’s office to sue to shut them down.
Efforts to designate the Muslim Brotherhood and CAIR have seen little public progress at the federal level, both in Congress and in the executive branch. But Abbott’s move may end up fueling momentum for similar legislative moves out of Washington, and could also provide a model to other like-minded governors in key states…
The Department of Education signed agreements with six other federal agencies to take over aspects of its work, marking one of the largest moves to dismantle the department to date, USA Today reports.
The Departments of the Interior, Health and Human Services and State are all taking a piece of the pie, though the Education Department has not determined the future of its Office for Civil Rights…
Cornell University Provost Kavita Bala took the unusual step of disclosing details about a discrimination case against Eric Cheyfitz, a professor who was placed on leave after he attempted to exclude an Israeli student from participating in his course on Gaza, due to misinformation circulating about the case. The professor recently retired to avoid further investigation by the university.
“After [the] third class, the faculty member talked to the student and explicitly told the student that he was not welcome in the class because ‘he was an Israeli citizen supporting an Israeli stance in Gaza.’ Those are the faculty member’s words,” Bala said at a recent Faculty Senate meeting. “This is not a case of academic freedom. This is a case of discrimination based on national origin”…
In an op-ed titled, “Why I Became a Socialist,” Chi Ossé, the New York City councilman mounting a primary challenge to House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), explains his recent decision to join the Democratic Socialists of America and touts his support for Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani as critical to his victory.
Though Ossé appears to be capitalizing on his partnership with the incoming mayor to elevate his profile, Mamdani has discouraged Ossé on several occasions from running against the top House Democrat at a time when he’ll need support and funds from Washington…
⏩ 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 a dispatch from the conservative National Task Force to Combat Antisemitism’s first summit following its split with the Heritage Foundation.
Tomorrow, the U.S.-Saudi Investment Forum will take place at the Kennedy Center, featuring discussions on energy policy, AI, financial services, urban development, biotechnology, aerospace and defense and more. A special address is on the agenda, though neither President Donald Trump nor Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s attendance has been confirmed.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee will hold a hearing on the nomination of Tammy Bruce, currently the State Department spokesperson, to be deputy U.S. ambassador to the U.N.
The Endowment for Middle East Truth is holding its 16th annual Rays of Light in the Darkness awards dinner in Washington, honoring Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA), Justice Department senior counsel Leo Terrell, Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Yechiel Leiter, Hungarian Ambassador to the U.S. Szabolcs Takács and journalist Anila Ali.
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THE RIGHT’S NEW DIVIDE
President Donald Trump, called by his Jewish supporters ‘the most pro-Israel president in history,’ won’t lead the party forever. So what will come next?
TRIBUNAL TURMOIL
Karim Khan has been accused of sexual misconduct; Jerusalem alleges the ICC’s head prosecutor pursued a case against senior Israeli officials as a distraction
Plus, UNSC adopts U.S. resolution on Gaza
Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
President Donald Trump speaks before signing an executive order in the Oval Office of the White House on March 31, 2025 in Washington, DC.
Good Monday 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
Washington is preparing for Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s visit tomorrow, where he’ll meet President Donald Trump at the White House and be hosted for dinner with administration officials, members of Congress and business leaders. On Wednesday, MBS is expected to meet with lawmakers on Capitol Hill, Punchbowl News reports, and the U.S.-Saudi Investment Forum will take place at the Kennedy Center.
Trump confirmed to reporters in the Oval Office this afternoon that the U.S. will sell F-35 fighter jets to Saudi Arabia, without offering details of the deal…
In a blurring of the lines between the political and the personal, the president may have more than just defense deals on his mind: The Trump Organization is in talks to bring a Trump property to one of Saudi Arabia’s largest government-owned real estate developments, The New York Times reports…
The U.N. Security Council just adopted the U.S.-sponsored resolution backing Trump’s 20-point peace plan, including the creation of an international stabilization force in the Gaza Strip, with 13 votes in favor and Russia and China abstaining. The resolution contains language on “a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood”…
The Journal also reports on Hamas’ rising popularity inside Gaza since the start of the ceasefire with Israel, as Gazans see the terror group as capable of restoring order and preventing lawlessness, which may pose an issue to the implementation of the ceasefire that requires Hamas to disarm…
In the latest fallout at the Heritage Foundation over its president’s defense of Tucker Carlson after his friendly interview with neo-Nazi influencer Nick Fuentes, Robert George, a prominent board member, resigned today, citing the lack of a “full retraction” by Heritage President Kevin Roberts of the video defending Carlson, Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel reports.
George’s decision to step down indicates that Roberts is likely safe in his role, for now, as its board remains split about his future, according to a former Heritage staffer familiar with internal discussions…
Trump weighed in on the Carlson controversy over the weekend, saying when asked by reporters what role Carlson should play in the conservative movement after his interview with Fuentes, “I found [Carlson] to be good. I mean, he said good things about me over the years. I think he’s good. We’ve had some good interviews.”
“You can’t tell him who to interview. I mean, if he wants to interview Nick Fuentes, I don’t know much about him, but if he wants to do it, get the word out. People have to decide. Ultimately, people have to decide. … Meeting people, talking to people for somebody like Tucker, that’s what they do. You know, people are controversial. Some are, some aren’t. I’m not controversial, so I like it that way”…
Also evoking backlash, a producer for former Rep. Matt Gaetz’s (R-FL) weeknight show on the right-wing One America News Network has reportedly been fired after he shared a vehemently antisemitic social media post depicting Jews as cockroaches, JI’s Matthew Kassel reports.
Vish Burra, who was a booker and script writer for Gaetz, had drawn widespread backlash for posting an AI-generated animated video last week showing him entering a “scheming room” with Stars of David on the door to find a group of cockroaches counting money, who scurry away upon his arrival. The post has since been deleted.
Burra also defended Roberts in a separate post, writing, “I will expose the vermin in the venomous coalition and their transgression against MAGA, America First, and Kevin Roberts at The Heritage Foundation. It all starts with Susan Lebovitz-Edelman,” referring to a Jewish trustee at the conservative Manhattan Institute who is married to hedge fund manager Joseph Edelman…
Political alliances are developing in the Democratic primary to replace New Jersey Gov.-elect Mikie Sherrill in a special election for the state’s 11th Congressional District: Gov. Phil Murphy announced he’s backing Essex County Commissioner Brendan Gill, his former campaign manager and a front-runner in the race, while Tahesha Way, his lieutenant governor, is expected to launch a campaign shortly.
The field of nine other Democrats also includes former Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-NJ), who represented the neighboring district until 2023 and today received the endorsement of Sen. Andy Kim (D-NJ), in an apparent act of reciprocity — Malinowski supported Kim in his bid for Senate in 2024 against the governor’s wife, Tammy Murphy. The primary is expected to take place in late January-early February…
In nearby New York, pro-Israel Rep. Grace Meng (D-NY) drew a primary challenger today: Chuck Park, who served as a foreign service officer until 2019 and as chief of staff to New York City Councilman Shekar Krishnan, an ally of Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, announced an anti-establishment bid for the Queens district…
Now that he is about to assume leadership of the largest city in the U.S., Mamdani will need to receive top-level security clearance from the Trump administration, marking the first test of the new mayor’s relationship with Washington, Politico reports. Trump told reporters on Sunday that Mamdani “would like to come to Washington and meet and we’ll work something out” and “we want to see everything work out well for New York”…
⏩ 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 a deep dive into the shifting anti-Israel dynamics on the far right.
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s White House visit will begin tomorrow with an arrival ceremony on the South Lawn and a greeting on the South Portico, before an Oval Office bilateral meeting and signing and lunch in the Cabinet Room. A formal dinner, hosted by First Lady Melania Trump, will take place in the evening in the East Room.
The American Jewish Committee will hold a webinar, “Unpacking the Saudi White House Visit,” tomorrow afternoon with Jason Isaacson, AJC’s chief policy and political affairs officer; Anne Dreazen, vice president of AJC’s Center for a New Middle East; and Michael Ratney, former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia.
The National Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, a project that was closely affiliated with the Heritage Foundation until earlier this month when it broke with the conservative think tank over Heritage President Kevin Roberts’ defense of Tucker Carlson, is hosting a summit in Washington tomorrow in response to the recent developments. The gathering, “Exposing and Countering Extremism and Antisemitism on the Political Right,” will feature remarks from task force co-chairs Luke Moon, Pastor Mario Bramnick and Ellie Cohanim; U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee; Ralph Reed, president of the Faith and Freedom Coalition; and Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council. Discussion topics will include “replacement theology,” the path ahead for Gen Z and “overcoming the Woke Right.”
The Jewish Federations of North America’s General Assembly wraps up tomorrow in Washington. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) is slated to speak and JI’s Lahav Harkov will moderate a panel on the Middle East in a post-Oct. 7 world.
U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Mike Waltz will deliver remarks with pop diva Nicki Minaj tomorrow on the persecution of Christians in Nigeria.
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MILITARY MATTERS
Jerusalem is looking to secure a new MOU – which would reportedly run through 2048 and includes ‘America First’ provisions – amid growing skepticism in U.S. politics over foreign aid
MANHATTAN MOMENTUM
Andrew Cuomo carried the district in the NYC mayoral race, underscoring its pro-Israel constituency
Cait Conley’s background in national security is viewed as a political asset, but Beth Davidson has more local experience
Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) leaves the House Republicans' caucus meeting at the Capitol Hill Club in Washington on Tuesday, May 23, 2023.
The withdrawal of nonprofit executive Jessica Reinmann from the Democratic primary in New York’s 17th Congressional District — a top-targeted swing seat currently held by Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) — is bringing the top contenders in the wide field into focus.
Reinmann, who endorsed military veteran Cait Conley upon her exit from the race, was one of eight — now seven — challengers aiming to take on Lawler in next year’s midterms.
A Democratic strategist in the district said he believes Conley, along with Rockland County Legislator Beth Davidson and potentially former Briarcliff Manor Mayor Peter Chatzky, comprise the top rung of candidates in the crowded race.
Those three candidates also led the field by a wide margin in fundraising as of the end of September. Conley had raised $1.3 million, Davidson $1.2 million and Chatzky $1 million. However, the vast majority of Chatzky’s war chest — $750,000 — comprises a personal loan to his campaign.
Davidson and Conley were invited to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s Candidate Week event in Washington earlier this month, where they received additional training and media preparation — a sign the national party sees the two women as the strongest contenders to take on Lawler.
Conley’s campaign has taken on a distinct national dimension, as she has touted her military background alongside a series of other female national security alumni in swing races. The so-called Hell Cats, a group that formally launched this week, is explicitly modeling itself after Virginia Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger, New Jersey Gov.-elect Mikie Sherrill and Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), each of whom flipped House seats in the 2018 midterms.
In her endorsement, Reinmann said she believes Conley is “by far the strongest candidate in this race” and that she has “seen her commitment to our nation and our shared values.”
Jake Dilemani, a New York political consultant, said that Conley’s profile — a woman with a national security and military background — is “unique and compelling” and one that voters seem receptive to at the moment. But he also cautioned against drawing too many one-to-one conclusions about Conley’s candidacy based on Spanberger and Sherrill’s victories in their recent off-year gubernatorial elections alone.
Davidson, meanwhile, has been racking up local Democratic endorsements, particularly in Rockland County, and she is the only Democratic candidate who hails from that part of the district, where Democrats have struggled against Lawler in previous cycles. Rockland Democrats’ backing for Davidson has not been without some internal controversy, however.
The strategist said that Davidson’s Jewish faith and family could give her a boost in a district where Jewish voters make up a significant and highly engaged portion of the voting population, and have been a strong base of support for Lawler. The Republican congressman has seen particularly strong support in Rockland County’s ultra-Orthodox community.
Dilemani also noted that Tarrytown Trustee Effie Phillips-Staley, who is running as the “de facto lefty” in the field, could rally a base of support with that approach and “pick up some of the enthusiasm that the left has from [Mayor-elect] Zohran [Mamdani]’s win,” but also emphasized that the Democratic voting base in NY-17 is much less progressive than that of New York City.
He said that the field will likely consolidate further in the coming months after the next fundraising deadline at the end of the quarter.
“Whoever is the nominee is going to have a tough challenge going up against Mike Lawler because he has proven himself to be a savvy politician, a good retail campaigner, a good fundraiser, and he has a pretty responsive constituent services team, so the party is going to have to produce a very, very solid candidate to run against him,” Dilemani said.
Hank Sheinkopf, a longtime New York Democratic consultant, also emphasized that Lawler has been popular and has a strong reputation for constituent services, which will make him a formidable incumbent. But he also said that Lawler and Republicans are likely to face backlash over the lengthy government shutdown, and that both Davidson and Conley could give him a strong challenge.
On Israel policy, both Davidson and Conley have expressed support for the U.S.-Israel relationship.
Davidson has highlighted that her daughter stayed in some of the kibbutzim that were attacked on Oct. 7, 2023, and said in a position paper that, “For me and for my family, championing the sanctity and safety of Israel is not an abstract political stance or foreign policy issue. It is deeply personal — woven into the fabric of our identity and survival as Jews.” She has expressed support for continued U.S. aid to Israel.
Conley, an Army veteran who spent time in the Middle East and North Africa in counterterrorism operations, said that, “As someone who has spent my career fighting for democracy, I deeply value Israel as America’s strongest ally in the region, the only democracy in the Middle East and a safe haven for the Jewish people” and that the U.S. should be “firmly committed to the safety and security of Israel.”
During the war between Israel and Iran, Conley expressed hope for a negotiated nuclear agreement but said that “Iran’s unwillingness to abandon the pursuit of nuclear weapons has left the world with few choices” and said that she knows firsthand the necessity of preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. But she also warned about “being drawn into another Middle East conflict.”
Davidson told JI on Thursday that last week’s election results show that voters are looking for change from the Trump administration, but distanced herself from Mamdani.
“What was clear across the country on election day was that voters were motivated to the polls by a strong disagreement with the Trump agenda and a desire for more affordability,” Davidson said. “I bring a very different record than Mayor-Elect Mamdani does, having cut taxes, fully funded our police force, and vocally stood up against antisemitism as a well-known Jewish leader in my community. That’s a record I’m ready to take to Mike Lawler from now through next November.”
Conley told Jewish Insider earlier this year, after Mamdani’s primary win, that she did not agree with his approach. “We need to address affordability but not by raising already exorbitant taxes on New Yorkers that will just drive more people out of the state. We need to stand up for the NY Jewish community and stand against anti-semitism in all forms,” Conley told JI.
But she said that Mamdani’s victory showed that voters are looking for alternatives to career politicians — like herself.
Chatzky has distinguished himself from many in the field with a significantly more critical stance toward Israel — he has accused Israel of violating U.S. arms sales laws, requiring the suspension of arms transfers, and said he did not believe that Mamdani is antisemitic.
Plus, moderates speechless in Seattle
Shmulik Almany
Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Yechiel Leiter addresses Rosh Hashanah reception at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, Sept. 18th, 2025
Good Thursday 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
Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Yechiel Leiter said in an interview with The Jerusalem Post that Israel “prefer[s] that Turkey not receive F-35s from the U.S.,” breaking with Washington over the move that President Donald Trump indicated he was open to during a meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in September.
But Leiter dismissed concerns around Saudi Arabia potentially acquiring F-35s, which is currently under negotiation ahead of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s visit to the White House next week. “There’s no indication that Israel’s qualitative edge will be compromised,” he said. Leiter has recently become Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s main conduit in Washington after the resignation of Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer…
Israel is seeking a new 20-year memorandum of understanding with the U.S. when the current one expires in 2028, U.S. and Israeli officials told Axios, double the length of past agreements.
New Israeli propositions, including redirecting some of the funds towards joint U.S.-Israeli R&D rather than direct military aid, are reportedly designed to make the lengthy deal more attractive to Trump as well as the GOP, which has grown weary of foreign aid…
Trump told MBS in a phone call last month that he expects to see progress made on Israel-Saudi normalization now that the ceasefire in Gaza is in force, U.S. officials also told Axios, which MBS said he was “willing to work on”…
Israel and White House advisor Jared Kushner are preparing contingency plans in case Trump’s 20-point Gaza peace plan doesn’t come to fruition, Israeli media reports. The IDF’s chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, told Israeli Security Cabinet officials that the IDF will soon present its alternative…
Meanwhile in the U.S., the Democratic primary for the seat of retiring Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) in New York’s 12th Congressional District, which has one of the largest Jewish constituencies in the country, gets more crowded by the day.
Shortly after the entry of JFK’s grandson, Jack Schlossberg, into the race, Erik Bottcher, a Democratic city councilman and LGBTQ activist, told The New York Times he’s jumping in (and that he supports Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state). There are rumors that Lincoln Project co-founder George Conway is eyeing a bid, as well.
Among the many other candidates are longtime Nadler aide Micah Lasher, who today got the endorsement of Comptroller-elect Mark Levine; state Assemblyman Alex Bores; and gun control activist Cameron Kasky, who posted yesterday on social media, “If you are a Democrat running in 2026 and do not fully support an arms embargo to the State of Israel … Stop wasting everybody’s time”…
Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell conceded to his opponent, socialist Katie Wilson, today after last night’s ballot drop made it mathematically impossible for him to prevail.
Though the moderate Harrell led in the polls for the week following Election Day, Wilson eventually gained ground and now leads him by a 0.7% margin — just shy of 2,000 votes. With only several hundred votes left to be counted, The Seattle Times said the race is “on pace to be the closest in modern Seattle politics.”
Wilson joins New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, as well as progressive challengers who prevailed in several Seattle City Council races, as evidence of the far left’s growing popularity in major U.S. cities. However, their small (or razor thin, in Wilson’s case) margins of victory and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey’s win over his DSA-aligned opponent are proof the fringe still lacks a mandate in the Democratic Party…
Former Rep. Elaine Luria (D-VA) announced raising more than $500,000 in the first 24 hours after the launch of her comeback bid for her seat in Virginia’s 2nd Congressional District.
The Jewish, pro-Israel Navy veteran sent out a fundraising email this afternoon with the subject line “Chutzpah,” saying the “Yiddish term that means guts or courage … runs in my family” and she’s “not afraid of a little mishigas”…
Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) was hospitalized today after suffering a “ventricular fibrillation flare-up” and subsequent fall and face injuries, but is doing well, his spokesperson reported. His scheduled discussion this evening with UJA-Federation of New York about his new book has been cancelled…
The New York Times profiles Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts and his path from leading a small Catholic college to helming the prominent think tank and sparking controversy among conservatives over his embrace of Tucker Carlson.
Roberts claimed as part of his defense over releasing the controversial video during a staff meeting last week, “I actually don’t have time to consume a lot of news. I consume a lot of sports,” and “I didn’t know much about this [Nick] Fuentes guy. I still don’t.”
“‘Who could believe that the head of a think tank doesn’t think?’ said Charles Jacobs, the president of the Jewish Leadership Project, which resigned from a Heritage Foundation task force meant to fight antisemitism after Mr. Roberts’ video was released”…
Joining the list of Heritage resignations, Adam Mossoff, a law professor at George Mason’s Scalia Law School and a prominent pro-Israel advocate, announced he is resigning as a Heritage visiting fellow today “based on [his] considered judgment” of Roberts’ video and “subsequent commentary”…
⏩ 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 a preview of President Donald Trump’s meeting next week with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams is traveling to Israel tomorrow for a five-day trip where he plans to meet with government officials and economic development and high-tech leaders.
The Texas Tribune Festival, taking place this week in Austin, continues tomorrow with speakers including former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO), Democratic Texas Senate candidates James Talarico and Rep. Colin Allred, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT), comedian John Mulaney, former Sen. Joe Manchin (I-WV), venture capitalist Joe Lonsdale and former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder. On Saturday, Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Adam Schiff (D-CA) are slated to speak.
MSNBC is launching its rebrand on Saturday as MS NOW, part of its separation from NBCUniversal, with dozens of veteran journalists recruited as part of its expanded newsroom.
On Sunday, the Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust will present its fourth annual New York Jewish Book Festival.
Sunday evening, the Jewish Federations of North America’s General Assembly kicks off in Washington, with an opening plenary including former U.S. Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel, authors Sarah Hurwitz and Micah Goodman, CNN contributor Scott Jennings and Rabbi Angela Buchdahl, senior rabbi at Central Synagogue in New York City.
We’ll be back in your inbox with the Daily Overtime on Monday. Shabbat Shalom!
Stories You May Have Missed
BROTHERHOOD PARADOX
One of its branches is banned for Hamas ties. The other sits in the Knesset
WOOD-N’T TAKE IT
Jordan Wood, now running to succeed Rep. Jared Golden, said he won’t take money from AIPAC in his newly launched House campaign
Plus, Cait Conley emerges as Dem front-runner against Lawler
Win McNamee/Getty Images
President Donald Trump meets with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman during a “coffee ceremony” at the Saudi Royal Court on May 13, 2025, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Good Wednesday 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
U.S. and Saudi officials are working to finalize a defense pact between the two countries ahead of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s visit to Washington next week, Axios reports. The agreement would reportedly contain similar guarantees to those Qatar received from the U.S. last month, with the Saudis also looking to purchase a weapons package that would include F-35 fighter jets.
The Trump administration also told the Saudis that it would like to see progress made on Saudi-Israel normalization, U.S. officials said. The negotiations on these deals quietly brought White House advisor Jared Kushner to Riyadh over the weekend and the Saudi defense minister to the U.S. earlier this week…
Jordan Wood, a former congressional aide and Democratic candidate for Senate in Maine, announced that he is switching his candidacy to now run for the House in Maine’s 2nd Congressional District, where Rep. Jared Golden (D-ME) has said he will not seek reelection.
Wood joined his fellow Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner in vowing not to accept support from AIPAC, saying in an interview last week, “There’s a tremendous amount of distrust right now among Democratic primary voters that the money that AIPAC has put into our political system has affected our priorities when it comes to foreign aid to Israel”…
Another shifting race is New York’s 17th Congressional District, where Jessica Reinmann, a Democratic nonprofit executive who was challenging Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY), dropped out of the Democratic primary today and endorsed Cait Conley.
An Army veteran with extensive counterterrorism experience in the Middle East, Conley told Jewish Insider in April about her commitment to Israel’s security and concerns around threats posed by Iran.
With her background in national security, Conley is viewed as having the strongest profile to win back the swing seat for the party, according to Democratic sources familiar with the race.…
The Wall Street Journal reports on financial gains made by U.S. businesses over the two-year Israel-Hamas war; out of the $32 billion of military-related sales the U.S. has greenlit to Israel since October 2023, $19.3 billion is through contracts with Boeing, Lockheed Martin has secured $743 million, Caterpillar secured $295 million, and more…
An Israeli-founded AI cybersecurity company, Tenzai, founded just six months ago, came out of stealth yesterday with a $75 million seed round. Its technology, which finds hackable vulnerabilities in code, drew support from major venture capital firms including Greylock Partners, Lux Capital and Battery Ventures…
Israel reopened the Zikim border crossing into Gaza today to facilitate increased food and humanitarian aid flow, as part of its compliance with the ongoing ceasefire agreement with Hamas…
After being heckled by anti-Israel protesters at a podcast taping earlier this week, former Vice President Kamala Harris paused the conversation to tell the audience: “A lot of what this process has been for me has been about reflection. Look, we should’ve done more as an administration. We should’ve spoken publicly about our criticism of the way that Netanyahu and his government were executing this war.”
“We had more levers in terms of leverage that we did not use. … But let’s be very clear, that the inhuman nature of what has happened to the Palestinian people in Gaza, the innocent civilians, the extent of hunger, famine, suffering, death, is something that we must acknowledge,” Harris continued…
⏩ 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 reporting on the status of the Muslim Brotherhood under Israeli law.
The U.S. House is expected to approve a spending package to reopen the government this evening, which would fund the government through Jan. 30.
The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom is holding a hearing tomorrow morning on religious freedom in Syria during the country’s transition out of dictatorship.
The DP World Tour golf championship kicks off in Dubai, UAE, tomorrow.
Stories You May Have Missed
NEXT STEPS
Pro-Israel Democratic Reps. Hakeem Jeffries, Ritchie Torres and Dan Goldman are facing long-shot challengers from the far left
HISTORY LESSONS
Former President Bill Clinton invoked slain Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s ‘law’: ‘We will fight terror as if there are no negotiations. We will negotiate as if there is no terror’
Former DNC vice chair Michael Blake’s launch video included Guy Christensen, who justified the murder of two Israeli Embassy staffers at the Capital Jewish Museum
Derek French/Sipa USA via AP Images
Democratic congressional candidate Michael Blake speaks during the 'Mayoral Candidate Forum All Faiths, All Candidates' event at Cathedral of St. John the Divine.
Major New York Jewish groups criticized former Assemblyman Michael Blake, who is running in the Democratic primary against Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY), for featuring a clip of an influencer who supported the shooting of two Israeli Embassy employees at the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington in his campaign launch video.
Blake’s video features a short clip from a social media video posted by Guy Christensen, an anti-Israel activist, accusing Torres of “investing in genocide,” one of the first clips in the video.
Christensen praised the alleged D.C. shooter, Elias Rodriguez, urging his followers to support Rodriguez and describing his “act of resistance” as “justified” and to respond with “greater resistance and escalation” in the face of a potential crackdown against the anti-Israel movement.
“I do not condemn the elimination of those two Zionist officials,” Christensen said on social media at the time of the shooting. “[Rodriguez] is not a terrorist. He’s a resistance fighter. And the fact is that the fight against Israel’s war machine, against their genocide machine, against their criminality, includes their foreign diplomats in this country and internationally.”
Christensen was expelled from The Ohio State University for the video, which was taken down by TikTok.
In a statement, the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York condemned Blake’s video, both for featuring Christensen and for its use of other antisemitic tropes.
“Hurling a bus load of antisemitic tropes and platforming bigots who cheer antisemitic violence in a launch video is not the pro-humanity flex one thinks it is. In the backdrop of rising hate, this only deepens division, further inflames an already inflammatory climate in New York, and makes us all less safe,” the group said in a statement.
The Anti-Defamation League of New York and New Jersey focused its criticism specifically on the Christensen clip.
“No matter what your views are on the candidates or the issues, we can all agree that Michael Blake’s platforming of anti-Zionist influencer Guy Christensen should be roundly condemned,” the group said. “Christensen is an activist who regularly touts Hamas and promotes antisemitic ideas, and he defended the shooter that left two dead at the Jewish Museum this past spring.”
UJA-Federation of New York said in a statement, “We strongly condemn any use of antisemitic vitriol and those who promote it to attack opponents.”
“Regardless of beliefs, actively platforming Guy Christensen, who regularly shares antisemitic ideas and pro-Hamas rhetoric — in addition to defending the heinous antisemitic shooting in Washington, DC, this spring — is absolutely unacceptable,” UJA continued.
Blake apologized in a statement, issued late Monday after a group of local rabbis also joined the chorus of criticism.
“I unequivocally denounce the murder and celebration of the two young Israeli embassy staffers, as stated in my May 22nd, 2025 post on X, and I apologize for any pain our campaign video caused any member of the Jewish community by including someone who condoned this horrific event,” Blake said. “Just as I would for anyone targeted for the color of their skin, faith, or identity, I stand firmly against all acts of hate and violence. I am focused on the Cost of Living and Affordability crisis impacting all of the district, where Ritchie Torres’ actions have failed, along with continuing to address Antisemitism, Anti-Muslim hate, Housing and Immigration. We deserve better than Ritchie Torres.”
Plus, Elaine Luria wants a rematch
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (L) is joined by Israeli Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer and other officials for a meeting with U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth at the Pentagon on July 09, 2025 in Arlington, Virginia.
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
Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed sidestepped a question about Israel’s right to exist during an interview with the anti-Israel media outlet Zeteo last week, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.
Zeteo founder Mehdi Hasan asked El-Sayed how he would respond if and when he faces questions on the campaign trail about whether he supports Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state. Pressed after initially dodging the question, El-Sayed said, “Israel exists. Palestine doesn’t. And so I always wonder why nobody asks me why Palestine doesn’t have a right to exist.”
El-Sayed also dismissed AIPAC donors as “MAGA billionaires throwing their money around to try to dictate the outcome for a Democratic primary,” though AIPAC has not yet endorsed a candidate in the Michigan Senate race…
Chi Ossé, a far-left Gen Z New York City councilman, is planning to launch a primary challenge to House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), The New York Times reports, despite discouragement from his ideological ally, Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, who clinched Jeffries’ endorsement shortly before the general election. Ossé’s insistence on running reportedly caused him to be disinvited from Mamdani’s election night party…
Elsewhere in New York, Bruce Blakeman, the first Jewish executive of Nassau County who just won reelection last week, is considering mounting a bid for governor, he told Politico, where he would face off against Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) in the GOP primary. Both are allies of President Donald Trump; Blakeman said he “told [Trump] that I was interested, and he didn’t discourage me. And I think he’s had the same conversation with Elise. I think the president is going to play it out and see what happens at the convention”…
Also throwing her hat in the ring, former Rep. Elaine Luria (D-VA), a moderate Jewish Democrat with a strong pro-Israel record, plans to launch a comeback campaign tomorrow, Punchbowl reports. Luria would likely be the front-runner in the already crowded Democratic primary to win back Virginia’s 2nd Congressional District from Rep. Jen Kiggans (R-VA), who defeated her in 2022…
Ron Dermer, Israel’s minister of strategic affairs and longtime advisor and confidante to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, resigned from his post today after three years in the role, JI’s Tamara Zieve reports. “This government will be remembered both for the October 7 attack and for its management of the two-year, seven-front war that followed,” Dermer wrote in his resignation letter. Israeli media had reported for months that Dermer’s departure was expected.
Dermer has led Israel’s ceasefire and hostage-release negotiations since February and is expected to stay on as Netanyahu’s envoy to continue handling the future of the Gaza portfolio, political sources recently told JI…
The State Department denied reports today that White House advisor Jared Kushner met with Gaza militia leader Yasser Abu Shabab to discuss ceasefire issues including dozens of Hamas terrorists still “stuck” in tunnels on the Israeli side of the ceasefire lines, though U.S. officials told Axios Kushner did speak with Netanyahu about the issue during their meeting in Jerusalem yesterday, and is eager to resolve it without impact on the next phase of the deal…
Saudi Arabia is set to host a U.S.-Saudi investment summit in Washington next Wednesday, a day after Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s visit to the White House. An invite obtained by CBS News shows the event taking place at the Kennedy Center, co-hosted by Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Investment and the U.S.-Saudi Business Council…
An undated letter from Houthi Chief of Staff Yusuf Hassan al-Madani to Hamas’ Al Qassam Brigades indicates that the Yemeni terror group has halted its attacks on Israel and ships in the Red Sea amid the ongoing ceasefire: “We are closely monitoring developments and declare that if the enemy resumes its aggression against Gaza, we will return to our military operations deep inside the Zionist entity, and we will reinstate the ban on Israeli navigation in the Red and Arabian Seas,” the letter reads…
⏩ 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 analysis on congressional redistricting efforts and additional reporting on Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa’s Washington meetings.
The International Conference of Chabad-Lubavitch Emissaries kicks off tomorrow, drawing 6,200 rabbis from 111 countries to New York City.
Former First Lady Michelle Obama will appear at Washington’s Sixth & I Synagogue tomorrow evening to discuss her forthcoming book, The Look.
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BETTER TOGETHER
Sponsored by Robert Kraft’s Blue Square Alliance, Hillel International and the United Negro College Fund, the event brought together over 100 students in an effort to rebuild the Black-Jewish alliance of the Civil Rights Movement
PEACEKEEPING PROSPECTS
Israeli experts are pessimistic about the effectiveness and safety of a U.N.-led force, given Israel’s experience with similar mandates in the past
Plus, Laura Loomer turns on Israel aid
Syrian Presidency
President Donald Trump greets Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa in the Oval Office on Nov. 10, 2025.
Good Monday 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
Despite the historic nature of Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa’s White House visit today, his meeting with President Donald Trump was kept a relatively low-key affair. Al-Sharaa entered through a back door and didn’t receive the usual greeting photo op with Trump, and the meeting was closed to the press.
The two leaders made news nonetheless: Syria is now set to join the U.S.-led campaign against ISIS, Trump and al-Sharaa discussed reopening respective embassies in Damascus and Washington and the Treasury Department issued a new order extending the suspension of U.S. sanctions on Syria for six months.
Ibrahim Olabi, Syria’s U.N. ambassador, said the two leaders also discussed a prospective Israel-Syria security agreement. “The term used frequently during the meeting by President Trump and Secretary [of State Marco] Rubio was ‘let’s get this done,’” Olabi said…
Trump has encouraged lawmakers to fully lift the congressionally mandated U.S. sanctions on Syria, but Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL), a Trump ally and the chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, did not commit to supporting sanctions relief when he held his own meeting with al-Sharaa yesterday, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.
Mast and al-Sharaa “had a long and serious conversation about how to build a future for the people of Syria free of war, ISIS, and extremism,” Mast said in a statement, but offered no words of praise for the Syrian leader…
Sergio Gor was sworn in as U.S. ambassador to India today to unusual fanfare — he and Trump were joined in the Oval Office by Rubio; Vice President JD Vance; Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent; Attorney General Pam Bondi; U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro; Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Jim Risch (R-ID); Katie Britt (R-AL) and Tommy Tuberville (R-AL); Erika Kirk and Fox News host Laura Ingraham, among others.
Swearing in Gor, who used to serve as the head of the Presidential Personnel Office where he wielded significant influence in assuring political hires shared his skepticism of American engagement abroad, Vance said, “We have such a crowd here, you’d think we were swearing in a vice president”…
Laura Loomer, a right-wing Trump advisor who has historically maintained pro-Israel stances, wrote on social media today that, after spending “an incredible week” in Israel, she has “reached a firm conclusion: Israel must end its dependence on U.S. aid and the U.S. must end all aid to Israel.”
“I truly hope by the end of the Trump administration and by the beginning of a new administration in 2028 that we see zero aid flowing to Israel,” she wrote, calling it a “win-win” for the U.S., which will no longer be a “global baby sitter,” and for Israel, which will be free to conduct its wars as it wishes.
In response, Democratic Majority for Israel accused Loomer of continuing “a troubling pattern on the Right — embracing anti-Israel policies & undermining our allies,” in the vein of Tucker Carlson and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA)…
Christine Pelosi, daughter of Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who was thought to be considering a run for her mother’s seat as she retires, announced today that she is not running for Congress. Instead, Pelosi is launching a campaign for the state Senate seat currently held by Scott Wiener, who is running for her mother’s San Francisco congressional district…
New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani named two of his top advisors today: Dean Fuleihan to be first deputy mayor and Elle Bisgaard-Church as his chief of staff.
Bisgaard-Church is a democratic socialist who was part of Mamdani’s campaign inner circle. Fuleihan, on the other hand, is a city and state government veteran; he previously served in the same role under former Mayor Bill de Blasio and as his budget director, as well as a budget expert in the state Legislature, among other roles. Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY), who was at times at odds with Mamdani during his campaign, called Fuleihan’s appointment “exceptional … in more ways than one”…
Danielle Sassoon, the former interim U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York who resigned her post rather than drop a case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams at the request of the Trump administration, has joined the law office of Clement & Murphy, The New York Times reports. The conservative boutique firm is known for its “longstanding opposition to executive branch overreach”…
The Wall Street Journal reports on Yale’s attempt to stay out of the line of fire in Trump’s crusade against higher education, including President Maurie McInnis’ increased government lobbying expenditures and a student forum where classmates encouraged each other to refrain from disruptive anti-Israel protests: “‘The only thing continuing to protest will do is to take education and opportunities away from the rest of us,’ said one post [on the forum]. ‘Ppl need to stop being stupid and selfish and realize they will gain no ground under this administration on the Israel issue’”…
Palantir CEO Alex Karp defended his support of Israel in an interview with WIRED, released today, saying, “Israel is a country with a GDP smaller than Switzerland, and it’s under massive attack. Some critiques are legitimate, but others are aggressive in attacking Israel. My reaction is, well, then I’m just going to defend them.”
“When people are fair to Israel and treat it like any other nation, which I don’t think they do, I will be much more willing to express in public the things I express in private to Israelis”…
⏩ 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 reporting on veteran journalists Bianna Golodryga and Yonit Levi’s new book, Don’t Feed the Lion, which they will launch at Temple Emanu-El in New York City tomorrow night, joined in conversation by comedian Elon Gold.
This evening, Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa will appear on Fox News’ “Special Report” with Bret Baier.
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SCENE AT SOMOS
At the post-election Somos conference, Jewish officials tried to find areas of common ground with the new mayor
DAYTONA X DAMASCUS DIPLOMACY
JI asked senior New York Democratic officials and Jewish community leaders to discuss the top threats that a Mamdani administration could pose to Jewish life in the city
At the post-election Somos conference, Jewish officials tried to find areas of common ground with the new mayor
Angel Valentin/Getty Images
New York City Mayor elect Zohran Mamdani meets with the press after he joined members of the Centro Islamico del Caribe -Masjid Ebadur Rahman mosque in prayer, on November 7, 2025 in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Mamdani was in San Juan for the annual SOMOS political retreat.
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — The humid air was swelling with anticipation as thousands of New York politicos descended on Puerto Rico’s capital last week to attend the annual Somos conference, a multiday marathon of post-election elbow-rubbing where receptions and panels occur alongside covert negotiations and late-night schmoozing at local bars and hotels.
The extended Democratic gathering, which kicked off on Wednesday and continued into the weekend, was adjusting to the ascendant political order led by Zohran Mamdani, whose victory in New York City’s mayoral election earlier that week had upended the Democratic establishment and led to new alliances that until recently would have seemed improbable.
While Mamdani was still largely unknown during Somos last year, just weeks after announcing his long-shot mayoral bid, the 34-year-old democratic socialist and state assemblyman now seized the spotlight as attendees swarmed his arrival Thursday at the Caribe Hilton, where the incoming mayor was later fêted by some of the state’s top elected officials at a crowded beachside reception.
For many Jewish leaders who joined the Caribbean confab, however, the feeling was far more subdued, as they openly grappled with the sensitive question of how to work with a mayor-elect whose stridently anti-Israel views conflict with their own core values.
It is a wholly unfamiliar position for Jewish leaders and mainstream Jewish institutions in New York City, where the mayors have long been proudly pro-Israel. But Mamdani’s stunning rise challenged the conventional thinking that a winning candidate in New York, a place with the largest Jewish community of any city in the world, must show strong support for Israel. In breaking with decades of precedent, Mamdani still faced skepticism from a significant number of Jewish voters who cast their ballots for former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who lost the Democratic primary and then ran as an independent. Exit polls showed that Cuomo, a vocal supporter of Israel, had doubled Mamdani among Jewish New Yorkers, with around two-thirds of the vote.
As Mamdani prepares to assume office in less than two months, Jewish leaders mingling at Somos were freshly processing his looming mayoralty with a mix of shock, hesitation and bemused detachment. Even if some voiced hope for a positive relationship, most were not ready to specify how they planned to move forward or what was expected of his administration.
One well-connected Jewish attendee cited the five stages of grief in characterizing the reactions among Jewish community leaders who had largely resisted engaging with Mamdani’s campaign. Many of them, it seemed, were dealing with the first stage of denial — and were far from finally reaching acceptance.
“We’re so screwed,” one Jewish political activist was overheard lamenting at an event on Friday evening.
Still, some Jewish community leaders who spoke with Jewish Insider over the course of the retreat suggested they were willing to give Mamdani the latitude to follow through on areas where they are aligned, pointing to a sort of provisional detente in the aftermath of a bruising and emotionally fraught election.
“The mainstream Jewish community is open to dealing with reality,” Noam Gilboord, the chief operating and community relations officer at the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, said diplomatically while attending the conference.
The JCRC, for its part, has not yet held any direct meetings with Mamdani, though members of his team privately reached out about some key issues during the election and have continued to stay in touch, according to Mark Treyger, the group’s chief executive. The campaign gave a heads-up to JCRC leadership, for instance, before Mamdani publicly announced that he would ask Jessica Tisch to stay on as police commissioner, an encouraging choice to Jewish community leaders who favored her for the role.
“We are here to represent the transition with the Jewish community, and we’re so happy to be here,” Ali Najmi, a Mamdani confidante and chief counsel to the mayor-elect’s transition team, told JI in a brief exchange. “We see so many good friends and old friends, and we’re so looking forward to our new friends.”
Mamdani’s team also checked in with the JCRC after he had won the primary to give assurances that the newly anointed Democratic nominee was committed to providing continued security for its annual Israel Day on Fifth parade — even if he was unlikely to attend, as a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against the Jewish state.
While Mamdani was absent from a Thursday night reception the JCRC hosted with the UJA-Federation of New York, he sent two of his top aides, Ali Najmi and Elle Bisgaard-Church, to join the event instead. They were warmly greeted by attendees in a public easing of tensions that would have been difficult to imagine just a few weeks ago.
“We are here to represent the transition with the Jewish community, and we’re so happy to be here,” Najmi, a Mamdani confidante and chief counsel to the mayor-elect’s transition team, told JI in a brief exchange. “We see so many good friends and old friends, and we’re so looking forward to our new friends.”
Najmi did not share further details regarding the transition’s formal plans to address Jewish issues, steps that are certain to be aggressively scrutinized in the coming months.
Yeruchim Silber, the director of New York government relations at Agudath Israel of America, an Orthodox advocacy group, said he appreciated the outreach and looked forward to meeting with Najmi again. “We’re hopeful that we could always find some common ground and work together,” he told JI during the reception. “Look, the mayor-elect said very clearly in his victory speech that he’s going to tackle antisemitism,” he added, “so we’ll take him at his word.”
“My understanding is there is interest in more formal Jewish outreach” from Mamdani’s team, said Phylisa Wisdom, the executive director of New York Jewish Agenda, a liberal Zionist group that has been receptive to the mayor-elect. Wisdom, who joined a private conversation with Mamdani at a Reform synagogue in Brooklyn before the election, said the appearance of his aides at the reception on Thursday demonstrated “a desire to be in all kinds of Jewish spaces they may not have been during the election,” in order to “build relationships and show goodwill.”
“This is a very, very divided time for the city, I think I can acknowledge that,” Mark Levine, the incoming city comptroller who endorsed Mamdani, said in his remarks to the room.
Mamdani, whose presence at formal Somos events drew throngs of eager admirers seeking selfies with the mayor-elect, likewise steered clear of an annual Shabbat gathering convened by the Met Council, the Jewish anti-poverty charity. Despite his victory, the event, which featured Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY), New York state Attorney General Letitia James and other prominent officials, made no direct allusion to Mamdani — further highlighting his uncomfortable relationship with the Jewish community.
Instead, the speakers at the Met Council’s widely attended reception zeroed in largely on such issues as hunger, poverty and the Trump administration’s efforts to withhold payments for food stamps amid the government shutdown.
“This is a very, very divided time for the city, I think I can acknowledge that,” Mark Levine, the incoming city comptroller who endorsed Mamdani, said in his remarks to the room.
Levine, who is Jewish, is now facing pressure from some Mamdani allies to divest the city from Israel bonds. He has refused to change course, saying last week that he has “criticism of the Israeli government” but still maintains “deep personal ties to Israel.” Mamdani, meanwhile, has voiced support for ending “the practice of purchasing Israel bonds,” though Levine has indicated he does not believe the mayor-elect has the power to enforce such a policy.
The Shabbat reception was disrupted by anti-Israel protesters two years ago, weeks after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attacks. But no such demonstrations occurred last Friday.
Mamdani, who will soon become New York City’s first Muslim and South Asian mayor, has frequently vowed to fight rising antisemitism. The day after the election, he swiftly moved to condemn vandalism of a Jewish day school in Brooklyn that was defaced by swastika graffiti, calling the attack a “disgusting and heartbreaking act of antisemitism” and pledging to “always stand steadfast with our Jewish neighbors to root the scourge of antisemitism out of our city.”
In his outreach to different parts of the Jewish community and in his public remarks during the election, Mamdani called for increased funding to prevent hate crimes and boosting police protection at Jewish institutions. He has expressed interest in a city curriculum backed by leading Jewish groups, even as it uses a definition of Zionism contradicting his own views on Israel. Mamdani has said he does not recognize Israel as a Jewish state.
Despite his pledges to counter antisemitism, that tension underscores how many Jewish leaders see his positions as an active threat and an impediment to upholding support for Israel, as the war in Gaza has fueled deep divisions in the Democratic Party.
Mamdani’s anti-Israel stances have provoked concerns that he will act on his views when he takes office. He has indicated, for instance, that he would reassess the partnership between Cornell University and Israel’s Technion, situated on Roosevelt Island. He has also pledged to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for war crimes if he steps foot in New York City, in a controversial move that legal experts have questioned as legally dubious.
Mamdani has faced scrutiny for his ties to the Democratic Socialists of America, whose avowedly anti-Zionist mission includes demands that the mayor-elect implement several policies that would sever New York City’s relations with Israel. His refusal to explicitly condemn calls to “globalize the intifada” have otherwise continued to frustrate Jewish community leaders.
Robert Tucker, a Jewish philanthropist who had served as the commissioner of New York City’s Fire Department until last week, announced that he was resigning after Mamdani’s win, reportedly owing to the mayor-elect’s anti-Zionist stances.
But some Jewish leaders at Somos speculated that Mamdani may now see his vocal opposition to Israel as an albatross as he seeks to enact an ambitious affordability plan that will need buy-in from the state leadership.
During his time at Somos, the mayor-elect seemed careful to largely avoid the issue. “I will make clear that we are not looking to remake New York City in my image,” he said in remarks at a labor breakfast Saturday. “We are looking to remake it in the image of struggling workers across the five boroughs.”
In comments to a mosque he visited in San Juan, where the imam had mentioned Palestine during his own sermon, Mamdani spoke in metaphorical terms as he addressed the audience. “If you are not at the table, you may find yourself on the menu,” he noted. “It was a Muslim brother, Malcolm X, who reminded us that sitting at the table does not make you a diner. You have to be eating some of what’s on that plate.”
Still, some of Mamdani’s allies on the far left indicated that they were eager to use momentum from his victory to push a more hostile view of Israel into the mainstream discourse and to challenge incumbents who accept donations from AIPAC while promoting pro-Israel policies.
In a panel discussion on Thursday billed as “Colonialism, Resistance and Solidarity: Puerto Rico and Palestine,” Mamdani’s supporters — including City Councilmember Alexa Avilés, Beth Miller of Jewish Voice for Peace Action and Linda Sarsour, a Palestinian-American activist who has spread antisemitic rhetoric — were emboldened by his recent win, as attendees chanted “From the river to the sea, Palestina will be free!” and “Viva, viva Palestina!” Sarsour described Mamdani’s election as “a new day” and said “we’re not going back.”
“Being someone who supports the Palestinian people is no longer a political liability,” Sarsour, who has vowed to hold Mamdani “accountable” as mayor, told the room. “It is what gets you elected into office.”
In statements following the election, a range of Jewish organizations promised to hold Mamdani responsible for keeping Jews in New York City safe. The mayor-elect’s “victory marks the beginning of a new political chapter for New York, one that many in our community view with enormous concern,” Eric Goldstein, the CEO of the UJA-Federation of New York, said in a letter to supporters. “His rhetoric on Israel and Zionism raises serious questions about whether Jewish New Yorkers will continue to feel seen and protected in the very city we indelibly helped build and grow.”
He said the Jewish community would be watching closely to ensure “that antisemitism is not given any oxygen in our neighborhoods,” adding that “actions matter more” than “words.”
Rabbi Ammiel Hirsh, who leads Stephen Wise Free Synagogue on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, said in a post-election sermon that he “will readily engage in dialogue” with Mamdani if he chooses to reach out. “We will support Mayor Mamdani’s policies where we can — and oppose them when we must,” he concluded.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, who, at Somos, celebrated Mamdani’s win, also stressed to reporters on the sidelines of the conference that Jewish New Yorkers still need to “see action” from the mayor-elect to address their concerns. “That’s one area where I know that there’s some opportunities for him to demonstrate, as he has said, but also demonstrate that he is there to protect all New Yorkers, to protect anyone’s right to worship or their beliefs but also their institutions,” she explained.
The Anti-Defamation League, for its part, launched a “Mamdani Monitor” to track policies that could impact Jewish safety and security. Jewish leaders in attendance at Somos, however, voiced reservations with the effort, suggesting they did not see it as productive as some in the community look for common ground to work with the mayor-elect.
Others voiced hope that a leading candidate for City Council speaker, Julie Menin, who is Jewish, would serve as a counterweight to Mamdani — in contrast with a leftist rival, Crystal Hudson, seen more as an ally of the mayor-elect. Menin, who declined to join a meeting between Mamdani and Jewish officials in the primary, is known as an outspoken supporter of Israel in the City Council.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, who, at Somos, celebrated Mamdani’s win, also stressed to reporters on the sidelines of the conference that Jewish New Yorkers still need to “see action” from the mayor-elect to address their concerns. “That’s one area where I know that there’s some opportunities for him to demonstrate, as he has said, but also demonstrate that he is there to protect all New Yorkers, to protect anyone’s right to worship or their beliefs but also their institutions,” she explained.
Hochul, for her part, has also drawn backlash from Jewish donors for choosing to back Mamdani’s campaign in the general election, people familiar with the situation told JI. “She’s got a lot to prove,” one Jewish leader said of the governor, long regarded as a staunch defender of Israel.
Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY), a pro-Israel Jewish Democrat who declined to endorse Mamdani in the general election, told JI at Somos that, despite their disagreements on Israel, he was looking forward to working with the mayor-elect on areas of alignment such as cost of living issues.
But some Jewish community activists were more suspicious of the incoming mayor. One Brooklyn organizer dismissed the possibility of working with Mamdani outright, saying that his stances on Israel had foreclosed any hope of finding common ground, even on unrelated issues.
Leon Goldenberg, an Orthodox business leader in Brooklyn who serves as an executive board member of the Flatbush Jewish Community Coalition, which endorsed Cuomo in the general election, told JI that he has been struggling to decide whether he will ask Mamdani for a meeting.
“I’m really at a loss,” he said on Thursday. “What are we going to talk about, Israel?”
The FJCC itself, which long enjoyed a close relationship with outgoing Mayor Eric Adams, was more optimistic, according to Josh Mehlman, the group’s chairman. “We have met, and will meet with them again,” he said of Mamdani’s team. “We are confident we can work together for the best interest of the Flatbush community and the Orthodox Jewish community citywide.”
Michael Blake frequently attended AIPAC events between 2014-2019, and was a featured speaker at their 2017 policy conference
Derek French/Sipa USA via AP Images
Democratic congressional candidate Michael Blake speaks during the 'Mayoral Candidate Forum All Faiths, All Candidates' event at Cathedral of St. John the Divine.
Michael Blake, a former New York state assemblyman and eighth-place-finishing New York City mayoral candidate, announced a primary challenge to Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) on Wednesday focused squarely on Torres’ support for Israel and ties to AIPAC.
But Blake himself has an extensive history with AIPAC and was, at least through 2020, a vocal supporter of the Jewish state.
In his campaign announcement on X, Blake said, “I am ready to fight for you and lower your cost of living while Ritchie fights for a Genocide. I will focus on Affordable Housing and Books as Ritchie will only focus on AIPAC and Bibi,” a reference to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “I will invest in the community. Ritchie invests in Bombs.”
Blake attached a video that focuses heavily on attacking Torres’ support for Israel and the backing he has received from AIPAC, with clips accusing Torres of being “bought” by supporters of Israel and of focusing more on Israel than his own district. At one point, the video shows Torres with dollar signs over his eyes.
“In 2025, Ritchie has nearly $15 million on hand, largely from AIPAC, while many of his constituents barely have $15 to get by,” Blake states in the video. “Ritchie Torres cares more about Bibi than he cares about the Bronx. More about AIPAC than he does about your academics.”
Social media posts by Blake and others show that he was for years a frequent attendee at AIPAC events, having attended no less than 10 of the organization’s events between 2014 and 2019, and was a featured speaker at least once.
“From entrepreneurship, to political organizing, to deepening my faith as a Christian, AIPAC and AIEF [AIPAC-affiliated American Israel Education Foundation] changed my life forever,” Blake said as a speaker at AIPAC’s 2017 policy conference. “Traveling to Israel made me a better legislator, better activist, and helped me to understand that as a leader within my community and the Democratic Party, I have a responsibility to support America’s friend and ally, Israel.”
Blake traveled to Israel with AIEF and with the New York Jewish Community Relations Council.
As recently as 2020, as a Democratic National Committee vice chair, Blake insisted that the Democratic Party would continue to support Israel, saying of the party platform, “We have been attentive to the previous conversations that have happened in terms of making sure there’s not language in there that would be anti-Israel.”
In a 2020 interview with Jewish Insider, Blake — who posted a photo of Netanyahu speaking at a 2014 AIPAC event — declined to endorse Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) characterization of Netanyahu as a “reactionary racist.” And he drew parallels between his experience as a Black man in the Bronx and the experience of Israeli Jews facing terrorism.
Blake also met on various occasions with Israeli officials and diplomats and attended the 2018 Israel Day Parade in Manhattan.
The former state lawmaker made a sharp turn on Israel following the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on Israel and the ensuing war in Gaza, accusing Israel of “genocide” weeks after Oct. 7 and calling for a ceasefire while making no mention of the Israeli hostages held by Hamas.
He also opposed congressional legislation aimed at combating antisemitism and the censure of Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) for antisemitic and anti-Israel comments, and backed former Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY), who denied Hamas atrocities on Oct. 7.
A pro-Israel activist who requested anonymity in order to speak candidly told JI, “The pro-Israel community is surprised by his 180-degree reversal. Blake spoke at pro-Israel events and received considerable financial support from the community. Once he proclaimed to be a pro-Israel stalwart and now he has joined the ranks of the detractors.”
Blake’s campaign did not respond to questions from JI but he faced criticism and questions on X over his past AIPAC ties. In response, he claimed that he walked away from the group “before the Genocide” and after “seeing how they treated Black leaders including Pres. Obama.”
But Blake’s appearance at an AIPAC conference, and other contacts with the group, continued well after Obama’s time in office and the former president’s public clashes with the group over issues like the Iran nuclear deal.
Blake also downplayed his speech at the 2017 policy conference as having happened eight years ago, even as he continued to attend AIPAC events for years afterward.
Plus, Treasury targets Hezbollah financiers
Maksim Konstantinov/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
The Kazakhstan national flag flutters in the wind on a flagpole.
Good Thursday 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
The Abraham Accords is expected to gain another participant this evening, though in a first, the country is not joining as a show of peace with Israel — since the new addition, the Muslim-majority central Asian nation of Kazakhstan, has had full diplomatic relations with Israel since 1992.
Kazakhstan’s president, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, is expected to announce the move at a meeting with President Donald Trump later today, where they will also hold a joint phone call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Trump administration officials told Axios that the White House wants to “build momentum” for the Abraham Accords ahead of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s visit to Washington on Nov. 18.
As far as Kazakhstan’s motivation, the former Soviet nation has long lobbied Washington to cancel a Cold War-era law that has hindered its access to American markets, and could benefit from currying favor with the Trump administration.
Leading Jewish organizations have worked with Kazakhstan’s Jewish community and government for over a decade to lobby Congress to repeal the Jackson-Vanik Amendment, and told Jewish Insider’s Lahav Harkov and Danielle Cohen-Kanik that they are highly supportive of the country’s inclusion in the Accords…
Ahead of Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa’s own visit to the White House on Monday, the U.N. Security Council voted in favor of a U.S.-sponsored resolution to lift sanctions on the former Al-Qaida leader turned president…
Also getting an Oval Office welcome, Israeli media reported today that Trump invited the 20 Israeli hostages released from Gaza last month to visit the White House in two weeks…
On the Hill, members of the Senate Armed Services Committee from both parties voiced concerns with Elbridge Colby, under secretary of defense for policy, and his office at the Pentagon at a committee hearing today — for the second time this week, JI’s Marc Rod reports.
“Many of this committee have serious concerns about the Pentagon’s policy office and how it is serving the president of the United States and the Congress,” Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS), the chairman of the committee, said in his opening statement. “In many of these conversations, we hear that the Pentagon policy office seems to be doing what it pleases without coordinating, even inside the U.S. executive branch”…
Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) announced this morning that she will retire at the end of her term in 2027, after serving 39 years in Congress where she made history as the first female speaker of the House.
For most of her illustrious career, Pelosi has been a reliable ally of Israel and, as Democratic leader, generally managed to keep her caucus united around support for the Jewish state. But, like many Democrats, she leaned in a more critical direction during the war in Gaza, at one point supporting a call to suspend weapons transfers to Israel. Read JI’s interview with Scott Wiener, the state senator from California seeking to win her seat…
The IDF is beginning to demobilize thousands of reservists called up for duty, some of whom have served hundreds of days in the past two years, announcing that the country is transitioning from war into a period of “enhanced border security” as the ceasefire with Hamas in Gaza largely endures…
The Treasury Department announced sanctions today against members of Hezbollah’s “finance team” who “oversee the movement of funds from Iran” in an effort to support the Lebanese government’s moves to disarm the terror group. The department revealed that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps has already transferred over $1 billion to Hezbollah this year…
Author Jamie Kirchick argues in The Washington Post that the “inevitable fracturing of President Donald Trump’s MAGA movement is in sight, the instigator of its rupture that most narcissistic and destructive of media personalities: Tucker Carlson.”
Kirchick admonishes Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts for failing to outright condemn Carlson’s platforming of neo-Nazi influencer Nick Fuentes: “Stalinists and Holocaust deniers like Fuentes are perfectly entitled to spew their nonsense on street corners, through self-published manifestos or in online livestreams. What they are not entitled to is the imprimatur of purportedly respectable institutions whose reputations hinge upon the voices they choose to amplify”…
⏩ 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 former Minnesota Sen. Rudy Boschwitz, who will be celebrating his 95th birthday.
On Sunday, the Zionist Organization of America will hold its annual gala, where it will present awards to Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY); Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Yechiel Leiter; Leo Terrell, head of the Department of Justice’s antisemitism task force; Israeli Ambassador to the U.N. Danny Danon; and philanthropists Irit and Jonathan Tratt.
We’ll be back in your inbox with the Daily Overtime on Monday. Shabbat Shalom!
Stories You May Have Missed
THE INSIDE STORY
The story of how the hostage families came to learn their loved ones were coming home, told to JI by key players
COMMUNITY CONCERNS
JI asked senior New York Democratic officials and Jewish community leaders to discuss the top threats that a Mamdani administration could pose to Jewish life in the city
Plus, AIPAC travels to APEC
Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) speaks at a press conference on taxes at the U.S. Capitol Building on August 03, 2022 in Washington, DC.
Good Thursday morning!
In today’s Daily Kickoff, we talk to New York Democratic officials and Jewish community leaders about the main threats that a Mamdani administration could pose to Jewish life in the city, and report on Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts’ apology for his controversial video defending Tucker Carlson after Carlson hosted a friendly interview with neo-Nazi leader Nick Fuentes. We also talk to key players in the two-year-long advocacy campaign for the release of the hostages about the days leading up to the return of all the living hostages from Gaza, and interview Sen. James Lankford about key policy issues, including next steps in Gaza. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Elliot Brandt, Yair Lapid and Ambassador Amy Gutmann.
Today’s Daily Kickoff was curated by Jewish Insider Israel Editor Tamara Zieve and U.S. Editor Danielle Cohen-Kanik, with an assist from Marc Rod. Have a tip? Email us here.
What We’re Watching
- The Blue Square Alliance Against Hate (formerly the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism) is hosting its second Sports Leaders Convening at Gillette Stadium in Massachusetts today. The full-day event will feature Robert Kraft, the organization’s CEO and owner of the New England Patriots; Ted Deutch, CEO of the American Jewish Committee; Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League; Adam Lehman, CEO of Hillel International; Michael Masters, CEO of the Secure Community Network; and leaders from major sports leagues.
- The 2025 Somos Conference, drawing New York Democrats to gather in Puerto Rico, continues today. New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani is expected to attend, beginning his visit tonight with a cocktail reception hosted by New York Attorney General Letita James. JI correspondent Matthew Kassel is at the conference — send any New York political tips his way.
- This morning, the Senate Armed Services Committee is holding a nomination hearing for Alex Velez-Green to be deputy under secretary of defense for policy, coming days after committee lawmakers blasted the Pentagon office and its head, Elbridge Colby, during a contentious hearing for failing to communicate with them.
- The Senate Judiciary Committee is holding a hearing on the Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery (HEAR) Act, a bill aimed at eliminating loopholes used by museums to possess Nazi-looted artwork that Jewish families have been trying to recover.
- The Edlavitch Jewish Community Center in Washington is beginning a run today screening the movie “The Floaters.” Read JI’s coverage of how the movie came together here.
What You Should Know
A QUICK WORD WITH JI’S Josh Kraushaar and matthew shea
In addition to New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s race, we’ve been spotlighting two other mayoral contests where socialist, anti-Israel candidates were running competitively against more traditionally liberal standard-bearers: in Minneapolis and Seattle.
If Mamdani’s bare 50% majority in the three-way race signaled that a far-left candidate could prevail in a deep-blue city — even while dividing the Democratic Party — the underperformance of the two other far-left challengers on big-city ballots underscores the limited appetite even deep-blue constituencies have for radical politics.
In Minneapolis, Mayor Jacob Frey won reelection to a third term over Democratic Socialists of America-affiliated state Sen. Omar Fateh. The race was close: While Frey held a substantial 10-point lead in the first round of balloting, he narrowly secured a victory by six points (50-44%) in the second round of the city’s ranked-choice election system.
Fateh formed an alliance with two other left-wing candidates in the race, but ultimately enough people who didn’t back Frey in the first round chose him as a second or third preference.
Fateh, a progressive affiliated with the DSA, has accused Israel of committing genocide, among other anti-Israel views, and campaigned with Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), who remains one of Israel’s harshest critics in Congress.
Members of Fateh’s staff had also expressed hostile views towards Israel; his communications manager, Ayana Smith-Kooiman, said in a series of now-deleted social media posts that Israel “does not have a ‘right’ to exist” and “must be dismantled,” and said she did not care about Hamas a month after the Oct. 7, 2023, terror attacks — statements that drew rebuke from Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN).
The outcome is also looking favorable for the more-moderate incumbent in Seattle — though far from certain. Mayor Bruce Harrell, who trailed his socialist challenger Katie Wilson during the summer primary, is now leading her in the general election by eight points, 54-46%, with more than three-quarters of votes tallied.
COMMUNITY CONCERNS
New Yorkers elected democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani on Tuesday as the next New York City mayor, ensuring the city will be headed in a leftward ideological direction for the next four years. Mamdani’s election has also sparked widespread concerns in the city’s Jewish community about how the incoming mayor, who refused to condemn “globalize the intifada” rhetoric or acknowledge the State of Israel as a Jewish homeland, would impact the day-to-day life of Jewish New Yorkers. Jewish Insider’s Haley Cohen asked senior New York Democratic officials and Jewish community leaders — granted anonymity to offer their candid thoughts — to discuss the top threats that a Mamdani administration could pose to Jewish life in the city.
Chief concerns: Respondents expressed worry that Mamdani’s anti-Israel worldview could lead to heightened antisemitism, bring a vanguard of leftist operatives hostile to Jewish concerns into City Hall, impact the effectiveness of the New York Police Department and fray ties between the city and Israeli institutions or businesses. He has even vowed to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he visits the city, though experts have voiced doubt on the legality of the move.
FACING THE MUSIC
Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts apologized in a staff meeting on Wednesday for his video last week defending Tucker Carlson and refusing to “cancel” neo-Nazi leader Nick Fuentes, saying that the video was the result of internal failures of communication and consultation that left too few people involved in its production, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports. Roberts and other Heritage leaders also repeatedly made reference to a plan under development for how Heritage will approach its relationship with Carlson going forward, amid strong pressure from numerous staff members to forcefully disavow the right-wing podcast host and his activities, but provided little clarity about what that approach will entail and sidestepped the full-throated denunciation of Carlson that several Heritage staffers sought.
Notable quotable: “About ‘no cancelation,’ is there a limiting principle to that? I should have said that there was, especially in light of Tucker hosting not just Fuentes, but a handful of other people,” Roberts said. “You can say you’re not going to participate in canceling someone — a personal friend, an institutional friend — while also being clear you’re not endorsing everything they’ve said. You’re not endorsing softball interviews. You’re not endorsing putting people on shows. And I should have made that clear.”
Update: In a new public video posted following the staff meeting, Roberts delivered a similar message, saying, “everyone has the responsibility to speak up against the scourge of antisemitism, no matter the messenger. Heritage and I will do so, even when my friend Tucker Carlson needs challenging.”
THE INSIDE STORY
When several dozen people gathered at the Kennedy Center for a yoga class overlooking the Potomac River on Oct. 8, the class began with a practice familiar to anyone who regularly does yoga: intention setting. Among those taking part in the class were former hostages and the family members of those still held in Gaza, all of whom had gathered at the same spot a day earlier for a somber event marking two years since the attacks that reshaped their lives. “What do you do in yoga? You set your intention. You think about the release of the hostages,” recalled Matan Sivek, who until last month was the director of the Hostage Families Forum’s U.S. operation. As soon as the class ended, a cacophony of cellphones began ringing as news broke about a possible deal. Sivek, and other key players in the campaign for the hostages, spoke with Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch last week to reflect on the two-year-long advocacy campaign — spearheaded by Sivek, his wife Bar Ben-Yaakov and leading Jewish organizations.
Behind the scenes: Within the Trump administration, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick was working behind the scenes on behalf of the hostages. His wife, Allison, was the driving force behind his advocacy. Allison Lutnick had gotten to know many of the families after a trip to Israel early last year, when she met the mother of Omer Shem Tov, a hostage who was freed in February. Allison then connected with Sivek when she moved to Washington this year, and soon after he facilitated a meeting between the Lutnicks and several freed hostages at the Lutnicks’ apartment in Miami. “We spent three three hours together in our apartment talking and sharing. They spoke of the horrors of what they’d been through and we spoke of the horrors of what we had been through 24 years earlier on 9/11,” Allison told JI on Wednesday.
postwar policy
As the global community looks to advance the ceasefire plan in Gaza, Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) emphasized the need for continued pressure from countries like Turkey and Qatar on Hamas to comply with the terms of the ceasefire requiring it to disarm, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports. But he also warned that there should be limits on the ways in which Turkey and Qatar are involved in the future of Gaza, arguing that they should have no role in certain sensitive areas, even as they remain involved in reconstruction work.
Looking ahead: Lankford said that ensuring that Hamas disarms, something it has thus far refused to do, will require military, diplomatic and financial pressure, particularly from countries like Turkey and Qatar that have been Hamas patrons. “If the Turks want contracts to be able to rebuild in Gaza, which they do, then that’s not going to happen until Hamas is actually disarmed, so Turkey’s got to decide, ‘Do you want those contracts to be able to rebuild or not?’ If they do, then here’s what that requirement is going to be,” Lankford said. Turkey and Qatar’s roles in the future of Gaza should be limited to certain sectors, Lankford added, given the countries’ hostility to Israel and support for Hamas. He said he’s comfortable seeing Ankara assist with reconstruction, but it should not be involved in running hospitals, schools or mosques or in rebuilding the economy.
TRIP TALK
A delegation organized by AIPAC recently completed a nine-day visit to Taiwan, Japan and South Korea, Jewish Insider’s Danielle Cohen-Kanik has learned, as the pro-Israel lobbying group seeks to promote ties with Israel among key U.S. allies. Over 200 of AIPAC’s largest donors as well as its CEO, Elliot Brandt; board chair, Michael Tuchin; board president, Bernie Kaminetsky; and top professional staff traveled to the region from Oct. 22-30, according to a participant with knowledge of the trip’s background.
Boosting ties: Though Israel already has warm relations with all three countries, as both Israel and the U.S. look to increase ties in the Indo-Pacific region, the trip was meant to highlight the Jewish state’s relevance in its defense prowess, relationship to the U.S., shared democratic values, growing relations to the Gulf states — which have historically provided the Asian nations with much of their oil and gas — and acumen in the technology and business sectors, the participant said. The large group met with high-level leadership in each country, including the Taiwanese president, vice president and secretary-general of its National Security Council, Korean ministers and a Japanese senior diplomat.
New in town: Israeli chef Eyal Shani teased the imminent opening of a new branch of his Miznon restaurant in Taipei, Taiwan, in an Instagram post yesterday.
BOMBSHELL ANNOUNCEMENT
Yair Lapid, Israel’s opposition leader, said on Wednesday that he was pulling his centrist Yesh Atid party out of the World Zionist Organization and called for the “immediate nationalization” of the Keren Kayemeth Le’Israel-Jewish National Fund, which controls more than 10% of the land of Israel, describing the so-called “National Institutions” as hopelessly corrupt, eJewishPhilanthropy’s Judah Ari Gross reports.
Background: The announcement comes as the World Zionist Congress was nearing a power-sharing agreement that would have seen Yesh Atid split control of the WZO and KKL-JNF over the next five-year term. An initial arrangement was tentatively approved last week, but it fell apart after Culture Minister Miki Zohar of the Likud party, who negotiated on behalf of the center-right bloc, announced that he planned to name Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s divisive son, Yair, to a senior position within the WZO. A new deal was approaching completion, but Lapid’s decision to abandon the organization throws the negotiation process back into turmoil, with no clear path forward.
Read the full story here and sign up for eJewishPhilanthropy’s Your Daily Phil newsletter here.
Worthy Reads
Steer Clear of Mamdani: The center-left Democratic Party think tank Third Way urged national Democrats “to resist the pressure to align” with the politics and agenda of New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, offering 10 reasons why doing so “will fail in tough races.” “The DSA platform is extreme and is a Republican ad maker’s dream: Just a glance at the DSA platform makes clear how politically toxic it would be to any voter not deeply in the sway of socialist ideology. … Indeed, the Mayor-elect’s affiliation with the DSA is already being weaponized against his fellow Democrats, as Republicans have declared him to be their ‘single most effective foil’ as they seek to paint Democrats across the country as radicals. … Mainstream Democrats ran authentic campaigns and won big without being socialists: Two moderate Democrats, Abigail Spanberger (VA) and Mikie Sherrill (NJ) delivered historic victories in key gubernatorial races, with Spanberger flipping Virginia from red to blue. … While they shared Mamdani’s focus on addressing affordability, both Spanberger and Sherrill did so with ideas and narratives drawn from the center left, not the far left.” [ThirdWay]
The Fuentes Feud: The New York Times’ Ross Douthat argues that the older generation of conservatives have a role to play in constraining the younger, “groyper” antisemitic strain on the right. “Whatever share of Capitol Hill interns or think tank employees are actually Fuentes sympathizers, this is the scenario the institutional right needs to avoid right now: preventing radicalized junior staffers from steamrolling or puppeteering nominal superiors. But this isn’t just a matter of imposing discipline; the older generation also has to understand where the radical ideas are coming from, the true shape of the debate. You aren’t going to out-debate Fuentes himself — that’s not the business he’s in — but you still want to understand the chain of ideas that draws younger right-wingers toward antisemitism, and offer adult wisdom that’s responsive to its pull.” [NYTimes]
Kippah Quandary: Tevi Troy, a senior fellow at the Ronald Reagan Institute, writes in The Wall Street Journal about his decision to hide his kippah under a hat in anticipation of Zohran Mamdani’s victory in the New York mayoral race. “The reason openly identifiable Jews can walk around safely wearing religious garb is the social compact. There is an understanding that people will behave appropriately and that there are consequences for misbehavior. One reason for the spate of attacks on religious Jews in New York in recent years has been the belief that antisemitic assaults won’t be punished. … My fear is that Mayor Mamdani will encourage even more impunity. His antipathy to Israel, and his tacit support for ‘globalizing the intifada,’ may send a signal to the New York City Police Department that protecting Jews won’t be a priority for the city. That in turn could send another signal to people on the streets of New York — that it is open season on Jews.” [WSJ]
Word on the Street
New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani named his transition team on Wednesday, an all-female group of advisors with experience in city government but lacking backgrounds in education and public safety, as has historically been included in mayors’ transition teams…
Robert Tucker, the Jewish commissioner of the New York City Fire Department, resigned, The New York Post reports, hours before he was set to fly to Israel to meet his counterpart there…
The Wall Street Journal considers the economics behind Mamdani’s largest campaign promises, including a state corporate tax hike, a “millionaires tax,” universal child care and rent stabilization…
The Times of Israel’s Editor-in-Chief David Horovitz rejects the argument that Mamdani’s victory is based on local issues and unconnected to his anti-Israel positions, describing it as “delusional”…
Rep. Jared Golden (D-ME) announced on Wednesday that he will not seek reelection in Maine’s 2nd Congressional District, citing the “increasing incivility and plain nastiness” in politics and rise of political violence. Golden is one of the few House Democrats to represent a district that President Donald Trump carried in the 2024 presidential election, and his district is now a prime GOP pickup opportunity…
Former Democratic National Committee Vice Chair Michael Blake announced a primary campaign against Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY), and plans to run as an anti-Israel Democrat…
U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Mike Waltz met Tuesday with Palestinian diplomats in New York to discuss a U.S.-sponsored U.N. Security Council resolution laying out an international security force to be deployed to Gaza, Axios reports. The U.S. is reportedly looking to bring it to a vote at the UNSC within two weeks…
The U.S. is seeking to strike a deal over dozens of Hamas terrorists “stuck” in tunnels on the Israeli side of the “yellow line” dividing Gaza, providing them safe passage to the Hamas-controlled side and amnesty in exchange for their disarmament, Axios reports…
The U.S. is preparing to establish a military presence at an airbase in Damascus in order to advance a security agreement between Syria and Israel, sources told Reuters…
An event with IDF veterans hosted by Students Supporting Israel at Toronto Metropolitan University yesterday was stormed by anti-Israel protesters, causing one person to be injured. The university’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) had publicized the event on social media, calling on its followers to demonstrate against it…
The body of Joshua Loitu Mollel, a Tanzanian citizen and agronomy student who was killed and kidnapped in the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks, was returned to Israel by Hamas last night…
Recently released hostage Rom Braslavski said he was sexually assaulted by his captors in Gaza, in an interview with Israel’s Channel 13 “Hazinor” program…
An Afghan national was arrested in Denmark on Wednesday on suspicion of promising to acquire weapons for an Iranian-backed attack on Jewish targets in Germany…
Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund was named on Monday as the presenting partner for the inaugural America Business Forum, taking place now in Miami. President Donald Trump spoke at the event, which took place across the street from the future site of his presidential library, on Wednesday…
Saudi Arabia is in talks with Syria to build data cables to connect the Gulf state to Europe, according to Semafor…
Singapore’s Minister for Foreign Affairs Dr. Vivian Balakrishnan met with Israeli President Isaac Herzog in Israel this week and discussed prospects for peace in the region. Balakrishnan also met with several Israeli lawmakers during his visit…
Kim Kardashian’s SKIMS fashion brand announced on Tuesday that it is entering the Israeli market through a partnership with the Ironi group, which owns Factory 54, and is set to open stores in Ramat Aviv Mall and Big Fashion Glilot, Israel Hayom reports…
Warner Bros. Discovery, under CEO David Zaslav, aims to decide by Christmas whether to sell the entire company or pursue a split. Paramount Skydance, according to NBC, has sent the WBD board multiple letters pressing for its $23.50 per share acquisition offer…
A Reddit rumor, flagged by Puck, claims that Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund has been planning to make a buyout offer for Warner Bros. to the tune of more than $70 billion…
Joel Pollak, formerly Breitbart’s senior editor-at-large, has been appointed as opinion editor of The New York Post’s new newspaper, The California Post…
Israel’s Hapoel Tel Aviv basketball team is facing off against the Dubai team today in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, in Round 9 of the EuroCup…
Pic of the Day
The Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia last night honored Ambassador Amy Gutmann with the Only in America Award, lauding her “indelible contributions to our society.”
“She has been an outspoken advocate for Israel, and steadfast in her forceful opposition to antisemitism, hate, and discrimination in all its forms,” the museum said of the former ambassador to Germany and president emerita of the University of Pennsylvania.
Pictured from left: Weitzman Chair Emeritus Phil Darivoff, Weitzman Co-chairs Sharon Tobin Kestenbaum and Mark Oster, former Ambassador David L. Cohen, University of Pennsylvania President Dr. Larry Jameson, Gutmann, Weitzman Museum President and CEO Dan Tadmor, museum namesake Stuart Weitzman, NBC News Chief Washington Correspondent and Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent Andrea Mitchell, Chair of the Penn Board of Trustees Ramanan Raghavendran.
Birthdays
Leading teacher in the Breslov Hasidic movement in Israel, Rabbi Yaakov Meir Shechter turns 95…
Belgian theoretical physicist, a Holocaust survivor and 2013 Nobel Prize laureate, François Englert turns 93… Former president and CEO of American Jewish World Service until 2016, prior to that she served as the Manhattan borough president, Ruth Wyler Messinger turns 85… Former commissioner of the Social Security Administration until 2021, Andrew Saul turns 79… Former aide to President Bill Clinton and a longtime advisor to Hillary Clinton, Sidney Blumenthal turns 77… Research scientist at NYU’s Langone Medical Center, Barbara Volsky turns 75… Senior chair of Sullivan & Cromwell, Joseph C. Shenker turns 69… Actress and cellist best known for her lead role in the 1984 film “Footloose” and the television series “Fame,” Lori Singer… and her twin brother, violinist, composer and conductor, he is the founder and music director of the Manhattan Symphonie, Gregory Singer both turn 68… Managing director of the NFL Players Association for 15 years until he retired five months ago, Ira Fishman turns 68… Editorial page editor and Op-Ed columnist for the Los Angeles Times until 2023, Nicholas Goldberg turns 67… Professional poker player from Las Vegas, he has won 10 World Series of Poker bracelets and his total tournament winnings exceed $45.5 million, Erik Seidel turns 66… Founder of Nourish Snacks, she is the host of NBC’s “Health & Happiness” and author of 15 New York Times best-sellers, Joy Bauer turns 62… Philanthropist, she is the founder and chair of Emerson Collective and XQ Institute, Laurene Powell Jobs turns 62… Principal and COO at Douglass Winthrop Advisors, Andrew S. Weinberg… SVP of investments in the Beverly Hills office of Raymond James, Seth A. Radow… Chairman at IDTFS Bank in Gibraltar, he is a partner in Covenant Winery, Geoffrey Rochwarger turns 55… Executive at Elliott Management, podcast host and author of Start-up Nation and The Genius of Israel, Dan Senor turns 54… Director of external affairs at the William Davidson Foundation, Kari Alterman… Film producer, together with her husband Robert Downey Jr., Susan Nicole Levin Downey turns 52… South Florida entrepreneur, Earl J. Campos-Devine… Head cantor of Lincoln Square Synagogue in New York City, Yaakov (“Yanky”) Lemmer turns 42… and his younger brother, the first Hasidic Jew to sign a contract with a leading record label, Shulem Lemmer turns 36… Producer on the Ben Shapiro Show, Jake Pollack turns 30… Former baseball outfielder in the Orioles and Angels systems, he played for Team Israel in 2012 and is now a manager of business development at Robson Forensic, Robert Eric Widlansky turns 41…
Plus, the end of a Golden era in Maine
Stephen Maturen/Getty Images
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey speaks to supporters at an Election Night party on November 2, 2021 in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Good Wednesday 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
Jewish Americans are still taking stock after Zohran Mamdani’s victory last night in the New York City mayoral race. The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, based in New York, called Mamdani’s victory a “grim milestone” and a reminder “that antisemitism remains a clear and present danger, even in the places where American Jews have long felt most secure.” Ted Deutch, CEO of the American Jewish Committee, listed policies the organization will be looking toward “to address the profound concerns about what the future holds for Jewish safety and belonging.”
Robert Tucker, the Jewish commissioner of the New York City Fire Department, resigned this morning, The New York Post reports, hours before he was set to fly to Israel to meet his counterpart there.
In his first response to an incident of antisemitism as mayor-elect, Mamdani denounced the vandalism of the Magen David Yeshiva in Brooklyn, which had two swastikas graffitied on it overnight, as “a disgusting and heartbreaking act of antisemitism, and it has no place in our beautiful city”…
Another heavily Democratic city rejected its own far-left candidate for mayor today, as incumbent Mayor Jacob Frey of Minneapolis won reelection against his DSA-aligned challenger, state Sen. Omar Fateh, Jewish Insider’s Matthew Shea reports. Marking a win for the more pragmatic wing of the Democratic Party, Frey secured his third term with 50% of the vote, to Fateh’s 44%, in the second round of the city’s ranked-choice voting.
A similar result may be emerging in Seattle, where preliminary results last night showed the Democratic incumbent, Mayor Bruce Harrell, leading over his socialist challenger, Katie Wilson, though many ballots remain to be counted…
One day after a historic Election Day — first democratic socialist mayor of New York City, largest turnout in an NYC mayoral race since 1969, first female governor of Virginia, first Muslim woman elected to statewide office as Virginia’s lieutenant governor, a record percentage of registered voters turning out for the municipal election in Minneapolis, among others — and the U.S. is already hitting another milestone: the longest government shutdown in history, at 36 days long.
President Donald Trump partially blamed the shutdown for Democrats’ strong showing in yesterday’s elections at a breakfast with Senate Republicans this morning, telling them, “I thought we’d have a discussion after the press leaves about what last night represented, and what we should do about it. … I think if you read the pollsters, the shutdown was a big factor, negative for the Republicans”…
Citing the shutdown, increased polarization and rising political violence, Rep. Jared Golden (D-ME) announced this afternoon that he will not be seeking reelection. Golden, a pro-Israel centrist who often worked across the aisle, has represented Maine’s 2nd Congressional District, a largely rural, working-class district that Trump won in the 2024 election by 14 points, since 2018, a seat that will be difficult for Democrats to maintain…
Recently freed former hostage Elizabeth Tsurkov recounted her two and a half years of captivity by Kataib Hezbollah, the Iran-backed terror group in Iraq, in a new interview with The New York Times, detailing the torture she experienced that resulted in potentially permanent nerve damage and the need for “long-term physical and psychological rehabilitation,” as determined by doctors at Israel’s Sheba Medical Center…
The University of Maryland, College Park student government is scheduled to vote on two resolutions hostile towards Israel tonight, JI’s Haley Cohen reports. One calls for the university to prohibit people who are “committing war crimes” and “genocide” from speaking on campus, after the campus chapter of Students Supporting Israel hosted an event last month where former IDF soldiers spoke about their experiences serving during Israel’s war with Hamas.
The second resolution calls on the university to issue an apology to students who faced disciplinary action for protesting that event, when demonstrators packed the outside hallway shouting “baby killers” and “IOF [Israel “Occupation” Forces] off our campus,” while several others protested outside of the building with chants comparing the IDF to the Ku Klux Klan…
Variety profiles David Ellison in his first 100 days as CEO of the recently merged Paramount Skydance, including the media company’s about-face on Israel issues. Free Press founder Bari Weiss, hired as editor-in-chief of CBS News by Ellison, “has been so vocal in her support of [Israel] that she faces frequent death threats. She and her wife, The Free Press co-founder Nellie Bowles, require a detail of five bodyguards that costs the studio $10,000-$15,000 a day.”
Paramount also reportedly “maintains a list of talent it will not work with because they are deemed to be ‘overtly antisemitic’ as well as ‘xenophobic’ and ‘homophobic,’” after the studio was the first to denounce a boycott of Israel signed by several Hollywood heavyweights…
⏩ 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 the latest news on the Heritage Foundation’s internal reckoning with its defense of Tucker Carlson.
Tomorrow, the Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on the Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery (HEAR) Act, a bill aimed at eliminating loopholes used to possess Nazi-looted artwork that Jewish families have been trying to recover.
The Senate Armed Services Committee will hold a nomination hearing for Alex Velez-Green to be deputy under secretary of defense for policy, coming days after committee lawmakers blasted the Pentagon office and its head, Elbridge Colby, during a contentious hearing for failing to communicate with them.
Maccabi Tel Aviv will play Aston Villa tomorrow in a Europa League match that generated controversy after local authorities announced that supporters of the Israeli team would not be permitted to attend, with the game deemed “high risk” over security concerns. Over 700 police officers are expected to be deployed and a no-fly zone will be established around the Villa Park stadium in Birmingham, England.
Israel’s Hapoel Tel Aviv basketball team will face off against the Dubai team in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, in Round 9 of the EuroCup tomorrow.
The Blue Square Alliance Against Hate, formerly the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism, will host its second Sports Leaders Convening at Gillette Stadium in Massachusetts tomorrow, featuring Robert Kraft, the organization’s CEO and owner of the New England Patriots; Ted Deutch, CEO of the American Jewish Committee; Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League; Adam Lehman, CEO of Hillel International; Michael Masters, CEO of the Secure Community Network; and leaders from major sports leagues.
The Washington Institute for Near East Policy will host a webinar tomorrow on the possibility of peace between Israel and Lebanon with Lebanese Member of Parliament Fouad Makhzoumi.
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KENTUCKY CONTEST
In an interview with JI, the wealthy businessman declined to weigh in on the Tucker Carlson controversy but said Republicans ‘shouldn’t be in the business of canceling anyone’
IN MEMORIAM
X is the only mainstream social media platform where Fuentes is allowed to have an account; he was unblocked in May 2024 and now has over 1 million followers
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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SCOOP
Moulton turned against the group when it was unable to guarantee him an endorsement upon the launch of his Senate campaign, a source told JI
THE X FACTOR
X is the only mainstream social media platform where Fuentes is allowed to have an account; he was unblocked in May 2024 and now has over 1 million followers
Plus, Virginia LG candidate skirts antisemitism questions
Joshua Sukoff/Medill News Service
President Donald Trump holds a joint news conference at the White House with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on February 4, 2025. This is Trump’s first joint news conference with a foreign leader in his second term.
Good Monday 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
It’s Election Day across the country tomorrow, and we’ll be watching several key races.
Front of mind is the New York City mayoral race where Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani is expected to prevail, though it remains to be seen if he’ll claim an absolute majority.
All candidates are still vying for the Jewish vote: Over the weekend, divisions emerged in the anti-Zionist Satmar Hasidic community after one of its political leaders issued an endorsement of Mamdani — some leaders publicly broke ranks to reject the move and instead endorse his rival, former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
Meanwhile, Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa visited the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s Ohel in Queens (and recalled a blessing he received from Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson decades ago which Sliwa claimed “saved my life”)…
In nearby New Jersey, gubernatorial candidates Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ) and Jack Ciattarelli are doing the same. We’ve covered Sherrill’s recent outreach efforts to the state’s sizable Jewish community; on the GOP side, President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social on Sunday urging “ALL of my supporters in the Orthodox community in Lakewood [N.J.] and its surrounding towns to vote in HUGE numbers for Jack Ciattarelli,” naming in particular “all the Yeshiva students who turned out to vote for me last year.” Trump won around 88% of the heavily Jewish township’s vote in the 2024 presidential election…
And in Virginia, former Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-VA) is likely to win the governor’s mansion against the state’s current lieutenant governor, Republican Winsome Earle-Sears, in a race set to make Old Dominion history — either way, the state will elect its first female governor.
Also on the Virginia ballot: Ghazala Hashmi, the Democratic state senator running for lieutenant governor, who has elicited concern from the state’s Jewish community over her past involvement in anti-Israel activism and her record on combating antisemitism.
In a brief interview today, Jewish Insider’s Editor-in-Chief Josh Kraushaar asked Hashmi how big of a challenge she thinks antisemitism is in Virginia. Hashmi replied: “I think we see growing challenges on so many levels of bigotry, and we have to be united in our efforts. I’m facing a great deal of Islamophobic attacks, as you probably have seen, so we have to respond to everything.” Pressed on what she thought about antisemitism specifically, Hashmi cut the interview short…
The fallout from the Heritage Foundation’s embrace of Tucker Carlson and refusal to disavow Nick Fuentes continues, as right-wing figures publicly declare themselves aligned with or opposed to the move. Orthodox conservative influencer Ben Shapiro said about Carlson, Fuentes and their ilk in a lengthy video statement today: “These people aren’t to my right. They’re not attached in any way to the fundamental principles of conservatism. And these people have already declared themselves my enemies. I’d be a fool not to take them seriously.”
Ryan Neuhaus, who served as Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts’ chief of staff until Friday, resigned after reposting numerous social media posts in defense of Roberts, including one saying that Heritage employees opposed to his statement were “virtue signaling” and calling for them to resign…
A new poll released today by the Democratic Majority for Israel finds that Democrats overwhelmingly support the ceasefire deal reached between Israel and Hamas and a majority of them think Trump played at least a “somewhat important role” in reaching the agreement, JI’s Danielle Cohen-Kanik reports.
A majority of those polled (56%) said they believe that the U.S. should keep its alliance with Israel, though only 32% felt so “strongly.” Three-quarters (75%) said they support Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish homeland, with 12% saying they don’t believe Israel has a right to exist…
The Wall Street Journal documents the rise and sustained popularity of Abdulmalik Al-Houthi, the reclusive commander of the Houthis in Yemen, who has continued to resist pressure by officials from Arab states to cease the terror group’s attacks on Israel and ships in the Red Sea, “and go back to being a relatively small-time player in the region’s conflicts.”
“‘They genuinely believe in this jihad to remove Israel from that land,’ said April Longley Alley, a former United Nations diplomat who has engaged with the Houthi leadership. ‘And they’re going to keep pushing’”…
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the dispatch of a humanitarian and medical aid delegation from Israel to Jamaica today, to assist in relief efforts after Hurricane Melissa tore through the country earlier this week…
Sudanese refugees in Israel told The Times of Israel about the compounded pain and fear they experienced as the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks and the civil war in Sudan unfolded in parallel, decrying the lack of media coverage of Sudan while the world focused on Gaza…
Yad Vashem announced today that the museum has identified the names of 5 million Jewish victims of the Holocaust, and hopes to use artificial intelligence to name at least 250,000 more…
⏩ 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 the backstory surrounding Massachusetts Senate candidate Rep. Seth Moulton’s (D-MA) attacks against AIPAC.
Tomorrow, the World Zionist Organization and Temple Emanu-El are holding a memorial event in New York City for slain Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin on the 30th anniversary of his assassination. Speakers will include Rabin’s grandson, Jonathan Benartzi; Yehuda Kurtzer, president of the Shalom Hartman Institute; former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro; Amy Spitalnick, CEO of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs; and Israeli American peace advocate Alana Zeitchik.
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UNIVERSITY INSIGHTS
Gee, who served as president of five universities over 45 years, told JI he believes some administrators are opposed to reform efforts as a knee-jerk reaction to Trump
SHOW OF SOLIDARITY
With a new board and leadership, the Kennedy Center is spotlighting Jewish culture and the fight against antisemitism in ‘solidarity’
The Jewish Book Council launched a new subscription service, Nu Reads, which provides six Jewish books per year, modeled on the success of PJ Library
For Jewish and Israeli authors and the people who enjoy their books, the publishing industry has been a decidedly depressing place over the last two years.
A spreadsheet titled “Is Your Fav Author a Zionist?” went viral on social media and called for readers to boycott so-called “Zionist” authors, a label extended even to some who merely spoke to Jewish audiences. The literary magazine Guernica retracted an essay by an Israeli author in response to protests from staff. LitHub, the preeminent news site dedicated to the publishing industry, has adopted a stridently anti-Israel stance since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks two years ago. “A litmus test has emerged across wide swaths of the literary world effectively excluding Jews from full participation unless they denounce Israel,” the author Jamie Kirchick wrote in The New York Times last year.
A new initiative from the Jewish Book Council, a 100-year-old nonprofit dedicated to promoting Jewish literature, aims to fight back against the torrent of bad news for Jewish writers. This month, JBC unveiled Nu Reads, a subscription service that will deliver selected Jewish books to subscribers bimonthly. The first book, Happy New Years by the Israeli author Maya Arad, has already shipped to Nu Reads’ inaugural subscribers.
“There’s a chill for our community across the industry,” JBC CEO Naomi Firestone-Teeter told Jewish Insider in an interview this month. “If we care about Jewish literature and we care about these authors and ideas, we need to buy these books. We need to invest in them and support them.”
Curated book subscription services have soared in popularity in recent years. A reinvigorated Book of the Month Club launched in 2016, an homage to the ubiquitous brand of the 1950s and 1960s that helped curious readers find new titles; the new iteration has a reported 400,000 members. More than 230,000 Jewish families in the U.S. and Canada receive children’s books each month through PJ Library, a program modeled on Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library. It was PJ Library — which has transformed young Jews’ experience with Jewish books in the two decades it has existed — that served as an inspiration to JBC.
“I very jokingly suggested that I wish that there was a PJ Library for grown-ups,” said Tova Mirvis, the author of five books and Nu Reads’ writer-in-residence, who helps curate the book selections. “It was just an idea, and I began to think about it. I spent a lot of time thinking about my own experience of reading Jewish books, and how who I am as a person and as a writer is so shaped by my love of Jewish fiction.”
Unlike PJ Library, Nu Reads is not a charity project. It asks consumers to choose to spend their money on hardcover copies of new Jewish books. The founding subscriber rate of $154 includes six books delivered over the course of a year, along with invitations to community gatherings and author talks. Several hundred people have become subscribers in the two weeks since Nu Reads was announced.
At a time when Jewish writers face growing challenges in the publishing industry, JBC hopes Nu Reads will herald Jewish readers’ purchasing power to remind publishers that Jewish books are a good investment, because publishing is, ultimately, a business.
“It’s much harder to get published because there are fewer venues. There are fewer places that review books. We have so many other distractions we use aside from reading books. There are fewer bookstores — all the ways that, I think, the literary world has shrunk, and so of course that affects Jewish writers as well,” Mirvis told JI.
Nu Reads, Mirvis hopes, will serve as “a reminder to the literary world, to publishers and editors, that there are so many people within the Jewish community who love these books. I think it’s a way to galvanize readers to say, ‘I want to read the next generation of these writers.’”
In early 2024, JBC created an online resource for Jewish writers and publishing industry professionals to report instances of antisemitism they had experienced. The organization, which is best known for presenting the annual National Jewish Book Awards, also launched a virtual support group for Jews in the literary world that still meets regularly.
“This is such a competitive industry,” said JBC CEO Naomi Firestone-Teeter. “We’re holding all of that together to try to not be sensationalist about anything, but at the same time, these are real concerns that are valid.”
So far, JBC has received more than 400 reports of antisemitism, with examples including digital harassment and abuse, students kicked out of literary journals because of their views on Israel and writers asked by publishers or marketers to discuss their Judaism only in a particular way.
Still, it’s nearly always impossible to attribute a decision in the literary world purely to antisemitic motives. A book may be dropped by a publisher because of the author’s attitude toward Israel or the Jewish themes it portrays. But it could also be dropped for a near-infinite number of other reasons: limited demand, fewer books being published overall or the book simply not being very good.
“This is such a competitive industry,” said Firestone-Teeter. “We’re holding all of that together to try to not be sensationalist about anything, but at the same time, these are real concerns that are valid.”
Nu Reads’ second selection is Sam Sussman’s Boy From the North Country, a novel about a boy in upstate New York who grows up with a nagging sense that he is Bob Dylan’s illegitimate child. (The book is based on Sussman’s own life, and a glance at a photo of the author reveals more than a passable resemblance to the folk icon.)
As a child in the Hudson Valley, far from other Jews, Sussman had formative encounters with stories by Jewish writers such as Chaim Potok, Philip Roth and Tony Kushner. When he moved to New York City, Jewish book events were how he tapped into the Jewish community.
“We only have so much control over how the wider world receives Jewish literature,” author Sam Sussman told JI. “But I think it’s very important that within the Jewish world, we’re open to stories from Jews of all backgrounds and with all political and cultural perspectives.”
“I really grew up in a part of the world where there weren’t a significant number of other Jews, and literature was a really important way for me to connect to a broader sense of Jewish community,” Sussman told JI.
Sussman has not experienced the kind of pushback or stigmatizing that some other Jewish writers have reported since Oct. 7. Instead, he urged Jewish readers to think about how to ensure that the full diversity of Jewish voices and stories are told and respected.
“We only have so much control over how the wider world receives Jewish literature,” Sussman told JI. “But I think it’s very important that within the Jewish world, we’re open to stories from Jews of all backgrounds and with all political and cultural perspectives.”
Sussman’s story, and the growing positive acclaim for his debut novel, is a reminder that despite the steady drip of negative headlines for Jewish authors, the literary world — an industry Jewish authors and intellectuals helped shape over decades — is not a monolith, and the story of American Jewish literature has not yet reached its conclusion.
“How do we respond to the urgent needs of our community and raise awareness about them and create written documentation around them, but also, how do we find ways that we can just really celebrate our Jewishness and have that propel us forward?” asked Firestone-Teeter. “The ability to hold all these things at once is incredibly inspiring.”
Flights will begin days before the Passover holiday, when Israel sees a surge in visitors
Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images
American Airlines plane on October 22, 2025.
American Airlines announced plans on Friday to resume direct flights to Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport from New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport starting in March, marking the first time since the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks that the carrier will fly directly to Israel.
Flights to Tel Aviv are scheduled to resume on March 28, 2026, just days ahead of the Passover holiday, when Israel typically sees an influx of tourism. Tickets will be available for purchase beginning Monday.
The announcement comes weeks after Israel and Hamas agreed to a ceasefire in the Gaza war. American is the last of the major U.S. carriers to resume flights to Israel.
Throughout much of the war, Israeli airline El Al was the only reliable option for direct travel to and from the U.S., leading to a shortage of flights to meet travelers’ demands and soaring ticket prices. The pause sparked debate among lawmakers over whether the airlines’ decisions were influenced by internal and external political pressure.
United and Delta both briefly resumed service between Israel and the New York area for short periods in 2024 after suspending all flights on Oct. 7. Both airlines fully reinstated flights earlier this year.
The Texas senator attended a high-dollar event in the heart of Rockland County’s Hasidic community, as Lawler reports his strongest third-quarter fundraising haul ahead of next year’s general election
Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) is seen outside a Senate Judiciary Committee markup on Thursday, November 14, 2024.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) appeared at a fundraiser for Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) in Monsey, N.Y., on Thursday evening.
Monsey, located in Rockland County, is home to one of the largest populations of Hasidic Jews in the country, second only to the Williamsburg, Borough Park and Crown Heights neighborhoods of Brooklyn, New York. Lawler, who represents many of the Hasidic communities in Rockland County, relies on the heavily Republican Hasidic voting bloc to hold on to his swing district House seat. Lawler is one of only two House Republicans serving in districts that former Vice President Kamala Harris won last year, making him a leading target for Democrats.
Tickets to the event started at $250 for access to the general reception and went up to $7,000 for passes to a VIP roundtable with Cruz and Lawler. Guests could get a photo with Lawler for $500, and be named as a co-host of the event for $3,500. The gathering was organized by the Lawler Victory Fund, a joint fundraising committee composed of Lawler’s campaign, his MVL PAC and the National Republican Congressional Committee, the House GOP campaign arm.
Video obtained by the Monsey Scoop showed Cruz and Lawler arriving at the event and shaking hands with VIP guests.
A spokesperson for Lawler did not respond to JI’s request for comment on the fundraiser.
Lawler’s campaign reported a $1.1 million fundraising haul in the third quarter of this year, leaving him with $2.8 million in cash on hand. The campaign said the numbers marked his strongest ever third quarter performance in a non-election year. Year-to-date, the New York Republican has raised $3.9 million.
“Powered by nearly 10,000 donations, the campaign continues to build the broad, bipartisan coalition needed to win and deliver for the Hudson Valley,” Lawler’s campaign said in a statement earlier this month on his third-quarter numbers.
Eight Democrats have jumped into the primary to challenge Lawler in next year’s general election contest, including Cait Conley, a decorated special ops combat veteran; Peter Chatzky, the former mayor of Briarcliff Manor; and Rockland County legislator Beth Davidson. Conley raised over $500,000, Chatzky raised more than $340,000 and Davidson raised over $370,000 in the last quarter.
Lawler and Cruz, a prolific fundraiser in his own right who began laying the groundwork for a 2028 presidential bid this year, also appeared together on Thursday night at the New York State Conservative Party’s 2025 fall reception. Conservative commentator Joe Piscopo, a former “Saturday Night Live” cast member, was honored with the Ronald Reagan Journalism Award at the event, which took place in nearby New Rochelle, N.Y., at the Glen Island Harbour Club and featured Cruz as the keynote speaker.
The Reform leader told JI the Jewish community ‘has an obligation to counter’ the normalization of anti-Zionist views on the left
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Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch speaks at the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in New York City on Feb. 28, 2025
As the New York City mayoral race nears its end, Manhattan Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch has a message for his colleagues: It’s not too late to provide “leadership and clarity of perspective” to voters to oppose Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani, citing the candidate’s hostility towards Israel and refusal to recognize it as a Jewish state.
Hirsch, a prominent and notable moderate pro-Israel voice within the progressive-minded Reform movement isn’t surprised by polling showing Mamdani leading his opponents, former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who is running as an independent, and Republican Curtis Sliwa, among unaffiliated and Reform Jews, who skew overwhelmingly liberal.
But Hirsch, the senior rabbi of the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue, expressed frustration with the lack of organized effort among Jewish leaders to oppose Mamdani, whose affiliation with the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and antagonistic views on Israel — including his refusal to condemn the term “globalize the intifada” — have generated private and public criticism.
In an interview with Jewish Insider on Wednesday, Hirsch, who has led the Upper West Side congregation for the past 20 years, said there is still time for left-wing Jewish leaders to find their voice. Even without initiatives and statements from the Reform movement, progressive Jewish leaders can still “make a difference” by “laying out the stakes” — even as early voting begins this Saturday.
Hirsch recently released an online video message, addressing Mamdani directly. “I do not speak for all Jews, but I do represent the views of the large majority of the New York Jewish community, which is increasingly concerned with your statements about Israel and the Jewish people,” the rabbi said. “Your opposition to Israel is not centered on policies, you reject the very existence of Israel as a Jewish state … I urge you to reconsider your long-held rejection of Israel’s right to exist. Be a uniter and a peacemaker.”
Following Hirsch’s video, other Jewish leaders began to follow his lead. Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove of the Conservative Park Avenue Synagogue on Manhattan’s Upper East Side said in an address to his congregation last Saturday, “Mamdani’s distinction between accepting Jews and denying a Jewish state is not merely a rhetorical sleight of hand or political naïveté — though it is to be clear both of those — his doing so is to traffic in the most dangerous of tropes.”
On Wednesday, more than 600 rabbis from around the country signed on to an open letter, “A Rabbinic Call to Action: Defending the Jewish Future,” spearheaded by The Jewish Majority.
“As rabbis from across the United States committed to the security and prosperity of the Jewish people, we are writing in our personal capacities to declare that we cannot remain silent in the face of rising anti-Zionism and its political normalization throughout our nation,” the letter states.
“When public figures like New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani refuse to condemn violent slogans, deny Israel’s legitimacy, and accuse the Jewish state of genocide, they, in the words of Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch, ‘Delegitimize the Jewish community and encourage and exacerbate hostility toward Judaism and Jews.’”
Hirsch, who serves as president of the New York Board of Rabbis, sat down with JI to discuss the current moment, one that he called “an obligation — it’s the call of history — for Jewish leaders to stand up” ahead of the Nov. 4 election.
Jewish Insider: You’ve been raising your voice against Mamdani, but with voting starting this weekend, do you think other Jewish leaders who have just started speaking out took too long?
Ammiel Hirsch: The Jewish world has very serious self-reflection to do in the aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks. Everything has changed and the future will be different than what it was going to be pre-Oct. 7. The American Jewish community has substantial — in some respects unprecedented — challenges in the years to come.
The kind of antisemitism we are seeing now and likely to see in the future is different and more widespread than anything anyone alive has experienced. Our relationship with Israel has to be reassessed and reevaluated. How we teach our young people has to be reassessed and evaluated and the nature of the American Jewish community itself — we are seeing a deep polarization that should have taken everybody by surprise. During crunch time, when Israel was under real existential threat, we didn’t expect this kind of polarization around the idea of the existence of Israel.
Everything needs to be reevaluated. I concluded over the last two years that certain things I was perhaps willing to overlook in favor of other values and interests need to be looked at more carefully now. I’m not prepared to overlook candidates for public office who express fundamental anti-Zionism. We need to draw the line on anti-Zionism because it disenfranchises and delegitimizes Judaism itself. It leads to an intensification of antisemitism.
JI: Are you surprised there hasn’t been more of an organized effort among the Jewish community to challenge Mamdani since he won the primary in June? Has the Jewish world met the moment?
AH: We’ve been slow to respond to widespread, pervasive, global anti-Zionism and we’ve been slow inside the Jewish community in countering Jewish voices who are anti-Zionist. We, the mainstream of the Jewish community, have an obligation to counter that ideology. If it’s not countered, it intensifies and exacerbates the problem and that relates to public candidates as well. It’s imperative for the American Jewish community to stand up and express the kinds of views that I expressed. I think more are doing so. It is a responsibility at this historic moment in time for Jewish leadership to do so.
It would have been better had it been earlier, but it’s welcome — and imperative — at any time. It does make a difference and I urge everybody, especially those in Jewish leadership, to lay out the stakes. I say this as a Jewish leader, but I’m a New Yorker and U.S. citizen as well and care about the well-being of the city and country. It goes way beyond the well-being of the Jewish community.
Judaism has a lot to say about poverty, economics, immigration, the death penalty — all of those issues are important as well. But specifically on the anti-Zionism issue, it goes to the very existence and future of the Jewish people. Anti-Zionism means dismantling the place where half of the world’s Jews live. That’s the intention of the anti-Zionist enemies of Israel and Zohran Mamdani is giving them ideological and communal support. It’s an obligation — it’s the call of history — for Jewish leaders to stand up at this moment of Jewish history. Our people need leadership and clarity of perspective from their leaders. They’re thirsting for Jewish leaders to clarify what is in the best interest of the Jewish people and what is in the best interest of our values. Not to do that is to fail at this inflection point of American and world Jewish history. I’m heartened that more American Jewish leaders are speaking up now, but not enough.
JI: What do you make of the recent IRS reversal allowing rabbis and other clergy members to make political endorsements from the pulpit? One of the most recent examples being by another prominent New York City rabbi, Elliot Cosgrove, who heads the Park Avenue Synagogue. He decried Mamdani in a speech to his congregation last Shabbat, saying he believes the front-runner “poses a danger to the security of the New York Jewish community.”
AH: For me, I uphold the Johnson Amendment [a 1954 provision in the U.S. tax code that prohibits all 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations from endorsing or opposing political candidates], no matter what the IRS decided to enforce. I do not endorse political parties or candidates. I speak about policies, which are directly relevant to our roles as rabbis and Jewish leaders. Policies reflect public morality. I’m not going to become partisan. It’s wrong on principle, because we receive tax relief status on the basis of our commitment to being nonpartisan. It weakens us because it unnecessarily splits the community and runs the risk of making synagogues into political centers. I try very carefully to speak about general policies and not endorse parties or candidates. That’s why my message was in the form that it was [speaking to Mamdani directly].
In my message, I was turning to the candidate himself. I didn’t tell people what my political preferences were or how they should vote. My message was that anti-Zionism endangers the Jewish community.
JI: Polls that look at Reform, Conservative and Orthodox voters have found Reform Jews are more supportive of Mamdani — why do you think that is? You’ve authored several essays, both before and after Oct. 7, about why the Reform movement is more inclined towards criticizing Israel than other branches of Judaism. Is that a driving factor here for support for Mamdani?
AH: The more liberal a person is the more likely they are to resonate and support liberal candidates, so it’s not surprising to me. The Reform movement started in North America as a religious movement that negated the centrality of Jewish peoplehood, so of course they were going to resonate more to universal values, not as an expression of Jewish peoplehood values, but the negation of it. Part of that still exists and the more years go by that Jews do not perceive an existential threat against the Jewish community, the more they return to that inclination towards universalism — that Jewish peoplehood is the problem. I’ve called that out for years now and I think that does play a role. It’s why I feel so strongly that I need to speak out.
I do not consider anti-Zionism to be a liberal position, it’s illiberal and I think many people are confused. Zionism is the liberation movement of the Jewish people, that’s a liberal philosophy.
JI: Would you like to see the Union for Reform Judaism come out with an official statement against Mamdani?
AH: I don’t participate in the decisions of the URJ. As I said, I believe it’s important for every Jewish leader to speak up at this inflection point of American Jewish history, so I would welcome it from everybody across the board.
I’ve seen some very good statements from our Orthodox colleagues. We need to unite as much as possible. There is room for debate and disputation, it’s part of Judaism, but at this critical moment in Jewish history we should seek to lay aside for another day controversies that distract us from the main objective that we have, which is to counter antisemitism and a form of anti-Zionism that constitutes antisemitism.
All of us need to unite on that because we’re a small minority and the task is monumental. If we don’t voice a common position, then what happens is we give an impression that the Jewish community is split on the very essence of the contemporary Jewish experience, which is the centrality of Jewish peoplehood and support of the Jewish state. We give the impression that the small minority of Jews, who are very noisy, constitute a much bigger component of Judaism than they really are. That’s another reason we need to counter this loudly.
In our movement, which is the most liberal of affiliated American Jews, there are some anti-Zionist voices but the overwhelming majority of the Reform movement is pro-Israel and considers Israel to be a component of their own Jewish identity.
JI: What are some ways in which you would encourage synagogues and Jewish institutions to engage with Mamdani if he is elected mayor?
AH: If he becomes mayor, he will have been elected fair and square. Then we’ll have to try our best to work with him where we can and oppose him when we must.
Given that this anti-Zionist philosophy is mainstream, it is imperative for American Jewish leaders to stand up, push back. People will vote how they vote and whoever wins will reflect the will of the people and then we’ll have to work within those constraints.
Several leaders in the community told JI they continue to have concerns about his record, while others are quietly engaging
Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
New York City Zohran Mamdani speaks on Sept. 15, 2025 in New York City.
As Jewish leaders reckon with the increasing likelihood that Zohran Mamdani will be the next mayor of New York City, many who have voiced anxiety over his avowedly anti-Israel policies are reacting with a mix of fear and resignation.
Their concerns have been mounting as Mamdani, the Democratic nominee, has continued to hold a comfortable lead in the race, where polling shows him handily prevailing over the divided field. The 33-year-old democratic socialist and Queens state assemblyman has recently claimed endorsements from prominent party leaders including New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, who clarified she does not agree with him on Israel issues but said she appreciated his commitment to combating antisemitism as well as his efforts to meet with Jewish community members to address “their concerns directly.”
But multiple Jewish leaders said in interviews with Jewish Insider on Wednesday that they remain deeply skeptical of his campaign’s outreach and pledges to confront rising antisemitism, citing a string of recent statements in which he has doubled down on his hostile approach to Israel — as well as an ongoing refusal to explicitly denounce extreme rhetoric espoused by his allies on the far left.
While Mamdani has, since winning the primary in June, walked back some of his polarizing views on key issues such as policing, he has otherwise made an exception for Israel, of which he has long been a fierce critic. In a series of interviews published last week, for instance, he reiterated a campaign vow to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if elected, even as legal experts cautioned such a move could violate federal law.
A vocal supporter of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel — which some critics deem antisemitic — he said he would end a program established by Mayor Eric Adams, who is now running as an independent, to foster business partnerships between companies in Israel and New York City. He also said he would stop relying on the working definition of antisemitism promoted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance — which labels some criticism of Israel as antisemitic — as was adopted by Adams in a recent executive order.
And although he has said he would discourage activists from invoking the slogan “globalize the intifada,” which he himself has not used publicly, Jewish leaders have noted that Mamdani has still not condemned the phrase itself, fueling suspicion that he tacitly approves of the chant critics interpret as a call to antisemitic violence.
“I believe that he will genuinely work to drive a wedge between Jews and their neighbors as long as he serves in public office,” Sara Forman, executive director of New York Solidarity Network, a group that supports pro-Israel Democratic candidates for state and local office, told JI. “To this date,” she said of Mamdani, “his actions certainly have given us no indication they match his words.”
Andres Spokoiny, who leads the Jewish Funders Network but emphasized that he was speaking only in his personal capacity, said that he was “extremely concerned and extremely fearful” about what he regards as a likely Mamdani mayoralty. “His views make the majority of Jews unsafe and unwelcome,” he told JI.
More broadly, Spokoiny said his worries had less to do with particular policies than what he called “the breaking of a taboo” around anti-Zionist sentiment that did not ultimately serve as an “impediment” to Mamdani’s rise, even in a place that is home to the largest Jewish community of any city in the world. “That fact that it is in New York is highly symbolic,” he said. “It shows that our society doesn’t have the antibodies to reject somebody with a very divisive message.”
He also voiced regret about a lack of unity in the organized Jewish community to collectively oppose Mamdani and coalesce behind one candidate in the race, which includes former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, running on an independent line, and Curtis Sliwa, the GOP nominee. “I think it asks for a deep rethinking in the Jewish community about how we face this challenge,” he said.
While Mamdani has won backing from some Jewish elected officials in New York, notably Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), others have continued to keep the nominee at a safe distance with just weeks until November. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has withheld an endorsement of Mamdani despite meeting privately with him, as has Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY), who said last month he is waiting for the nominee to take “concrete steps” to address antisemitic hate crimes.
“Typically during a general election you’ll see candidates moderate their positions either in a dishonest attempt to bridge the gap between themselves and uncomfortable voters or in a genuine extension of the olive branch,” said Sam Berger, an Orthodox Democrat who represents an Assembly district in Queens. “Indeed, we’ve seen Zohran do this with the business world as well as with the NYPD.”
Simone Kanter, a spokesperson for Goldman, said on Wednesday that the congressman had “nothing new to add yet beyond what he’s already said” about Mamdani.
During his campaign, Mamdani has more actively aligned with groups on the far left including Jewish Voice for Peace, which is anti-Zionist, and Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, which hosted a recent gala at which the nominee was celebrated alongside Brad Lander, the Jewish comptroller with whom he cross-endorsed in the primary.
Even as Mamdani has engaged in outreach to the Jewish community to address concerns about his platform, among other issues, some Jewish leaders indicated they did not anticipate there would be any common ground on which to develop a relationship with a potential Mamdani administration.
“Typically during a general election you’ll see candidates moderate their positions either in a dishonest attempt to bridge the gap between themselves and uncomfortable voters or in a genuine extension of the olive branch,” said Sam Berger, an Orthodox Democrat who represents an Assembly district in Queens. “Indeed, we’ve seen Zohran do this with the business world as well as with the NYPD.”
By contrast, Berger argued of his colleague in the state legislature, Mamdani “hasn’t done the bare minimum with long-recognized Jewish institutions and leaders, instead relying on his support from the fringe of the fringe,” which he called “a major red flag.”
“Fixing potholes is typically apolitical,” he told JI, “but [when] the point of contention is the uplifting of baseless hatred against the Jewish people there is no common ground to be had.”
Kalman Yeger, an Orthodox assemblyman in Brooklyn who has been among Mamdani’s most outspoken critics, said the nominee’s “inability to get his brain around the notion that globalizing the intifada is a bad thing is terrifying.”
Simcha Eichenstein, a Democratic assemblyman from the Hasidic neighborhood of Borough Park in Brooklyn, was equally pessimistic about Mamdani.
“We can agree to disagree when it comes to policy matters, but as a visible Jew, I should be able to walk the streets of New York City safely, without fear of harassment,” he told JI on Wednesday.
“The inability and unwillingness of a candidate running to represent nearly a million Jews to denounce radical, extreme and antisemitic groups have many within the Jewish community wondering whether we have a future in New York at all,” Eichenstein added, citing as an example the radical pro-Palestinian group Within Our Lifetime, which has led at least one protest that was attended by Mamdani in 2021.
Kalman Yeger, an Orthodox assemblyman in Brooklyn who has been among Mamdani’s most outspoken critics, said the nominee’s “inability to get his brain around the notion that globalizing the intifada is a bad thing is terrifying.”
“His lunatic threat to arrest Netanyahu, when he is surely not stupid enough to believe he has that power, is a sign to the Jew haters that he stands with them,” Yeger added, claiming Mamdani “will, by his words, his actions and his inactions, cause continued increasing antisemitism” in New York City.
Mamdani has forcefully rejected accusations he has fomented antisemitism, vowing to increase funding to counter hate crimes by 800%. A spokesperson for his campaign did not return a request for comment from JI on Wednesday.
Daniel Rosenthal, vice president of government relations at UJA-Federation of New York, said his organization, a nonprofit forbidden from making political endorsements, “will strongly oppose any actions that alienate or marginalize Jews, including attempts to delegitimize Israel and support BDS. As always, we will work to ensure that the needs and concerns of Jewish New Yorkers are heard and addressed.”
Leon Goldenberg, a Brooklyn real estate executive who is an executive board member of the Flatbush Jewish Community Coalition, said his group had no interest in meeting with Mamdani — despite that he expects him to win the election. “What I really have a problem with is ‘globalize the intifada,’” he told JI on Wednesday. “You can’t condemn it. ‘Globalize the intifada’ is murder Jews on the streets.”
Goldenberg, who endorsed Adams in the general election but now believes he has no chance, said he was considering moving his permanent residence to Florida, where he keeps an apartment, if Mamdani prevails this fall. “He’s bright. I’m not going to take that away from him,” he said of the nominee. “But there’s very little that qualifies him to be mayor. If he had a different mindset, he’d be a great mayor.”
Despite their concerns about a potential Mamdani administration, few Jewish leaders were ready to speculate about working with him.
Daniel Rosenthal, vice president of government relations at UJA-Federation of New York, said his organization, a nonprofit forbidden from making political endorsements, “will strongly oppose any actions that alienate or marginalize Jews, including attempts to delegitimize Israel and support BDS.”
“As always, we will work to ensure that the needs and concerns of Jewish New Yorkers are heard and addressed,” Rosenthal told JI.
Other Jewish leaders pointed to ongoing voter registration efforts to boost Jewish turnout in the election. Josh Mehlman, who chairs the Flatbush Jewish Community Coalition, said his group had helped register more than 5,000 new Democratic voters in the Orthodox community in the last week alone. He did not respond when asked if he felt the increase in registrations would have any discernible impact on the outcome of the mayoral race.
Joel Rosenfeld, a representative of the influential Bobov Hasidic sect, also stressed his community “is fully focused on voter registration” in the lead-up to the election. Asked if he had anything else to add on the matter, Rosenfeld said, “A blessed new year,” ahead of the Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashanah.
Still, there are signs that some Hasidic groups may now be cautiously — and quietly — warming up to a potential future Mamdani administration, even if it remains unlikely that any groups will endorse him, community members say.
“The Hasidim are a very practical bloc of voters, particularly the leadership,” said one Democratic consultant who has worked with the community. “Results matter more than ideology for them. If they think Mamdani will win, that’s where they’ll go.”
One Jewish community activist familiar with the matter said that “there are some groups secretly talking to” Mamdani “or his top people,” though he added it was “hard to believe any groups will openly endorse him, especially if Adams is still in the race.”
“The feeling is that like it or not he is most likely going to be the next mayor so we might as well begin a dialogue now rather than after the election,” he told JI.
Another activist familiar with a Satmar faction in Williamsburg, which represents the largest Hasidic voting bloc in New York City, said that Mamdani’s team is “aggressively courting” the community and has been in dialogue with leadership. “They want to work with us and we want to work with them,” the activist said in summarizing the dynamic, speaking on the condition of anonymity to address a sensitive situation.
“The Hasidim are a very practical bloc of voters, particularly the leadership,” said one Democratic consultant who has worked with the community. “Results matter more than ideology for them. If they think Mamdani will win, that’s where they’ll go.”
‘At a time of skyrocketing antisemitism, his views are far too extreme and would fuel hate and threats against our Jewish community,’ the Long Island congresswoman said
Steve Pfost/Newsday RM via Getty Images
Rep. Laura Gillen speaks during a town hall in Hempstead, New York on April 16, 2025.
Rep. Laura Gillen (D-NY) blasted New York Gov. Kathy Hochul for endorsing Democratic New York City mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani, citing Mamdani’s record on antisemitism.
Gillen joins Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-NY), a fellow Long Island swing district representative, in reaffirming her strong opposition to Mamdani at a time when other New York leaders, including Hochul and Rep. Pat Ryan (D-NY), are warming to the controversial nominee.
“I completely disagree with the Governor’s endorsement of Mr. Mamdani,” Gillen told Jewish Insider. “At a time of skyrocketing antisemitism, his views are far too extreme and would fuel hate and threats against our Jewish community. His antisemitic views deserve to be condemned, not endorsed.”
Mamdani recently said he would revoke Mayor Eric Adams’ executive order implementing the use of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism in the city, as well as repeated his vow to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, at the behest of the International Criminal Court, for committing war crimes if he visits the city.
The 13 senior police officials were in the midst of their trip when a terror attack occurred at a Jerusalem bus stop
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Delegation of New York police chiefs at the Jerusalem Police Headquarters
A delegation of 13 senior police officials from the New York area returned to the U.S. on Friday fresh off an intensive week in Israel designed to increase their counterterrorism training and understanding of antisemitism.
Organized by Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora and Combating Antisemitism, along with U.S. Jewish security groups Community Security Initiative and Community Security Service, the trip included a tour of Mabat 2000, the visual surveillance system deployed by Israel Police and visits to the Nova music festival massacre site and several kibbutzim attacked on Oct. 7, 2023.
“These are all things that these police commissioners will all relate to,” said Mitch Silber, executive director of CSI.
“This trip has enhanced my understanding of Jewish culture, enabled me to observe firsthand the challenges Israeli law enforcement faces and will help us better protect the Jewish community and the county as a whole,” Kevin Catalina, the police commissioner of Suffolk County on Long Island, told Jewish Insider. “The knowledge and experience gained during this trip will no doubt prove invaluable.”
Silber reflected on a tour of Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust museum and memorial — describing it as one of the most meaningful parts of the trip.
“You’ve got American police chiefs from the greater New York area walking through Yad Vashem, hearing about the origins of the Nazi regime and how the Holocaust happened.”
“The goal is to bring New York-area law enforcement and local security partners to Israel for training on antisemitism, how Israel encounters terrorism and [to learn about] the Arab-Israeli conflict,” Silber told JI. “How do you sensitize a police department that’s probably not particularly Jewish and to understand, why is it that they need to have a police car outside of a sukkah? What even is Sukkot? What is Yom Kippur? By helping them to understand the Jewish experience and why Jews seem to be disproportionately the target.”
The delegation was made up of senior police executives, chiefs and commissioners from Long Island, Westchester and Rockland counties and Connecticut. Many were returning to the Jewish state for their second time — following a similar trip that ran in early October 2023, but was cut short due to the Oct. 7 attacks.
“I was on the CSI/CSS trip that experienced Oct. 7 in Ashdod and had to be evacuated,” Mike Kopy, public safety commissioner of Rye, N.Y., told JI. “Even as we headed to the airport that day I saw the resilience of ordinary Israelis as they headed to their bases. I thought it was important to return now in order to better understand the current situation and take what we have learned about antisemitism and counterterrorism home to New York to better protect our Jewish community and residents.”
This trip also provided a firsthand glimpse into some of the challenges Israel Police confront. On Monday, six Israelis were killed when two terrorists opened fire at a bus stop in Jerusalem.
At the time of the shooting, “we were on our way to the Israel National Police Jerusalem command center,” said Silber. “We met with senior Jerusalem police officials to learn how you police a multiethnic, multireligious city like Jerusalem.”
According to data from early 2025, Jews were the target of 62% of all hate crimes in New York City. “Why is that?” Silber said. “Some of the lectures we’ve gotten are about the history of Jewish people in European countries and the trend of at some point a government deciding it’s not worthwhile protecting those communities and those communities have to move. It all depends on whether law enforcement wants to protect them or not.”
The Democratic candidate also said he does not believe that far-left NYC mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani is ‘taking actions I would claim to be antisemitic’
Campaign website
Peter Chatzky
Peter Chatzky, the deputy mayor of Briarcliff Manor, N.Y., and the latest of seven candidates to join the field of Democrats hoping to unseat Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) in New York’s Hudson Valley region, is standing out from the field with the comparatively critical stance he’s taking toward the U.S.-Israel relationship.
Though Chatzky called Israel a “critical ally of the United States,” he told Jewish Insider in a recent interview that he believes, from public information and reports he has seen, that Israel is violating conditions in U.S. arms sales law relating to humanitarian aid and international law — requiring the suspension of arms sales.
The district, New York’s 17th, has one of the largest Jewish constituencies in the country. Lawler has made his support for Israel a centerpiece of his time in Congress, and most of the Democratic candidates in the race are showcasing their pro-Israel bona fides.
“[U.S. support for Israel is] incredibly important to people in this district, many like me, many are Jewish. Many have family in Israel,” Chatzky said. “I think all of us in this district believe that Jews have a right to feel safe, particularly in Israel, and I think U.S. policy has to recognize that. I think the safety of the Jewish people, the safety of an ally, is paramount, and should be paramount in everything we do.”
At the same time, Chatzky said he believes findings from international observers and media that Israel is in violation of U.S. laws conditioning arms sales on adherence to human rights law and support for humanitarian aid. He said he’s also been concerned by pictures and video coming from Gaza.
“Israel has a 100% right, 1,000% right, to defend itself. I recognize war is brutal,” he said. “We have an obligation in the U.S., we have a legal obligation, we have a moral obligation, to uphold our own standards, our own laws. … I think the U.S. could be doing a much better job, and we should do it with every ally. This is not an Israel-specific thing. Every ally should be held to our high standards of morality and support for humanitarian aid.”
Chatzky said that the U.S. should be “maximizing efforts to provide humanitarian aid” and doing “all we can” to protect innocent civilians.
He said that the issue is “sensitive” in the district, and that there are some constituents who are not willing to engage with any criticism of Israel or suggestion of wrongdoing. Chatzky said he has family in Israel, but said he has not had the opportunity to visit the Jewish state.
He said he would not support efforts to impose specific conditions on arms sales to Israel that aren’t applied to any other U.S. allies, though he said he might support efforts to expand congressional oversight over such matters globally.
Chatzky said he supports a two-state solution, but that such an outcome depends on having representative governments that are willing to negotiate — something that is not currently the case in Gaza.
“Hamas is certainly not representative of all the people who are living on the Gaza Strip, the Palestinians. I don’t think they have the same sort of democracy-focused interests that true leadership would require to establish that two-state solution,” Chatzky said. “It’s still a lofty goal. It would be great. I don’t have the magic formula to get there next week.”
Asked about the U.S. strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities in June, Chatzky said he doesn’t feel there has been enough “transparency” or “reliable information” available about the strikes, their effectiveness and the impact of those strikes on civilians. “It’s hard for somebody who doesn’t have access to all the privileged information to know what the facts are,” he continued.
He said he supports a negotiated solution to deal with Iran’s nuclear program, adding “nobody really wins if a nuclear war is initiated anywhere. And I think America always has to take whatever steps they can to limit that.”
While Chatzky said that he “can’t really defend” Democratic New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani’s refusal to fully disavow calls to “globalize the intifada,” he said that Mamdani “does seem to have tremendous support among some Jewish leaders.”
“I haven’t seen him taking actions I would claim to be antisemitic,” he continued. He said he thinks Mamdani understands and will do what is necessary to protect the Jewish community in New York City. “Making assumptions that he would somehow ignore such a significant chunk of his constituency — I’m not seeing anything in that in his campaign so far.”
Asked about the rise of antisemitism domestically more broadly, Chatzky said that “we have to take a critical look at everything governments are doing and make sure they’re not even accidentally inspiring more antisemitic behavior.”
“We have to just be careful about the policies we’re putting in place and who we’re blaming,” he continued. “We’re currently in an America that seems to be bent on divisiveness and finding people to cast blame on. And I’m worried some of the antisemitism we’re seeing is because of that sort of national attitude of ‘Who’s the bogeyman in this instance?’ And we have to avoid that at all costs.”
Chatzky, in his campaign, is highlighting past confrontations with President Donald Trump’s business as a private citizen, mayor and deputy mayor of Briarcliff Manor, N.Y. At different points in time Chatzky and the town successfully blocked or forced the Trump organization to modify plans for development and major events at Trump’s golf course in the district.
“I am the only one who’s actually battled toe-to-toe with Donald Trump,” Chatzky said.
Chatzky argued that he’s also the only candidate in the Democratic field with a decade of experience in elected office and 40 years of experience running a business, having founded a tech company.
He said that a crucial job for Congress will be to rebuild the institutions and reputation of government disrupted by Trump and his administration. He said he also wants to see the U.S. build its social safety net, something he said he’s always done for his own employees in his business career.
At the same time, he said he’s had experience at the local level working across the aisle with Republicans and with colleagues to his left, explaining, “it’s about building coalitions, which I think is badly needed in American national-level politics today. I think we all have to start speaking together much more comfortably.”
As of the end of the third quarter, Chatzky fell in the middle of the pack of Democratic candidates in fundraising. Rockland County legislator Beth Davidson led with $855,000, followed by national security veteran Cait Conley with $816,000, Chatzky with $680,000, nonprofit executive Jessica Reinmann with $535,000, former FBI agent John Sullivan with $301,000, former journalist Mike Sacks with $212,000 and Tarrytown village trustee Effie Phillips-Staley with $152,000.
AJC CEO Ted Deutch: ‘This law is a meaningful tool to make our campuses places where students can learn without fear of discrimination’
Susan Watts/Office of Governor Kathy Hochul
Gov. Kathy Hochul tours Anne Frank exhibit and delivers remarks at the Anti-Hate Center in Education at the Center for Jewish History.
Responding to heightened campus antisemitism, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul will sign legislation on Tuesday afternoon that requires all colleges in the state to designate anti-discrimination coordinators to enforce Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, her office confirmed to Jewish Insider.
The new bill, which passed the New York State Legislature unanimously in June, was introduced by Assemblywoman Nily Rozic and state Sen. Toby Ann Stavisky, both Democrats from Queens, amid an uptick in antisemitism on college campuses in the aftermath of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attacks.
“By placing Title VI coordinators on all college campuses, New York is combating antisemitism and all forms of discrimination head-on,” Hochul, a Democrat, told JI. “No one should fear for their safety while trying to get an education. It’s my top priority to ensure every New York student feels safe at school, and I will continue to take action against campus discrimination and use every tool at my disposal to eliminate hate and bias from our school communities.”
The legislation centralizes colleges’ enforcement of Title VI, which prohibits discrimination in federally funded programs based on race, color and national origin, by mandating a designated Title VI coordinator to address student complaints and directing the New York State Division of Human Rights to develop training to support such efforts.
It was backed by several Jewish groups including the Anti-Defamation League, UJA-Federation of New York and the American Jewish Committee.
Ted Deutch, chief executive of the AJC, called the legislation “a significant step in protecting Jewish students across the state.”
“This bipartisan legislation signed by Gov. Hochul will combat the alarming rise of antisemitism and ensure Jewish students’ concerns are heard and taken seriously,” he said in a statement. “By requiring every college and university in the state to have a properly trained Title VI Coordinator, this law is a meaningful tool to make our campuses places where students can learn without fear of discrimination.”
The bill comes as Democrats have faced criticism nationally from Republicans over their approach to countering antisemitism and supporting Israel amid its war in Gaza. It also comes as President Donald Trump has moved to dismantle the Department of Education — an effort that has raised questions among Jewish leaders over the government’s ability to investigate Title VI complaints and to hold schools accountable for incidents of antisemitism.
In anticipation of the bill and amid the Trump administration’s ongoing crackdown on campus antisemitism, some schools in the state, including Columbia University, New York University and the State University of New York system, have already announced commitments to hire designated Title VI coordinators.
Hochul, who is facing a potentially competitive reelection campaign as she seeks a second full term, has tackled the issue of rising campus antisemitism during her time in office, meeting with hundreds of college officials last year to address the matter, among other efforts.
Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), a Republican whose viral questioning of university leaders over their handling of campus antisemitism seized the national spotlight, is mulling a challenge to Hochul in next year’s election.
Two attendees called the conversation ‘antagonistic,’ citing the group’s conversation about the humanitarian situation in Gaza
Ohad Kav
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar (center) meets with members of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations on Aug. 25, 2025, in New York City.
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar met on Monday with American Jewish leaders in New York, speaking with the group at a moment when tensions between Diaspora Jews and Israel’s leaders over the conduct of the war seem to be growing.
The meeting was organized by the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, and most of its members — representing the Reform, Orthodox and Conservative movements, as well as major national organizations including the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee, and the Jewish Federations of North America — were present in the room.
Conference of Presidents CEO William Daroff said the 90-minute meeting was “positive and wide-ranging.”
“We spoke about the war, the plight of the hostages, and the challenges facing Israel, with a clear focus on strengthening U.S.-Israel relations,” Daroff told Jewish Insider. “The exchange underscored our unity, our partnership with Israel and our shared commitment to the Jewish future.”
Two attendees, who requested anonymity, described the meeting as antagonistic, saying Sa’ar took an argumentative tone against Jewish leaders in America who have raised concerns about the humanitarian situation in Gaza.
Amy Spitalnick, the CEO of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, told JI after the meeting that she sees a growing distance between Israeli leaders and Jews in the United States.
“I think there is deep concern among many American Jews that this government’s quadrupling down on its approach is only going to widen the gap between the diaspora and Israel, when the vast majority of American and, frankly, Israeli Jews have made clear that they believe the war must end, the hostages must be released and the humanitarian crisis in Gaza needs to be addressed,” Spitalnick said.
That sentiment was echoed by Rabbi Liz P.G. Hirsch, CEO of Women of Reform Judaism.
“I said I was there representing two million Reform Jews. We’re the largest denomination in North America, and we are proud Zionists. We’re lovers and defenders of Israel, even as there are broad views within our movement,” Hirsch told JI on Monday. “The frame that this government is offering — and this is something I would say not just in this meeting, but publicly — is widening the breach between the North American community, between the full movement that I represent, and Israel.”
A spokesperson for the Israeli consulate in New York declined to comment. Sa’ar will also travel to Washington this week, where he is expected to meet with Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday. It will be Sa’ar’s first official visit to Washington since he was appointed Israel’s foreign minister last November.
Michigan's flagship university is emerging as epicenter of anti-Israel activism in new school year
Katie McTiernan/Anadolu via Getty Images
Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) attends a protest at the University of Michigan as students set up an encampment to protest against Israeli attacks on Gaza in Ann Arbor, Michigan, on April 24, 2024.
Days after the University of Michigan kicks off the new school year this week, the campus is slated to host two anti-Israel speakers — former Columbia University protest leader Mahmoud Khalil and Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), one of the most outspoken critics of Israel in Congress.
On Wednesday afternoon, Tlaib is scheduled to speak at an on-campus press conference titled “United Against Genocide, United Against Repression” hosted by The People’s Coalition Michigan.
“The [UMich] Regents continue to shield their indefensible investments in the genocidal state of israel by attacking anyone who stands in solidarity with Palestine,” the group wrote on social media. “[Tlaib] will join students, workers, and community members to bring attention to the Regents’ long and continuing campaign to suppress free speech.”
Later that evening, the campus chapter of Students Organize for Syria is scheduled to host Khalil, who was released in June from the immigration detention center where he had been held for three months as the Trump administration sought to have him deported.
One day after his release, the anti-Israel activist appeared at a rally in New York City organized by the National Iranian American Council, a group accused of having ties to the Iranian regime, where he protested U.S. airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Khalil, who has repeatedly declined to condemn Hamas, will speak “on liberation and freedom,” according to the campus group.
The events come days before thousands of pro-Palestinian activists are set to gather in Detroit, beginning Aug. 29, for the second annual People’s Conference for Palestine, under the slogan “Gaza is the Compass.”
The three-day conference features several radical anti-Israel speakers including Khalil and Hussam Shaheen, a convicted Palestinian terrorist released from Israeli prison on Feb. 1 as part of a ceasefire and hostage-release deal with Hamas.
A State Department spokesperson said Friday that all international speakers for the conference will be placed on a visa “look out” status due to concerns surrounding speakers’ ties to terrorism, according to The Jerusalem Post.
In Siena poll, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer hits his all-time low in popularity, with just 38% of New Yorkers viewing him favorably and 50% viewing him unfavorably
Aaron Schwartz/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer speaks to the media during a weekly press conference in the Capitol Building in Washington DC, on Tuesday, March 12, 2024.
A new Siena poll of New York voters illustrates the unpopularity of the state’s leading political figures in the runup to this year’s mayoral contest and next year’s gubernatorial election. Of particular note is the surging dissatisfaction among many Democratic voters towards elected leaders from their own party.
In the poll, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) hits his all-time low in popularity, with just 38% of New Yorkers viewing him favorably and 50% viewing him unfavorably. His favorability with Democratic voters took a slight downturn since the last Siena survey in April, with just 49% of voters in his own party viewing him favorably.
Among Jewish voters, a narrow 52% majority of New York Jews viewed him favorably, with 43% rating him unfavorably.
Schumer doesn’t face reelection until 2028, but amid the wave of anti-establishment sentiment within the Democratic Party, the numbers suggest he could face a credible primary threat if he pursues a sixth term.
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), who is up for reelection in 2030, also faces a mixed political picture. Her favorability rating is, like every other New York elected official, underwater. But her overall numbers, with 36% viewing her favorably and 38% viewing her unfavorably, are better than nearly all of her counterparts. She’s also the most popular politician among Jewish voters, with 54% viewing her favorably and only 27% viewing her unfavorably.
There’s a notable disconnect between Gov. Kathy Hochul’s job approval rating and favorability rating; more New Yorkers are satisfied with her performance in office than like her personally. Hochul’s job approval rating stands at 53%, with 42% disapproving. But only 42% of New Yorkers view her favorably, while 44% view her unfavorably.
In an early test of a likely 2026 general election matchup between Hochul and Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), Hochul leads 45-31%. In that matchup, Jewish voters would divide nearly evenly, with 45% backing Hochul and 42% supporting Stefanik, according to the poll.
Stefanik’s favorability rating statewide is 27%, with 32% viewing her unfavorably — a respectable showing for a Trump-aligned Republican in a solidly blue state. By comparison, a clear majority of New Yorkers (56%) view President Donald Trump unfavorably, with only 37% viewing him favorably.
The survey also breaks out New York City voters for a ballot test of this year’s mayoral race. It finds Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani leading with 44%, former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo at 25%, Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa at 12% and Mayor Eric Adams lagging behind at 7%.
The new poll suggests that Adams’ support has cratered in recent weeks, as Cuomo seeks to consolidate moderates into his camp ahead of the general election. But underscoring the difficulty Cuomo faces, his 29/61% statewide rating is the worst net unfavorability of any of the politicians tested — including Trump and Adams.
Of note: Among Jewish voters in New York state, Mamdani’s numbers are historically dismal. A whopping 75% view the far-left candidate unfavorably, with just 15% viewing him favorably.
The meeting comes a day after reports indicated Netanyahu intends to expand IDF control over Gaza
Dursun Aydemir/Anadolu via Getty Images
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar (C) attends the EU-Israel Association Council meeting in Brussels, Belgium, on February 24, 2025.
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar will meet with American Jewish leaders in New York on Tuesday morning, Jewish Insider has learned.
Sa’ar is in New York to attend a special session of the United Nations Security Council, which he initiated to discuss the situation of the remaining hostages in Gaza, days after the release of videos of two hostages — Evyatar David and Rom Braslavski — by Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, showing the two men looking haggard and emaciated.
William Daroff, CEO of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, said in a statement to JI, “We look forward to this important meeting with Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar, continuing a long-standing relationship grounded in mutual respect and shared priorities. It is always beneficial when American Jewish leaders and Israel’s foreign minister engage directly on the key issues of the day.”
“As Minister Sa’ar prepares to address the United Nations Security Council on the ongoing plight of the hostages,” he continued, “it is critical that their suffering not be swept aside by the international community. Their release must remain a global moral imperative.”
The meeting comes a day after reports indicated Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu plans to ask the Security Cabinet to back expanding Israel’s military efforts in Gaza.
In an interview with JI, Pirro discussed her outreach to Jewish groups to find ways to offer her office’s resources
Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
Interim U.S. Attorney for Washington, D.C. Jeanine Pirro stands during her swearing in ceremony in the Oval Office of the White House on May 28, 2025 in Washington, DC.
When interim U.S. Attorney for D.C. Jeanine Pirro began her tenure as Westchester County, N.Y., district attorney on New Years Day in 1994, she walked into her new office to discover a backlog of antisemitism-related cases left behind by her predecessor.
“One had to do with a swastika cut into the grass at Winged Foot Golf Club. I don’t know if you know Winged Foot, but it’s the creme de la creme of golf courses,” she remarked during an interview with Jewish Insider at her D.C. office on Tuesday.
Pirro said learning of the scope of antisemitism in Westchester County, which has long been home to a sizable Jewish population, opened her eyes to “the trauma and the revictimization” of the Jewish people and prompted her to get involved with efforts to promote Holocaust education through the Simon Wiesenthal Center.
“It’s almost like this thing that follows me,” Pirro said of prosecuting anti-Jewish hate crimes, calling it “so telling” that the fatal shooting of two Israeli Embassy staffers in Washington — by a 31-year-old suspect who witnesses said shouted “free Palestine” and “I did it for Gaza” — took place during her first week in her current role.
“My introduction here was just stunning, and it kind of brought me back to where I started, as a local DA, right off the bat with antisemitism,” she said of her initial days as U.S. attorney for the nation’s capital.
President Donald Trump appointed Pirro, known colloquially as Judge Jeanine from her 11 years hosting “Justice with Judge Jeanine” on Fox News’ weekend lineup, to serve as Washington’s chief federal law enforcement officer in an acting capacity in mid-May. He formally nominated her for a full term in the position a month later.
The Senate Judiciary Committee voted along party lines last week to advance Pirro’s nomination, and she’s expected to come before the full Senate in the fall, when the chamber returns from its August recess.
Pirro emerged as one of Trump’s most vocal defenders on the network, and is a personal friend of the president. She aggressively disputed allegations at the start of his first term of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia to swing the 2016 election in the president’s favor. Her repeated on-air claims that Democrats had rigged the 2020 election for former President Joe Biden in the aftermath of Trump’s defeat was referenced several times in Dominion Voting Systems’ lawsuit against the network, which Fox ultimately settled for $787.5 million in 2023.
She had been co-hosting Fox’s “The Five,” one of the network’s top rated programs, in New York in early May when she agreed to join the Trump administration. The decision came after Ed Martin’s nomination to the U.S. attorney role was pulled over collapsing support among Senate Republicans due to his lack of experience as a prosecutor, ties to alleged Nazi sympathizers and defense of rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Within weeks, Pirro found herself speaking to the nation about the murder of two Israeli Embassy staffers, one of the highest profile antisemitic crimes in the nation’s capital — amid growing antisemitism taking place across the country.
“What I want to be clear about today, since this is the first time you are hearing from me, is that this is a horrific crime. And these crimes are not going to be tolerated by me and by this office. A young couple at the beginning of their life’s journey, about to be engaged in another country, had their bodies removed in the cold of the night, in a foreign city, in a body bag,” Pirro said at a press conference the morning after the May 21 slayings of Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky.
“I am not unaware, based upon my own background, of the repercussions of this kind of case. This is the kind of case that picks at old sores and old scars, because these kinds of cases remind us of what has happened in the past that we can never and must never forget,” she continued.
In addition to prosecuting the alleged assailant, Elias Rodriguez, Pirro has been doing outreach to Jewish groups to find ways to offer her office’s resources and “highlight that I’m here. Call me.”
She recently connected with the family of Malki Roth, the 15-year-old Israeli American killed in a 2001 suicide bombing at a Sbarro restaurant in Israel, who informed her that they had never heard from anyone at her senior level in the Justice Department about their daughter’s death.
“I said to myself: I ain’t high up, but it’s sad they lost a daughter and they didn’t get the attention that they needed. They will get that attention now, and I am determined to do whatever I can,” Pirro said.
As part of that commitment, Pirro said she’s “working on” securing the extradition from Jordan of Ahlam Tamimi, a Palestinian terrorist convicted by an Israeli court for her role in the bombing, to the U.S. in order to face federal charges for the attack, which Roth’s parents have been advocating for since their daughter’s death.
Tamimi was released from Israel to Jordan as part of a 2011 deal. Jordan has repeatedly refused U.S. extradition requests for Tamimi since the DOJ indictment against her became public in 2017.
Pirro noted that Tamimi has expressed no remorse for her actions and is living a life of fame and freedom in Jordan, where she became well known for hosting a program on a Hamas-affiliated television network for years. “That hate has always been so incomprehensible to me, and that’s why this has always been a mission. Now I’m back at my roots, and I continue with the mission,” she said.
“I don’t want to look in anymore. I want to look out,” Pirro said. “I want the people on the outside to know that there’s someone on the inside that they have access to, that they can speak with, that they can go back into the community and say, ‘She’s taking a strong stand. She’s going to prosecute these cases. She feels strongly about them, and if you’re not sure, go talk to her.’”
Pirro said that the office’s national security division is also pursuing three active cases “in the Arab world.”
Asked about what tools she could utilize as U.S. attorney in the broader fight against antisemitism, Pirro said that she and her team were reaching out to Jewish organizations to encourage community leaders to contact their office directly on local matters where they could be of assistance.
She argued that her emphasis on direct community outreach, rather than solely engaging with “other federal agencies that talk to each other all day long,” marked a shift in approach.
“They’re acronyms,” she said of those agencies. “I don’t want to look in anymore. I want to look out,” Pirro said. “I want the people on the outside to know that there’s someone on the inside that they have access to, that they can speak with, that they can go back into the community and say, ‘She’s taking a strong stand. She’s going to prosecute these cases. She feels strongly about them, and if you’re not sure, go talk to her.’”
Since taking over the role, Pirro has been connecting with D.C. leaders and other relevant stakeholders involved in efforts to address crime, domestic violence and antisemitism.
Pirro said she needed to tread carefully, in light of her ongoing confirmation proceedings, on the subject of Zohran Mamdani’s victory in the Democratic mayoral primary in New York. She argued that his plans would be “a disaster for business, a disaster for crime victims … a disaster for quality of life in New York.”
She argued that cutting the New York Police Department or trying to replace them with social services and mental health workers, as Mamdani has advocated for, would send the city in the wrong direction and make it more difficult to build business and community.
“When you see other Democrats joining, you say to yourself, it’s about power,” Pirro said. “And that’s why we’ve got Donald Trump in, because people heard him loud and clear — they want to be safe, and if they’re safe, then they can think about, you know, having a business, you know, making sure that maybe one day they can take a vacation, and, you know, their families can survive.”
Democrats, highlighting that Pirro is a longtime friend and ally of the president, have argued that she can’t be trusted to uphold the rule of law or the Constitution when they conflict with Trump’s agenda and desires.
Pirro said she’s had a positive working relationship with Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, and that she intends to work with city officials regardless of political differences. Still, she criticized the D.C. City Council for its approach to criminal justice issues.
“My relationship with Muriel Bowser is good. I want to work with her. That’s the only way to make the city safe again. I think that the chief of police, Pamela Smith, is great. The mayor has a similar agenda. I think the mayor believes that D.C. needs to be safe,” Pirro explained.“I think we’ve got a city council that’s out of control, that is so defense oriented. They’re totally tolerant of criminals.”
While Pirro said that securing convictions in the Democratic stronghold was a tall task, she said she was undeterred.
“We are in the center of the nation where laws are passed on a regular basis, and yet the enforcement of those laws is a very difficult thing to push in some areas,” Pirro said. “I mean, in the end, if we don’t have the determination and if we don’t have the will, then nothing happens, because there is a system that is geared toward the defendant.”
“I’m not going to worry about whether or not they’re liberal judges. I’m not going to worry about whether or not you know, juries in Washington are very defense oriented, and my staff won’t either,” Pirro said. “They know that it’s a hard fight in the district, but that’s our job, and you know what? That’s why I’m here. It’s a challenge, and it’s worth it.”
Pressed about the slow response by municipalities like D.C. to anti-Israel protest encampments on university campuses, and if the decision by city leaders to act in some cases but not in others was an indication that changes could be made in the nation’s capital, Pirro concurred.
“All law is a matter of will, it’s all about enforcement,” Pirro said, adding that a longtime concern for her has been a lack of consideration for and rights of crime victims in the justice system.
“We are in the center of the nation where laws are passed on a regular basis, and yet the enforcement of those laws is a very difficult thing to push in some areas,” Pirro said. “I mean, in the end, if we don’t have the determination and if we don’t have the will, then nothing happens, because there is a system that is geared toward the defendant.”
Pirro said that the D.C. attorney’s office is “neglected” and understaffed — relying on contractors — and in need of additional full-time staff and resources.
“I want more people, and I will get more people,” Pirro said. “I’m hiring people who want to fight the good fight and [are] competent.”
Trump, a longtime ally, has been “very gracious” in allowing her to hire more staff, Pirro said. She said she’d also spoken to senators about the resource crunch and they’ve been “very receptive, very interested in making D.C. safe.” She described the recent shooting of a congressional intern in the district as helping to motivate concern and interest from lawmakers.
Despite the lack of staff, Pirro lavished praise on the prosecutors in her office.
“What I’m most proud of in this office is the level of prosecutors and the level of talent. These are serious, well prepared, competent, aggressive prosecutors who are in a city that is not necessarily victim oriented. So we fight the good fight every day here. We fight it on behalf of many, many different segments of the community, whether it’s seniors, whether it’s just innocent victims, whether it’s people of the Jewish faith, whether it’s antisemitism, hate crimes of any type,” she said.
LePatner, a Blackstone executive, served on the boards of the Abraham Joshua Heschel School and UJA-Federation of New York
courtesy/UJA-Federation of NY
Wesley LePatner speaks at the UJA-Federation of New York's annual Wall Street Dinner in December 2023.
Wesley LePatner, a Blackstone executive who was involved with Jewish communal organizations in New York City, was killed in the Monday shooting at the firm’s Midtown headquarters, the company confirmed on Tuesday.
LePatner was the global head of Core+ Real Estate at Blackstone and CEO of Blackstone Real Estate Income Trust, according to Blackstone’s website. A Yale graduate, she joined the company in 2014 after more than a decade at Goldman Sachs.
She served on the board of trustees at the Abraham Joshua Heschel School, a pluralistic Jewish day school in New York, and she joined the board of directors at UJA-Federation of New York earlier this month.
“We are devastated by the tragic loss of Wesley LePatner, a beloved member of UJA’s community and a member of our board of directors, who was killed in yesterday’s mass shooting in Midtown,” the federation said in a statement.
“Wesley was extraordinary in every way — personally, professionally, and philanthropically,” the organization said. “In the wake of Oct. 7, Wesley led a solidarity mission with UJA to Israel, demonstrating her enduring commitment in Israel’s moment of heartache. She lived with courage and conviction, instilling in her two children a deep love for Judaism and the Jewish people.”
In 2023, LePatner was awarded the Alan C. Greenberg Young Leadership Award at UJA’s 2023 annual Wall Street dinner. In a speech, she outlined her involvement with the organization, dating back nearly two decades.
“I first attended the UJA Wall Street dinner as a young analyst in 2004, where I am pretty certain I sat in one of the last tables at the back of the room,” LePatner said at the event, which took place two months after the Oct. 7 attacks. “Never in my wildest imagination could I have believed that I would be up on this stage two decades later. UJA has many super-powers, but its most important in my view is its power to create a sense of community and belonging, and that ability to create a sense of community and belonging matters now more than ever.”
LePatner also sat on the board of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Yale University Library Council and Nareit, a real estate organization.
The shooting also claimed a second Jewish victim, Julia Hyman. A Cornell graduate, Hyman worked for Rudin Management in the Midtown skyscraper.
Ofir Akunis, consul general of Israel in New York, called the murder of LePatner and Hyman — as well as NYPD Officer Didarul Islam — “horrific and senseless” at the Israel on Campus Coalition’s National Leadership Summit in Washington on Tuesday. “In this difficult moment, Israel stands in solidarity with New Yorkers and all Americans,” Akunis said.
One Jewish political leader: ‘No one thinks it’s going to be good for the Jewish community to be hostile and to be in constant war with the next mayor’
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Democratic socialist candidate Zohran Mamdani, who won the Democratic primary for mayor of New York City, attends an endorsement event from the union DC 37 on July 15, 2025, in New York City.
In recent weeks, a creeping sense of frustration has settled in among many Jewish leaders in New York City as they have reckoned with the dawning reality that no one is stepping up to organize opposition to Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee for mayor. Without a well-funded outside effort, Mamdani faces few obstacles in the general election despite numerous political vulnerabilities.
The complacency comes even as top Democratic leaders in New York have so far declined to endorse Mamdani, whose antagonistic views on Israel and democratic socialist affiliation have engendered criticism. But with a divided field of warring and baggage-laden candidates, Jewish leaders have privately voiced disappointment at the current state of the race.
“Big-money people are talking every week about how we have to do something, but I haven’t seen a real plan,” said one Jewish community leader who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations. “People are just grasping,” he added. “There’s a sense of frustration out there and fear of a letdown.”
“You can’t beat somebody with nobody,” another Jewish leader said in assessing Mamdani’s rivals, including incumbent Mayor Eric Adams, former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Curtis Sliwa, the GOP nominee — all of whom have so far resisted pleas to suspend their campaigns in order to avoid splitting the vote.
While some independent expenditure committees are preparing to spend heavily in the race to target Mamdani, an assemblyman from Queens whose far-left policies have provoked anxiety among Jewish New Yorkers, moderate voters and business leaders, the Jewish leader expressed skepticism that such efforts would ultimately “make a difference” as long as the election remains crowded with multiple opponents.
In the Hasidic enclave of Williamsburg, “the rank and file and donors are concerned” about Mamdani, said a source familiar with the situation. “But at the leadership level, people are mostly thinking that it’s a foregone conclusion” that Mamdani will prevail in November. “There’s not much to do and we have to start adapting and have to try to make amends with him and work with him.”
Jim Walden, an attorney, is also running as an independent alongside Adams and Cuomo, who in recent days have exchanged criticism as Mamdani, leading most polls with a plurality of the vote, stayed away from the headlines while celebrating his recent marriage in his birthplace of Uganda.
In the Hasidic enclave of Williamsburg, “the rank and file and donors are concerned” about Mamdani, said a source familiar with the situation. “But at the leadership level, people are mostly thinking that it’s a foregone conclusion” that Mamdani will prevail in November. “There’s not much to do and we have to start adapting and have to try to make amends with him and work with him.”
“No one thinks it’s going to be good for the Jewish community to be hostile and to be in constant war with the next mayor,” the source said on Monday. “For the community’s sake, we have to move on.”
As the anti-Mamdani coalition has struggled to coalesce more than a month after his shocking primary upset, the organized Jewish community is now largely taking a “wait-and-see” approach to the upcoming election, several Jewish activists told Jewish Insider on Monday.
David Greenfield, who leads the Jewish anti-poverty group Met Council and has been a fierce critic of Mamdani, said that many Jewish leaders are “watching closely to determine if he’ll moderate his socialist positions now that he has secured the Democratic nomination.”
“Zohran has floated possibly keeping NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch and that has caught the attention of several community leaders,” Greenfield told JI. “Currently, the race is quiet, partly due to Zohran himself being on vacation this month, but we expect it will significantly heat up again after Labor Day.”
A Jewish political activist who was not authorized to speak on the record echoed that assessment, even as he noted that some Jewish community leaders have been seeking to register new voters and working on “community structuring” in advance of the general election.
Still, he speculated that “if the race stays as is, then there will be a quiet shift to have conversations with Mamdani.”
For now, most mainstream Jewish groups remain hesitant to meet privately with Mamdani, according to a Jewish activist familiar with the matter, but the Democratic nominee has stepped up his outreach to Jewish voters and elected officials — while slightly softening his widely criticized defense of the slogan “globalize the intifada,” a phrase that many Jews interpret as a call to antisemitic violence. Mamdani has refused to personally condemn the slogan, but recently said he now discourages its use, marking a reversal from his primary comments as he seeks to grow his coalition.
“We’re planning to get started in August with messaging,” Jeff Leb, a political consultant who is leading a new super PAC called “New Yorkers for a Better Future Mayor 2025,” said on Monday. “I don’t think that people are sleeping on Zohran,” he said of the race. “I just think they’re making sure they have the resources they have to be active. Right now it’s a little bit early.”
Despite his evolution on the phrase, Mamdani remains a staunch opponent of Israel, backing the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement he has indicated he could implement if elected. He has also suggested he would not visit Israel as mayor — defying a long-standing precedent in a place that is home to the largest Jewish population of any city in the world.
There are, to be sure, a range of anti-Mamdani initiatives underway in the Jewish community and beyond — some of which are expected to pick up in the coming weeks as summer begins to wind down after a period of relative inactivity, people involved in the efforts told JI.
Jeff Leb, a political consultant who is leading a new super PAC called “New Yorkers for a Better Future Mayor 2025” that plans to raise at least $20 million to hit Mamdani, told JI the group has in recent weeks held Zoom calls with more than 500 people and secured commitments as it readies attacks “to educate the public on Zohran’s priorities.”
“We’re planning to get started in August with messaging,” Leb said on Monday, noting that the super PAC is currently “candidate-agnostic” and will get behind Adams or Cuomo later in the race when polling indicates who is most favored. “I don’t think that people are sleeping on Zohran,” he said of the race. “I just think they’re making sure they have the resources they have to be active. Right now it’s a little bit early.”
Meanwhile, Eric Levine, a top GOP fundraiser in New York and a board member of the Republican Jewish coalition, is now organizing a fundraiser for Adams on Aug. 13, featuring former New York Gov. David Paterson and several donors from the legal and financial communities, according to an invite he has circulated within his network in recent days.
The Flatbush Jewish Community Coalition, which endorsed Cuomo in the primary but has not made a decision in the general election, recently launched a voter registration drive to boost Jewish turnout in November, Josh Mehlman, the group’s chairman, said on Monday.
The organization is expecting to register “tens of thousands of new voters,” Mehlman confirmed in a statement to JI. “With the political turbulence and antisemitism that unfortunately surrounds us, it is more clear than ever that the importance of every resident registering to vote for the upcoming and future elections will shape the quality of life and security of our communities,” he explained. “Our renewed efforts reflect that urgency.”
“No one wants to be fighting with the guy,” one Jewish leader said of Mamdani, acknowledging his rhetoric on Israel had evolved but not far enough to satisfy his most ardent skeptics. “No one wants to be in this position. But at the same time, I would put the onus on him. He’s the one who’s going to need to make changes.”
Sara Forman, the executive director of the New York Solidarity Network, a local pro-Israel group whose super PAC endorsed Cuomo in the primary, said the organization is now “keeping a close eye on everything that’s happening” in the race “and on its impact on the Jewish community,” while cautioning against “premature” conclusions at this stage of the election.
“Whether the field of candidates is able to coalesce in some way and what that looks like in September is very different from the end of July,” she told JI on Monday.
Privately, many Jewish leaders have fretted about the seemingly disaggregated and inchoate efforts to oppose Mamdani at a pivotal point in the race — as the current field continues to remain unsettled with limited time until the election.
“No one wants to be fighting with the guy,” one Jewish leader said of Mamdani, acknowledging his rhetoric on Israel had evolved but not far enough to satisfy his most ardent skeptics. “No one wants to be in this position. But at the same time, I would put the onus on him. He’s the one who’s going to need to make changes.”
The congressman once again declined to endorse Zohran Mamdani in the NYC mayoral race but said he is ‘likely to win’
Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) is seen in the U.S. Capitol on Friday, June 28, 2024.
Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) said Wednesday that he’s unlikely to mount a primary challenge against New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, after months of circling a potential run for that office.
“I’m unlikely to run for governor. The assault that we’ve seen on the social safety in the Bronx is so unprecedented, so overwhelming that I’m going to keep my focus on Washington, D.C.,” Torres, a favorite of the Jewish community, said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “So, my heart lies in Washington, D.C. I feel like now, more than ever, we have to fight the catastrophe that is the Trump presidency.”
Hochul’s lieutenant governor, Antonio Delgado, already declared his candidacy against the governor.
Torres also once again declined to endorse Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee for New York City mayor, but said Mamdani is “likely to win.”
“There’s a difference between praising the man in his policies and praising the manner in which he ran his campaign. I mean, when it comes to how he ran his campaign, he’s genuinely a singular figure,” Torres said. “We do have an obligation to learn from his race. And I suspect he won not because he ran on divisive issues like ‘globalize the intifada’ or ‘defund the police.’ He ran on affordability.”
Torres said he spoke to Mamdani on Sunday and that they have “profound differences of opinion, and I’m not going to downplay those differences, but I’m committed to a working relationship with him. I’m committed to continuing dialogue.” He said that the mayor and the city’s congressional delegation have a “mutually necessary relationship, so we will coexist.”
Critics and Iranian dissidents accuse NIAC of being tied to the Iranian regime
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Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, who was released from ICE detention, speaks during a rally on the steps of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in Manhattan on June 22, 2025 in New York City.
One day after former Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil was released from the immigration detention center where he had been held for three months, the anti-Israel activist appeared at a rally in New York City organized by a group accused of ties to the Iranian regime protesting the U.S.’ weekend airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
“Mahmoud Khalil is a freedom fighter … who refuses to remain silent while watching a genocide in Palestine,” Khalil told a cheering crowd on Sunday, where he led anti-Israel chants including, “From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will be Free,” at the People’s Forum protest, a demonstration organized by the National Iranian-American Council to protest the U.S. military strikes on three Iranian nuclear sites.
Iranian dissidents and critics of NIAC, a U.S.-based Iranian-American advocacy group that calls for diplomacy with the Iranian regime and was critical of the Biden administration’s approach to Israel and the Middle East, accuse the group of being tied to the regime.
Khalil, who grew up in Syria but is of Palestinian descent and living in the U.S. on a green card, led last year’s anti-Israel campus protests at Columbia against the war in Gaza and subsequent negotiations with university administrators. He was detained in March and released on Saturday after U.S. District Judge Michael Farbiarz said it would be “highly, highly unusual” for the government to continue detaining a legal U.S. resident who was unlikely to flee and hadn’t been accused of any violence.
Khalil’s release was met with support from some left-wing lawmakers.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), who met Khalil at New Jersey’s Newark-Liberty International Airport a day after he was freed from a federal immigration facility in Louisiana, said that his detention by the Trump administration violated the First Amendment and was “an affront to every American.”
“He has been accused, baselessly, of horrific allegations simply because the Trump administration and our overall establishment disagrees with his political speech,” Ocasio-Cortez added.
Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) wrote on X that he welcomed the decision to release Khalil. “As I have said before, his prolonged detention — without charges — is a chilling, McCarthyesque action in response to the exercise of First Amendment rights to free speech and raises serious constitutional concerns,” Nadler said.
From secular to sacred, the trendy Chabad location draws young professionals, business executives and politicos together in community
Courtesy
Chana Gurevitch and Rabbi Berel Gurevitch, former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Tom Nides and television producer and congregation member Neil Goldman at Chabad West Village.
It’s Friday evening in Manhattan’s fashionable West Village. A couple dozen of New York’s elite — business executives, a television producer, a fashion designer, a journalist and a few politicos — pack a charming brownstone, a spot that’s been frequented by a range of influential people, from former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Tom Nides to reality TV personality Andy Cohen. Wine flows around a long candlelit table. A three-course meal and deep discussion follow late into the night.
This isn’t dinner in one of the neighborhood’s Michelin-starred restaurants — although some weeks the waitlist here can be just as long. It’s Shabbat at Chabad West Village.
There are more than 3,000 Chabad Houses around the world aimed at Jewish outreach, inspired by the teachings of the Lubavitcher Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson. New York City alone is home to some 40 Chabad centers. Each Chabad caters to the characteristics of the community it serves.
But in the West Village — one of Manhattan’s most unlikely neighborhoods for the spread of Torah — synagogue-goers, a diverse group of mostly secular Jews, say something unique is happening at this Chabad in particular. The growing, vibrant community is a stark contrast with the shul just across the street, the Charles Street Synagogue that sits defunct.
“When we moved here, we did not know one person,” Rabbi Berel Gurevitch, who launched Chabad West Village six years ago with his wife, Chana, told Jewish Insider. “Now our list consists of around 5,000 Jewish people,” said Gurevitch, who is in his early 30s but declines to disclose his exact age so as not to inhibit older members from connecting.
The Gurevitches decamped from the comfort of Crown Heights, Brooklyn, where they both grew up, for the West Village, a neighborhood known for its trendy arts and nightlife scene. The synagogue initially ran out of a small apartment on Grove Street — with New Yorker staff writer Calvin Trillin, who still attends frequently — as its landlord.
Now in a townhouse on Charles Street, where such real estate can run into the tens of millions of dollars, the center, which is also the personal home of the Gurevitches and their three children, has become synonymous with several innovative programs: letting attendees be “Rabbi for a Day”; a “TGIF” program where participants learn how to host Friday night dinners with their friends; explanatory “Shabbat Matinée” services for people who would otherwise be at brunch and are giving prayer a chance; and a speaker series called “Hineni: Here I Am,” which has featured Trillin, Nides, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt and comedian Alex Edelman.
“[Rabbi Gurevitch’s] energy and drive was infectious instantaneously,” Marc Calcano, the West Village Chabad’s security director, told JI. “You can easily tell how everyone in the congregation lives based on this energy. It’s not just the synagogue where you go to worship, but it’s where you meet great people and there’s incredible conversation. After services no one ever wants to leave. This place is incredibly special. The lingering continues for hours.”
Unlike some Chabad centers, which cater specifically to young professionals, families or senior citizens, the West Village Chabad has drawn a diverse crowd that spans different age groups and income levels. The community has recently celebrated several simchas and full-circle moments, where children and their parents pray together.
“It started for my kids. [The rabbi] brought in a real beehive to teach about [honey for] Rosh Hashanah and I just thought ‘what an amazing thing to encounter in the middle of the West Village,’” said Steeven Mallet, 42, who stumbled upon the Chabad four years ago while walking his dog and has sent his children to its preschool since. “Then we started going for Shabbos and events.”
“My wife is Conservative, I’m Orthodox and there’s just a crowd of everyone,” said Mallet, who was born and raised in France and works in finance. “It’s a very tolerant community.”
Marc Calcano, the West Village Chabad’s security director, was hired in the aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks on Israel — as antisemitism skyrocketed around the U.S. and Jewish institutions remained on high alert. “[Rabbi Gurevitch’s] energy and drive was infectious instantaneously,” Calcano, a former NYPD officer, reflected. “You can easily tell how everyone in the congregation lives based on this energy. It’s not just the synagogue where you go to worship, but it’s where you meet great people and there’s incredible conversation. After services no one ever wants to leave. This place is incredibly special. The lingering continues for hours,” he told JI.
In January, Calcano celebrated the bar mitzvah of his son, Carter, at the synagogue. Calcano — who is not Jewish but whose children have a Jewish mother — never expected that Carter, who has Down syndrome, would be able to lead a bar mitzvah service. But with the help of Gurevitch, he did it. “Every minute that I spend thinking about it is an emotional minute for me,” Calcano said.
In April, a Grammy-nominated musician and a Trump White House staffer, who got married in 2022 after meeting at Chabad West Village, celebrated their second child’s bris at the synagogue.
Among the qualities that set the synagogue apart is its fast-growing demographic of singles and young professionals — at a time when polls from recent years show that synagogue attendance is declining for the majority of American Jewish young adults — especially those unmarried and without children. According to Gurevitch, every young professional event he’s held since Oct. 7 has sold out. Last month, the center hosted its first wine tasting Shabbat dinner geared towards those in their 20s and 30s.
“I was extremely lonely when I first moved to New York,” Scarlett Tucker, a 30-year-old CPA who lives in the neighborhood, told JI. Tucker, who met her best friend after first attending a Shabbat dinner at the center in 2022, describes her Jewish upbringing in California as “eating lobster at the Passover Seder.”
“I feel very close to Chana [Gurevitch] and I don’t have any family here so it’s been a warm place,” Tucker said. “For a long time, I didn’t really understand being Jewish.”
“I have not gotten more religious at all, I’ve just gotten more comfortable with it,” she continued. “The one thing that has changed for me, most significantly, is that it’s now very important to me that I marry someone Jewish.”
“They have created, and allowed me to help build with them, a vibrant Jewish base for me and so many others in downtown New York City, where Jews from all walks of life can find an entry point into our tradition,” Neil Goldman, segment producer at the Late Show with Stephen Colbert, told JI. “They have established a beautiful Jewish community where none existed, have brought so many Jews in touch with their Jewish heritage for the first time, and are fulfilling the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s call to make our world a brighter, more spiritual place.”
Ezra Feig, the 33-year-old founder of Nice Jewish Runners, a running club started in the aftermath of Oct. 7, told JI that his attendance at Chabad West Village for the past three years has felt “unique” due to “how they have managed to attract so many amazing people which has created a feeling where everyone is welcome and feels included.”
Feig reflected that as he was going through El Al security on the way to Israel for Passover, he was asked what community he belonged to. When he said “Chabad West Village,” the security agent responded, “Oh I’ve heard what a great community that is. I’m going to come check it out.”
Neil Goldman, segment producer at the Late Show with Stephen Colbert, told JI that he was drawn to Chabad West Village five years ago by the Gurevitches’ “soulfulness, their elegance, and of course their food.”
“They have created, and allowed me to help build with them, a vibrant Jewish base for me and so many others in downtown New York City, where Jews from all walks of life can find an entry point into our tradition,” said Goldman, who is 39. “They have established a beautiful Jewish community where none existed, have brought so many Jews in touch with their Jewish heritage for the first time, and are fulfilling the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s call to make our world a brighter, more spiritual place.”
Jonathan Harounoff, Israel’s international spokesperson to the United Nations, described a similar setting where “regulars are highly impressive and the food is incredible.”
“What makes the place even more appealing, though, is its total lack of pretension,” Harounoff, 29, told JI.
While congregants echo that the people — and food — are what make the synagogue special, the 5,000- square-foot, multistory West Village townhome is distinctive in itself — and holds a metaphor, according to Gurevitch.
Etched into the walls of the sanctuary is a line from the Book of Genesis, “Behold, God was in this place and I didn’t know it.”
“Our dreams are big,” Gurevitch said. “On a fundamental level, I would like to see a thriving Jewish community here. Until every Jewish person in this area has that connection and access, our job isn’t finished and we’re far from there. We’ve only scratched the surface.”
“I like people to have their own interpretations of it,” Gurevitch told JI. “But I think the most obvious one is that this Chabad, like an expression of life itself, is a place where you can find God in the most unexpected way. You’re walking down the street in the West Village and suddenly you walk inside and there’s 140 people praying. Wake up and realize that God is in here, you don’t have to travel the world or climb mountains or turn your life upside down to find God. I think this Chabad physically and spiritually represents that.”
Amid hosting events and meals for a variety of movers and shakers, Chana stressed the importance of “striking a balance.”
“We hold on to that homey, warm, intimate feeling even though there are thousands of members and very well-attended events,” she said.
The Gurevitches’ vision for Jewish life in the West Village is only just beginning. “Our dreams are big,” the rabbi said. “On a fundamental level, I would like to see a thriving Jewish community here. Until every Jewish person in this area has that connection and access, our job isn’t finished and we’re far from there. We’ve only scratched the surface.”
“Five, 10 years from now,” he continued, “I would love to walk down the street on Shabbat and see kippahs, people walking with their tallits, moms pushing strollers, Jewish people living publicly and proudly and us being able to provide the support base and epicenter for all of them.”
In its announcement shared with JI, the group said ‘it is essential to elect champions of both the gay community and of Zionists’
Alexi Rosenfeld/Getty Images
Former governor and Mayoral candidate, Andrew Cuomo, (C) marches in the Celebrate Israel Parade up Fifth Avenue on May 18, 2025 in New York City.
A new coalition of pro-Israel LGBTQ activists is backing former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo as its first choice in a ranked slate of candidate endorsements for New York City mayor, according to a statement shared exclusively with Jewish Insider on Thursday.
“Amidst the unprecedented rise in antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment and activity within our city, we, LGBTQ Zionists of New York, feel a deep responsibility to share our endorsements for the Democratic primaries,” the group said in its announcement. “We believe it is essential to elect champions of both the gay community and of Zionists — those who support the Jewish people’s right to self-determination and the existence of the State of Israel.”
The group cited Cuomo’s “longstanding support for LGBTQ rights and plan to address antisemitism in the city,” which includes, among other things, a vow to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism into city law.
Cuomo, the Democratic front-runner who often touts his support for Israel and has called rising antisemitism “the most important issue” in the race, has been consolidating support from Jewish leaders in recent weeks, amid concerns over the increasing favorability of his top rival, Zohran Mamdani, a state assemblyman from Queens who has repeatedly refused to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state and described himself as an anti-Zionist.
In the wake of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attacks, many Jewish and pro-Israel activists have increasingly felt unwelcome expressing their Zionism in LGBTQ spaces — where the ongoing war in Gaza has fueled rising anti-Israel sentiment that has also shaped the June 24 mayoral primary in New York.
“New York City is home to the largest LGBTQ community in America and the largest Jewish population outside of Israel,” the group said. “The stakes of this election are beyond historic — they’re personal. As we enter Pride Month, we are grateful for our selected candidates’ work thus far. We stand with immense pride as New Yorkers, as LGBTQ Jews, and as Zionists, and we will advocate for a future where we are seen, heard and celebrated for all that we are — and nothing less.”
In addition to Cuomo, the coalition ranked Whitney Tilson, a former hedge fund executive who has been outspoken in his support for Israel and his criticism of rising antisemitism, as its second pick for mayor. Brad Lander, the Jewish city comptroller who has long identified as a “progressive Zionist,” is its third choice, followed by Zellnor Myrie, a state senator from Brooklyn, and Scott Stringer, a former comptroller who is also Jewish.
The coalition represents hundreds of LGBTQ activists in New York City from a broad range of organizations, a spokesperson told JI. The group, which says it plans to engage in get-out-the-vote efforts in the final leg of the race, is led by Roniel Tessler and Alex Kaufman, who were motivated to pursue grassroots LGBTQ Zionist organizing following the Oct. 7 attacks.
The group also endorsed several downballot candidates, including Mark Levine, the Jewish Manhattan borough president now running for comptroller; Jenifer Rajkumar, a Queens state assemblywoman hoping to unseat Jumaane Williams in the race for public advocate; and Patrick Timmins, who is mounting a campaign against the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg.
In a heated City Council race in Park Slope, the group threw its support behind Maya Kornberg, a Jewish political scientist now challenging Shahana Hanif, the incumbent, who has faced backlash from Jewish voters over her harsh criticism of Israel and alleged insensitivity to antisemitic incidents in her district.
“We are endorsing candidates who will confront, condemn and work to resolve the dangerous rise of antisemitism in our city, and ensure Jewish, LGBTQ and Zionist voices are protected and respected,” the group said in its statement on Thursday.
Judith Weinstein-Haggai and Gad Haggai were murdered in Kibbutz Nir Oz in the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attacks in Israel
Hostages and Missing Families Forum
Judy Weinstein-Haggai and Gad Haggai
The IDF found and returned the bodies of U.S.-Israeli citizens Judith Weinstein-Haggai and Gad Haggai, who were killed in the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attacks, the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office announced on Thursday.
The Haggais were murdered in Kibbutz Nir Oz during Hamas’ onslaught targeting Gaza border communities. Their bodies were held by Hamas, the PMO said.
The couple was on a morning walk when they were shot by terrorists on motorcycles. Weinstein-Haggai called emergency medical services, but the ambulance that was traveling to help them was hit by a rocket, according to her daughter.
Gad was 72 and Judith, a New York native who also held Canadian citizenship, was 70; they are survived by four children and seven grandchildren.
The Weinstein-Haggai family released a statement via the Hostage and Missing Families Forum, saying that their return “is painful and heartbreaking, yet it also brings healing to our uncertainty. Their return reminds us all that it is the state’s duty to bring everyone home, so that we, the families, together with all the people of Israel, can begin the process of healing and recovery … A grave is not a privilege. A grave is a basic human right, without which personal and national recovery is impossible.”
The family called on leaders to “do everything necessary to reach an agreement that will return all 56 remaining hostages — the living for rehabilitation and the deceased for burial.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu thanked the IDF soldiers and Shin Bet fighters who recovered the bodies and added, “We will not rest until we bring all of our hostages home, living and deceased.”
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz sent condolences to the Weinstein-Haggai family and said that “the State of Israel is morally and nationally committed to returning our brothers and sisters, living and not living, and we will continue acting with determination until the mission is complete.”
The bodies of two American hostages, Itay Chen and Omer Neutra, remain in Gaza, out of a total of 56 hostages, 20 of whom are thought to be alive.
‘I’m running for my community, my congregation and my country,’ former journalist Mike Sacks, running in New York’s 17th Congressional District, said in an interview with JI
Courtesy Mike Sacks
Mike Sacks
Mike Sacks was taught as a child to fight antisemitism — literally — with left jabs and left hooks and right crosses.
His father, he said, taught him to box as an elementary schooler “because [my father] had to fight back against Jew hatred as a kid and as a young man,” having been subjected to antisemitic taunts.
Now, the former political journalist turned Democratic candidate in New York’s 17th Congressional District told Jewish Insider, rising antisemitism is a factor in his bid to unseat Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY). But he also accused Republicans of cynically weaponizing the issue with no intent to actually address the problem.
Sacks told JI in an interview earlier this month that local and nationwide antisemitism was a major reason he decided to run, saying “I’m running for my community, my congregation and my country.”
“As a Jewish father raising my kids in the Jewish faith, this is my community. It’s not a political issue for me. It’s personal,” Sacks said. “When I go to Congress, this is not an issue I’ll take on to score political points, but for the rights of my community and my faith.”
“I was raised with an understanding that what is good for the Jews is what’s also good for the community and for the country, and to seek out and vindicate those universal values from which this country is founded,” Sacks continued, “that has helped make it a haven for Jews since we first started arriving in this country.”
“Under the guise of addressing antisemitism, [President Donald] Trump is attacking American values and violating our Constitution in the Jewish people’s name,” Sacks said. “These are values — free speech, due process — that we’ve learned from history, when turned on other people will be turned on us too. It’s un-American, and that’s not how we overcome antisemitism.”
He said that his patriotism and his sense of civic pride is deeply entwined with his Jewish identity, and said he wants to ensure that everyone, regardless of background, can share that sense of pride.
Sacks called antisemitism on college campuses a real problem that must be addressed, but argued that the Trump administration’s policies stripping research funding from universities and rescinding visas from anti-Israel demonstrators are not serious efforts to combat antisemitism.
“Under the guise of addressing antisemitism, [President Donald] Trump is attacking American values and violating our Constitution in the Jewish people’s name,” Sacks said. “These are values — free speech, due process — that we’ve learned from history, when turned on other people will be turned on us too. It’s un-American, and that’s not how we overcome antisemitism.”
If elected, he said he’d speak out against antisemitism, work to facilitate dialogue and support Nonprofit Security Grant Funding. And he said he’d support any legislation to combat antisemitism that he believed was sincere and would be effective, and was not aimed at scoring “political points off our people’s plight and peril.”
He didn’t speak specifically on whether he would support Lawler’s Antisemitism Awareness Act, but accused Republicans of trying to protect those making antisemitic accusations that Jews killed Jesus in amendments to the legislation.
Sacks also accused Republicans of weaponizing antisemitism in the 17th District race, referring to an incident in which a National Republican Congressional Committee spokesperson called out Sacks and the other 17th District candidates over the vandalism of an Albany GOP headquarters building with the word “Nazis.” The spokesperson demanded the candidates condemn the vandalism, which occurred more than 100 miles away, in another part of the state.
“What will guide my response to any threat to Israel is … where to find that solution that can lead us back to a path of peace and a path of coexistence where it all might seem bleak and dark and gone in those moments of greatest peril,” Sacks said.
Sacks called the move “cynical” and in “bad faith,” adding, “we need to confront these efforts to use our own identities against us head-on.”
He hinted toward his family’s Jewish background in his campaign launch video, which includes a shot of Sacks working on a Hebrew workbook with one of his sons at their dinner table, a scene that a campaign spokesperson described as a weekly occurrence.
Sacks described himself as a “proud Zionist guided by my belief in our need for a Jewish democratic state,” adding that he associates himself with “the 69% of Israelis who want to bring all the hostages home and have a ceasefire.”
He said he “stand[s] against those on the far left who deny the necessity of a Jewish state” as well as those on the far right who would “sacrifice Israel’s democracy to extend control over all the Palestinian territories.” Sacks said he would oppose any efforts to block weapons shipments to Israel.
Sacks associated himself with those protesting against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel and Yair Golan, the leader of a left-leaning opposition party in Israel. (This interview took place before recent comments by Golan sparked widespread backlash.) He described Israeli figures like Yitzhak Rabin and author Amos Oz as his “heroes,” condemning the “racist extremism” of National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and blasting Lawler for meeting with Ben-Gvir during his trip to the U.S. last month.
He said that a two-state solution is the best path to ensure Israel’s security and existence as a Jewish state, which he emphasized must include removing Hamas from leadership in Gaza and fighting for a pathway to Palestinian statehood. “I do not believe [the two-state solution] is dead. I do not believe that it can’t be resurrected if it is dead. I believe that is the only way forward,” he said.
“What will guide my response to any threat to Israel is … where to find that solution that can lead us back to a path of peace and a path of coexistence where it all might seem bleak and dark and gone in those moments of greatest peril,” Sacks said.
Sacks argued that new leadership is needed in the U.S. to help move back toward a two-state solution, arguing “the U.S. needs to be led by a government that does not sympathize with those in Israel who would follow in the footsteps of Yitzhak Rabin’s assassin,” referring to Ben-Gvir.
Sacks traveled to Israel in December 2008, as Israel was launching Operation Cast Lead in Gaza. He said that his takeaway from those operations, after which attacks from Gaza on Israel resumed, is that “the answer is not whether to respond, but how. And the solution is political, not military.”
“What will guide my response to any threat to Israel is … where to find that solution that can lead us back to a path of peace and a path of coexistence where it all might seem bleak and dark and gone in those moments of greatest peril,” Sacks said.
Addressing the ongoing nuclear talks between the U.S. and Iran, Sacks emphasized that Tehran has “never been weaker” and described the Islamic Republic as a decaying and “sclerotic” regime. He said the U.S.’ path forward should be calibrated to protect Israel from “any rash decision by a wounded Iranian regime looking to stay relevant in the region.”
He expressed skepticism that Trump would be able to achieve an effective deal that would ensure peace and security, pointing to the president’s decision to pull out of the original 2015 nuclear deal during his first term, adding that Trump now appears to be renegotiating something along the same lines.
Sacks said that the original nuclear deal was “a great deal for the time,” but said that the state of affairs now and when he would be in Congress would be very different, and his support for any potential deal would “depend on the details of the deal in context with that geopolitical moment and the security demands of our allies in the region.”
Addressing his candidacy more broadly, Sacks said that his prior career as a reporter gave him a “front row seat to the deterioration of our democracy and billionaires profiting at our expense” and the deep issues in U.S. politics. He said rising costs and the “tepid” response from Democrats to Republican policies were other contributing factors to his run.
He framed himself as fighting to restore American democracy against a “would-be king seizing power for himself from the people to enrich his billionaire best friends at our expense.”
Rep. Elise Stefanik is floating a run for governor, joining Rep. Mike Lawler, who has also been seen as planning to run for the state’s top job
DOMINIC GWINN via Getty Images
New York Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik during the 2024 Conservative Political Action Conference the Gaylord National Convention Center in Fort Washington, Maryland, Friday, Feb. 23, 2024.
The New York Republican gubernatorial primary could pit two lawmakers popular in the Jewish community — Reps. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) and Mike Lawler (R-NY) — against each other.
Lawler has long been seen as a likely GOP candidate, but Stefanik’s potential entry comes as more of a surprise, weeks after President Donald Trump asked her to withdraw her nomination to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
Both lawmakers have been stalwart advocates on issues of concern within the Jewish community. Stefanik has been an outspoken supporter of Israel and aggressively questioned college presidents about antisemitism during House Education and Workforce Committee hearings in 2023.
Lawler leads the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s Middle East subcommittee and has also been among the House’s most vocal supporters of Israel and opponents of antisemitism, passing multiple bipartisan bills on the issues. He represents one of the nation’s most Jewish districts in the New York City suburbs, which is also a swing seat.
Stefanik appeared to lean into the speculation — first raised in an NBC News article on Wednesday and confirmed by other outlets — with a campaign press release attacking New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and highlighting a poll showing a majority of New Yorkers do not want Hochul to seek reelection.
“This latest bombshell polling proves what every New Yorker already knows: that we must FIRE Kathy Hochul in 2026 to SAVE NEW YORK. Hochul is the Worst Governor in America and it’s not even close,” Stefanik said in the release. “This polling shows that we can WIN & SAVE NEW YORK.”
A campaign spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment about the possibility of a primary against Lawler. Lawler did not rule out the possibility of a primary against Stefanik, but also praised her.
“Elise Stefanik has been a powerful leader in the House, where she maintains a strong and important role in leading our conference. We both agree that Kathy Hochul is the worst Governor in America, bar none,” Lawler said in a statement to Jewish Insider. “In 2026, New Yorkers have a chance to elect a strong, competent leader to move the state in a better direction. In the coming months the process will play out to ensure that Republicans have the strongest candidate possible.”
Given her long record in Congress, fundraising prowess and close ties to President Donald Trump as a former cabinet nominee and vocal defender of him in GOP leadership, Stefanik would likely have the edge in the GOP primary.
Amid the speculation, Trump posted on Truth Social, “Congresswoman Elise Stefanik is GREAT!!!” suggesting she’d be well-positioned to receive his endorsement.
But Lawler’s more moderate profile and willingness to reach across the aisle and distance himself from Trump at times could prove an asset in the general election, with swing voters and persuadable Democrats wary of voting for an ardent Trump supporter.
He has twice proven his electoral mettle by winning a district that both former President Joe Biden and former Vice President Kamala Harris carried in their presidential campaigns.
Congressional Republicans would be happy to see Lawler remain in Congress; his departure would make winning his seat more difficult, while Stefanik’s upstate district is more favorable to Republicans. But Stefanik is also a member of House Republican leadership.
On the other side of the aisle, Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY), another favorite of the Jewish community, has openly mused about a gubernatorial run against Hochul in the Democratic primary.
The anti-poverty advocate pushed for Holocaust education in her daughter’s school and said universities that fail to protect Jewish students should lose federal funding
Flynn Larsen
Jessica Reinmann
Jessica Reinmann, a Democratic nonprofit executive challenging Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) in New York’s 17th Congressional District, said, in a recent interview with Jewish Insider, that she feels a deep personal connection and dedication to the State of Israel and to the Jewish people, which she traces back to her strong relationship with her grandfather when she was young.
Her grandfather’s mother and her sister were the only children, out of 16 in their family, to survive the Holocaust, but they were separated — her great grandmother coming to the United States and her sister going to Israel.
She said that her grandfather would regularly visit his family in Israel and would tell her stories about them, teaching her that Israel is “not just a state” but “our homeland.” She said that her grandfather also instilled in her a strong sense of Jewish heritage and peoplehood, recalling that he helped her practice her haftorah for her bat mitzvah, and saw him reading it along with her as she recited it.
“For me, Israel’s right to exist, its right to defend itself, its right to be our homeland — the Jewish people’s homeland — located where it is is undeniable,” Reinmann said. “We’ve had a long-standing relationship that not only protects democracy in the Middle East, but it protects all of the Jewish citizens of the United States … and we must maintain that relationship.”
When he died, her grandfather required that some of the inheritance he left her family be used for them to visit Israel, which they did in 1994. It was Reinmann’s first time out of the country — her family could not previously afford to travel to Israel.
Reinmann recalled in detail the feeling of connection to the history of the Jewish people when she stood before the Western Wall in Jerusalem and placed a note addressed to her grandfather between the bricks.
“I remember my note that I put in the Wailing Wall was ‘Dear Grandpa, I finally made it. I love you,’” Reinmann said. “My grandfather was my person, and so being there was just a connection to him that I have never felt again.”
Reinmann said that her Jewish upbringing — strongly influenced by her grandfather — and the values of tikkun olam and tzedakah that it instilled in her have been a major influence on her desire to give back to her community, first as a nonprofit leader and now as an aspiring public servant.
The district in the New York City suburbs, once a blue bastion, has been key to Republicans’ control of the House in the past two cycles and Democrats are hoping to claw it back in the next year’s midterms. It’s also among the most Jewish districts in the country, and the incumbent Lawler has built strong support in the community.
Addressing the specifics of the war in Gaza, Reinmann emphasized that Hamas provoked the war by attacking Israel and taking hostages, and that it could have ended the war at any time by releasing the hostages.
The three priorities for the U.S. now, Reinmann said, must be returning all of the hostages, “annihilat[ing] Hamas” and finding a path forward toward peace.
“I think we really need to take back our standing in the world as the leader of the free world and as the leading democracy,” Reinmann said.
“I imagine [peace] looks like a two-state solution at some point, but until there’s less hatred, until everybody can deal with each each other with dignity and respect, there’s going to be a lot of peacekeeping that needs to be done once Hamas is gone to protect Israel and Israelis,” Reinmann said.
Asked about the regional threat from Iran, Reinmann said that the U.S. needs “do everything that we can … both diplomatically and militarily” to ensure that Iran cannot develop a nuclear weapon, as well as cut off Iran’s financing.
“I think we really need to take back our standing in the world as the leader of the free world and as the leading democracy,” Reinmann added.
On the home front, Reinmann said she’s seen the impact of campus antisemitism through her daughter, who is currently a student at Yale. Her daughter, she said, had to walk past and through antisemitic encampments with signs calling for “Intifada” and “From the River to the Sea.”
“She’ll say that it was no big deal because she could walk away from it, but I think it changed her,” Reinmann said.
“When institutions that receive a significant amount of federal funding continuously allow students on their campus to feel scared and to feel discriminated against and to not be able to get into classes — if we don’t hold places accountable under Title VI, there’s no point in having Title VI,” Reinmann said.
She said that she strongly believes in the First Amendment, even the right to express hateful views, as long as it is done in a manner that is civil and in compliance with relevant regulations. But she emphasized that speech that incites violence is not free speech.
She said that college campuses need to fulfill their legal responsibilities to protect students against discrimination, and if they fail to do so, the law is clear that their funding should be revoked, with due process.
“When institutions that receive a significant amount of federal funding continuously allow students on their campus to feel scared and to feel discriminated against and to not be able to get into classes — if we don’t hold places accountable under Title VI, there’s no point in having Title VI,” Reinmann said.
She said she had been involved locally in implementing and improving Holocaust education, work Reinmann said she began when she built a relationship with the Holocaust and Human Education Rights Center in White Plans, N.Y., through her daughter’s bat mitzvah project.
Reinmann said that her daughter told her that her school did not have any dedicated Holocaust education and subsequently, as the head of the middle school parent-teacher association, Reinmann worked with the school to bring in a Holocaust survivor to speak and launch a Holocaust education program.
Reinmann found that her daughter’s high school did not recognize International Holocaust Remembrance Day, and she joined a Jewish parents’ group which pressed the school to institute an annual day of special classes for students from second through twelfth grade on Holocaust Remembrance Day.
She said that more than 70 families from the school also came together last year for a Shabbat dinner, with the goal of “really making the Jewish religion not so obscure to people.”
Before facing Lawler — or another Republican, should he decide to run for governor of New York — in the general election, Reinmann will face Rockland County legislator Beth Davidson and likely other Democrats in the Democratic primary. The district is among House Democrats’ top targets to flip in the upcoming midterms.
Reinmann has spent the last 10 years leading 914Cares, an anti-poverty charity based in Westchester County, but said that with the return of the Trump administration, she felt she could do more to make a difference on the issues that she cares about by stepping up to run for federal office.
She said that her experience at 914Cares has exposed her to and given her experience working with a broad cross-section of the Westchester community, from affluent donors to underresourced communities. She said she also formed local networks with schools, health care centers, day cares, police and fire departments and other nonprofits to distribute assistance and meet people where they are.
Reinmann’s organization does not take federal money, but she said she has been involved in local, state and national political advocacy on poverty issues.
Her key issues in Congress, she said, would be affordability, supporting unions, poverty awareness and gun safety legislation, naming several fellow New York Democrats including Reps. Pat Ryan (D-NY), George Latimer (D-NY) and Grace Meng (D-NY) as specific members she’s hoping to work with on such issues.
She also emphasized the need to restore the U.S.’ standing globally, repair relationships with allies that Trump has damaged and restore USAID, as well as protect government services that the administration has or may attempt to cut.
The other leading Democratic candidates for New York City mayor condemned the arrest as unconstitutional and authoritarian
Seth Wenig-Pool/Getty Images
Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo
Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is so far staying silent with regard to the arrest by federal agents on Sunday of a Palestinian student activist who played a leading role in anti-Israel protests at Columbia University last year — as several primary rivals for New York City mayor condemn the move.
A spokesperson for Cuomo, a Democrat who announced his mayoral bid a week ago, did not return requests for comment from Jewish Insider on Monday. He has otherwise declined to publicly address the matter.
His hesitation to weigh in on the politically charged issue suggests that Cuomo — who has been courting Jewish and pro-Israel voters — is taking a cautious approach to the Trump administration’s polarizing crackdown on campus protests even as he indicates that combating rising antisemitism is among his top priorities.
“The law must be aggressively enforced and our New York should go even further and be at the forefront, leading the fight against the global rise of antisemitism,” Cuomo said in a 17-minute kickoff video, which featured an image of an anti-Israel demonstration outside of Fordham University.
The former governor has also pledged to stand up to President Donald Trump, characterizing him as “the bully in the schoolyard” who “puts his finger in your chest.”
Cuomo’s opponents in the June primary election, meanwhile, have almost unanimously denounced the arrest as a violation of due process and called for the release of Mahmoud Khalil — a green card holder who was detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents days after the Trump administration said it would slash $400 million in federal funding from Columbia over the university’s handling of alleged antisemitic protests.
Brad Lander, the progressive-minded city comptroller and a Jewish Democrat, called the arrest “an unconstitutional and egregious violation of the First Amendment, and a frightening weaponization of immigration law.”
“I disagree strongly with things that were said in the protests he reportedly led,” Lander said on Sunday. “But it will not make Jews — or any of us — safer for the federal government to deport people for saying things we may find hateful.”
In a statement to JI on Monday, Scott Stringer, the former comptroller and a Jewish Democrat, said it is “absolutely absurd for the government to arrest people they don’t agree with.”
“While I disagree with many of the tactics and rhetoric of the protests at Columbia, the Trump administration detaining a green card holder for engaging in speech they don’t like is a clear violation of First Amendment rights,” Stringer added.
Zohran Mamdani, a state assemblyman from Queens and the most outspoken critic of Israel in the mayoral race, also denounced the arrest as “a blatant assault on the First Amendment and a sign of advancing authoritarianism under Trump,” he wrote on social media. “He must be released now.”
Mamdani added in a separate post that Cuomo’s continued avoidance of the issue shows he is “not prepared to stand up to Donald Trump.”
“This chilling action by the Trump administration crosses another line towards authoritarianism,” said Zellnor Myrie, a Brooklyn state senator who is one of several progressives in the race. “ICE has no right to detain a green card holder who has not been convicted of, or even charged with, any crime. This is profoundly un-American, and Khalil must be released.”
Adrienne Adams, the City Council speaker who officially launched her mayoral bid on Saturday, likewise characterized Khalil’s arrest as an act of “blatant authoritarianism.”
“This is a civil rights issue and an astounding overreach that disregards the U.S. Constitution,” she said on Monday. “It should concern every American and cannot be allowed to stand.”
In a statement shared with JI on Monday, Jessica Ramos, a state senator from Queens, said that the Trump administration had “offered no serious legal justification for Khalil’s detention, instead citing a Trump executive order.”
“We know from history that abuse of detention powers are a hallmark of authoritarian regimes,” Ramos added. “Contrary to his own belief, Trump is not a king. His actions are a threat to all of us, even those who disagree with Khalil’s speech. I demand the immediate release of Mahmoud Khalil.”
The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement on Sunday that Khalil had been arrested “in support of President Trump’s executive orders prohibiting anti-Semitism,” claiming the former Columbia graduate student “led activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization.”
“ICE and the Department of State are committed to enforcing President Trump’s executive orders and to protecting U.S. national security,” the statement added.
Khalil, who has not been formally charged with a crime, is being held in an immigration detention facility in Louisiana, according to an online ICE database. His attorney has vowed to challenge the arrest in court.
Trump, in comments posted to social media on Monday, said that Khalil’s detention “is the first arrest of many to come.”
“We know there are more students at Columbia and other Universities across the Country who have engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity, and the Trump Administration will not tolerate it,” he wrote. “Many are not students, they are paid agitators. We will find, apprehend, and deport these terrorist sympathizers from our country — never to return again.”
A spokesperson for New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who had aggressively targeted Columbia protestors last year, declined to comment on the arrest. “We don’t have a lot of information on this beyond what has been reported,” the spokesperson told JI, adding that Adams’ team “doesn’t work with ICE on civil immigration enforcement.”
The mayor has in recent weeks faced widespread calls to resign over accusations, which he denies, that he negotiated a deal with the Department of Justice to dismiss his federal corruption charges in exchange for enforcing the Trump administration’s immigration agenda.
Jim Walden, a former federal prosecutor who is running as an independent, shared a more skeptical view of Khalil on Monday, even as he called for due process in handling his arrest. “I cannot lend my voice to someone who strikes me as an antisemitic terrorist sympathizer,” he told JI in a statement. “He deserves due process of law in the United States — unlike the repressive regimes he supports.”
“Offering support to terrorists, attacking Jewish students, and engaging in hate speech seem like valid reasons for authorities to take a closer look at pro-Hamas organizers,” Walden said.
Alvin Bragg and Tali Farhadian Weinstein differ on policing strategy as uptick in violent crime comes to define the election
Courtesy/Matthew Kassel
Tali Farhadian Weinstein and Alvin Bragg (Courtesy/Matthew Kassel)
Most of the eight Democratic candidates running for Manhattan district attorney in New York City’s crowded June 22 primary election believe that the office is in need of a makeover, even as they have put forth competing visions — some more sweeping than others — for enacting change.
The open-seat race to succeed outgoing District Attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr., whose record has drawn scrutiny as he prepares to retire after more than a decade in office, represents a rare and unique opportunity to advance a new criminal justice agenda amid a national reckoning over racial inequality, mass incarceration and police accountability.
Some candidates in the race advocate for relatively measured reforms, including calls for restorative justice, prioritizing major crimes over low-level offenses that distract from more meaningful casework and revamping a variety of units. But three outspoken progressives are vowing to reshape the office by slashing its budget and reducing staff, among other measures. The candidates — a civil rights attorney, a public defender and a state assemblyman — have no prosecutorial experience but wear that distinction as a point of pride, claiming that the system is excessively punitive and in need of an outsider’s perspective.
But with just under a week remaining until Manhattanites cast their ballots — and with early voting already underway — voter enthusiasm instead appears to be coalescing around two center-left establishment candidates: Tali Farhadian Weinstein and Alvin Bragg, former federal prosecutors with years of experience working within the criminal justice system. In one of the few publicly available polls on the race, released Monday by the progressive think tank Data for Progress, the two were tied for first place with 26% among likely Democratic primary voters in Manhattan surveyed between June 7 and 13.
Though 21% of respondents were undecided, suggesting that the race is somewhat fluid, the third-place candidate, Lucy Lang, a former assistant district attorney for Manhattan, was trailing by double digits with just 8% of the vote. Tahanie Aboushi, the left-leaning attorney who recently earned a major endorsement from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), was a point behind Lang in fourth place. Despite describing herself as “the leading progressive” in an email to Jewish Insider earlier this week, Aboushi has struggled to break out, as have Dan Quart and Eliza Orlins, who fill out the roster of non-prosecutors eyeing one of the most high-profile prosecutorial jobs in the country.
The apparent lack of enthusiasm for a staunchly progressive Manhattan district attorney in some ways mirrors the dynamic at play in the mayoral race, whose contours are being increasingly shaped by the uptick in violent crime across the city. Most of the left-wing mayoral candidates have been overshadowed by moderates like Andrew Yang, Kathryn Garcia and Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president and former police captain who has surged to the top of the polls while aggressively promoting a public safety message.
Farhadian Weinstein, who most recently served as general counsel to the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office, has sought to allay such fears, casting herself as one of the few candidates in the race who is willing to address crime with a sense of practicality. “Isn’t that interesting that in the mayor’s race, the candidates are, as a group, by and large, speaking about it much more sensibly and realistically than the candidates for the chief law enforcement officer of Manhattan?” she wondered rhetorically last Friday afternoon at a campaign stop outside a kosher market on the Upper West Side.
“People want to feel safe, and they know that safety is connected to the recovery of the city,” Farhadian Weinstein, 45, told JI. “When I stand outside of subway stations, as political candidates often do in order to try to meet a good flow of voters, it seems to be an invitation for people to talk about how they feel about the subway, and people are talking about how their chests are tightening up when they’re going in. There’s just this sense of insecurity that is affecting people’s choices and is really degrading, and we have to do something about that.”
Farhadian Weinstein, who says that women in particular have often expressed such anxieties to her, proposes establishing a bureau of gender-based violence, while pledging to prosecute subway crimes “where appropriate” as well as appointing a gun violence coordinator and opening a courtroom in Manhattan dedicated to gun cases.
Her message seems to be resonating. “I responded to her immediately,” Thomas Kopache, an actor who lives on 93rd Street and Columbus Avenue, told JI outside the kosher market.. “It just seems like the gun violence has gotten out of control, and I just feel like we need a stronger stance on that. I applaud what she’s going to try to do.”
A woman who approached Farhadian Weinstein last week near the intersection of 90th Street and Broadway expressed a similar concern. “I’m concerned about what’s going on with the police, not that they’re doing bad things — it’s just the opposite,” she said. “This business of defunding the police, an 11-year-old being shot, a father being shot — where do you stand on this?”
Farhadian replied without hesitation. “So I am alone, almost, in my field in not being for defunding the police,” she averred. “Six out of eight people in my race are defunders of one kind or another, and the other one besides me, her name is Liz,” Farhadian Weinstein said, referring to Liz Crotty, a former assistant district attorney in Manhattan and now a practicing criminal defense lawyer who has carved out a somewhat more conservative path than her opponents. “But she’s not a viable candidate.”
Crotty, who has indeed failed to gain traction in the crowded field, does reject calls to defund the police, though she has also noted, correctly, that the district attorney has no authority over the police budget.
Not that candidates are shying away from the subject: Bragg, for his part, is in favor of trimming the budget for homeless sweeps, mental health responses and policing in schools — proposals he believes rank-and-file officers will agree with. But in terms of what he will be able to do in office, Bragg emphasizes a need for more rigorously investigating allegations of police misconduct if he is elected.
Bragg, who has been described as a “pragmatic progressive,” opts for an evenhanded approach that is informed by his own lived experience as well as his background as a career prosecutor.
“My whole life has been talking about both safety and fairness,” Bragg, 47, told JI on Tuesday afternoon in Harlem, where he lives with his wife and two children, as he campaigned on Frederick Douglass Boulevard and 116th Street, just a block from a group of volunteers distributing flyers for Farhadian Weinstein. “More people started talking about police accountability this past year because of the uptick in gun incidents,” he said. “So I’ve talked to people about them, but about how they’re inextricably interwoven. Places where we have the most acute police accountability issues are also where we have the most acute public safety issues, and everyone wants both.”
Bragg, a former civil rights lawyer who worked as New York’s chief deputy attorney general from 2017 to 2018, where some of his most notable cases included suing disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein and the Trump administration, would be Manhattan’s first Black district attorney. He often speaks about growing up in Harlem, where he was wrongly held at gunpoint by the police on numerous occasions — injustices that influenced his decision to become a lawyer while adding a personal dimension to his candidacy.
Gwen Barton, a retired healthcare worker in Harlem, told JI that she is voting for Bragg because she appreciates his story. “Being from the area, raised in the area, I like that, because I’ve been in the same neighborhood,” said Barton, a member of Local 1199 of the Service Employees International Union, the largest union in the city, which has endorsed Bragg. “He would really know the experience, and he sees what’s been going on here with the police and all of that.”
“I’m going to vote for him,” said Santiago Almonte, a retired correctional officer who lives in the neighborhood. “He’s going to do better than the one that’s in there right now,” he added, referring to Vance, who has faced accusations of going easy on powerful figures in recent years.
Alvin Bragg on a recent stroll on the streets of Harlem. (Mathew Kassel)
While Bragg and Farhadian Weinstein have crafted differing strategies for addressing such matters as violent crime, gun control and incarceration, the two candidates are more aligned than it may seem on those issues, though there are some subtle distinctions, according to Rebecca Roiphe, a professor at New York Law School.
“These two candidates are not wildly different in their approach to violent crime,” Roiphe told JI. “Alvin Bragg’s approach focuses on cutting off the flow of illegal guns to the city, community programs and prosecution targeted at the most violent crimes. He does not want to use incarceration as a primary tool to address violence. Tali Farhadian Weinstein proposes similar programs, but she is more interested in creating specialized gun courts, which will accelerate prosecutions and is more open to prosecuting gun possession in certain circumstances.”
Both candidates “see a role for incarceration in crime control, but for Bragg it is more of a last resort reserved mostly for people who have committed violent acts and are unlikely to benefit from community and other social programs,” Roiphe added. Farhadian Weinstein, on the other hand, “seems more willing to use it as a deterrent in some cases.”
Bragg and Farhadian Weinstein have also vowed to increase the office’s focus on hate crimes as attacks against Jews and Asian-Americans have surged over the past year.
As the primary draws near, Bragg and Farhadian Weinstein have pulled ahead in the race, thanks to a series of high-profile endorsements that have buoyed their candidacies. Bragg was recently endorsed by Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), the powerful chair of the House Judiciary Committee, as well as The New York Times, a stamp of approval that is likely to lend him credibility among the newspaper’s conventionally liberal readers in Manhattan. Farhadian Weinstein, meanwhile, has earned the support of the city’s two major tabloids, the Daily News and The New York Post — which do not usually align politically — and on Tuesday was endorsed by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Farhadian Weinstein has also benefited from boosting her campaign with $8.2 million of her own money, which she has used to blanket the city with TV advertising and campaign mailers in the final weeks of the race. The massive personal donation has raised some eyebrows, as have contributions from a number of Wall Street-affiliated donors. Farhadian Weinstein, who is married to the hedge fund owner Boaz Weinstein, has maintained that such apparent conflicts of interest will not hinder her ability to perform in a job whose duties include prosecuting white-collar criminals. The next district attorney is also expected to inherit Vance’s current ongoing investigation into former President Donald Trump’s taxes.
Farhadian Weinstein has continued to face scrutiny as she has emerged as a frontrunner. A recent ProPublica investigation found that Farhadian Weinstein and her husband paid no federal income taxes in 2013, 2015 and 2017. They paid just $6,584 in 2014.
Recently, Farhadian Weinstein has gone on the offensive, commissioning a poll that was accused of spreading misleading information about Bragg as well as releasing a new attack ad alleging that Bragg and Quart “won’t protect women” when it comes to rape and domestic violence cases. Both campaigns have rejected the characterization.
Bragg has raised $2.35 million, according to a spokesperson for his campaign, which has also garnered $1 million in outside spending from a national progressive political action committee. Despite being outspent, however, he may still have an advantage in a primary where identity politics is likely to influence the race, particularly at a moment when Adams is vying to be the city’s second Black mayor, says Eli Valentin, an author and political analyst. “You have the below-96th Street dynamic and the north-of-96th Street dynamic, and I think in this election that may actually play out,” he told JI. “High Black turnout may favor someone like Bragg.”
If she is elected, Farhadian Weinstein would be the borough’s first female district attorney. A Persian Jew, she fled Iran at the age of 4, settling with her family in New Jersey before pursuing a law degree and scoring clerkships with Attorney General Merrick B. Garland, who was then a judge, and former Associate Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. Farhadian Weinstein worked in the Justice Department during the Obama administration and went on to serve in the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office under Eric Gonzalez, where she helped publish a comprehensive study analyzing wrongful convictions and filed a successful lawsuit in partnership with New York State Attorney General Letitia James against the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.
On the Upper West Side last week, Farhadian Weinstein seemed to be enjoying her status as a leading candidate competing in a primary whose victor will be all but assured safe passage in the general election given the partisan makeup of the borough. Between conversations with potential voters, she stopped to chat in Hebrew with an elderly man who had just recently returned from Israel, while her mother and daughter, one of three, hovered nearby for moral support.
Likewise, Bragg was in his element days later as he pounded the pavement about 30 blocks north, engaging potential constituents and reflecting with locals about Harlem during the crack epidemic in the 1980s. Standing on the corner of 116th Street and Frederick Douglass Boulevard, he took a brief pause from campaigning when a man he recognized rode by on a bicycle without a helmet on. Bragg seemed mildly alarmed at the sight.
“Joseph!” Bragg yelled from across the street. “You out here on a bike? Is that Marley? I love it. Be safe! Helmet! Helmet!”
New York City councilmember is vying to become the next Brooklyn borough president
Matthew Kassel
Robert Cornegy
With his towering 6-foot-10 frame topped by a bundle of impressive dreadlocks, Robert Cornegy, Jr., a New York City councilmember who until recently claimed the title of tallest politician in the world, was hard to miss as he sauntered into Basquiat’s Bottle, a trendy bar and restaurant on a commercial drag in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant.
“This is one of the restaurants that’s kind of central to the community,” Cornegy, 55, told Jewish Insider on a recent Sunday afternoon, settling in at a table in the back while contemplating an order of shrimp and grits.
Cornegy, whose district includes Bedford-Stuyvesant as well as Crown Heights, is now competing for the more high-profile role of Brooklyn borough president — and he has been savoring the opportunity to step away from Zoom, hit the pavement and make a more personal impression on potential voters with just weeks remaining until the June 22 Democratic primary.
“Because I’m such an attraction, I’m used to meeting people and engaging people,” said Cornegy, who wasn’t boasting so much as accurately characterizing his striking height. “I’m on the doors, I’m in the streets, I’m in bars, I’m in restaurants talking to people. When people generally get a chance to speak to me and know me, whether they’re with me or not, they walk away with a solid impression.”
But Cornegy is relying on more than just his memorable presence as he jockeys to succeed Eric Adams, the outgoing borough president and mayoral hopeful. In recent months, Cornegy has established himself as a leading contender in the crowded field of more than a dozen candidates, tying for first place in one poll alongside fellow city councilmember Antonio Reynoso, with Assemblymember Jo Anne Simon, who leads in fundraising, not far behind.
Robert Cornegy in Coney Island (Courtesy)
While Reynoso has pulled in support from a number of leading progressives, Cornegy is carving out a center-left lane, having earned endorsements from several prominent Jewish community leaders as well as influential celebrities including Tracy Morgan and Spike Lee.
Facing term limits in the City Council, where he has served since 2014, Cornegy believes that he is best qualified to usher his home borough into a post-pandemic era, citing his current role leading the housing and buildings committee as well as his prior experience chairing the small business committee.
“During the pandemic, it became incredibly evident to me that whoever was going to lead this borough had to have a solid understanding for the recovery process of small business and job creation and responsible development,” said Cornegy, who is also chairman of the council’s Democratic Conference. “While we try to fight for affordability in an ever-increasing, unaffordable borough, the person couldn’t be just a ‘no, no, no’ person. It had to be somebody who was willing to fight the hard fight around affordability and who had some acumen within that.”
The borough presidency is largely ceremonial, holding some substantive duties like community board appointments and zoning and land use recommendations. But Cornegy says he is excited by the role because it nevertheless represents a powerful platform.
“We have the largest bully pulpit probably in the state outside of the mayor of New York and the governor,” he argued, indicating that the primary pillars of his campaign are job growth, affordable housing and public safety — perhaps the issue on which he is most passionate.
The city councilman was an active presence last summer at social justice demonstrations in his district, where a Black Lives Matter mural was painted in bright yellow letters onto a block-length stretch of Fulton Street he helped turn into a pedestrian plaza. But while Cornegy advocates for increased policy accountability, he has distanced himself from efforts to defund or abolish the police.
“I don’t think it’s mutually exclusive to demand reform and accountability in the criminal justice system — I’m a Black man in America — while still supporting a platform for solid public safety,” said Cornegy. “I don’t think you have to abandon one for the other.”
He says his constituents are largely in agreement with his views. “My community, the community of Bedford-Stuyvesant and northern Crown Heights, has never demanded abolishing or defunding the police,” said Cornegy, who believes that police officers should live in the neighborhoods they work in and advocates for the establishment of a mental health emergency response unit. “They’ve demanded policing in their communities that didn’t violate their civil and human rights, and I think most people would agree with that as a narrative.”
Henry Butler and City Councilman Robert Cornegy speak during “The Last O.G. Season 2” Garden Party For Good at the Hattie Carthan Community Garden in Brooklyn on March 28, 2019 in New York City. 547100 (Credit: Mike Coppola/Getty Images for TBS)
Still, Cornegy has found himself at odds with progressives who support more sweeping reforms. “He’s trying to signal that he understands policing is a problem, but almost every elected official is saying that,” said Alex Vitale, a professor of sociology at Brooklyn College and the author of The End of Policing. “He does support some small investments in non-police public safety strategies, but those proposals are very small in scale and don’t reduce the burden of policing.”
Cornegy took issue with such criticism, noting that he is deeply engaged in reform efforts, pointing to his sponsorship of a chokehold criminalization bill as well as his support for ending qualified immunity, which has long protected police officers from wrongdoing.
“I can go all the way back where we’ve been witnessing this regularly in our communities and trying to find a substantive way for long-term, substantial change, and have been working towards that,” he told JI. “I think that there was a little bit of a disregard for that hard work that some of us have put in.”
Others have appreciated his approach. “Security is a major issue, especially considering all the anitsmeitic incidents,” said Leon Goldenberg, a prominent Orthodox Jewish real estate executive and talk radio host in Midwood who, as a member of the Flatbush Jewish Community Coalition, recently endorsed Cornegy.
If elected, Cornegy said he will use the borough president’s office as a “sanctuary” for victims of hate crimes while working to assemble a task force for attacks within Brooklyn. “In order to get a hate crime designation, it takes almost an act of god,” said Cornegy, who adds that he will encourage Brooklyn’s district attorney to act more forcefully on such designations. “This kind of hatred, unchecked, only escalates.”
Cornegy has longstanding ties with Brooklyn’s Orthodox Jewish community thanks in part, he said, to his support for causes like security funding of yeshivas. “My agenda for public safety certainly encompasses the Orthodox community and my narrative around public safety,” he said.
Such relationships, he says, have only accrued over time. “I celebrate the fact that, yes, while I’ve gotten Orthodox support,” Cornegy said, “it has come out of hard work together.”
Robert Cornegy in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn (Courtesy)
“I’ve worked on behalf of an issue that was germane to a particular demographic, and so that demographic now feels confident that, as a Black man, I could still have Jewish issues or Hispanic issues or Polish issues. I have a Polish contingency,” Cornegy told JI. “But those are all forged out of doing work that positively impacted those communities. So there’s this kind of feeling that, ‘OK, he’s Black, but he has a larger view of what the needs of public communities outside of his own are, and potentially can advocate on our behalf as well.’”
“I would say his claim to fame is he’s really a consensus builder,” said David Greenfield, the CEO of the Met Council and a former city councilman who served alongside Cornegy. “In Brooklyn, which is a big, complicated, complex borough, he’s done a good job bringing people together.”
The son of a Southern Baptist minister who grew up in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Cornegy — now a father of six — played basketball at St. John’s University, went to the Final Four and then played professionally overseas for 15 years. He spent some of that time playing in Israel in the early ’90s — while also living briefly on a kibbutz because he wanted to immerse himself in the culture — an experience he describes as formative. “I played on teams where they were professional athletes and still served in the military,” he recalled. “When I would ask why, there was a level of patriotism that existed that I didn’t even think existed in the United States.”
“I’m a patriot,” Cornegy said. “I love the United States of America. But I hadn’t seen that before.”
Cornegy described the recent violence between Israel and Hamas as “incredibly disturbing,” adding: “I was there, and I understand protecting your homeland from people who really have to do that on a consistent basis.”
“Because we’re such a diverse borough, it is always on my mind how to bring peace here, at least, because you’ll see that there are conflicts that are happening on our homeland because of what’s happening there,” Cornegy told JI. “That disturbs me a lot, because for the most part, here in the borough, we kind of live cohesively together, and I’m always thinking about what can I do as the Brooklyn borough president to alleviate some of that pressure that people are experiencing.”
Robert Cornegy at a rally
That impulse was on display, on a smaller scale, at Basquiat’s Bottle in Bedford-Stuyvesant the other day, when a kitchen worker approached Cornegy to thank him for providing a free suit for his graduation not long ago. And although the city councilman only had a glass of water, he still bought a round of drinks for the wait staff — he abstained — rather than leaving the restaurant without having ordered anything.
It was clear that Cornegy was enjoying his status as a kind of community fixture as he campaigns for the opportunity to expand his web of connections.
Cornegy gained some prominence outside of Brooklyn when, having undergone a rigorous vetting process, Guinness World Records deemed him the world’s tallest politician a couple of years ago. But he lost his crown after an insurance commissioner in North Dakota beat him by a centimeter. “A centimeter,” Cornegy emphasized, sounding a note of amused annoyance, “and some obscure elective role that I’ve never even heard of before.”
He didn’t seem too bothered by it, though. “I’m still the people’s champ here in New York,” he said. “I’ll take that.”
As a candidate in the special election to fill a vacant City Council seat in the Bronx, Haller wants to bring Jewish values to public office
Courtesy
For Jessica Haller, 2006 was a watershed year. A managing consultant at MasterCard, her daily commute — from her home in the Bronx to New York’s Westchester County — gave her plenty of time to contemplate the issues of the day. That summer, some 5,000 miles away, a deadly war was raging between Israel and Hezbollah. Haller, whose father is Israeli and who has family in Israel, felt a mixture of discontent and helplessness.
It was during one of those commutes that Haller made the decision to quit her job and refocus her time on making a lasting impact.
“I remember driving to work up the highway to Westchester from the Bronx and the absolute utter frustration I had knowing that there is not anything that I could do for my people and the State of Israel,” Haller recounted in a recent interview with Jewish Insider.
Knowing she was unable to end a war on the other side of the globe, Haller considered the ways she could make an impact a little closer to home. A national conversation about climate change was beginning around that time, and Haller’s interest was piqued.
“That was sort of my evolution, waking up and saying, ‘I need to learn about this. I am frustrated by not being able to help or prepare anything for my children in the future,’” explained Haller, who announced her run for the New York City Council in early 2020.
Months later, she took part in a climate change-focused training session led by former Vice President Al Gore and began applying for graduate school to study environmental science. The rest, as they say, is history.
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Haller, 46, was born and raised on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Her father, who was born to Polish Holocaust survivors in a displaced persons camp in post-World War II Germany, grew up in Azor, near Holon in central Israel. He came to the U.S. in 1970 and married Haller’s mother, a native of the Bronx.
After graduating from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, Haller worked as a consultant for the accounting firm Coopers & Lybrand and later as a managing consultant for MasterCard.
She received her master’s degree in environmental science and policy at Columbia University’s School of International & Public Affairs. After graduating, Haller partnered with two NASA scientists to create a climate data startup to bring data from the global climate models to municipalities and businesses. After it failed to secure funding, she started her own entrepreneurial and environmental consulting firm while working for various nonprofits and in local government.
Haller, a mother of four, suggested that climate change “has come to the point where we need leaders in elected office to understand what’s going on so that we can move as quickly as we need to.”
Candidate Jessica Haller during a recent interview in a New York City park. (Jacob Kornbluh)
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With many New York City councilmembers term-limited and leaving office at the end of next year, Haller had hoped to become one of at least 35 freshmen entering the 51-member chamber on January 1, 2022, as part of a new group of local legislators ready to push a progressive agenda. But the coronavirus pandemic and the early retirement of Councilmember Andrew Cohen, who will vacate his seat in the coming weeks after winning a state Supreme Court judgeship in November, has changed both Haller’s priorities and her timetable.
The special election to represent the 11th district, which includes the Bronx neighborhoods of Bedford Park, Kingsbridge, Riverdale, Wakefield, Woodlawn, Norwood and Van Courtland Village, will take place within 80 days of Cohen leaving his post.
Haller is running in a seven-person race, which includes Eric Dinowitz, a local public school teacher and son of State Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz; attorney Daniel Padernacht; social worker Abigail Martin; and local Democratic district leader Marcos Sierra. Dinowitz, who has both name recognition and establishment support in the district, is considered a leading candidate along with Haller. The two have each raised more than $70,000, enough to grant them public matching funds of $142,000.
The winner of the nonpartisan election — which will be one of the first races to use the city’s new ranked-choice voting system — will serve out the remainder of Cohen’s second term, which ends next December. The winner of the special election will have to simultaneously campaign for a full term that will begin in 2022. The winner of the district’s June primary is all but assured to win the general election later next year.
For Haller, winning the special election will give her a seat at the table ahead of the upcoming city budget debate, with the assistance of some veteran lawmakers including Councilmembers Brad Lander and Helen Rosenthal, with whom she has established relationships. “It’s exciting to hit the ground running and to learn from people currently serving in senior positions, and I think it would put me in a very good position for the new council,” Haller said in an interview with Jewish Insider in the River Run Playground in Manhattan, where she once played as a child.
Haller is a supporter of the Green New Deal and backs an initiative to cut the New York Police Department’s budget by $1 billion. But she is hesitant to define herself as a progressive candidate, in the mold of fellow Bronx native Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY). “All these things come with so much baggage, and I don’t want to carry the baggage,” Haller explained.
“I share a lot of progressive values, but I’m not waving flags and screaming hashtags that are absolutes,” she continued. “There’s a lot of nuance and there’s a lot of balance that needs to go into making policy decisions for the future of the city.”
Haller has the backing of the Vote Mama PAC, the 21 in ’21 initiative, Women for the Win, the Jewish Climate Action Network, Bronx Climate Justice North and North Bronx Racial Justice.
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Haller has another reason to run for City Council. Of the 16 members that are not term-limited and up for re-election in 2021, only Kalman Yeger (D-Brooklyn) is Jewish. The current council has 14 Jewish members, all but one of whom are part of the council’s Jewish Caucus, which was founded in 1991. Haller is worried that the number of Jewish legislators will be largely reduced after the 2021 election, leaving a lack of “voices of Jewish leadership for the next eight years in the council.”
And Haller is determined to serve on the council as both a woman and as a Jew, to speak out and advocate for the issues that she believes are most important.
Haller said she feels that her progressive bona fides are sometimes met with skepticism by her colleagues, which she attributes to her staunch pro-Israel positions. “I feel like sometimes that I’m holding it in, that I have to say that ‘I’m willing to stand with you for equity, and I’m willing to stand with you about Rikers Island, and I’m willing to stand with you and fight for racial justice, for climate justice, and that I have to make you comfortable, and you have to make me comfortable.’” she said. “And not everybody is willing to do that.”
Stu Loeser, a political consultant and resident of Riverdale, described Haller as “a model for a lot of young women who know they want to bring change in the world and also want to be great mothers of strong Jewish kids, an approach I think we can use more of in politics.”
Loeser, who first met Haller at Wharton, told JI that the candidate “has propelled herself forward in multiple worlds at the same time” and used her learning “to drive the fight against climate change forward.”
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Despite suggestions from supporters that she should seek the backing of more progressive political groups, Haller told JI she would not seek the endorsement of the Democratic Socialists of America.
In August, the DSA’s New York City chapter came under fire for distributing a questionnaire that asked city council candidates to agree “not to travel to Israel if elected… in solidarity with Palestinians living under occupation.”
Haller told JI that the DSA erred by inserting themselves in a debate that is largely irrelevant to the local races. Educational trips to Israel, she suggested, are of interest for lawmakers serving in the U.S. Congress because it is “vitally important” for them to experience what is happening on the ground before making foreign policy decisions. But for candidates running for city council, “we’re not going to govern differently” having been on a trip to Israel.
Even though the city council doesn’t determine foreign policy, Haller noted that many rising political stars use the council as an entryway to a further political career. It would be, she said, “a mistake to cut off a learning opportunity” for them by placing conditions on an organization’s support.
Haller suggested that the DSA questionnaire underscores why it’s “really, really important to have a voice that represents the width, the breadth and the depth of the Jewish community in this city, and why we need that voice to be strengthened by a Jewish caucus.”
Jessica Haller (Courtesy)
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In addition to being members of the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale, Haller and her husband, Chad, co-founded The Kehilah of Riverdale led by Rabbi Dina Najman in 2014. The synagogue, which has no permanent location, has about 120 active members.
Since the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak in March, the congregation has met regularly for prayer services in Haller’s backyard — in compliance with social distancing requirements — with a screen separating the area where they have only 14 men and 14 women at the weekly prayers.
Najman told JI that Haller “has inspired our synagogue to be committed to not only being responsible citizens and to encourage sustainability in our community, but to also be teachers and exemplars. And when we’re not, she makes sure — in a very responsible and respectful way — to reshift course, to make sure that we don’t lose sight of what’s important.”
In the wake of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s recent COVID-19 restrictions on houses of worship, Haller told JI that the pandemic has highlighted the importance of having an observant Jew on the city council. Having Jewish councilmembers, she suggested, may result in government officials being more sensitive to religious practices.
“I think there needs to be Jewish engagement around what the future of the Jewish caucus and the council looks like,” Haller said. “Given what’s going on, and given that there are different kinds of Jews with all different kinds of views, do we care? I maintain that I do care.”
Ari Hoffnung, COO of Vireo Health, a leading multi-state cannabis company, who considers himself a close friend of Haller and worked with her in the city comptroller’s office in the early 2010s, told JI: “There’s no question that she could be a passionate voice for Jewish New Yorkers, and that she will stand up against antisemitism and hatred in all of its forms.”
Part of that inspiration is derived from Haller’s mentor, former Manhattan Borough President Ruth Messinger, with whom she served on the board of Hazon. Messinger was one of the first people to encourage Haller to seek public office, and continues to offer her political advice from time to time.
Messinger told JI that she has long found Haller to be an “analytic and strategic thinker and somebody who is very interested in policy change, which is where I come from — it’s not just to do the right thing in your home kitchen, but try to change the government policies.”
In a post Haller published on her campaign website last week, she described her Shabbat observance and pledged to keep her office open with a dedicated and diverse staff so that constituents are served even when she’s disconnected and home with her family. “Shabbat, in my tradition, is not meant for working. It is a time for being with the community and for reflecting on our collective values and responsibilities: to ourselves, to the planet, and to the society we live in,” she wrote. “You can trust that my office will be available and if the community needs me, I’ll be there.”
Najman suggested that as a lifelong public servant, Haller “will continue to use her voice as an elected official for more action and more advocacy and be a voice for the people.”
Messinger said she was “very impressed” to see Haller committed to public service as she squares it with her Shabbat observance. “I think it takes skill in the industry to do a good job of representing everyone in your district.”
New York Attorney General Letitia James said police and community members both shoulder blame for underreporting such incidents
Alec Perkins
New York Attorney General Letitia James
Recently released statistics from the Federal Bureau of Investigation — indicating the highest number of antisemitic hate crimes in a decade — “severely” undercounted the number of incidents, New York Attorney General Letitia James said on Monday.
James and Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost joined a webcast hosted by the American Jewish Committee to discuss the release of the FBI’s annual hate crimes report, which found that hate crimes targeting the Jewish community had increased by 14% in 2019.
James said she questioned the accuracy of the data, suggesting that underreporting from both local law enforcement and the impacted communities themselves led to a lower number.
The New York attorney general — who described herself as an “honorary member of the Orthodox community,” having represented Crown Heights in the New York City Council for 10 years — sees the latter issue as a particular problem in what she called the “insular” Orthodox Jewish community.
“Going forward, obviously we’ve got to do a better job, particularly in the Orthodox community,” she said. “We’ve got to inform them and educate them and encourage them with respect to reporting these crimes.”
Yost agreed that underreporting is an issue for many categories of crimes, not just hate crimes, but noted that the victims of hate crimes are more than statistics laid out in data.
“We’re talking about hate crimes. That’s measured one life at a time. One case file at a time. This doesn’t happen to X number of people, it happens to one person… Someone who’s going to carry that trauma with them, the rest of their lives,” he said. “As much as I care about the data, it’s not the numbers that move me, it’s the stories.”
The Ohio attorney general criticized New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio for his particularly stringent enforcement of coronavirus mitigation measures in Orthodox Jewish communities.
“When you single out a particular group and other similarly situated groups are not called out, I think you’re really sending a subtle message that helps to create a fertile seed bed for antisemitism or for racism or what have you,” Yost said.
James and Yost diverged on recent discussions and protests over police accountability. While James saw them as a potential step toward rebuilding trust between citizens and the police — thereby increasing reporting of hate crimes — Yost painted a darker picture.
“The notion of law enforcement being a tool of the popular will frightens me and… it should frighten every American who knows anything about history,” he said. “The Holocaust, the things that happened in Nazi Germany were popularly supported. Law enforcement famously looked by while lynchings occurred in the South. Why? Because it was popularly supported… I’m really concerned that in our rush to make policing more responsive in some communities, that we risk unleashing the genie from the bottle.”
Adams is among a dozen contenders, including City Comptroller Scott Stringer, Councilmember Carlos Menchaca (D-Brooklyn) and several former de Blasio administration officials
Screenshot
Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams during the Zoom announcement for his mayoral campaign.
Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams became the third elected official to formally announce his bid to become the next mayor of New York City on Wednesday.
In a virtual kickoff rally conducted over Zoom, Adams pledged to make the government “work much better than it is now” to lower the number of coronavirus cases in the city and deal with the devastating impact the pandemic has had on the city’s most vulnerable communities. Evoking a phrase Mayor Bill de Blasio used in his first mayoral campaign in 2013, Adams said, “People talk about a ‘tale of two cities,’ but we need to acknowledge that the dysfunctionality of government is the author of that book. We need action, and we need it now.”
Adams is among a dozen candidates, including City Comptroller Scott Stringer, Councilmember Carlos Menchaca (D-Brooklyn) and several former de Blasio administration officials, to announce a mayoral bid ahead of the Democratic primary on June 22, 2021. City Council Speaker Corey Johnson, who was considering a run for the city’s top job, bowed out earlier this year to focus on his mental health.
Adams has already raised more than $2.5 million for his race, according to recent campaign finance board filings.
Adams, 60, who previously represented Brooklyn’s 20th state Senate district, has longstanding ties to the borough’s Jewish community. He has been a leading voice in combating the rise of antisemitism across the city’s five boroughs. In 2018, following the deadly shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, Adams, a retired NYPD captain, said he would begin carrying his handgun whenever he attends religious services.
In recent months, Adams criticized de Blasio for the lack of outreach to the city’s Orthodox Jewish community amid an uptick in coronavirus cases in neighborhoods with large Jewish populations. “For the last six months, I’ve sounded the alarm to demand the city’s COVID-19 outreach reach those who don’t access traditional media, those whose first language isn’t English,” Adams said after de Blasio expressed ‘regrets’ for the approach he took in responding to the virus.
In 2016, Adams headed a delegation of law enforcement officials to Israel in a trip sponsored by the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York. Earlier this year, Adams denounced the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) for the distribution of a questionnaire asking local candidates seeking their support to agree not to visit Israel if elected. “I encourage every New Yorker to visit Israel and other places important to understanding the cultures essential to the history of people in our great city,” Adams said in a tweet.
The controversial New York city councilmember says he has 'no regrets' about his failed run for Congress
AP/Mike Groll
State Sen. Ruben Diaz (D-Bronx), speaks during a charter school rally at the Legislative Office Building on Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2016, in Albany, N.Y.
In the lead-up to New York’s June 23 primary, it looked as if Rubén Díaz, Sr., the brash Pentecostal minister and city councilmember, was in a strong position to defeat his Democratic opponents in the crowded race to represent the 15th congressional district, which includes most of the South Bronx.
The prospect of Díaz in Congress filled Democrats with dread, due in large part to his opposition to gay marriage and his comparison of abortion to the Holocaust. The 77-year-old, Puerto Rican-born city politician, who is perhaps most closely identified by his trademark cowboy hat, has also expressed positive views on President Donald Trump.
But when the votes were finally tallied, it seemed that Díaz was less popular in the district than had been assumed. Coming in third, he lost by a resounding 18 points to Ritchie Torres, the 32-year-old progressive city councilman, who has characterized Díaz as “the Donald Trump of the Bronx.” Torres, an openly gay man who identifies as Afro-Latino, declared victory in mid-July and was ruled the official winner three weeks ago.
In many ways, Torres’s win functioned as a symbolic rebuke of Díaz and the views he represents. Díaz appeared visibly shaken on primary night when an NY1 reporter, Juan Manuel Benítez, tried to interview him live on the air. The city councilmember, dressed flamboyantly in a red cowboy hat and bolo tie, refused to answer Benítez’s questions, pointing an accusatory finger at his interlocutor and calling him “bad.”
But in a recent phone interview with Jewish Insider, Díaz — who has largely avoided the limelight since the election — adopted a care-free tone in discussing his loss. “I have no regrets,” he said. “No regrets.”
“Anyone that runs for public office — anybody — anyone is excited to win,” he told JI. “People don’t want to lose. Somebody has to lose.”
Ruben Diaz, Sr.
“I did what I had to do. I congratulate Ritchie Torres,” said Díaz, adding that he had not spoken with his former opponent, who is all but assured a seat in Congress in the sapphire-blue district.
Still, the city councilman sounded somewhat aggrieved in assessing the reasons he believes he failed to garner a plurality of the vote.
He blames Trump.
Or, rather, he blames Torres’s apparently successful effort — along with the efforts of other candidates in the race — to link Díaz with the president. “I thought people would not believe it, but they did,” said Díaz.
“People should know me,” he added.
Díaz — who admitted in a March interview with Jewish Insider that he did little campaigning in his district — averred that there was nothing he would change if he had the chance to do his campaign over, implying that his record stands on its own. “No elected official does more activity for that community than me,” he declared. “No one.”
“I do a Christmas party, the biggest Christmas party in the Bronx,” he told JI. “I do street fairs. I do back-to-schools. I’m telling you, I do so much activity.”
Díaz seemed surprised that his enthusiasm for Trump’s first presidential campaign — “I do like Donald Trump,” he told The Washington Post in the spring of 2016 — might have hampered his prospects in the Bronx. “I have supported Republicans in the past, and I have no problem with that,” he said. “Most likely, I will do it in the future.”
When asked who he would vote for in the upcoming election, Díaz put forth a roundabout response. “I’m not voting for Biden,” he said matter-of-factly. “No. I’m not voting for him. Definitely not, because I’m not voting for him. I’m in America. You’re free to choose whoever you want to choose.”
So who did he plan to vote for?
“I don’t know who I’m going to vote for,” Díaz shrugged. “I don’t know.”
What about Trump?
“I don’t know,” Díaz said. “I might vote for Trump, who knows? Hey, I’m deciding. I’m probably — I’m a Democrat. I am a Democrat. And I might be voting for Biden, yes. I’m just joking with you. I think that I am a Democrat.”
JI pointed out that it did not sound as if Díaz was joking.
“I tell you what you want to hear,” he said with an impish chuckle. “You want to play games, then I’ll play games with you.”
Finally, he clarified that he would probably not vote for Biden, but that if he did, it would be because he likes Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA), Biden’s vice presidential running mate. “She’s good,” he said, without elaborating any further.
Diaz during a campaign stop in the Bronx. (Matthew Kassel)
Díaz told JI that he will retire from the city council at the end of his current term in 2022. “Next year I’m not running,” he said. “I’m out of politics.”
“What do you want me to do, die there?” said the reverend, who previously served in the New York State Senate and has been a city councilmember since 2018.
Díaz suggested he might not have served his term in Congress if he had won the primary. At first, he said he would only have served one term if elected. But then he added, “Who knows, maybe I wouldn’t even serve. Maybe I would have resigned before I was sworn in.”
“I was trying to prove something,” he concluded.
What he was trying to prove, however, Díaz failed to explain. “There were those plans of how long I was going to serve,” he said. “Should I serve if I win? I just wanted to run and see.”
Though his experiment didn’t seem to yield the result he would have liked, Díaz said he has nevertheless been keeping busy in his current capacity as a city official.
His district office is open, he told JI, pointing out that he has been working to serve his community amid the coronavirus outbreak.
“Everybody has to worry about the virus. Everybody. Everybody has to worry about that,” he said. “That’s something that’s dangerous, so people have to wear their masks, and I’ve been giving masks here and there, and helping different groups, and now I’m planning to give back-to-school book bags.”
“This is my last year and that’s it,” he added. “But I’m going to keep doing what I always did.”
Did he plan to stay in the Bronx after his term is up?
“I’m not moving,” said Díaz, who has been in the borough since 1965. “I will die here in New York.”
Antisemitic poster alluding to Jewish donors found at district office of NY Assemblymember Rebecca Seawright overnight
Assemblywoman Rebecca Seawright
Assemblymember Rebecca Seawright (D-Manhattan) called on the New York Police Department’s hate crimes unit to investigate the antisemitic vandalization of her office in New York’s 76th Assembly district.
Seawright’s office, located on Park Avenue on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, was sprayed with white paint overnight on Monday. A vulgar and antisemitic message alluding to Jewish donors was written on a large poster and slid under the door.
“I want to speak loud and clear today that we will never be intimidated by this criminal act,” Seawright said during a press conference, flanked by Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) and faith and community leaders, outside her office on Tuesday. “We will stand together, speak up, and remain vigilant against this violence and antisemitism.”
Though not Jewish, Seawright is a member of the Assembly’s Jewish Legislative Caucus. Her husband, Jay Hershenson, who serves as vice president for communications and marketing at Queens College of the City University of New York, is Jewish.
Seawright, who has represented the district since 2015, was knocked off the ballot’s Democratic line last month after missing a key deadline during the peak of the coronavirus outbreak. Following the ruling, she gathered more than 5,000 signatures to get on the November ballot on the “Rise and Unite” independent party line.
Maloney, who represents the neighborhood as part of the 12th congressional district, told JI that the incident was “extremely disturbing.” Maloney pointed out that the Never Again Education Act, which she sponsored in the House and which allocates resources to Holocaust education, is aimed “to stop this kind of hatred.”
Rabbi Joseph Potasnik of the New York Board of Rabbis, who participated in a virtual town hall on combating antisemitism hosted by Seawright’s office last month, said that it’s important that people of all faiths speak out against acts of antisemitism. ”The truth is that antisemitism is anti-Christianity, is anti-Islam. A person who hates me today is going to hate you tomorrow,” he explained. “You scratch the skin of an antisemite and you will find a racist and many other layers of bigotry.”
Rep. Anthony Brindisi is facing a tough challenge against the congresswoman he unseated two years ago
Brindisi for Congress
For Rep. Anthony Brindisi (D-NY), the hardest part of his job is leaving his family behind at the beginning of each week to head to Washington. But as a public servant, the father of two has found a way to ease those departures. On the flight from New York to Washington, D.C., Brindisi — who has represented New York’s 22nd congressional district since 2019 — writes a note to his 13-year-old son and 9- year-old daughter about why he’s going to Congress that week.
“Hopefully, they can look back at that later on and understand that daddy was trying to make the world a better place,” the first-term congressman told Jewish Insider in a recent interview, “and that’s why he had to go to Washington every week.”
For Brindisi, 41, the notes don’t just add up to a collection that his kids will have to look at later in life, but also for himself, as a lawmaker, to “document and remember all the things that have been happening this last year and a half.”
Born and raised in Utica, New York, Brindisi earned his law degree from Albany Law School after graduating from Siena College. After graduation, he joined the law firm founded by his father, Brindisi, Murad, Brindisi & Pearlman. In 2011, he ran for a State Assembly seat, succeeding former Assemblywoman RoAnn Destito (D) in a special election to represent Oneida County.
In 2018, encouraged by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Brindisi ran for Congress and beat first-term Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-NY) by less than 2 percentage points. Now, the roles are flipped: Tenney is challenging Brindisi in November, hoping to take back the seat she lost.
“It has been a crazy time and an exciting first year and a half,” Brindisi said of his time in Washington. “There’s been so many history-making moments that have happened since 2018, and it’s interesting to have a front row seat to all of them.”
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The 22nd district is considered a toss-up, according to The Cook Political Report. In 2016, President Donald Trump won the district by more than 15 points and it remains a top target for the GOP.
Brindisi co-chairs the whip role for the Blue Dog Coalition, a group of Democratic lawmakers who identify as fiscally responsible, and is a member of the Problem Solvers Caucus, which is made up of Democrats and Republicans looking for bipartisan solutions to Washington’s biggest challenges.
Brindisi boasts about being one of the few freshman members of Congress who has had four pieces of legislation signed by President Donald Trump, among them bills on veteran affairs and health care matters. “It was not an easy thing to do, especially when you’re in divided government right now,” he told JI. “But I believe in bipartisanship and trying to solve problems.”
Working in a bipartisan manner “has really been my recipe for success,” Brindisi said. “I spent a lot of time trying to build relationships with other members of Congress on both sides of the aisle. And when you take the time to listen to other members, sometimes you can find consensus and then work together to solve a problem.”
Brindisi believes this approach is greatly appreciated by his constituents. “The one thing I hear over and over again from constituents is, ‘We don’t care if you’re a Democrat or Republican. We just want you getting things done.’ And that’s what I focused on in my first couple of years, in addition to being visible in the district,” he stressed.
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At the age of four, Brindisi lost his mother after a protracted battle with cancer. Brindisi told JI that his three older sisters, who he credits with raising him, instilled in him the values that he feels guide his work as a public servant.
“One of the lessons that always stuck out was, don’t be a bystander. When you see something wrong, you have to do something about it,” Brindisi said, adding that those words “were in the back of my head” when he first ran for Congress. “I didn’t like seeing what was happening in Washington and people not working together to solve big problems. I guess I could have sat back and stayed in the state legislature, but I decided to run for Congress in a seat that traditionally isn’t held by Democrats to do something to change that.”
“I’ve always enjoyed public service,” Brindisi continued. “It has its moments — it definitely has its ups and downs. But when you can help a constituent who’s trying to get health insurance or if you can pass substantive legislation that’s going to improve the lives of people in your district and across the country, to me, it makes up any of the low points.”
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Victor Pearlman, executive director at the Jewish Community Federation of the Mohawk Valley, is married to Brindisi’s older sister Eva. “[Anthony] is an amazing young man with an innate ability who understood my Jewish upbringing and my values like I don’t even think many Jews could understand,” Pearlman told JI in a phone interview. “He has participated in Passover Seders, he has come to shul to read passages at my children’s bar and bat mitzvahs.”
Although the Jewish community is relatively small in Utica, Pearlman said that the local Jewish community “supports [Brindisi] almost to a person.”
Brindisi first visited Israel in 2016 on a delegation of New York assembly members. He described the trip as “remarkable” and said it had a significant impact on how he views the U.S.-Israel relationship as a member of Congress. “I think being able to see firsthand the strong bond between our two countries and the shared values was important and has helped shape and strengthen my view of why we need to support our ally Israel and maintain a strong bond between our two countries,” Brindisi said.
Pearlman told JI that following his brother-in-law’s trip to Israel, “one of the first things he said to me was, ‘I felt like I was in America, and I didn’t expect that because I was in the Middle East.’ And all I said to him was, ‘I told you so.’”
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The New York Democrat supported Trump’s decision to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and the U.S. withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran. Brindisi was also one of 12 House Democrats who broke party ranks last year to vote in favor of a Republican motion to recommit on anti-BDS legislation that would allow state and local governments to adopt laws to divest public funds from entities that boycott Israel.
But Brindisi maintained that his record on Israel is “more in line with the long-standing principles” of the Democratic Party.
“Although there are those in my party that may not feel as strongly as I do about the relationship between the U.S. and Israel, to me, supporting Israel should not be a partisan issue,” he stressed. “It is a relationship that has existed for several decades, and we need to maintain that strong, unbreakable bond for the future.”
Brindisi is one of almost two dozen Democrats who didn’t sign onto House letters publicly expressing opposition to potential Israeli annexation of parts of the West Bank. A House letter sent to Israeli leaders, signed by 191 House Democrats and backed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, warned that annexation would undermine the two-state solution. Another letter, signed by 12 progressive members and addressed to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, threatened to condition aid to Israel over annexation.
Brindisi told JI he did not sign onto the more mainstream letter against annexation because it didn’t strongly oppose conditioning military aid to Israel. “My concern with the letter is that I believe it’s important that we reiterate and make it very clear that it’s in America’s national security interests to maintain our commitment to security assistance to Israel without conditions,” he said. “That’s a red line for me.”
Brindisi added that he has “concerns” with the prospect of unilateral annexation of territory in the West Bank because he favors direct negotiations between the parties. “What is most important to me is the long-standing permanent relationship between our two countries,” he said. “The security aid that we provide is not symbolic. In my mind, it saves lives, and we need to reiterate that commitment to make sure that it’s clear.”
Pearlman told JI, “I like to hope that part of his love of Jews and Israel might have been slightly influenced by me. I can say to my Jewish friends: You won’t find a better supporter of Israel [than Brindisi].”
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Brindisi is confident that he will win a second term in November, but acknowledged that it’s “going to be a tough race” given the challenge posed by the GOP in a presidential year. “But I feel that people in the district, by and large, don’t want to turn back the clock. They want to continue the progress we’ve made.”
And it’s his accomplishments as a freshman that Brindisi wants voters to judge him on, drawing a clear contrast with the more progressive wing of his party. “There’s a lot of members that prefer to make noise on social media, but don’t accomplish a whole lot when they come to Washington,” Brindisi told JI. “My goal is to deliver results for the people that elected me, and that means sometimes working quietly behind the scenes.”
Chemistry professor Nancy Goroff is setting her sights on flipping the district blue
Courtesy Goroff for Congress
Rep. Lee Zeldin’s (R-NY) victory in his 2018 reelection bid was not unexpected. But the narrow margin of his win over political newcomer Democrat Perry Gershon in New York’s 1st district two years ago came as more of a surprise.
Now Gershon, a real estate lender, is gearing up for a rematch against the three-term Zeldin, one of two Jewish Republicans in the House of Representatives, in a district that has trended red in recent years. But before he can take on the incumbent congressman again, Gershon must face off against three candidates in the district’s Democratic primary on Tuesday: chemistry professor Nancy Goroff, Suffolk County legislator Bridget Fleming and business consultant Greg Fisher.
Gershon is confident that, this time around, he has the experience and name recognition necessary to beat Zeldin. “I spent my time in the off year engaged in the community, meeting with people… and taking the retail politicking to a level I was unable to do the first time around because nobody knew me,” Gershon said in an interview with Jewish Insider.
Goroff, who teaches at Stony Brook University, is significantly ahead of Gershon in fundraising, with nearly $2.4 million raised and $760,000 still in the bank. Gershon has raised approximately $1.2 million and has $188,000 remaining, while Fleming raised $700,000 and has $112,000 on hand. Fisher has raised no money, according to Federal Election Commission filings.
The Democratic nominee will likely need a sizable fundraising haul to compete with Zeldin — who has raised nearly $4 million and has more than $2 million still on hand.
Goroff believes her background in science will give her an edge over her competitors and will ultimately be an asset on Capitol Hill. “I will bring unique skills and expertise to Washington, so that I can be a leader on issues that matter, like climate change and healthcare and getting us out of the COVID-19 pandemic crisis,” she told JI. She also highlighted her accomplishments at Stony Brook, including pushing to expand healthcare coverage and leading diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.
“I think that I can hit the ground running in Washington and really lead on important issues,” she added. Goroff, who hopes to leverage her background to serve on the House Science, Space and Technology Committee and the Education and Labor Committee, said she’s intensely focused on climate change.
“I want to be a resource for other members of Congress. I want to make sure that my office is helping members have access to the best information available,” Goroff said. “This is for Republicans and Democrats, that they can get their questions answered and then hold their [colleagues’] feet to the fire to make sure that we’re really taking meaningful action on climate change.”
Fleming is also focused on the environment, touting her record in the county legislature. “On all these issues when Donald Trump and Lee Zeldin have abandoned us, I’ve been a champion and I’ve been known to stand up for our environmental resources,” she said.
Fleming pointed to her past electoral victories and experience as a lawmaker as evidence that she’s the best choice to take on Zeldin in the fall. “I have a great deal of support because of the work that I’ve done for the community over the years,” she said. “But also I know how to run a good race, and it’s going to be a tough race.”
Perry Gershon
Goroff and Gershon both told Jewish Insider that their Jewish faith has been a driving force behind their political aspirations and their decision to challenge Zeldin.
Both candidates criticized the congressman for voting against last year’s House Resolution 183 condemning antisemitism. Zeldin said he voted no on the resolution because it had been watered down, but Goroff posited that Zeldin’s preferences for the bill “didn’t match the reality of what was going on on the ground.” Gershon called Zeldin’s vote against the bill “appalling.”
“The reason that I got in is that I want to make the world a better place,” Goroff said. “It’s very much that Jewish idea of public service and improving the world around you. It means getting involved in [the] community.”
Gershon and Goroff are also largely aligned on their approaches to the U.S.-Israel relationship. They both support a two-state solution, but believe that the president and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have made the peace process more difficult, and said the potential annexation of parts of the West Bank — which could happen as soon as July 1 — would be a further obstacle to peace.
“Too often, the discussion… has been focused on whether the Israelis or the Palestinians have the right to take a certain action, as opposed to… whether it’s actually in their self-interest,” Goroff said. “There seems to be a very short-term focus. And it’s largely about Netanyahu trying to stay in power, as so much of his activity over the last years has been.”
Gershon — who has visited Israel nine times — was mostly in agreement, but noted that the Palestinians lacked a voice in conversations related to peace negotiations. “A two-state solution isn’t in the cards right now because there’s no one negotiating for the Palestinians,” he said. “But I’d like to see the settlements stop, and I think that will help bring a partner to the table.”
Fleming criticized the Trump administration’s “impulsive” foreign policy. “Policy has to be formulated and implemented that will ensure stability in the region and safety for the citizens of Israel,” Fleming weighed in. “In that respect, I think we need to ensure that financial support for Israel is maintained.”
Gershon stated that cutting U.S. aid to the Palestinian Authority was unequivocally “the wrong move.”
“I think the Palestinian Authority is a potential negotiator on the other side, and certainly a whole lot better than Hamas,” he explained. “And the more you do delegitimize the Palestinian Authority and make it harder for them to operate, the more you’re empowering the more radical elements like Hamas.”
Gershon is also a strident critic of the BDS movement, which, in a position paper, he called “little more than a new manifestation of antisemitism.”
“It is a lie to suggest that BDS seeks peace in the region or is founded on legitimate principles,” he added. “BDS is particularly threatening at the college level, as the movement tries to brainwash our youth to turn against Israel at a young age.”
Recent polling in the race has provided varied results with no clear frontrunner. A poll conducted in late May by Goroff’s campaign found her in a statistical tie with Gershon, with Fleming trailing by double digits. The May poll was a boost for Goroff, who in a poll a month earlier had trailed Gershon by 22 points. In the April poll, Fleming had a five-point lead on Goroff. Fisher took just 1% of the vote each time.
But a separate poll released by Fleming’s campaign painted a drastically different picture — it found Fleming and Goroff in a statistical tie, with Gershon trailing them.
With no clear-cut winner ahead of Tuesday’s primary, the race is anyone’s game. All three candidates have in recent weeks sought to tie Zeldin — who traveled to Tulsa, Okla., for Trump’s first campaign rally in months — to the president in the hopes that a blue wave will boost their odds with primary voters.
“The damage that Trump has done with his xenophobia, and that Zeldin has done enabling the president — Zeldin didn’t even criticize what happened in Charlottesville, and to me that is a shonda for his Judaism,” said Gershon.
“I’m a big believer in racial justice and in the need — as part of my Judaism — to establish equal treatment for brown people and white people under the law of the land.”
Challenger Jamaal Bowman has been raking in endorsements and donations ahead of Tuesday’s vote
AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite
House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., walks through the Hall of Columns at the Capitol as House Democratic chairs gather for a meeting with Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., in Washington, Wednesday, March 27, 2019.
As embattled Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY) fights for his political life, constituents and longtime supporters of the 16-term congressman are growing nervous about his chances in the Democratic primary in New York’s 16th district, where Engel will face a challenger who has been raking in endorsements — and donations — ahead of Tuesday’s vote.
Engel’s possible ouster by Jamaal Bowman, a 44-year-old Bronx middle school principal backed by Justice Democrats, has provoked angst in some parts of the district, where constituents see Engel as a friend and a staunch supporter of Israel.
Stu Loeser, a political consultant and resident of Riverdale, told JI that the primary race is — for the first time in years — a topic of conversation in the community. “People obviously aren’t seeing each other as much these days, but when we talk or run into each other, the primary almost always comes up,” said Loeser, who served as spokesperson for former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg.
Over the last two weeks, Bowman has picked up national endorsements from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA). A poll published Wednesday showed Bowman leading Engel by 10 points.
Rabbi Avi Weiss, the founding rabbi of the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale, recently published an open letter to Bowman asking him to clarify his positions on Israel. Weiss told JI on Wednesday that he was “very disappointed” that Bowman hasn’t responded to the issues raised in the letter.
“Amongst the issues… most important to us is the well-being of the State of Israel, one of America’s greatest allies,” Weiss explained. “Dr. Bowman’s Israel policy is too questionable for me to consider sending him to Congress.”
Harry Feder, a prominent member of the Jewish community in Riverdale and a longtime friend of the congressman, told JI that community leaders are urging members to take the race seriously and vote. “I think it’s a matter of people coming out to vote and that they realize that this election is being looked at nationally,” said Feder, the former president of the Riverdale Jewish Center. “Engel is one of the strongest — if not the strongest — member of the House in support of Israel, and to lose him as chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee would be a horrible thing for the Jewish community.”
On Wednesday evening, NORPAC, a nonpartisan political action committee that supports pro-Israel candidates, held a Zoom fundraiser for Engel with 120 Jewish leaders and activists signed on as co-chairs.
Among them is Rabbi Menachem Genack, the CEO of the Orthodox Union’s kosher division, whose son lives in the district. “We are trying to mobilize people within this district, making sure that our community is aware of [the situation] and comes out to vote,” Genack told JI, pointing to the neighboring 14th congressional district where in 2018 the incumbent, former Rep. Joe Crowley, lost his primary to Ocasio-Cortez, then a relatively unknown challenger. “In a primary, small numbers make a big difference.”
A recent mailer sent out by the Engel campaign and obtained by Jewish Insider highlights Engel’s commitment to combat growing antisemitism and his strong defense of Israel.
Halie Soifer, executive director of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, told JI that voters in the district “don’t understand or don’t appreciate” the effect of the seniority members of Congress like Engel have. “It’s really an extraordinary opportunity that New Yorkers have to be represented by a chairman of a committee like the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee,” she said.
JDCA endorsed Engel for re-election and is now assisting his campaign with targeted digital ads, as well as phone and text banking, to reach as many Jewish voters as possible. Similarly, Democratic Majority for Israel is running TV ads, sending mailers and operating phone banks to boost Engel’s chance on Tuesday.
A local operative, who declined to be identified by name, told JI that Engel failed to learn from the Crowley episode, choosing to live most of the time in his Maryland home rather than be present in the district. Engel’s absence was a driving factor in Bowman’s rise, the operative noted, leaving Jewish constituents exasperated and concerned about losing a friend in Washington.
Feder dismissed that notion, pointing out that he and Engel live in the same building in Riverdale. “He was chairman of a committee,” he explained. “Foreign affairs doesn’t stop because of a virus.”
Jack Rosen, president of the American Jewish Congress, suggested that Engel’s challenge is part of an “instinctive drive” by the some in the progressive movement to oust pro-Israel lawmakers. “We have to understand there’s a showdown here,” he explained. “Why would any of the progressives not support someone with Eliot Engel’s record? They would agree on almost anything, with the exception of Israel. So why are they targeting him? The only differentiator is Israel.”
Soifer and Feder expressed confidence that Engel will pull off a victory next week — if his supporters turn out.
“I think he’ll be re-elected,” Soifer predicted. But if Bowman wins, she said her group will “seek to engage” with him and address the priorities of Jewish voters. “We have not said anything disparaging about Jamaal Bowman. We have noted that there’s a difference of views when it comes to Israel.”
Synagogue shutdowns, Purim party cancellations and suspension of classes at Jewish schools grow as fear spreads
Ilia Yefimovich/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images
An Israeli woman under quarantine, after potential exposure to coronavirus, is seen at at a special polling station during the Israeli parliamentary election.
The ongoing spread of the coronavirus across the United States, Israel and Europe is leading to self-quarantine, event cancellations and widespread fear among the Jewish community.
Spreading quickly: A Jewish lawyer in Westchester unwittingly transmitted the disease to nine other friends and family members, bringing the total confirmed cases in New York State to 11. The man remains hospitalized, and his wife, two children and a neighbor have tested positive for coronavirus. A friend of the family has also tested positive, along with his wife and three children.
Shutdowns: The confirmed cases across Westchester led to the self-quarantine of more than 1,000 people, the suspension of activities at the Young Israel of New Rochelle, and the cancellation of classes at SAR Academy through next week and at Yeshiva University temporarily. A Jewish school in Baltimore sent home three students who may have had “indirect contact” with one of the patients. Nefesh B’Nefesh canceled an aliya fair slated for March 15 in New Jersey amid concerns.
No stigmas: Councilmember Mark Levine (D-Manhattan), former chair of the New York City Council Jewish Caucus, tells JI, “Once again Jewish New Yorkers are at the center of a public health crisis. And once again ignorance and prejudice are leading to scapegoating of the community. We need to do everything possible to ensure that coronavirus does not further exacerbate already surging antisemitism and that no group in this city is targeted as a result of this crisis.” Members of the community expressed concerns about being stigmatized due to the outbreak to LoHud.
Holy land: The Israeli Health Ministry is cracking down in an attempt to stop the spread of coronavirus, sending more than 50,000 people into mandatory home quarantine. With at least 15 confirmed cases in Israel, the Health Ministry has ordered anyone returning from France, Spain, Switzerland, Germany and Austria confined to home quarantine for 14 days. This is in an expansion of the restrictions already imposed on those coming from China, Singapore, Thailand, Japan, Hong Kong, Macau, South Korea, and Italy.
Big impact: El Al has laid off 1,000 employees and cut salaries of top management as it struggles with the fallout. Israeli Chief Rabbi David Lau advised Jews yesterday to forego the traditional touching and kissing of the “mezuzah” on doorposts to help prevent the disease’s spread. All IDF soldiers and all health workers in Israel are prohibited from leaving the country at all.
Cancellations: The ministry’s orders also banned any gatherings of more than 5,000 people, and any international conferences, leading to widespread cancellations of concerts, Purim parties, sports games and conferences across Israel. The Jerusalem Marathon, scheduled for March 20, has been postponed, the mayor said Thursday. Most sports games in Israel are now playing to empty stadiums.
Eyeing the U.S.: While there are currently no specific restrictions on travelers from the United States, the ministry said that anyone who attends a conference overseas must also observe a 14-day quarantine. The policy applies to all those returning from March 4 and forward, which could potentially include those at the recent AIPAC policy conference in Washington. AIPAC sent a warning to those at its conference earlier this week that a group of attendees were “potentially in contact” with an individual with confirmed coronavirus, though no attendees have tested positive so far.
NY-Jerusalem: One of the people in Westchester who tested positive for coronavirus visited Israel between the dates February 22-28. The Israeli Health Ministry released a detailed list of the woman’s activities in Jerusalem, including visits to shops, restaurants and travel on public transportation. The ministry ordered that anyone who was on the same El Al flights or visited locations at the same time as the tourist must enter quarantine for 14 days.
Across the pond: A Jewish dentist in London tested positive for the virus yesterday and has been in self-isolation since he returned from a trip to Switzerland via Milan last week.
Sivan Rahav-Meir, a news anchor, reporter, author and Torah scholar, is spending a year crisscrossing the United States — and learning as much as she's teaching
Until last year, Israeli journalist Sivan Rahav-Meir had rarely spent more than a long weekend in the United States. But now, living in New York as an emissary for the World Mizrachi movement, Rahav-Meir and her family have come to experience a whole new swath of Jewish life — and holidays.
“I was sent here in order to teach, but basically I think I came here to learn,” Rahav-Meir told Jewish Insider in a recent interview. “I see how it is to shape your identity as a minority and not a majority. I’m used to living in a place where my culture is the culture. But since we’ve been here, we’ve had Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, the Super Bowl.”
In late August, Rahav-Meir and her husband, Yedidya Meir, a writer and radio host — plus their five young children — left their home in Jerusalem to temporarily put down roots in Woodmere, New York for a year of teaching, lecturing, touring and connecting with Jews across North America. At times with Yedidya but often solo, Rahav-Meir gives Torah classes, political briefings, lectures on parenting and marriage as well as speeches about bridging gaps between secular and religious and Israeli and American Jews.
Rahav-Meir is already well-versed in traversing communities. She grew up in a secular family in Herzliya and became religiously observant as a teenager. She began working as a journalist from a very young age, writing for youth magazines and appearing on children’s TV programs, eventually becoming best known as a reporter and anchor with Channel 12 News. She has authored several books, including a book of weekly Torah lectures that was published in English as #Parasha: Weekly Insights from a Leading Israeli Journalist. And now, she’s embarking on a new mission, to connect with and better understand the American Jewish community.
With six months under her belt, Rahav-Meir has come to learn that “all the jokes about Israelis and the jokes about Americans are true.” It’s easier for her to understand “why people see us [Israelis] as rude and impolite — because you are so, so polite,” she said. When she writes work-related emails in English, Rahav-Meir sends them first to a friend “and she translates it from English to American. She adds all the, you know, ‘hope all is well,’ ‘looking forward’… the nuances that are completely different.”
On a more serious note, she says, “it’s not only the nuances, the being more or less polite. It’s the way we are shaped as Jews and the confidence sometimes we have as Israelis” in our identities.
For the past six months, Rahav-Meir has crisscrossed North America, visiting California, Texas, Canada, Maryland, Florida and many cities in between. On Tuesday she’ll be talking politics in Chicago; this weekend, she and her husband will be the scholars in residence at two synagogues in Teaneck, New Jersey; and next week she’ll discuss the polarizations between Orthodox and secular and American and Israeli Jews in Stamford, Connecticut. And she’s still booking lectures and events for the next few months — at least.
Sivan Rahav-Meir and her husband, Yedidya Meir.
In between all her travels, Rahav-Meir gives a weekly Torah class at Stern College, in both Hebrew and English, which is broadcast live on Facebook and YouTube, and distributed via Whatsapp, and as a podcast — and even through El Al’s in-flight entertainment system.
And despite her crazy schedule, Rahav-Meir hasn’t given up her weekly column in Yediot Aharonot and the Friday radio show she co-hosts with her husband on Galei Tzahal (Army Radio). And she has still been reporting live for Channel 12 News more than she ever imagined.
“I covered a lot of terror attacks in Israel over the years,” she said. “I came here and the last thing I thought was that I would report live from terror attacks here. I covered the Jersey City [shooting] and the Monsey [Hanukkah stabbing] of course.” It’s important, Rahav-Meir said, to also talk about the “minimization of antisemitism. The fact that you see a swastika here, or hear a curse there, it becomes often and it’s not rare anymore.”
Since her family has been in New York, Rahav-Meir said she has heard from many Israelis who ask if she feels safe amid the recent wave of antisemitic attacks. “Are you really afraid to go with a kippa or tzitzit? Do you really feel it?” Friends and family have asked her. “Let’s face it,” she said, “most of us do not feel it on the street every day, but it is shocking, and it forces us to ask hard questions about our identity.” America, she said, was once thought of as “the ultimate place” for Jews to feel safe, “the goldene medina. And it turns out, no, this is not the promised land.”
Rahav-Meir made it clear that, as an emissary of World Mizrachi — the global religious-Zionist organization — she is not in the U.S. to convince anyone to make aliya. And most American Jews she meets, she said, have no plans to do so.
“They love the concept of aliya,” Rahav-Meir said. “Aliya is a very positive value… So many people tell me, ‘I wish my kid would make aliya, or my grandfather.’” But she recognizes that the millions of Jews living in the U.S. “are not making aliya tomorrow morning. So we have to ensure a strong identity here.”
And everywhere she goes, Rahav-Meir said, she is asked one thing over and over again about Israel: the elections. “I see people are really disturbed” by the three consecutive elections, she said. “They are confused, they are bothered by the fact that their beloved homeland is going through something that is not healthy.” At every lecture, she said, she fields questions about Benny Gantz, Yair Lapid, Benjamin Netanyahu, Arye Deri and other Israeli political figures.
Rahav-Meir reporting from the Siyum HaShas in New Jersey last month.
When the veteran journalist arrived in New York in August, she never dreamed that she would be missing not one but two election campaigns in Israel. But, to be honest, she’s fairly relieved.
“I’m quite happy I’m not in this mess right now,” she admitted. “Because I’m sure if I was there I would feel frustrated… three elections, three campaigns one after the other — that’s crazy in one year. I’m really glad to zoom out this year and see things from a bird’s eye view… If I had to pick one year to be away, this was probably a good year.”
While she’s skipping the campaigns, Rahav-Meir won’t be missing out on voting or on election night. As she did in September, Rahav-Meir will soon travel back to Israel to cover the March 2 election for Channel 12 News, before returning shortly afterward to New York.
There is one thing she hears repeatedly from Israelis living in the United States: “They all tell me, don’t make the mistake we did, don’t stay here,” she said. “They all say, ‘we only came for one or two years and look at us now, 30 years later.’ They warn me.”
While the Meir family hasn’t closed the door on staying for a second year, two years is the maximum allowed by World Mizrachi. Regardless, she said, there’s no question they will be returning to Israel. And while Jerusalem is calling, there are things Rahav-Meir has begun to appreciate about the unique communities of American Jews she has encountered.
“The type of haredim in America — it’s beautiful,” she said. “Someone could be a doctor, but also learn seriously, or give a shiur, it’s a real mixture… I appreciate that type of Orthodoxy, and I see it in many communities [in North America].” Rahav-Meir also admires the wide range of outreach organizations of all denominations across the country. “They really care about their fellow Jews out there, about reaching out to the unaffiliated.” She’s also been impressed when visiting tiny observant communities like in Memphis, Tennessee — where “every person counts, you need everyone” — and huge ones like in Boca Raton, Florida — “it’s like an empire.”
And what will her kids miss once they head back to Israel?
Two words: “Amazon Prime.”
Some politicians are driven by ego and ambition to seek higher office. Others are driven by a mission to shake up the establishment and challenge the status quo. But for Allison Fine, it was the moment itself that called for her to step up and enter the race to succeed longtime Rep. Nita Lowey (D-NY).
Bio: Fine, 55, has a diverse resume. She is the past president of Temple Beth Abraham in Tarrytown, N.Y., a former chairwoman of the national board of NARAL Pro-Choice America Foundation, and a member of the advisory board of the Weschester branch of UJA-Federation of New York.
District details: Fine is one of seven Democrats — including State Senator David Carlucci, former Obama administration official Eveln Farkas, and Mondaire Jones, one of a few progressive candidates seeking to make history as the first black, gay member of Congress — who have announced their candidacy in New York’s 17th district. Lowey, whose district includes Westchester and Rockland counties, announced last month that she would retire next year after serving 32 years in Congress.
Now is the time: “This is not a business-as-usual moment in our country’s history,” Fine explained in an interview with Jewish Insider. “In every government that has more women at the table, they generally have fewer extreme partisan splits and they get more stuff done for people and for their families. I bring a really deep knowledge [of] technology and community service, and I bring both a passion [for] and a deep knowledge [of] women’s equality. This is a woman’s seat and I think it should stay a woman’s seat.” Fine didn’t plan to run for Congress, but, citing women’s equality and economics as key issues in the race, told JI, “This moment and time is too important to be sitting on the sidelines.”
Big shoes to fill: Fine said that she “can’t replace” Lowey, the current chair of the powerful House Committee on Appropriations and head of the subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs. “But I do want to build on her legacy, in particular on her strong support for Israel, on her deep desire to want to reduce hate in all of its forms, and to support women’s equality and women’s health.”
Frequent traveler: “I have been to Israel five times,” Fine tells JI. “I’m hoping to go on the sixth time next year. I did my junior year in Tel Aviv, I have family there, and it is always such a moving experience to be in Israel.”
From shul to the halls of Congress: Fine pointed to her past role as president of her synagogue as something the may have prepared her to walk the halls of Congress and deal with partisan politics. “I think anybody who can do a good job as president of a synagogue is well-qualified to go to Congress,” she said. “People are really passionate about their congregations and they’re very vocal. It’s not an easy job at all.” Fine suggested that her ability to adapt to meet the demands of a changing environment has prepared her for Washington, noting that during her tenure as synagogue president, “We were the first synagogue to move from dues to a donation model — he idea of remaking communities without the barriers that came last century, in terms of what it meant to be a member in our community. We tried very hard to take down the walls of our synagogue to make sure everyone felt that they were a full member of the community regardless of their financial means, and made it a much more inviting place.”
Fine with The Squad: The newly declared candidate was reluctant to express her opinion on some of the outspoken freshmen members in the Democratic party, in particular Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY). “I’ll just say this: I am delighted that we have so many women and so many women of color who are stepping up to run for office, and I think it is a huge benefit to the country to have this happen,” she said. “I think we need to support women once they are in office because the level of harassment that elected women receive is far larger than what men receive. And it’s a very difficult job to be a woman in public life. The amount of abuse and hate and harassment aimed at all women in public life is outrageous and they are at risk. And it certainly doesn’t help when people like the president aim their hate at such members.”
Broadway Roulette simplifies the ticket-buying process for New Yorkers and visitors alike
Courtesy of Elizabeth Streisand
It seems fitting that Elizabeth Streisand came up with the idea for her innovative theater-industry startup, Broadway Roulette, in a fortuitous manner.
In 2011, Streisand was helping her soon-to-be husband, Eric — an investor and cousin of Barbra Streisand — operate an Airbnb out of an Upper West Side apartment he no longer lived in. Streisand, who mostly worked nights as a freelance entertainment journalist, had a flexible schedule that allowed her to accommodate guests and field their questions. Visitors kept asking her how to get tickets to Broadway shows, a process that can seem forbidding to those not well-acquainted with New York’s insular and often opaque theater world.
Streisand noticed that most of her guests didn’t care which show they saw — they just wanted to experience a Broadway production. She began offering to purchase tickets on behalf of her visitors, opting for whatever show seemed interesting at the moment. “People liked it,” Streisand, who is 37, told Jewish Insider. “And I was like, ‘Oh, wait, this could be a really interesting business.’”
Now, four years since its founding in 2015, Broadway Roulette has established itself as one of the most promising startups to emerge in New York’s theater industry. Users who want to see a show, but don’t have a strong preference for which production, can pay between $49-$59 to let Broadway Roulette decide for them. All they have to do is choose the day and number of tickets, and rule out a couple of shows they don’t want to see — no musicals, for instance. On the morning of the show, Broadway Roulette’s proprietary algorithm randomly picks a show for them to see. Collectively, Streisand and her employees see every show offered through Broadway Roulette so they know what they’re offering to users.
Courtesy of Elizabeth Streisand
The idea, Streisand said, is to make something that can seem like a chore — in this case, buying tickets — fun and engaging. And users have responded well to the service. Over the past two years, the company has attracted 15,000 unique users, and around 30 percent rebook within a couple of months. One of Broadway Roulette’s biggest strengths is that it attracts locals, who make up 80% of the site’s users. During the 2017-2018 Broadway season, only 38% of all attendees were from the New York area, according to the Broadway League, the industry’s trade association. Local users are valuable to the industry as they can be turned into repeat buyers.
Over the past few years, Broadway Roulette has also attracted a number of investors, including Morgan Stanley, Halogen Ventures, and Zuckerberg Media, run by Randi Zuckerberg.
“I love when new companies bring surprise and delight back to the consumer experience,” Zuckerberg told JI via email. “Broadway Roulette does this especially well, turning the task of researching shows and comparing prices into a game, all while driving new audiences to great shows in the process.”
Despite Streisand’s success, it was not easy breaking into the theater world, which has something of a reputation for old-school stodginess and outdated business practices. But her background as a celebrity journalist for publications including Us Weekly and People primed her for the challenge. “I was so used to people telling me to go away and shutting the door in my face,” she said. After months of pitching, “Jersey Boys” agreed to partner with Broadway Roulette — and then other shows followed.
Credit: Broadway Tour/BroadwayTour.net
In June 2017, when Broadway Roulette closed a pivotal investing round, Streisand — who had continued working full-time as a freelancer — decided to go all in and quit her contractor position at Yahoo.
Since then, things have moved along at a good clip. Though Broadway Roulette, which makes money through its service fees, isn’t yet profitable, its overhead is low — there are four employees, not including Streisand’s dog, a Maltese-poodle mix named Marilyn Monroe whom Streisand describes as an office “therapist” — and it is growing every year. In 2017, revenue came in at around $500,0000, according to Streisand, and last year, revenue was just under $1.5 million. Streisand estimates that this year the company will bring in somewhere between $2.5 and $3 million.
For Streisand, operating a startup has required something of a learning curve, but she has had help along the way, including from her husband, whose background is in private equity.
Still, Streisand has always lived somewhat improvisationally. The daughter of two doctors, she grew up all over the country, in places including Virginia, New York, Tennessee and Colorado. Before she became a journalist, she worked in the corporate communications department at Calvin Klein.
Being a relative newcomer has allowed Streisand to see the theater world with fresh eyes. She has become an advocate for female representation in the traditionally male-dominated theater industry, and takes pride in running a ticketing company with an all-female staff.
Fiona Rudin, who has invested in Broadway Roulette, said she was initially intrigued by the company because of the way it sought to democratize access to theater. But she signed on as an investor because she liked Streisand’s charisma, a character trait evident to anyone who meets her. At the end of her conversation with JI, Streisand, who had mentioned that she was 38 weeks pregnant, revealed that she was actually in labor but didn’t want to miss the meeting. Four days later, she emailed to say that her baby was born 12 hours after the interview.
Looking ahead, Streisand says there is room for Broadway Roulette, which recently began partnering with restaurants in the Theater District, to expand its platform to other markets and perhaps other industries, including the off-Broadway community and the Chicago improv scene.
Jonathan Demar, a Tony Award–winning theater producer who has worked on popular shows including “Hadestown,” believes that Broadway Roulette’s model could be replicated in other cities. “There’s so many markets that you could do this with,” he said in a phone interview. “I feel like the theater institution is starting to open its eyes to how we can use technology to help get people to the theater.”
For now, though, Streisand is focused on getting people to Broadway — and experiencing its special allure, regardless of the production. “Part of our platform is that all shows on Broadway are worth seeing,” she said. “And I truly believe that.”
Photo credit: Azi Paybarah
Longtime Congresswoman Nita Lowey (D-NY) announced on Thursday that she will not seek re-election for a 17th term next year.
Lowey, who represents New York’s Westchester and Rockland counties, is chairwoman of the powerful House Committee on Appropriations and head of the State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs subcommittee. In her role, Lowey recently secured funding to protect Jewish non-profits against terrorist attacks.
Lowey has been a staunch supporter of Israel in her 31 years in Congress and is a frequent speaker at AIPAC’s annual gatherings. In her most recent appearance at AIPAC Policy Conference in March, speaking alongside Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY), chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Lowey stated, “It is our honor to lead the committees that write nearly every piece of legislation that advances the strong U.S.-Israel relationship, which benefits the United States in meaningful and immediate ways.”
The New York representative opposed the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, maintaining that the JCPOA “lacks a crystal clear statement” that the international community reserves the right to take all measures to deter Iran from ever developing nuclear capabilities. Over the summer, Lowey joined her colleagues in criticizing Israel’s decision to deny Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) and Ilhan Omar (D-MN) from entering the country.
Reaction: Ann Lewis, who served as White House director of communications for President Bill Clinton and is currently co-chair of the Democratic Majority for Israel, tells JI, “Lowey has been an inspiring leader ever since I met her. She was one of the first women to run successfully for Congress. While leading one of the most important committees in Congress, she established bipartisan partnership with her Republican colleagues and was an eloquent force for the U.S.-Israel relationship.”
Cheryl Fishbein, President of the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York said in a statement that Lowey “has been a true friend and a leader in every issue of importance to the Jewish community.” and has left “big shoes to fill.” Fishbein said that ,in her leadership position on the appropriations committee, Lowey “could do more to influence and advance a piece legislation than almost any other member, except for the Speaker.”
William Daroff, the incoming CEO of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, tweeted, “Congress is losing one of its most impactful members and greatest supporters of a strong US-Israel relationship. There is no doubt that Nita Lowey will be missed.”
Halie Soifer, executive director of the jewish Democratic Council of America said in a statement that Lowey’s “wisdom and experience will be deeply missed in Congress when she retires.”
Aaron Keyak, former head of the National Jewish Democratic Council, tells JI that Lowey’s decision “is a great loss” for the pro-Israel community. “She has been a true champion and one of the strongest to ever hold the gavel for the House Appropriations Committee,” he said.
Top five: Mondaire Jones, who worked in President Barack Obama’s Justice Department, announced a primary challenge against Lowey earlier this year. Other candidates currently being discussed in Democratic circles are Westchester County Legislator Catherine Borgia, Assemblyman David Buchwald, State Senator David Carlucci, and Stephanie Hausner, a former Clarkstown councilwoman and the current deputy director at the Israel Action Network.
Rumor mill: Chelsea Clinton has been floated in the past as a possible candidate for the seat, but has never publicly expressed interest in running.
Democratic strategist Hank Sheinkopf tells JI that any replacement would lack Lowey’s influence in the Democratic party. As an “unabashedly pro-Israel member of Congress with the power generated by seniority,” Lowey is “an irreplaceable defender of the Israel” and there’s “no guarantee” that a newly elected Democrat will be as strong of a supporter of Israel, Sheinkopf explained.
Next in line: Lowey’s possible replacements on the line on the Appropriations committee are Reps. Marcy Kaptur (D-OH), Pete Visclosky (D-IN) and Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), who is an ally of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Rep. Barbara Lee (D-TX) is a senior member on the State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs subcommittee.
Former diplomat says the U.S. should return to the JCPOA and work to ensure Iran is in compliance
Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call via AP Images
Wendy Sherman, former Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, and John Brennan, former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, arrive to brief the House Democrats' caucus meeting on Iran in the Capitol on Tuesday, May 21, 2019.
President Donald Trump is reportedly considering easing sanctions on Iran to pave the way for a public meeting with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani in New York at the United Nations General Assembly later this month.
Wendy Sherman, who served as lead negotiator for the Obama administration on the JCPOA, told Jewish Insider on Wednesday that she “would be shocked if Iran agreed to a meeting without some sanctions relief.” According to Sherman, if Trump is serious in offering Tehran some relief, “There are plenty of ways to do this so that everyone’s interests can be met and so that everyone’s face can be saved.”
Bloomberg reported that during an Oval Office meeting on Monday, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin expressed his support for such a move, while then-National Security Advisor John Bolton “forcefully” opposed such a step. On Tuesday, Trump fired Bolton, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo suggested a meeting with Rouhani is a possibility. The Daily Beast reported on Wednesday that Trump has indicated he is “actively considering” the French plan to grant the Iranian regime a $15 billion credit line if they return to compliance with the 2015 nuclear deal.
Sherman told JI that even if the U.S. relaunches direct negotiations with Iran, it “is a very complicated undertaking. I think what’s most important here is that the president go to a meeting with a strategy; a clear objective and a plan.”
Following that, the former diplomat said, “he will need a team that can follow up, a set of consultations that have happened with our partners and allies, and a really full idea of not only what the first step is, but what the next many steps are. The president, as we know, has gone into some of these meetings thinking that he could simply trust his own instincts and his own impulses and that has never gotten a result good for our national security.”
Sherman claimed that “virtually all” of the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates have said they would return to the 2015 nuclear deal “and I agree with that. Of course, Iran would have to come into full compliance. Likely, we would then, as in all arms control agreements, work for a follow-on agreement.”
Sherman said the conditions of the deal “have changed because of the president’s actions and Iran’s reaction to the president’s actions. The JCPOA remains the essential base but, as a negotiator, you have to take that into account and you have to address where we are.”
Tommy Vietor, Obama’s former National Security Council spokesman, said he believes “Trump should be willing to meet with Rouhani or any other foreign leader. The problem is that Trump is a terrible negotiator. He’s trying to buy a meeting with Rouhani by offering sanctions relief in the hope that it will lead to a negotiation and eventually a deal as strong as the JCPOA. Meanwhile, hard liners in Iran are empowered and our European allies are furious at us for ratcheting up tensions.”
Jason Brodsky, policy director of United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI), told JI that easing sanctions just to meet the Iranian president, “who isn’t its supreme decision-maker, isn’t maximum pressure.” Mark Dubowitz, the CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said that Trump appears poised to make “the same mistake President Obama made in 2013 when he relieved the sanctions pressure on Iran to incentivize negotiations that led to the fatally-flawed JCPOA, giving Tehran patient pathways to nuclear weapons. Why President Trump would want to pull an Obama 2.0 is troubling and puzzling.”
Douglas Feith, a former under secretary of Defense for President George W. Bush, said that Trump “deserves credit for the surprising effectiveness of unilateral U.S. sanctions. If Iran wants sanctions relief, it should be willing to alter its behavior substantially. If it does so, some sanctions relief can reasonably be granted.” But, Feith added, “The U.S. should not have to pay Iran anything to come to the table.”
Paul Moshe Reichmann, the Orthodox Jewish real estate developer who made and lost billions of dollars while transforming the skylines of Toronto, New York and London, died on Friday in Toronto. He was 83.
From the New York Times
Mr. Reichmann and his brothers, Albert and Ralph, led Olympia & York, their family’s real estate development firm, which counted among its greatest projects the World Financial Center in Lower Manhattan and Canary Wharf in London’s East End. At their apex in 1990, the Reichmanns held about 8 percent of New York City’s commercial office space, more than twice as much as their closest rival, the Rockefellers.
Paul Reichmann, a tall, soft-spoken man who dressed in black suits, white shirts and dark ties, was clearly the family business strategist and chief decision-maker. He and his family were lavish contributors, mostly to Orthodox Jewish causes; they donated up to $50 million a year to yeshivas, synagogues and hospitals around the world.
The strains of commerce and religious orthodoxy were often inseparable in the family’s ventures. For example, Olympia & York closed its construction sites on the Jewish Sabbath, paying overtime for Sunday labor, and during the Jewish religious holidays, as well as Christian ones.
At the height of his business career, Mr. Reichmann sometimes spoke wistfully of the Talmudic studies and religious school building projects he undertook as a young man.
Paul Reichmann was born in Vienna on Sept. 27, 1930, the fifth of six siblings. His parents, Samuel and Rene, were Orthodox Jews who had moved from rural Hungary to Vienna, where they owned a prosperous egg export business. But Nazi Germany’s annexation of Austria in 1938 forced the family to flee to Paris.
Two years later, when the Nazis overran France, the Reichmanns fled to Tangier, Morocco, where Samuel Reichmann became a successful currency trader.
When anti-Jewish riots broke out across the Middle East after the 1956 Arab-Israeli War, the Reichmanns uprooted themselves again, this time going to Canada. The family settled in North York, a suburb of Toronto, where Samuel and his sons, Paul, Albert and Ralph, started a small company producing tiles and other building material, which they called Olympia Tile. In 1958, it became the springboard for Olympia & York, which would erect close to 100 buildings in the Toronto area over the next 15 years.
From Bloomberg
In 1949, Paul Reichmann devoted himself to studying the Talmud in the U.K. and Israel. In 1952 in Israel he met Lea Feldman, who later became his wife.
From 1953 to 1956, he worked in Casablanca as the unpaid educational director of Ozar Hatorah, an American-sponsored group that runs schools for Orthodox Jews, according to Bianco. Reichmann later called that time “the most interesting years of my life.”
From the Toronto Star
Paul Reichmann was among the greatest land developers in history. Reichmann, who died Friday morning in Toronto at 83, was also among this country’s outstanding philanthropists.
It is unlikely that those of my generation, raised in Toronto in the 1960s and 1970s, will see Reichmann’s like again. With uncommon audacity, persistence and real estate acumen, Reichmann reshaped the skylines of Toronto, New York and London.
Faith and Fortune: The Reichmann Story from Handel Productions on Vimeo.
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