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Meet the rabbi running for State Assembly on the Upper West Side
(JTA) — Rabbi Stephanie Ruskay has worked for American Jewish World Service and the Jewish Service Corps. She’s been an associate dean for the last 10 years at the Conservative movement’s Jewish Theological Seminary.
Ruskay has made a point of centering justice at each of those organizations, including in the curriculum at JTS, where community organizing and social justice are part of her fourth-year seminar.
Now, Ruskay is hoping to bring that commitment to justice to a new, wider stage as she runs for State Assembly in Manhattan.
Ruskay, a self-described progressive, is running to represent the 69th district that includes parts of the Upper West Side, Morningside Heights and West Harlem. A victory would make her the first female rabbi to hold elected state office in American history.
In a phone interview, Ruskay said she would view being elected to the State Assembly as “an extension of her rabbinate.”
“I don’t feel like I’m changing careers,” she said.
The Assembly seat opened up in the fall when current Assembly member Micah Lasher, whom Ruskay praised, decided to run for Congress.
Ruskay has been endorsed by former Manhattan borough president and onetime Democratic mayoral nominee Ruth Messinger, a longtime Jewish mentor of Ruskay, and City Council member Shaun Abreu.
In a conversation this week, Ruskay talked about rabbis who sign petitions, the Jews who are wary about Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, and why running for State Assembly is the next step in her career.
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length.
What prompted you to run for State Assembly? Why now?
I have felt like the country and the world are in a difficult spot, and I have been civically engaged and doing multifaith justice work for many years. And I felt like I needed to and wanted to be doing a bit more than I’m able to currently do. I’ve been watching the New York legislators and feeling like [they’re] doing a formidable job trying to make New York the safest it could be for all people in the face of real difficulty in the country, and I wanted to be part of that.
What would be your biggest priorities in office, and how do you describe yourself on the political spectrum?
First of all I would describe myself as a community organizer who listens to people and looks for the intersection of what they care about and I care about and meet it together. I’m a progressive and a Democrat. My priorities are immigration, housing, education, environment. In some ways they’re all bastions of democracy. Democracy did not used to be a thing we had to say was overtly a goal — it is today.
You’ve been endorsed by former Manhattan borough president Ruth Messinger, who was president of American Jewish World Service from 1998 to 2016. What’s your relationship with Messinger like, and have you spoken with other current or former elected officials or public figures?
Ruth has been my mentor and friend and teacher for many years. I worked for her at AJWS, and that was a place that really shaped my philosophy around how you partner with people. They work in the developing world with the philosophy that people know best what they need — we won’t tell you what you need, we’ll bring the resources we have and we’re going to work together. And the reason it’s in our self-interest [as Jews] is that we don’t think we can live in a world where other people’s dignity is not valued; it’s a diminishment of our ability to be human and Jews in the world. I was 22 then, I’m 51 now, so that was a formative time in my life.
I’ve been talking to current and former elected officials. We do plan to announce other endorsements in the coming weeks. I am a person who believes you can and should learn from everyone. I think my campaign is going to be a combination of lots of things I hear from other people who served over many decades.
The incoming Zohran Mamdani mayoral administration will take over in just a few weeks. There are many Jewish constituents who have concerns about a mayor whose views on Israel are completely opposed to theirs on Israel. What do you make of this moment for Jewish New Yorkers, and how do you view your role as a Jewish leader?
I feel like choosing to run for State Assembly is actually an extension of my rabbinate. I don’t feel like I’m changing careers. I feel like, if I take seriously the things that I teach about and preach about and study about related to caring for people who are poor and making a community that is safe for people and where people can thrive — that is some of what our texts teach, and the way you do that is you go be involved in how their lives unfold and be partners.
I’m doing this like I’ve done everything — you listen to people. So, of course, I have my own perspective on the election and voted. And if I want to be people’s representative, I have to listen to what’s on their minds, and take that into account in a serious way. So I’m hearing from people who are very excited, I’m hearing from people who are very anxious. And I’m hoping to be the representative of all those people. And you come in and bring their voices into the room.
What was your perspective during the election?
I think this is an exciting and anxiety-provoking time all at the same time, and so we now have a mayor-elect, and I think that you go in and you be a partner and you represent your people. And when we agree, I’ll be very excited to work together, and when we don’t agree or when I know that I represent people who have a very different perspective from what’s happening, then my job is to bring that into the room. In organizing, we say no permanent friends and no permanent enemies. You work with people who you can work with at every moment, and that’s what I’ll do as an assemblyperson.
Earlier in the fall, there was a letter signed by 1,100-plus rabbis from New York and around the country, which called out anti-Zionism and specifically named Mamdani. I’m curious what went into your decision not to sign the letter, and what you made of this huge open letter as it was circulating?
I’m an administrator at the [Jewish Theological] Seminary, so we don’t sign letters at all, it’s just the institutional policy. I think the war of the letters is a challenging thing. I understand what would move somebody to sign on, either they feel personally very moved or they’re getting a lot of pressure from constituents and they want to go on the record. I don’t know, I guess in 50 years we’re going to look back at this time and decide if all the letter-signing was productive or not.
In my time working, I have seen people choose to sign letters and then have enormous ramifications in looking for jobs. It’s very complicated, and at some point there’s too much noise of too many letters and it’s hard to keep track of. And you have to ask yourself, are all the letters making an impact, and in what way?
According to your campaign site you would be the first female rabbi elected to state office in American history. What does that mean to you?
I’m not doing it to be history-making, I’m doing it because I feel like I don’t know what else to do in this time. It happens to be that a female rabbi has not done that before — maybe I’ll start a trend and there will be tons of us, you know, the first of many. But I think if you want to walk the walk, you have to not be inhibited by not having seen it before. This is my idea of what I could do that would have even more impact than I’m having now.
Could you tell me more about your experience as associate dean of JTS? What have you learned from the role, and how might that inform how you operate as a State Assembly member?
I love my job. I feel like it’s always different. The student body is constantly changing, you’re constantly having to ask, ‘Why are we doing it this way?’ We are continuously experimenting. And the world doesn’t stay still — I’ve been there 10 years, you don’t do the same thing for 10 years. You’re constantly trying to meet the moment, and the moment has changed a lot.
I recently had a chance to meet someone who’s an Assemblyperson, and watching how they interacted in the community made me think there was a lot of similarity between constituent services and what we do in the dean’s office. In the dean’s office, students come in with individual issues — it could be about money, course requirements, a lot of things. And you have to try to help the person who’s right in front of you, but you also have to think, ‘Who else is struggling with this issue?’ And is there a policy that would help alleviate this issue for more people?
What’s been your career journey as a rabbi, and how did that lead you to your role with JTS?
I grew up in the Conservative community. I was born in Manhattan, lived in a Mitchell-Lama building [for moderate and middle-income families], 50 West 97th St., until I was 7, and then we moved to Mahopac, which is in Putnam County. We spent a lot of time at our synagogue, and we learned about tradition and history. But justice at that time was not a piece of Jewish life that we talked about in a big way. I thought, how come these feel like separate endeavors? And so I think a lot of my career is about trying to integrate those two things and be part of leading in the Jewish community in a way in which justice and service were as important as all of the other halachic observances — not more important, but as important.
So prior to rabbinical school, I served for a year in Bulgaria in the Jewish community for the Jewish Service Corps for the Joint Distribution Committee, and then worked at American Jewish World Service. Part of my role with AJWS was communicating with rabbis around the country, trying to raise up justice work and civic engagement and international development into what they were doing in communities. I thought, ‘Rabbis play a really important role in setting the agenda for the Jewish community,’ so I thought, ‘I would like to become one!’
I went to rabbinical school at JTS, I worked at Auburn Theological Seminary running their multifaith conflict resolution and leadership program for teenagers — Israelis, Palestinians, South Africans, Northern Irish and American kids. After rabbinical school, I worked at Avodah, the Jewish Service Corps, and led alumni and community engagement. And through that work, I ended up having a relational meeting with someone at JTS — and the next thing I knew, I worked there. The challenge was: Maybe you can come here to make justice more central to how we train students. And I thought, I don’t know if I can. But if I don’t try, I definitely won’t.
Favorite spot for Jewish food in the district?
I’m going to say I spend an equal and large amount of time at both Kosher Marketplace and Six 60 One. And I meet people I know at both places regularly.
The post Meet the rabbi running for State Assembly on the Upper West Side appeared first on The Forward.
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UN Official Speaks at Same Event in Qatar as Hamas Leader, Iranian Foreign Minister
Francesca Albanese, UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, attends a side event during the Human Rights Council at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, March 26, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Denis Balibouse
A United Nations official who has been criticized for using her role to denigrate Israel spoke at the same event in Qatar over the weekend as a senior Hamas official and Iran’s top diplomat.
The Al Jazeera Forum, which took place over the weekend in Qatar, featured speakers including Hamas former leader and current senior figure Khaled Meshaal, Iran’s foreign minister, and Francesca Albanese — the UN’s notoriously controversial special rapporteur on the human rights situation in the Palestinian territories.
Writer and Open Source Intelligence researcher Eitan Fischberger noted that Albanese, whose job centers around human rights, would be speaking at the same event as the leader of Hamas — the terrorist organization that has ruled Gaza since 2006 and committed the October 7 attack on Israel — and Iran’s foreign minister — who is part of the regime that reportedly killed tens of thousands of civilians while they were protesting against the government.
And Albanese was not the only speaker whose professional focus is on human rights but ended up speaking at a conference with some of the world’s most notable human rights abusers. According to the Al Jazeera Forum website, a former prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), a professor of international law, and a humanitarian and climate activist also spoke at the event. Additionally, at least one American professor — who teaches at the University of Maryland, College Park — spoke at the forum.
While Albanese spoke at the event, she discussed Israel being a “common enemy of humanity.”
EMBED https://x.com/HillelNeuer/status/2020454512356376911?s=20
The Anti-Defamation League responded to her appearance and comments at the forum, writing, “When will the world stop allowing Albanese to dress up hateful bias against Jews, Israel and endorsement of terrorism, as righteous indignation? ADL has long been calling for Albanese to be found in breach of the UNHRC code of conduct and to be separated from her mandate.”
The Israeli Director of the Digital Diplomacy Bureau wrote that “the mask is finally off” and that there is “No need for satire – reality writes it better.”
Albanese’s appearance at a conference with a Hamas leader is the latest chapter of her extensive history of using her role at the UN to denigrate Israel and seemingly rationalize Hamas’ attacks on the Jewish state.
In 2024, the UN launched a probe into Albanese’s conduct over allegedly accepting a trip to Australia funded by pro-Hamas organizations. UN Watch explains that in “November 2023, Ms. Albanese conducted a lobbying trip to Australia and New Zealand in which she did not conduct any investigation pursuant to her mandate. Contrary to her denials and those by the UN, this report documents how the trip was partially funded by ‘external’ groups, most likely pro-Hamas lobby groups in those countries.”
Also in 2024, Albanese claimed Israelis were “colonialists” who had “fake identities.” Previously, she defended Palestinians’ “right to resist” Israeli “occupation” at a time when over 1,100 rockets were fired by Gaza terrorists at Israel. Last year, US lawmakers called for the firing of Albanese for what they described as her “outrageous” antisemitic statements, including a 2014 letter in which she claimed America was “subjugated by the Jewish lobby.”
Albanese’s anti-Israel comments have earned her the praise of Hamas officials in the past.
In response to French President Emmanuel Macron calling Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel the “largest antisemitic massacre of the 21st century,” Albanese said, “No, Mr. Macron. The victims of Oct. 7 were not killed because of their Judaism, but in response to Israel’s oppression.”
Video footage of the Oct. 7 onslaught showed Palestinian terrorists led by Hamas celebrating the fact that they were murdering Jews.
Nevertheless, Albanese has argued that Israel should make peace with Hamas, saying that it “needs to make peace with Hamas in order to not be threatened by Hamas.”
When asked what people do not understand about Hamas, she added, “If someone violates your right to self-determination, you are entitled to embrace resistance.”
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Somalia Warns Israel Against Military Base in Somaliland, Signs Defense Pact With Saudi Arabia
Somalia’s President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud delivers the opening keynote speech during the 17th Al Jazeera Forum, themed ”The Palestinian Cause and the Regional Balance of Power in the Context of an Emerging Multipolar World,” in Doha, Qatar, on Feb. 7, 2026. Photo: Noushad Thekkayil/NurPhoto via Reuters Connect
Somalia’s President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud has warned Israel against establishing a military base in the self-declared Republic of Somaliland, as Mogadishu bolsters strategic ties with Middle Eastern states amid mounting regional tensions.
At the Al Jazeera Forum in Doha on Saturday, Mohamud sounded the alarm over a potential Israeli military foothold in the Horn of Africa, while once again condemning Israel’s recognition of Somaliland as a “blatant breach of international law.”
Somaliland, which has claimed independence for decades in East Africa but remains largely unrecognized, is situated on the southern coast of the Gulf of Aden and bordered by Djibouti to the northwest, Ethiopia to the south and west, and Somalia to the south and east.
During Saturday’s event, Mohamud insisted that an Israeli military base in Somaliland would offer no real defensive benefit and would primarily serve as a springboard for foreign interventions.
“A base is not a tourist destination — it is a military facility, and military means either attack or defense,” he said during a speech. “There is no part of Somalia that Israel has any need to defend.”
“We will fight to the full extent of our capacity,” Mohamud continued. “We will confront any Israeli forces that enter, because we oppose this and will never allow it.”
For years now, Somalia has hosted military facilities for foreign powers, including Turkey and Egypt.
Mohamud’s remarks came after Israel last year became the first country to officially recognize the Republic of Somaliland as an independent and sovereign state — a move expected to reshape regional power dynamics as the two governments deepen political, security, and economic cooperation.
At the time, regional powers — including Egypt and Turkey — condemned Israel’s diplomatic move, saying it undermined Somalia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.
According to experts, the growing Israel-Somaliland partnership could be a “game changer” for Israel, boosting the Jewish state’s ability to counter the Yemen-based Houthi terrorist group while offering strategic and geographic advantages amid shifting regional power dynamics.
Unlike most other states in the region, Somaliland has relative security, regular elections, and a degree of political stability — qualities that make it a valuable partner for international allies and a key player in regional cooperation.
“Israel’s interference in Somalia’s sovereignty will not be tolerated,” Mohamud said during his speech. “The African continent rejects any attempts to change borders through military force or unilateral actions.”
In a move to strengthen its defense capabilities amid increasing regional instability, Somalia signed a defense cooperation pact with Saudi Arabia on Monday, aimed at enhancing military ties and providing advanced technology and training for the Somali National Army.
According to officials from both countries, the deal is intended to safeguard the Red Sea, a strategic corridor between the Indian Ocean and the Suez Canal that has increasingly drawn the attention of Gulf states.
Even though the newly signed memorandum is not a mutual defense treaty, Somali officials say it sets the stage for deeper military cooperation — a move analysts say has gained momentum following Israel’s recognition of Somaliland.
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‘Every Jew Will Die’: German Synagogue Receives Threatening Letter With Gun Cartridge
Illustrative: The exterior of the main synagogue in the German city of Munich. Photo: Reuters/Michaela Rehle
German authorities have opened an investigation into a death threat mailed to the Jewish Community of Munich and Upper Bavaria (IKG) amid an ongoing rise in antisemitism across Germany.
The package, received by the IKG’s community center and the Ohel Jakob Synagogue on Thursday, contained a cartridge for a handgun and a note which included such intimidations as “all the Jews belonged shot” and “every Jew will die … I will cause all the deaths.”
The Bavarian police’s Criminal Department 4 launched a probe into the incident.
Munich’s leading synagogue has previously implemented security protocols for incoming packages.
“Every shipment is controlled. In this case, it immediately became apparent that the letter had a problematic content,” Vice President Yehoshua Chmiel told the Jüdische Allgemeine newspaper. “The escalation goes on and on … We receive a lot of threats. But a letter with a real cartridge is new.”
“We feel let down,” he added. “There are no acts against antisemitism. There are speeches, but they don’t help us.”
Ludwig Spaenle, who serves as the Bavarian state government’s commissioner against antisemitism, called the hate crime “evil and inhumane” before encouraging law enforcement in their investigation.
This latest incident comes as Jews in Germany are already on edge amid a relentlessly hostile climate.
In the city of Potsdam just outside Berlin, for example, members of the Jewish community have begun expressing second thoughts about a multi-year plan to develop a kindergarten out of fear that it could become a prime target for terrorists.
Evgueni Kutikow, chairman of the Jewish Community of Potsdam, said to Märkische Allgemeine that worries about antisemitism had grown and that “one mother called me crazy when I asked her if she would enroll her child in a Jewish daycare center.”
Kutikow has resisted canceling the kindergarten’s construction, however.
“As things stand now, I’m skeptical. But I’m also not prepared to abandon the project,” he said. “We don’t live in a bubble — we see what’s happening around us and across the world.”
Last month saw two antisemitic hate crimes in Germany targeting Andreas Büttner, the commissioner for antisemitism in the state of Brandenburg in northeastern Germany.
On Jan. 5, the Brandenburg state parliament received a death threat against him. The note warned, “we will kill you” and included an inverted red triangle, a symbol used by the Islamist terrorist group Hamas to designate targets.
This messaging mirrored an arson attack against a shed on Büttner’s property days earlier, when investigators also discovered inverted red triangles. Israeli Ambassador to Germany Ron Prosor posted on X at the time explaining that “attacks on those who think differently and attempted murder: That is what the Hamas triangle stands for — in Gaza as in Brandenburg. And the hatred of Israel goes hand in hand with hatred of our democracy. The rule of law must smash these terrorist organizations — and indeed, before they strike again.”
Following the attack, Büttner stated that “the symbol sends a clear message. The red Hamas triangle is widely recognized as a sign of jihadist violence and antisemitic incitement.” He added that “anyone who uses such a thing wants to intimidate and glorify terror. This is not a protest; it is a threat.”
On Jan. 13, another antisemitic act contributed to the growing climate of fear.
Police arrested an unnamed, 32-year-old man in Giessen in an attack on a synagogue. A judge would place him on a psychiatric hold, suspecting mental illness had contributed to his actions.
The suspect allegedly pushed over boxes which contained papers and then set them on fire outside the synagogue. A prosecutor’s statement read that “thanks to the swift intervention of a passerby, the fire was quickly brought under control, preventing the flames from spreading to the residential building and the synagogue.”
Police also believe the man performed a Nazi salute outside the synagogue that evening.
The commissioner to combat antisemitism in the German state of Hesse sounded the alarm after the arson attack, warning that it reflects a “growing pogrom-like atmosphere” threatening Jewish life across the country.
Germany, like most Western countries, has experienced a surge in antisemitic incidents over the past two years, following the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel.
According to official German government figures, antisemitic crimes jumped from 2,641 in 2022 to 6,236 in 2024, an increase of 136 percent.
“We are witnessing a growing number of antisemitic incidents. Ninety years ago, that hatred marked the beginning of the end,” Daniel Günther, the minister-president of Schleswig-Holstein, a state in northern Germany, said in a statement last month following the vandalism of a Holocaust memorial at a local synagogue in Kiel. “That is precisely why we cannot tolerate a single incident today. Every act must be investigated and punished under the rule of law.”