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NYC mayoral candidate Curtis Sliwa has a mixed record with Jews. Catch up on it here.
Curtis Sliwa, the Republican nominee for mayor of New York City, is best known for founding the Guardian Angels — and he credits a Jewish group with inspiring the movement.
As a teenager going to high school in Crown Heights, a heavily Orthodox Jewish neighborhood, Sliwa says that he saw a group of men chasing out antisemitic gangs. That group was the Maccabees, founded by Rabbi Samuel Schrage to patrol the streets for crime in the 1960s.
“People leaving shul, running down Kingston towards Empire Boulevard, and these gangbangers were running for their lives,” Sliwa recalled in a 2021 interview with journalist Yitzi Weiner. “I said: ‘Wow, this really works! These guys are not coming back in here messing with the Lubavitchers!’”
That image remained with him until he started the Guardian Angels, a citizen patrol group on New York City subways and streets whose members wear a red beret, in 1979. It would become one of many stories about Jews in Sliwa’s public life, during which he has alternately talked about Jewish communities with admiration and disdain.
The radio host, amateur subway patroller and local celebrity is raising two Jewish sons, wearing his red beret as a kippah at their bar mitzvahs. (He and their mother, Melinda Katz, separated in 2014.) But he has also faced his share of controversies with Jewish communities, including accusations of antisemitism.
Sliwa is highly unlikely to become mayor of the overwhelmingly Democratic city. Since incumbent Mayor Eric Adams dropped out, he is now the lowest-polling candidate, trailing frontrunner Zohran Mamdani and former Gov. Andrew Cuomo by a wide margin. Still, Sliwa has cast himself as a champion for Republicans in the outer boroughs and a sizable minority of disaffected, politically homeless New Yorkers — including Jews who don’t like their other options.
We are breaking down for you what Sliwa has actually said about Jews, antisemitism, Israel and the Gaza war.
Jewish security and antisemitism
Long before Sliwa’s foray into politics, he worked alongside Jewish patrols such as Shmira and Shomrim, whose unarmed volunteers respond to emergencies in Jewish neighborhoods and assist police. He talks proudly about the Guardian Angels’ efforts to defend Chabad-Lubavitch Jews during the anti-Jewish Crown Heights riots of 1991.
While Sliwa says he would bulk up the NYPD’s personnel as mayor, volunteer groups like these are central to his vision for security — especially in Jewish communities.
“I, unlike any of the candidates, have said Jews must protect themselves,” he told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “If you depend strictly on Gentiles, history is replete with instances where you’re going to be horribly disappointed.” In another recent interview with the Queens Jewish Link, Sliwa said to Jews that he would not be “your Gentile mashiach,” using the Hebrew word for messiah.
The patrols that Sliwa views as key to public safety have been subjects of controversy over the years. In 2008, a 20-year-old Black man was beaten by a pair of Shmira patrollers. Another young Black man, Taj Patterson, was brutally attacked by a group of haredi Orthodox men that included members of Shomrim in 2013.
The Guardian Angels, meanwhile, have been criticized for fabricating stunts. In a 1992 interview, Sliwa admitted to manufacturing crimes and injuries for the group’s publicity.
New York City mayoral candidates Scott Stringer, Curtis Sliwa and Brad Lander attend a memorial event for seniors who died during the Covid pandemic in nursing homes, March 23, 2025, in the Cobble Hill neighborhood of the borough of Brooklyn. (Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images)
Sliwa told JTA that he wants to introduce students to understanding antisemitism at a young age. As a child himself, he described a fork in the road when he lost an academic award to a Jewish classmate. His uncle suggested the classmate had a deal with their Jewish teacher, but Sliwa’s father corrected him, saying, “‘Curtis, he studied a lot harder than you. Lesson? Study harder.’” Sliwa said this kind of correction should be formally implemented in schools.
“There is no curriculum that addresses the problem of antisemitism,” he said. “Me? I would do it in third and fourth grade.”
Israel and the Gaza war
Israel and its ongoing war in Gaza have loomed large over the mayoral race. Mamdani’s pro-Palestinian advocacy and staunch criticism of Israel shook up New York City politics — and in response, his opponents have proffered the support for Israel that has long been tradition across both parties.
Sliwa talks about his visits to Israel as a thread that connects him to Jewish New Yorkers. During a trip there in 1998, he was offered free rides from bus drivers who mistook him for an Israeli paratrooper with his red beret, he told the Jewish News Syndicate. He applies his theory of Jewish-led security for Jews to Israel, telling The Jewish Press, “Jews have to organize among themselves. That’s why the State of Israel came about.”
He has criticized Mamdani’s views, saying the frontrunner has “no love in his heart for the State of Israel and for Israelis.” Like other candidates, he has rebuked Mamdani for declining to condemn the pro-Palestinian slogan “globalize the intifada” during the primary. (Mamdani has since clarified he does not personally use the language and would “discourage” it because of interpretations that it could incite violence against Jews.)
Sliwa went a step further by extending his attacks to Mamdani’s Jewish supporters. “I would say the Jewish community must look internally,” he said to JNS. “Why are some of our children and grandchildren following this guy and giving him absolution and exemption when he is using the language of an antisemite?”
But Sliwa has also said that he is more focused on his “law and order” platform than foreign policy. In an interview with The Forward, he pointed out that Cuomo’s focus on antisemitism accusations against Mamdani failed during the Democratic primary, which Mamdani roundly won.
And he recently acknowledged the intensity of pro-Palestinian sentiment in New York City, citing a New York Times/Siena poll that found voters are more sympathetic to Palestinians than to Israel. In an interview with City & State, he suggested that President Donald Trump could dampen Mamdani’s momentum by brokering peace in the Middle East.
“If he can bring peace to Gaza, he can definitely take one political plank away from Zohran Mamdani, who has used that effectively during the primary and will now use it in the general campaign,” said Sliwa.
Controversies
Sliwa has clashed with Jewish New Yorkers over the years. In a 2018 speech, he described Orthodox Jews as a drag on the tax system and warned suburban residents that they were trying to “take over your community.”
Curtis Sliwa, the Guardian Angels founder and now a New York mayoral candidate, responds in a video to accusations that remarks he made in 2018 were antisemitic, July 25, 2021. (Screenshot)
“We’re not talking about poor, impoverished, disabled people who need help. We’re talking about able-bodied men who study Torah and Talmud all day and we subsidize them,” he said in a videotaped meeting in the Hudson Valley. “All they do is make babies like there’s no tomorrow and who’s subsidizing that? We are.”
This speech resurfaced when Sliwa ran for mayor in 2021. He responded with a video in which he did not apologize or disavow his comments, but offered to meet with Orthodox leaders to “resolve our differences.”
“My two youngest sons have been raised Jewish. They need to read this? To say to themselves, my father is an antisemite? Come on, even my worst critics out there would recognize that’s a shanda,” he said in the video.
Despite his offense at being called an “antisemite,” Sliwa sparked backlash again at a 2024 event by saying that antisemitism was innate to “Gentiles.”
“It’s in our DNA,” he said at an event supporting then-presidential candidate Donald Trump in Staten Island. “I also have to hold myself back sometimes. And I have two Jewish children.” He later told JTA that he “used the wrong term” in those remarks, meaning to say that antisemitism was often “fed into the minds” of non-Jews.
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Troy Jackson wins Maine Democratic Senate nomination, keeps mum on Israel, AIPAC
(JTA) — BANGOR, Maine – Troy Jackson accepted the Democratic nomination for Maine’s U.S. Senate race on Saturday with no mention of Israel, sidestepping an issue that has become a focal point for many Maine Jews as they assess the party’s new standard-bearer.
Jackson secured the nomination in a landslide 566 to 5 vote by delegates at the nominating convention. Saundra Pelletier, the only remaining challenger after the rest of the field dropped out in the days leading up to the gathering, picked up the handful of votes that didn’t go to the winner.
While Jackson took several shots during his acceptance address at Sen. Susan Collins, the incumbent Republican he will now face in the general election, it was Pelletier who used her remarks to specifically malign Collins’ voting record on Israel.
“She voted to increase federal funding in defensive arms for Iran, and did not vote to take moderate measures to hold Netanyahu accountable,” Pelletier said, receiving a chorus from the crowd.
The victory for Jackson came after the state’s former Democratic nominee, Graham Platner, a staunch Israel critic, left the race earlier this month amid a sexual assault allegation, which he has denied. The resulting scramble to replace him upended the Democratic primary and prompted fresh scrutiny from Jewish Mainers of Jackson’s recent evolution on Israel.
Jackson, a former state lawmaker and union advocate, had previously said little publicly about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict during his two-decade career in state legislature. However, during the race to replace Platner, he has embraced the term “genocide” to describe Israel’s war in Gaza and called for an end to U.S. military aid to Israel on his campaign website, both positions championed by Platner before his exit. Jackson also has said he wouldn’t accept any funding from AIPAC.
But on Saturday, as a sea of supporters sporting his campaign’s blue and yellow “Troy Jackson” t-shirts cheered their new nominee, Jackson omitted any mention of Israel from his remarks. Instead, Jackson reaffirmed his commitments to passing Medicare for all, supporting union rights and restoring abortion rights nationwide, among other issues.
During his address following the decisive victory, Jackson also offered a message to Maine voters who remain on the fence:
“Whether you supported me from the beginning, supported another candidate, or are still deciding what you think of this fifth-generation logger from Allagash,” Jackson said. “I’ve always known this, that your trust has to be earned, and so I want you to hear this directly from me. There is a place in this campaign for all of you. There is work for you in this movement, and I will spend every day, now through November, earning that trust because today we turn the page.”
Amy Fried, a professor emerita of political science at the University of Maine who attended Saturday’s conference as an alternate delegate but did not cast a ballot, said that while she believed Jackson had addressed Israel in the lead-up to Saturday because “a lot of people are interested in the topic,” his speech reflected the issues he had been “concerned about his whole political career.”
“Obviously, he’d have to take votes on foreign policy and funding when he’s in the Senate,” Fried said. “But I think that his main interest is always in issues that have to do with housing and healthcare, you know, all of the matters that are sort of more day-to-day kitchen table issues.”
While Jackson avoided revisiting his recent stances on Israel, which have raised concern among some Jewish voters in Maine, about a dozen pro-Palestinian protesters rallied outside the convention hall in support of his candidacy.
“It’s a really positive step that you have nominated Troy Jackson,” one protester shouted through a megaphone. “I think he’s going to be a strong voice for the kind of values that I believe in and the people of Palestine, the children of Iran, and all the other places the U.S. bombed.”
Ronna Lugosch, a 71-year-old Jewish grandmother and delegate from Round Pond, Maine, said that she was “more excited now than I was before” about Jackson’s candidacy.
Lugosch, who supports Jackson’s stances on Israel, said she hadn’t noticed he had left the topic out of his remarks. “Unfortunately, it’s a sensitive topic, so that’s my guess that maybe he didn’t bring that up because it was just too much,” Lugosch said. “You know, he was being careful.”
Still, Lugosch said that she was “really impressed with all his comments about working people and organizing.”
“I’m going to campaign for him because we need to get rid of Susan Collins,” Lugosch said. “Before it was more of a sort of a defensive stance, but now I’m supportive, and so I feel better about going out into the community.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Troy Jackson wins Maine Democratic Senate nomination, keeps mum on Israel, AIPAC appeared first on The Forward.
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Maine Democratic Senate nominee Troy Jackson raises eyebrows in the Jewish community
(JTA) — BANGOR, Maine – Throughout his two-decade-long career as a state lawmaker in Maine, Troy Jackson built his political brand around labor and economic issues.
But as the former logger and state Senate president now seeks a seat in the U.S. Senate, Jackson has begun staking out positions on something new — Israel.
Facing one of the Democratic Party’s most divisive issues, Jackson has embraced the label “genocide” to describe Israel’s war in Gaza and called for an end to U.S. military aid to Israel.
“This is unconscionable. Anybody with eyes and a heart knows the Israeli government is committing genocide in Gaza. It has to end, and we as Americans have the power to end it,” Jackson wrote in a post on X on July 9, responding to reports of a Palestinian aid worker killed by Israeli strikes. “When I’m in the U.S. Senate, I’ll never vote in favor of US taxpayer-funded military aid to Israel.”
A week later, Jackson also inveighed against AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby that has become a frequent target of progressives.
“I pledge to lead for Maine voters by rejecting attempts to buy influence through unlimited personal wealth and dark money,” Jackson wrote in a post on X. “That means rejecting all money from corporate PACs, AIPAC, and lobbyists from Big Oil and Big Pharma.”
For some Jews in Maine, Jackson’s emergence has prompted unease. Some worry that his embrace of the term “genocide” reflects a troubling shift in Democratic primaries across the country that many Jews have found alienating. Other Maine Jews, while somewhat hesitant, see the longtime Democrat as a pragmatic choice to represent the state and say they prefer him over Platner.
Jackson’s newfound efforts to speak out forcefully on Israel comes as he is likely to secure the Democratic nomination Saturday to take on Republican Sen. Susan Collins in a high-profile race that could determine control of the Senate.
His policy statements and comments about Israel have mirrored the broader evolution of the race since the collapse of Graham Platner’s campaign earlier this month. Platner, a staunch critic of Israel, bowed out of the race earlier this month following a sexual assault allegation that he has since denied. In the days that followed, some of the Democratic candidates who emerged to replace Platner but then dropped out, including Shenna Bellows and Jordan Wood, also began using the term “genocide” for the first time.
Jackson’s campaign did not respond to a Jewish Telegraphic Agency request for comment about his views on Israel.
For some Jews in Maine, Jackson’s sudden emphasis on Israel has raised questions about whether his positions reflect a deeply held conviction or an effort to win over Platner’s supporters.
“I do think that his rhetoric on Israel has been kind of like a ‘pick me’ appeal to the perception of what the Platner base is feeling about the whole thing,” said Brian Kresge, president of Congregation Beth Israel in Bangor, who said he largely votes for Democrats. “I don’t know whether it’s a closely held position because it’s not something he said much about during the gubernatorial race (Jackson came in third place in the governor’s race). It’s not something I’ve ever heard him talk about in his other forays in politics.”
Rabbi Bill Siemers, the leader of Beth Israel, Maine’s oldest active synagogue, said that he had found “no evidence” in Jackson’s “social media or in his talks that this was an issue for him before very recently, and it’s clear to me and to others that he brought this up so he could be the Senate nominee.”
“Now we know where we are. We know where we stand, that this, at least in the upper levels of the Maine Democratic Party, this is a requirement, and that’s not good,” Siemers said, referring to the label of genocide.
“I don’t think Jews want to have to go to the polls and vote on the basis of that, but they will,” he added.
Jackson’s rhetoric on Gaza earned praise from Our Revolution, the group formed by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders to advance the progressive movement. Jackson has won endorsements from both Sanders and Our Revolution, as well as left-wing streamer Hasan Piker, California Rep. Ro Khanna and Maine’s Democratic Socialists of America chapter.
“Troy Jackson doesn’t do word salad. He calls a genocide a genocide and says he’ll never vote for taxpayer-funded military aid to fund it,” the group wrote in a Facebook post earlier this month. “That’s what Maine voters delivered a historic win for on June 9, what other contender in Maine will actually say it?”
Jackson, 58, is a fifth-generation logger from northern Maine and first entered politics in 1998 by leading a logging blockade along the Maine-Canada border to protest corporations hiring low-wage foreign workers. In 2000, he launched an unsuccessful Republican bid for the state House before later winning a seat two years later as an independent.
He ran again for re-election in 2004 as a Democrat and won, kicking off a two-decade long career in state politics where he maintained strong union ties and progressive views. Jackson also once voiced opposition to same-sex marriage and abortion, both positions he has since reversed.
In 2024, at the Maine State Democratic Convention, Jackson, who served as convention chairman, reportedly attempted to quiet down a small group of pro-Palestinian protesters who called Maine Rep. Jared Golden a “war criminal” during a video celebrating the Jewish congressman.
“I believe in the ability of people to demonstrate and protest,” Jackson said amid the outburst. “There is a time for that.”
Earlier this year, Jackson came in third place in the state’s Democratic primary for governor. During his campaign, he pledged not to take “dark money,” but did not specifically reject AIPAC, which typically spends in federal races.
During Platner’s campaign, Jackson campaigned alongside him and endorsed his candidacy until Platner was accused of sexual assault. Following the allegation, he joined other progressive leaders in calling for Platner to drop out.
Going into Saturday’s nominating convention, Kresge said that there was still a “palpable sense of relief” among the local Jewish community that Platner, whose Nazi-linked tattoo had sparked outcry among Jewish Mainers, was out of the race.
“Troy Jackson may sound alike on a lot of these issues, but he’s not burdened by – well, he is burdened by some accusations and stuff —but he’s not burdened by a Reddit history,” Kresge said. “He has an actual political resume to run on.”
While some Jewish Mainers questioned Jackson’s recent rhetoric on Israel, others said his long record in local government offered some assurances.
“I don’t know Troy Jackson, but I think having a resume to fall back on, and having been in the position where he’s had to make compromises and understand the difference between spouting a popular slogan versus getting things done, I think is a small measure of comfort,” said Matt Tzuker, a Jewish resident of Portland.
Maine State Rep. Laurie Osher, who is Jewish and said she was ready to vote for Jackson, said that she hoped that Jackson would be able to “keep up the momentum” that Platner had gained during his campaign.
“He’s got my vote because I have worked with him,” Osher said. “For every moment that I found him doing something I didn’t think was great, he was also open to me telling him why I didn’t think it was great, and I saw him do better.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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MAGA influencer Laura Loomer mounts Jewish apology tour in Ukraine, meeting with Zelensky and rabbi
(JTA) — MAGA firebrand Laura Loomer, who is warring with anti-Israel figures on the right, is invoking her Judaism as she pulls an about-face on a former hobbyhorse of hers: Ukraine.
Loomer interviewed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on a visit to the country this week, asking him about his Jewish identity and the country’s antisemitism policies. She also sat down with influential rabbi Moshe Azman as Ukraine’s punishing war with Russia drags into its fourth year.
In a series of tweets, she apologized for her past assertions that Ukraine is “full of Nazi sympathizers,” and that Zelensky was “a self-hating Nazi Jew.”
“I admit it, I fell for Russian propaganda,” Loomer, who wields considerable influence with President Donald Trump, wrote Friday after sharing “a lovely Kosher dinner” with Azman’s family. She also visited a historic Kyiv monastery recently shelled by Russian drones and invited Zelensky to make his case for why supporting Ukraine was “America First.”
Loomer’s Jewish Ukraine tour comes as the American right is splintering, largely between pro- and anti-Israel factions — pitting the likes of Loomer and Jewish pundit Ben Shapiro against those aligned with pundit Tucker Carlson.
Military aid to Ukraine has served as a tension point between the hawks and isolationists since Russia’s invasion in 2022. The two issues have become increasingly intertwined, with the right’s loudest anti-Israel voices opposing the U.S.-Israel war against Iran and also projecting weariness around supporting Ukraine.
Vice President JD Vance, whose language on Israel and Jewish issues has alarmed some Jewish leaders, took credit for halting U.S. aid to Ukraine earlier this year. Vance’s associate Carlson, who has recently turned on Trump and broken with the Republican Party, conducted a softball interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2024. The U.S. Senate will vote on a new joint Russia-Iran sanctions bill next week.
Trump himself exhibited closeness with Putin during his first term and, together with Vance, chastised Zelensky during a White House meeting last year. But his administration has indicated a recent willingness to try to end the war on terms sympathetic to Ukraine, and the two leaders are scheduled to meet in the White House next week.
Loomer, too, formerly exhibited pro-Russia tendencies, including writing for the Russian-owned English-language outlet RT. More recently, she has feuded with other right-wing media figures, including Carlson, Candace Owens and Joe Rogan, often citing her pro-Israel views as the reason for the falling-out. Unlike a growing number of pundits on the right, she has also continued to cheer on the war with Iran even as its support has sunk across party lines and other commentators have sought to cast blame onto Israel.
Loomer has also used inflammatory rhetoric toward Muslims, calling on Trump to pass “a Muslim Ban as it was intended to be” after New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a “war criminal” earlier this week.
In her Zelensky interview, filmed at the Ukrainian presidential palace and released in full on Friday, Loomer tried to play partisan politics. She unsuccessfully urged him to call Trump the best president in history and told him that his 2024 visit to a Pennsylvania munitions factory alongside Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro was “one of the reasons why a lot of Americans came to dislike you.” (Shapiro, who is also Jewish, was at the time a prominent campaign surrogate for then-Vice President Kamala Harris, who was running for president.)
Loomer sought a Jewish connection with the president, telling him, “I’m Jewish, you’re Jewish. We share that in common.” Zelensky, who rarely publicly comments on his Jewish heritage, highlighted that Ukraine earlier this year passed a law criminalizing antisemitism.
“It’s illegal, antisemitism. We did it during my presidency,” he said. The new law, a strengthening of a 2021 law, institutes fines and possible prison terms for those found guilty of hatred or discrimination on the basis of Jewish identity.
Zelensky, who has long enjoyed largely unqualified support among Democrats and liberal Americans, praised Loomer’s visit and change of heart. He, Azman and other Ukrainian figures who met with Loomer have sought to cultivate increased favor with Trump during a particularly uncertain phase of the war.
Loomer told the president her main goal was to counter “Russian propaganda” she believed was prominent among American podcasters, including allegations of links between Ukraine’s military and Naziism.
“I really opposed sending my taxpayer dollars to Ukraine because I really believed that you had an army, the Azov Battalion, full of Nazis,” she told Zelensky, referencing an infamous Ukrainian military wing that has continued to attract scrutiny, both before and after the 2022 invasion, for its links to neo-Nazis and other extremists.
“We are not Nazis,” Zelensky told her, later urging her to visit Babyn Yar, the memorial to the “Holocaust by bullets” perpetrated by Nazis on Ukrainian soil with the help of local collaborators in 1941. In 2022, shortly after the invasion, a Russian bombing near the memorial prompted Zelensky to make an appeal to the global Jewish community for support.
Loomer, who is notorious for credulously reporting explosive allegations against her political enemies, said she accepted Ukraine’s claims to now be Nazi-free. One of the deciding factors, she said, was meeting with Azman, the Chabad-affiliated rabbi who holds the disputed title of chief rabbi of Ukraine and whose son was killed in battle with Russia in 2024.
“The Rabbi told me his dead Jewish son didn’t fight alongside Nazis,” Loomer tweeted, adding, “I can assure Amercians [sic] that Jews are safer in Ukraine than they are in Mamdani’s New York City!” (Azman has also praised the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riots by Trump supporters, celebrating them for “protesting mass election fraud” and comparing them to the Maidan, the 2014 Ukrainian protest movement that ousted a pro-Russia president.)
Most diaspora Jews and Jewish organizations have backed Ukraine since the invasion and have decried Putin’s initial assertion that his invasion was intended to “denazify” the country. Loomer has now joined their ranks, hoping to marry that support to her own ideological identity as a Jewish right-winger in an era where the president she has long championed is losing some influence.
“We won’t have Trump forever,” she wrote Tuesday, “and the axis of evil is moving fast.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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