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Sicily’s Jews have their first rabbi in 500 years. Italy’s Jewish establishment won’t accept them.
CATANIA, Italy (JTA) — Rabbi Gilberto Ventura believes his synagogue has the most beautiful view in the world. Located in the tower of a century-old castle on the slopes of Mt. Etna in the eastern Sicilian city of Catania, the synagogue is wedged between a snow-capped volcano and the sun-kissed Mediterranean sea.
The 49-year-old Brazil-born rabbi also thinks his congregation is one of the most unique in the world. It’s made up mainly of Bnei Anusim — descendants of Jews forced to hide their religious practice and convert to Catholicism after the Spanish Inquisition of 1492. Before that infamous decree, Sicily was home to tens of thousands of Jews.
The synagogue, which was first inaugurated last fall, is the result of decades of grassroots efforts by those descendants in Catania to find each other and forge a sense of community that had been lacking for centuries.
Hiring a full-time rabbi was the last piece of the puzzle, and Ventura, who has a long history of working with communities of Bnei Anusim in Brazil, was a natural candidate. He arrived in Catania in January.
“I really believe that the future Judaism in the world, especially in some places like Italy and, of course, Brazil, is connected to the Bnei Anusim, and the need to embrace the Bnei Anusim,” Ventura said.
But in an ongoing point of frustration, the formal organization representing Italian Jewry, the Union of Italian Jewish Communities (UCEI), does not recognize them as Jews.
“In the case of Catania, this strange Jewish community hasn’t passed all the steps the law requires,” said Giulio Di Segni, the vice president of UCEI.
He was referring to the fact that the community did not seek UCEI’s permission before establishing themselves under the name “Jewish community of Catania.” Per Italian law, UCEI has a monopoly on acknowledging and establishing Jewish communal life in Italy — including authority over who can use the term “Jewish community of” in formal ways.
“UCEI can’t accept this because it is too easy,” he added. “We are not against their synagogue or their way of prayer, but they cannot use the name ‘Jewish community of Catania.’”
The rooftop of the Castello Leucatia, where the community meets, has a large menorah and a view of the Mediterranean. (David I. Klein)
Catania’s Jewish community members told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency a variety of stories about their Jewish backgrounds. Some came from families that always outwardly identified as Jewish. Others identified the source of family traditions practiced by parents and grandparents who — as descendants of Jews who faced persecution for practicing Judaism — still felt the need to hide aspects of their Jewishness from the public eye.
In the midst of questions about their ancestry, the majority of the Jewish community members have undergone Orthodox conversions. But that hasn’t led to their acceptance.
Benito Triolo, president of the Catania Jewish community, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that he first came to Judaism at the age of 40, thanks to the insight of a Jewish friend in Palermo, Sicily’s capital and most populous city. Working together, they established a Charter of Sicilian Jewry, which aimed to identify and highlight the Jewish heritage of neighborhoods across the island.
While working on that project, Triolo came closer to his own Jewish heritage, and after years of study, he completed an Orthodox conversion through a rabbi in Miami 25 years ago.
Another community member, who was born Alessandro Scuderi but today goes by the name of Yoram Nathan, first felt drawn to Judaism as a child watching news of the Six-Day War in 1967. At first, he was laughed at by other members of his family — except his grandmother, who happened to have a tradition of lighting eight candles in early winter and baking flat unleavened bread around Easter time.
Decades of study later, Scuderi also completed a formal conversion to Judaism before an Orthodox rabbinic court, or beit din.
Others had more straightforward backgrounds.
“I was born in a Jewish family,” said David Scibilia, the community’s secretary. “Frankly speaking, we were not hiding or deep in the shadows in this part of the country.”
Scibilia said that his father explained to him that he was a Jew as early as the age of four. Within their own home, they observed holidays and kept Shabbat — no easy task since Italian schools at the time of his childhood in the 1970s had class on Saturdays. He did not eat meat until he was an adult and was able to acquire kosher meat.
He said that his family had maintained their Jewish identity since the days of the Inquisition and married amongst a small group of other similar families.
“I was a Jew, but not part of any community,” Scibilia said. “Just my family was my community.”
An aerial view of the city of Catania shows the Mt. Etna volcano in the background, Jan. 28, 28, 2022. (Fabrizio Villa/Getty Images)
Scibilia explained that once he had a child of his own, he realized he did not want her to have the same lonely Jewish experience. But when he reached out to UCEI, he said he found the proverbial door to organized Jewish life shut. Earning membership in Jewish community organizations across Western Europe involves a strict vetting process, and many groups require applicants to prove their mothers’ Jewishness according to varying standards.
Scibilia’s experience was echoed by Jews outside of the community in Catania and across Italy’s south who talked to JTA — a feeling of neglect or rejection by UCEI for those who fall outside of the norms of Italian Judaism.
UCEI currently recognizes 19 Jewish communities across northern Italy and just one in the south, in Naples, which has jurisdiction over the rest of the southern half of the peninsula and the island of Sicily. The organization recognizes around 28,000 Jews in total across the country.
Scibilia noted that despite his Jewish upbringing, he has multiple certificates of conversion from Orthodox rabbis. The first came from a beit din of American rabbis from who traveled to Syracuse, Sicily, to assess Scibilia and others like him in Sicily. His second comes from the conversion court of the Israeli Chief Rabbinate, which is known for its exacting Orthodox standards.
Both were rejected by Italy’s own Orthodox rabbinate, and he was forced to stand before another rabbinic court in Italy.
“I have at this moment — don’t start to laugh — three documents that prove that I am a Jew, two Ketubah [marriage contracts] for my wedding, and so on, again and again and again,” Scibilia said.
Others’ experiences in the region have been even more fraught, he said.
“The problem in Italy, that if you try to study with any rabbi here, you can study for 20 years, maybe you can die even before you reach the end of the tunnel,” he said. “From my point of view, they are playing with the spirituality of these people.”
In a statement last year, UCEI called the the Catanians “a phantom ‘Jewish community’” and accused them of “misleading the local institutions and deluding believers and sympathizers into adhering to traditional religious rites, never actually recognized or authorized by the Italian rabbinical authority.”
“Between UCEI and the Italian republic is an agreement signed in ‘87,” Di Segni said. “This law means everything about Jewish communities in Italy is through the Union Jewish community in Italy (UCEI).”
Noemi Di Segni, shown in Rome in 2017, is president of the Union of Jewish Communities in Italy. (Stefano Montesi/Corbis via Getty Images)
Triolo said he isn’t too concerned about UCEI’s recognition.
“Ours is a process of refounding old communities that existed as early as 200 and up to 1492,” Triolo said. “Our recognition is already in our history. At that time the UCEI did not exist. We were there and we simply returned!”
No one knows when Jews first arrived in Sicily, but the Talmud tells a story that claims Rabbi Akiva, a well-known early rabbinic sage, visited the island in the early second century and told of a small Jewish community in Syracuse. Some historians believe the Roman writer Caecilius Calactinus — who was born in a town near Messina in the first century B.C.E — to have been of Jewish origin.
All agree that over the course of history, Sicily’s Jews watched as the island was traded between Greeks, Carthaginians, Romans, Arabs, Normans and half a dozen other empires. The narrative has also long been that Jewish life there ended five centuries ago, under Spanish rule.
The Spanish empire’s Jews suffered the same fate as Jews from the Iberian peninsula, who would become known to the world as Sephardim when they were expelled in 1492.
The descendents of Spain — and Sicily — spread throughout the world, establishing communities in North Africa, throughout the Ottoman empire, in the Netherlands and ultimately the British Isles and North America, as it was believed that Judaism faded away in their homelands.
Catania’s Jews disagree, arguing that many Jews practiced their religion over the centuries, in secret.
Triolo and others in the community formally inaugurated their synagogue in October. It was furnished with Torah scrolls donated by the Ohev Sholom synagogue in Washington, D.C.
The synagogue is situated in the tower of the Castello Luecatia, an early 20th-century structure built by a merchant believed to be of Jewish origin. The building was granted to the community by the city’s municipality.
“So they had the people, they had a synagogue, but they needed somebody to teach,” Ventura said.
The community meets in the Castello Luecatia, an early 20th-century structure built by a merchant believed to be of Jewish origin. (David I. Klein)
Ventura, who is Orthodox, may be the island’s first permanent working rabbi in over 500 years, but it’s not his first time working with Bnei Anusim.
Back in his native Brazil, Ventura was the leader of the Synagogue Without Borders, an organization through which he served 15 communities in Brazil’s north that were made up of descendants of Jews who came with the first Portuguese colonists to South America and who ultimately had to hide their identity as the Inquisition spread to the New World.
His work there put him in conflict with Brazil’s Jewish establishment, too. But Ventura is unfazed.
In Brazil, he founded synagogues and summer camps and built mikvahs and yeshivas across the country’s north. Since 2015, he has facilitated the conversion of hundreds of Bnei Anusim, bringing them back into the fold of mainstream Orthodox Judaism.
“I am a teacher since I was 21 years old,” he said. “Now I am 49, along with my wife. It’s one of the things we love to do, and know how to do. To teach Jewish philosophy, to teach Torah, to teach Tanakh, to teach the story of the Jews in Brazil, and now we are starting to teach the story of the Jews in Italy, the story of the Inquisition etcetera.”
In Castello Leucatia, he leads Shabbat services with the energy of a gospel preacher, pausing between prayers to explain a verse, teach a new tune, welcome latecomers, or simply to allow the congregation to talk.
Catania community members are shown at a recent gathering. (David I. Klein)
“This is what’s most important,” he remarked during one such lull on a recent Friday night. “That they get to talk and be a community.”
Ventura had organized a Shabbat event for other Jews across Italy — from Naples to Turin — who shared his belief that the future of Judaism was in communities like the one in Catania.
“Our point of view of Judaism is that we have to be a part of society, we don’t have to insulate ourselves, we believe that Judaism has a lot to contribute to society,” Ventura said. “In Brazil, we have a lot of connections with people from the periphery, in the favela and other communities, immigrants, Indians, etcetera. So that is something we want to establish here, to teach the people a Judaism that brings good things to the wider society.”
Ventura isn’t the only one working with such communities in southern Italy. Across the Strait of Messina, Jewish life has also been on the rise in Calabria — the toe of Italy’s boot — thanks to an American-born rabbi named Barbara Aiello.
Aiello, though raised in Pittsburgh, is of Calabrian descent. She returned to the land of her ancestors in the early 2000s and began working with the Bnei Anusim there, ultimately establishing a synagogue called Ner Tamid del Sud, meaning “eternal light of the south.”
“Until now, nobody took care of Judaism in the south of Italy,” Scibilia said while looking out at the Mediterranean from the terrace of Castello Leucatia.
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Two deaths in Manchester synagogue attack last year will be probed through public inquiry, Britain says
(JTA) — The deaths of two Jewish men in an attack on a synagogue in Manchester last year will be examined through a public inquiry, the British home secretary announced on Monday, a necessary step to include sensitive information in the investigation.
Melvin Cravitz and Adrian Daulby were killed during the attack on Yom Kippur on Oct. 2, 2025, when Jihad Al-Shamie rammed a car into a group of worshippers outside the Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation in Manchester and stabbed two people. Cravitz died from stab wounds and another man, Andrew Franks, was seriously injured but survived. Daulby was shot by police while blocking the synagogue doors to stop Al-Shamie from entering. Two other people were seriously injured.
Al-Shamie, a Syrian-born British citizen, said he was acting for the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, before police shot him dead.
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood announced the public inquiry in a statement about national security at the House of Commons, saying that “what happened that day must be fully understood.”
“This will ensure that all evidence can be heard, including any sensitive national security material that could not otherwise be fully heard in the coroner’s court,” said Mahmood.
Judge Alexia Durran, the chief coroner of England and Wales, was overseeing inquests into the deaths of Cravitz and Daulby. Durran last month recommended that Mahmood convert the inquests into a public inquiry, following statements from Home Office lawyers that some information from MI5 would be withheld from open court due to national security concerns. A full investigation that involves hearing sensitive material in private requires a public inquiry.
Earlier this year, Greater Manchester Police’s chief constable Stephen Watson said he was “deeply sorry” for a “missed opportunity” to uncover the plot against the Heaton Park synagogue. Watson made the apology after prosecutors revealed that Al-Shamie had two prior arrests for allegedly breaching a non-molestation order and alleged rape, and his mobile devices were not examined until after the synagogue attack.
Mahmood listed “a series of attacks on our Jewish community” in the year since the synagogue attack, including the stabbing of two Jewish men in the London neighborhood of Golders Green, a spate of arson attacks and a “foiled but potentially lethal plot” against Jews in Manchester on the eve of Yom Kippur last month. In the last case, two Iranian men have been charged with terrorism offenses.
“Faced with the threat posed to our Jewish community, we have increased funding to the police by an additional £250 million to boost police presence in key Jewish areas and to tackle antisemitism on our streets,” said Mahmood.
She added, “I know we cannot simply build higher walls around our Jewish community and expect them to live in fear. So we must root out the evil of antisemitism wherever it lurks in society, and this government is committed to that effort.”
Mahmood’s announcement comes days after the Home Office released data showing that hate crimes against Jewish people in England and Wales rose 10% in the year ending in March.
Mahmood said the United Kingdom was aware that “the Iranian state is targeting our Jewish community,” adding that the threat posed to Jews demonstrated “how the lines are increasingly blurring between extremism and state threats.”
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Checkmate? Netanyahu faces a daunting playing field ahead of Oct. 27
(JTA) —
With just two weeks to go before Israel’s election, the political chessboard is set — and there is little indication that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has found a winning move.
Israel’s prime minister is not elected directly by voters but must assemble a coalition commanding a majority of the Knesset’s 120 seats. That means Benjamin Netanyahu’s chances of retaining power depend in part on how well his smaller political allies perform at the polls.
There are 38 parties running in these elections, although no more than 15 will meet the 3.25% vote threshold – the percentage of the total vote that a party needs to clear to gain any seats in the Knesset. The parties that will be left standing after the Oct. 27 vote will likely include three or four on the right, led by Netanyahu’s Likud list; four or five on the center-left, with polling showing the new Yashar party led by Gadi Eizenkot, a former military chief of staff, leading them; two Haredi Orthodox parties; and two predominantly Arab parties.
Unfortunately for Netanyahu, several right-wing parties didn’t merge as he had hoped. Religious Zionism, the ultra-nationalist party led by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, did not join forces with National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit or Amcha Yisrael, led by retired Brig. Gen. Ofer Winter.
As a result, both Smotrich’s party and Winter’s party remain close to Israel’s electoral threshold, raising the possibility that one or both could fail to win enough votes to enter the Knesset — which means their votes, which could have strengthened Netanyahu’s bloc, will be wasted. With the 3.25% threshold the equivalent of four Knesset seats, the wasted vote could be substantial.
“Netanyahu has been considered Israel’s political magician for many years — the man who managed in 2022 to bring Ben-Gvir and Smotrich together on a joint list,” said Dr. Gayil Talshir, a political scientist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Ahead of that election, Netanyahu publicly urged the two parties to merge, warning that the right-wing bloc “can’t take the risk” of either party falling below the electoral threshold. Days later, the two leaders reached a deal following a meeting with Netanyahu, who had pressed for the merger.
“We haven’t seen that happen in this election,” Talshir continued. “Netanyahu is entering this election in the weakest position we have seen him in over the past decade in terms of the parties running.”
The right-wing parties’ decisions to run separately reflected a combination of personal animosity and ideological differences. Winter emphasized the need to bring new faces into politics, arguing that those tainted by the failures behind Hamas’ invasion of southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, should make way for new leadership. Smotrich and Ben-Gvir, meanwhile, remained divided by personal tensions and the belief that each appeals to a somewhat different segment of Israel’s ultranationalist right.
Veteran pollster Shmuel Rosner believes Winter’s new party risks falling below the threshold. It is currently polling at around four to five seats, but support for new parties has traditionally declined as the initial excitement surrounding their launch fades. Smotrich’s Religious Zionism, which is polling at roughly five to six seats, is also vulnerable. The party has spent a significant amount of time below the threshold in polling in recent months.
“The party lineup is more challenging for Netanyahu than for his opponents,” Rosner said. “In the anti-Netanyahu camp, there is currently no party that is at risk of falling below the electoral threshold, while in the bloc that leans toward Netanyahu, there is at least one — and potentially another — party in that position.”Even if both parties clear the threshold, however, current polling suggests that Netanyahu remains well short of the 61 seats needed to form a governing coalition. Most polls put his bloc at around 52 to 53 seats.
But the picture is not entirely bleak for Netanyahu. The opposition-aligned bloc, currently led by former military chief Gadi Eisenkot, is also not projected to reach 61 seats. In recent weeks, its numbers have fallen sharply, from roughly 58-59 seats to around 52-53. The balance of the seats go to Arab-led parties.
Yashar party chairman Gadi Eisenkot speaks during the “Game-Changing Generation” National Youth Conference at the International Convention Center in Jerusalem, October 11, 2026. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
Talshir attributes that decline not necessarily to a loss of support for the bloc itself, but to changes elsewhere in the electoral map. Three Arab parties have joined forces to make up a unified Joint List party, strengthening the Arab political bloc and helping one of the parties avoid falling below the electoral threshold. The merger could also increase turnout among Arab voters.
Both major political camps have pledged not to include the Arab parties in a governing coalition. However, here too, the anti-Netanyahu bloc is in a better position.
Joint List and Ra’am are projected to win roughly 14 seats. And the leader of Balad, one of the parties making up the Joint List, withdrew from the race late last month after the Supreme Court signaled that his candidacy would be disqualified. The impact of his forced withdrawal remains unclear, but some analysts suggest it could further boost turnout among Arab voters, who may cast protest votes against those who prevented him from running.
Netanyahu’s potential coalition members are adamantly opposed to including any Arab parties in their coalition, and have made the possibility of a coalition that includes an Arab party a line of attack against the opposition bloc. The previous government, formed by Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid in 2021, brought Ra’am into its coalition to secure a parliamentary majority – a history-making first.
But key figures in the current opposition camp have pledged not to repeat that arrangement this time, saying that emotions remain too raw in the Jewish public three years after the Oct. 7, 2023 deadly Hamas raids inside Israel. Those ruling out another partnership with Arab parties include Gadi Eisenkot, the current leader of the opposition camp in the polls; Lapid, who helped engineer the previous coalition; and Avigdor Lieberman, the hawkish former finance minister.
Talshir nevertheless believes that those commitments could ultimately be tested if the election produces another deadlock. She points to a possible scenario in which Eisenkot and Ra’am could cooperate to establish a minority government, with Ra’am voting to install an Eisenkot-led list while remaining outside the coalition in order to prevent Netanyahu from remaining prime minister.
Abbas told Channel 12 in an interview in August that his top priority was replacing Netanyahu’s current government. And on Saturday, Joint List chairman Youssef Jabareen said his party would be willing to support any government that ends Netanyahu’s rule, subject to conditions he did not specify.
Leader of the Arab Israeli party Ra’am (United Arab List), Mansour Abbas speaks during an election campaign event, ahead of Israel’s legislative elections, in the Arab town of Ka’abiyye-Tabbash-Hajajre in Israel’s Northern District on September 26, 2026. I(Jalaa MAREY / AFP via Getty Images)
If neither bloc can assemble a coalition, Israel could once again find itself heading toward another election — as happened during the two-year political crisis that began in 2019 and led to five subsequent elections — while Netanyahu would remain in office as caretaker prime minister.
“Looking at the scenarios and the polls we are seeing right now, we see a very small chance that either bloc will be able to reach 61 seats,” Rosner said.
One of the biggest wild cards is the handful of parties currently polling below the electoral threshold that have nevertheless decided to remain in the race.Rosner points to three notable parties in that position: The Reservists-Economic Party led by Yoaz Hendel and Yaron Zelekha; the Haredi-oriented party led by Moti Leitner; and Benny Gantz’s Blue and White.
The most significant of the three, Rosner said, is the Hendel-Zelekha party, which is hovering around the electoral threshold and could either cross it or fall short. “It is on the edge of the threshold,” Rosner said. “It could pass or fall with four seats.”
The party, he added, is difficult to place politically. “It doesn’t really say what it will do, and it is made up of people who have different interests and different desires,” Rosner said. Still, he estimates that it would be easier for the party to join the opposition-aligned bloc than Netanyahu’s coalition, in part because of the coalition’s partnership with the Haredi parties. Military reservists deeply resent Haredi men who avoid serving in the military and want the next government to end the practice.
Gantz’s Blue and White, which once led the opposition camp but lost much of its popularity after Gantz joined Netanyahu’s government, is still running despite remaining well below the threshold. It is currently polling at around 1%.Gantz has made clear that if his party clears the electoral threshold, he would seek to form a unity government that includes both Netanyahu and parties from the opposition’s change bloc.
The new Haredi party, HaTzibbur HaHaredi, is polling at a similar level. It could draw one or two seats away from the established ultra-Orthodox parties, potentially weakening Netanyahu’s bloc. The party has said it would support a “broad national government,” without specifying which political camp it would join.For now, the key question is not so much whether voters will switch sides, but whether each bloc can mobilize its existing supporters to turn out on election day.
“The struggle right now is much less about moving voters from one side to the other and much more about making sure voters leave their homes and vote,” Rosner said. “And I estimate that the more difficult test will be for the right-wing bloc.”
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Poll: Most New York City Jewish voters say criticism of Israel is often a cover for antisemitism
A majority of Jewish voters in New York City believe criticism of the Israeli government is often used as a cover for antisemitism, and more are concerned about antisemitic speech and attitudes than physical hate crimes, according to a new poll examining Jewish views on rising antisemitism and the city’s political climate. The survey also found that Jewish voters were more likely to blame the political left than the right for scapegoating Jews.
The Honan Strategy Group survey of 503 Jewish voters across the five boroughs, shared exclusively with the Forward, was conducted Oct. 2 through Oct. 6 via text-to-web before Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s controversial Oct. 7 statement and before his supporters turned on him during a peace vigil last Wednesday.
The survey found that while 85% do not consider criticism of the Israeli government or its leaders inherently antisemitic, 56% believe such criticism is often used as a cover for antisemitism. Meanwhile, seven in 10 Jewish voters believe they are being blamed for society’s problems, and more hold the political left responsible than the right.
The poll has a reported margin of error of plus or minus 4.3 percentage points.
The findings highlight the ongoing tensions between Mamdani and parts of the Jewish community over his harsh criticism of Israel, his defense of pro-Palestinian protesters’ rights and his ties to the Democratic Socialists of America and other left-wing groups.
Throughout his mayoral campaign and since taking office, Mamdani has sought to draw a line between his opposition to Israel and Zionism and his commitment to protecting Jewish New Yorkers. Last month, he rolled out a new municipal strategy to combat antisemitism, but the plan did not adopt a definition of the term.
Last Wednesday, on the third anniversary of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, Mamdani issued a statement condemning Israel’s war in Gaza as a “genocide” and accusing the U.S. government of complicity in Israeli war crimes, irking Jewish leaders, including some allies.
The poll also found Jewish voters divided over whether some positions Mamdani has taken toward Israel are antisemitic. By 48% to 42%, respondents said describing Israel’s actions in Gaza as genocide is not antisemitic. Similarly, 49% said boycotting Israeli products and companies is not antisemitic, compared with 43% who said it is. But a majority — 52% — said denying Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state is antisemitic. Almost two-thirds consider protesting outside synagogues an act of antisemitism.
Mamdani, who rose to power aligned with pro-Palestinian activism and is the city’s first Muslim mayor, has repeatedly accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza, has refused to recognize Israel specifically as a Jewish state and has called for a permanent end to city investments in Israel Bonds.
Mamdani has also defended the rights of anti-Israel protesters, including outside synagogues hosting events promoting real estate in Israel and the West Bank. Some demonstrations have included chants calling for an “intifada” and other rhetoric Jewish leaders described as antisemitic and intimidating, slogans Mamdani has either condemned or encouraged people not to use.
“The data shows broad consensus that criticism of Israel’s government is not antisemitic on its own,” pollster Bradley Honan told the Forward. “But it also shows that most Jewish voters have watched that criticism turn into something more troubling, and they want that line taken seriously.”
Earlier this year, the city’s top Jewish officials urged Mamdani to recognize Israel’s centrality to Jewish identity, and a group of liberal rabbis who met with the mayor warned Mamdani that his rhetoric on Israel is “causing harm.”
The same survey found widespread disapproval among Jewish voters of Mamdani’s handling of antisemitism.
Respondents also appeared to disagree with Mamdani’s approach to combating antisemitism. His plan includes millions of dollars for security, hate-crime prevention and Jewish education. It does not adopt a formal definition of antisemitism and offers little clarity on how the administration views anti-Zionism.
In the poll, 34% said antisemitic speech and attitudes were a bigger problem than physical hate crimes, such as assaults and vandalism. Just 8% said hate crimes were the bigger concern, while 46% considered both equally serious.
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