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NYC’s first Jewish City Council leader could govern as a check on Mamdani. Here’s her plan to fight antisemitism
Julie Menin, New York’s first Jewish speaker of the City Council, has introduced a plan to combat antisemitism in the city, where Jews are divided over Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
Her plan includes introducing a bill that would ban demonstrations around entrances and exits of houses of worship. Mamdani is assessing the proposal. “On the first day of his administration, the Mayor directed the NYPD and Law Department to review the legality of a range of proposals, including those like Speaker Menin’s buffer zones proposal, and he will wait for the outcome of that review,” Dora Pekec, a Mamdani spokesperson, said in a statement.
Mamdani has also said he is reviewing the legality of similar legislation proposed by Gov. Kathy Hochul, which would create a 25-foot buffer zone around houses of worship across New York state. Menin’s bill would “probably” extend that to 100 feet, she told The New York Times.
On his first day in office, Mamdani revoked an executive order issued by former Mayor Eric Adams in December that called on Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch to evaluate proposals for establishing a buffer zone of at least 15 feet outside houses of worship. Tisch, who is Jewish, has remained commissioner under Mamdani.
Menin’s proposal also includes $1.25 million in funding to the Museum of Jewish Heritage and establishes a hotline to report incidents of antisemitism, housed within the New York City Commission on Human Rights.
Antisemitic incidents accounted for 57% of reported hate crimes in 2025, according to the NYPD, while Jewish New Yorkers make up 10% of the city’s residents.
“As the first Jewish speaker of the New York City Council, I must emphasize, no one is in a position too high or too low to fight hate,” Menin said at a press conference Friday hosted at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in Manhattan.
Menin’s proposal follows a series of protests at synagogues after which Mamdani drew scrutiny for what some Jewish New Yorkers saw as slow or equivocal responses. After chants of “we support Hamas here” outside a Queens synagogue event promoting real estate development in Israel earlier this month, Mamdani said the rhetoric and displays at the protest were “wrong and have no place in our city.” He took about a day to issue a statement, as other city leaders immediately issued condemnations.
The response echoed an earlier incident, when demonstrators outside Park East Synagogue chanted “globalize the intifada” and “death to the IDF” while protesting an event promoting immigration to Israel. Mamdani condemned the protesters’ rhetoric but also said “sacred spaces should not be used to promote activities in violation of international law.”
“I think the most important thing for New Yorkers is to know that they have a mayor who is firmly committed to rooting out the scourge of antisemitism across this city,” Mamdani told the Forward on Monday, adding that he would fulfill that commitment “not only through my words, but through my actions.”
On day one in office, Mamdani revoked executive orders issued by Adams prohibiting city employees from boycotting Israel and implementing the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, which classifies most anti-Zionism as antisemitic.
Mamdani also announced his intent to keep open the Office to Combat Antisemitism, created by Adams in May. Rabbi Moshe Davis, the current executive director, is a holdover from the Adams administration. On the campaign trail, Mamdani pledged an 800% increase in funding for hate crime prevention and response, but has not since offered other specific policy recommendations.
“Rhetoric is not enough. Policy fights antisemitism,” Councilman Eric Dinowitz, chair of the Jewish Caucus, said at Friday’s press conference. “This government action will help our Jewish community that will go beyond saying ‘I condemn antisemitism,’ because it is not enough.”
The proposal for protest-free buffer zones outside houses of worship could run into legal challenges if passed. The bill has prompted First Amendment concerns, as legal experts note it could be problematic if the bill permits supportive demonstrations but bans critical ones.
A 1994 federal law, the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, already makes it illegal to use force, threats, or physical obstruction to block access to reproductive health services or houses of worship.
“We’re not trying to stifle peaceful protests,” Menin said at the press conference. “What we are trying to do is protect congregants for any house of worship, of freely being able to enter and exit without fear of intimidation or harassment.”
The post NYC’s first Jewish City Council leader could govern as a check on Mamdani. Here’s her plan to fight antisemitism appeared first on The Forward.
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Nick Fuentes says his problem with Trump ‘is that he is not Hitler’
(JTA) — In the fall, a video of Nick Fuentes criticizing Donald Trump drew the praise of progressive ex-Congressman Jamaal Bowman.
“Finally getting it Nick,” Bowman commented, apparently recognizing some common ground between himself on the left and Fuentes, on the far right, who said in the video that Trump was “better than the Democrats for Israel, for the oil and gas industry, for Silicon Valley, for Wall Street,” but said he wasn’t “better for us.”
Now, Fuentes says there is actually no common ground between him and those on the left.
“My problem with Trump isn’t that he’s Hitler — my problem with Trump is that he is not Hitler,” Fuentes said during his streaming show on Tuesday, which focused mostly on the potential for an American attack on Iran.
He continued, “You have all these left-wing people saying, ‘Why do I agree with Nick Fuentes?’ It’s like, I’m criticizing Trump because there’s not enough deportations, there’s not enough ICE brutality, there’s not enough National Guard. Sort of a big difference!”
Fuentes, the streamer and avowed antisemite who has previously said Hitler was “very f–king cool,” has been gaining more traction as a voice on the right. His interview with Tucker Carlson in October plunged Republicans into an ongoing debate over antisemitism within their ranks, inflaming the divide between a pro-Israel wing of the party and an emerging, isolationist “America First” wing that’s against U.S. military assistance to Israel.
Once a pro-Trump MAGA Republican, Fuentes has become the leader of the “groyper” movement advocating for farther-right positions. The set of Fuentes’ show includes both a hat and a mug with the words “America First” on his desk.
In a New York Times interview, Trump recently weighed in on rising tensions within the Republican Party, saying Republican leaders should “absolutely” condemn figures who promote antisemitism, and that he does not approve of antisemites in the party.
“No, I don’t. I think we don’t need them. I think we don’t like them,” replied Trump when asked by a reporter whether there was room within the Republican coalition for antisemitic figures.
Asked if he would condemn Fuentes, Trump initially claimed that he didn’t know the antisemitic streamer, before acknowledging that he had had dinner with him alongside Kanye West in 2022.
“I had dinner with him, one time, where he came as a guest of Kanye West. I didn’t know who he was bringing,” Trump said. “He said, ‘Do you mind if I bring a friend?’ I said, ‘I don’t care.’ And it was Nick Fuentes? I don’t know Nick Fuentes.”
Trump flaunted his pro-Israel bona fides in the interview, mentioning the recent announcement that he was nominated for Israel’s top civilian honor and calling himself the “best president of the United States in the history of this country toward Israel.”
Fuentes, meanwhile, spent the bulk of his show on Tuesday speculating that Trump will order the U.S. to attack Iran, and concluded that “Israel is holding our hand walking us down the road toward an inevitable war.”
The post Nick Fuentes says his problem with Trump ‘is that he is not Hitler’ appeared first on The Forward.
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Larry Ellison once renamed a superyacht because its name spelled backwards was ‘I’m a Nazi’
(JTA) — Larry Ellison, the Jewish founder of Oracle and a major pro-Israel donor, has recently been in the headlines for his media acquisition ventures with his son.
The new scrutiny on the family has surfaced a decades-old detail about Ellison: that he once rechristened a superyacht after realizing that its original name carried an antisemitic tinge.
In 1999, Ellison — then No. 23 on Forbes’ billionaires list, well on his way to his No. 4 ranking today — purchased a boat called Izanami.
Originally built for a Japanese businessman, the 191-foot superyacht was named for a Shinto deity. But Ellison soon realized what the name read backwards: “I’m a Nazi.”
“Izanami and Izanagi are the names of the two Shinto deities that gave birth to the Japanese islands, or so legend has it,” Ellison said in “Softwar,” a 2013 biography. “When the local newspapers started pointing out that Izanami was ‘I’m a Nazi’ spelled backward, I had the choice of explaining Shintoism to the reporters at the San Francisco Chronicle or changing the name of the boat.” He renamed the boat Ronin and later sold it.
The decades-old factoid resurfaced this week because of a New York Magazine profile of Ellison’s son, David Ellison, the chair and CEO of Paramount-Skydance Corporation.
Skydance Corporation, which David Ellison founded in 2006, completed an $8 billion merger last year with Paramount Global. Larry Ellison, meanwhile, joined an investor consortium that signed a deal to purchase TikTok, the social media juggernaut accused of spreading antisemitism. Together, father and son also staged a hostile bid to purchase Warner Bros. but were outmatched by Netflix.
After acquiring Paramount, David Ellison appointed The Free Press founder Bari Weiss as the editor-in-chief of CBS News, in an endorsement of Weiss’ contrarian and pro-Israel outlook that has been challenged as overly friendly to the Trump administration.
Larry Ellison, who was raised in a Reform Jewish home by his adoptive Jewish parents, has long been a donor to pro-Israel and Jewish causes, including to Friends of the Israel Defense Forces. In September, he briefly topped the Bloomberg Billionaires Index as the world’s richest man.
In December, Oracle struck a deal to provide cloud services for TikTok, with some advocates hoping for tougher safeguards against antisemitism on the social media platform
The post Larry Ellison once renamed a superyacht because its name spelled backwards was ‘I’m a Nazi’ appeared first on The Forward.
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Alex Bregman, who drew a Jewish star on his cap after Oct. 7, inks $175M deal with the Cubs
(JTA) — For the second year in a row, Jewish star third baseman Alex Bregman has signed a lucrative free-agent contract with a team that is run by a Jewish executive and plays in a historic ballpark in a city with a significant Jewish community.
Last year, it was the Boston Red Sox. Now, Bregman is headed to the Chicago Cubs — a team whose Jewish fans possess almost religious devotion.
Bregman, who had opted out of a three-year, $120 million deal with Boston, has signed a five-year, $175 million pact with the Cubs. It is the second-largest contract ever signed by a Jewish ballplayer, behind Max Fried’s $218 million contract in 2024. Bregman previously signed a five-year, $100 million extension with the Houston Astros in 2019.
Bregman, who played the first nine years of his career in Houston, has been one of baseball’s premier third basemen over the past decade, with three All-Star selections, a Gold Glove, a Silver Slugger and two World Series rings. He’s also heralded for his leadership on and off the field.
Bregman grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where he played baseball in high school and also, according to his mother, was once teased while leaving school for a bar mitzvah lesson. His grandfather, the onetime attorney for the Washington Senators whom she said Bregman called “zeyde,” gave him a collection of baseball cards featuring Jewish players.
His great-grandfather fled antisemitism in Belarus and fell in love with sports in the United States, The Athletic reported in 2017, as Bregman hurtled toward his World Series win.
“It’s the fulfillment of four generations of short Jewish Bregmans who dreamed of playing in the major leagues,” his father Sam, now the district attorney in Albuquerque’s county as well as a Democratic candidate for New Mexico governor, said at the time. “The big leagues and the World Series. One hundred twenty years in America fulfilled by Alex in this World Series.”
Bregman has also been vocal about his Jewish pride. He celebrated Hanukkah with a local synagogue in Houston, and following the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel that launched the Gaza War, Bregman drew a Star of David on his hat during a playoff game and participated in a video of Jewish players calling on fans to support Israel.
Some Jewish fans hoped Bregman’s shows of solidarity with Israel would lead him to suit up for another new squad this spring, Team Israel at the upcoming World Baseball Classic. But Bregman announced this week that he will play for Team USA again. Another Jewish ballplayer, Rowdy Tellez, will rejoin team Mexico, taking two big names off the recruitment board for Israel.
Back in 2018, as Bregman was first emerging as a major star, he said he regretted taking a pass on Team Israel the previous year, when it made it to the second round of play. Suiting up for the U.S. team, Bregman had just four at-bats as a backup player.
Now, he has selected a jersey number for his Cubs era that reflects his aspirations.
“I wore No. 3 because I want a third championship,” Bregman said during his first press conference with his new club on Thursday.
The post Alex Bregman, who drew a Jewish star on his cap after Oct. 7, inks $175M deal with the Cubs appeared first on The Forward.