Phylisa Wisdom, the progressive Jewish leader chosen to head New York City’s Mayor’s Office to Combat Antisemitism, says she is preparing to take a broad view of her mandate as she steps into the role under intense scrutiny.

In an exclusive interview with the Forward, her first since Mayor Zohran Mamdani named her last week, Wisdom laid out an ambitious early agenda focused on building trust across the city’s diverse Jewish communities and developing a comprehensive strategy modeled in part on the Biden White House’s national plan to counter antisemitism.

She described her overall approach as “being creative and committing resources to doing what we can to turn the tide.”

Wisdom, who is 39 and lives in Brooklyn, said Friday that one of her first steps when she assumes the role later this month will be launching a citywide “listening tour” spanning five borough-based hubs, including homes, schools and community centers. The goal is to understand the concerns and experiences of a broad cross-section of Jewish New Yorkers and build a sustainable relationship.

Her appointment comes as the city grapples with a sharp rise in antisemitic attacks and as the Mamdani administration faces scrutiny from the Jewish leaders after a divisive election shaped in part by his positions in opposition to Israel.

Wisdom acknowledged she faces a “challenging task” confronting rising antisemitism while serving a mayor whose anti-Zionist posture has left some questioning his commitment to the city’s prevention and response efforts.

Nonetheless, she stressed that the Mamdani administration is taking its commitment “very seriously,” and is prepared to deploy other city agencies to the work. Wisdom didn’t elaborate on how that cooperation would be structured. Mamdani outlined a broad framework for the office in his Day One executive order.

Serving as Mamdani’s point person on this issue, she said she aims to outline a framework to define antisemitism to help determine which incidents to investigate or pursue. The office, established by former Mayor Eric Adams last year through an executive order, initially adopted the controversial International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism, which considers most forms of anti-Zionism as antisemitic. Mamdani revoked the IHRA definition on his first day in office, prompting swift backlash from mainstream Jewish organizations.

To address the need for a working definition of antisemitism, Wisdom said she is looking to craft a city plan similar to the Biden White House’s national plan, which was released in 2022. Rather than adopting a single codified definition of antisemitism, Wisdom said the office will draw from the multiple established working definitions, including IHRA, the Nexus Document — which states that most criticism of Israel and Zionism is not antisemitic — and the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism, which was released in 2021 as a progressive alternative to IHRA.

“We want to ensure that it’s really focused on policy, practice and investment, and not getting caught up in the definitional fight,” Wisdom said. “I think the best practice is to use myriad resources, including those three definitions.”

Wisdom said she hopes to release the plan before the High Holidays in the fall, when Jewish communal life is most visible.

She added that the office will work closely with both the New York City Commission on Human Rights and the New York State Division of Human Rights to coordinate enforcement and education efforts. Wisdom said she is also considering reviving the previous administration’s interagency task force on antisemitism to ensure cross-agency collaboration, including the New York Police Department and the Office for the Prevention of Hate Crimes.

Orthodox backlash 

Wisdom’s appointment drew immediate backlash from Orthodox leaders and activists over her past work at an advocacy group that has pushed for enforcement of state secular education standards in yeshivas.

Wisdom, who had been the executive director of the progressive and pro-Zionist New York Jewish Agenda since 2023, was previously director of development and government affairs at Yaffed, which scrutinized yeshivas in Brooklyn over inadequate secular education. That history was not mentioned in City Hall’s official bio for Wisdom, an omission that immediately fueled suspicion.

The backlash also sharpened a political contradiction Mamdani himself has cultivated. During the campaign, he promised Satmar and other Hasidic sects that he would protect yeshivas from government intervention.

In the interview, Wisdom indicated that she has moved past her prior activism to focus on the office’s singular task: combating antisemitism in all its forms. She said she’s “acutely aware” that Orthodox New Yorkers “face the lion’s share” of antisemitic incidents in the city and that protecting visibly Jewish communities would be a top priority. Questions about yeshiva curriculum policy, she added, fall under the purview of the Department of Education.

Wisdom also pointed to her work at NYJA advancing a state hate crimes bill and helping implement the Stop Hiding Hate social media reporting law as evidence of her experience translating advocacy into enforceable policy.

“We are really going to be thinking about, rather than a sledgehammer approach, a scalpel approach to combating antisemitism,” Wisdom said. “One that will ensure  all Jewish New Yorkers can feel safe and belong in the city.”

The post Mamdani’s antisemitism chief pledges trust-building amid early skepticism appeared first on The Forward.

Is Al Jazeera using its “academic” arm, the Al Jazeera Center for Studies (AJCS), to normalize Hamas’s atrocities, while hiding behind the veneer of a purportedly rigorous research institution? From Feb. 7 to 9, an AJCS-sponsored forum in Doha, Qatar, gave pride of place to figures such as Hamas leader Khaled Meshal under the banner of academic discourse.

AJCS is one of at least a dozen parts of the Al Jazeera Media Network’s ecosystem, funded and run by the Qatari ruling family, and used as soft power tools to amplify anti-Western and pro-Islamist narratives. Established to provide research support to Al Jazeera’s news channels, AJCS also serves to integrate the network into academic spheres. Those connections allow AJCS to enjoy a patina of academic credibility to launder and legitimize the violent ideas espoused by figures like Meshal and Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi.

When Meshal spoke in Doha, he justified Hamas’s October 7, 2023, massacre in Israel by calling it legitimate “resistance.” Hamas has ruled Gaza since 2007. The US Justice Department announced terrorism and murder conspiracy charges against Meshal for his central role in the Oct. 7 atrocities in 2024.

Araghchi had a different agenda: deflecting attention away from the thousands of Iranians slaughtered by his regime in recent weeks in the deadliest massacre since the country’s 1979 revolution. Araghchi used his remarks to call “Palestine … a test of whether international law has meaning, whether human rights have universal value.” There was no pushback from the moderator about this ironic call for justice.

Past speakers at the conference include Hamas officials Osama Hamdan and Basem Naim. Hamdan was placed on the Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) list by the US Treasury after a Hamas suicide attack in Jerusalem killed 23 people and injured 130 others in 2003. Hamdan facilitated training for a key planner of the 1996 Jaffa Road bus suicide bombings that killed 45 commuters.

Naim’s Treasury designation noted that he “holds a leadership role on Hamas’s Council on International Relations.”

The Doha forum also gave voice to some of Al Jazeera’s co-opted correspondents, including Gaza-based Al Jazeera Arabic correspondent Ismail Abu Omar. Besides being a reporter for Al Jazeera, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), based on documents found in Gaza, identified him as a company commander in the East Khan Younis Battalion. If true, this raises additional concerns about its reporters serving as Hamas operatives while on Al Jazeera’s payroll. Not surprisingly, the network denied the allegations.

Abu Omar filmed himself with Hamas operatives breaching Israeli kibbutzim on Oct. 7. His published accounts on Al Jazeera expressed joy at the atrocities unfolding against Israelis, telling the network that he “was filled with tears” and “experiencing the scenes that we have always heard about, live and directly.”

Abu Omar amplified Hamas military chief Mohammed Deif’s words that “everyone who has a gun should take it out, because today is the day.”

Abu Omar is a former reporter for Al-Aqsa TV, which is sanctioned by the US Treasury Department as “a television station financed and controlled by Hamas” that airs content “designed to recruit children to become Hamas suicide bombers.” When AJCS chooses its speakers, it signals what it values.

AJCS is about more than sketchy forums, of course. Its partnerships deserve scrutiny too. In May 2025, AJCS co-hosted a conference with the obscure but influential Strategic Council on Foreign Relations in Iran (SCFR). SCFR is the advisory board to the supreme leader of Iran, helping to shape the ayatollah’s policies around the world.

It should raise eyebrows that an ostensibly independent research arm of a media entity partners with a murderous office of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. By partnering with the SCFR, AJCS signals solidarity with Iran’s oppressors, not its victims.

Technically, Araghchi is a diplomat. But he gave the lie to that title at the 2024 Al Jazeera Forum when, as secretary general of SCFR, he cautioned Arab nations against diplomacy with Israel and normalizing relations with the Jewish state.

At the 2024 forum, Araghchi also said nuclear weapons “have no place” in Iran’s religious doctrine but proclaimed that Iran has the right to enrich uranium for civilian purposes. In fact, the regime has stymied international monitoring of its enrichment, sought to expand its nuclear program, and has no civilian use for its production of 60 percent enriched uranium. But there was no refutation or questioning of Araghchi’s statement when he appeared at the Al Jazeera Forum.

In 2025, AJCS co-organized a conference with Qatar’s Hamad Bin Khalifa University in order to “deconstruct Western narratives.” Reflecting Qatar’s foreign policy, Al Jazeera’s organizers charged Western media with “justifying” Israel’s right to self-defense in the face of Hamas’s atrocities. Moreover, they attacked media outlets for “false reports” about Hamas terrorists raping Israeli women, notwithstanding the evidence to the contrary.

Arafat Madi Shoukri, a senior researcher at AJCS, organized the conference. Israel designated Shoukri as a Hamas operative for his work with the Hamas-aligned Council for European Palestinian Relations (CEPR).

Shoukri has been photographed with Ismail Haniyeh, an architect of the Oct. 7 massacre. He also directed the London-based Palestinian Return Center (PRC), which former Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak declared an illegal Hamas-affiliated organization that engages in terror-affiliated activities.

That conference featured as its keynote speaker Wadah Khanfar, a former director general of Al Jazeera. According to the Palestinian outlet Raya Media Network, Khanfar was “active in the Hamas movement” and a “leader in the movement’s office in Sudan.”

In May 2024, Khanfar praised Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist attack, proclaiming it “came at the ideal moment for a radical and real shift in the path of struggle and liberation.”

Mutaz al-Khatib, from Hamad Bin Khalifa University’s College of Islamic Studies, spoke at the conference on “professional ethics” in war coverage. On October 7, 2023, he posted on Facebook that “what happened was merely a rehearsal that shows that liberating Jerusalem is possible.”

Fatima Alsmadi, a researcher at the Al Jazeera Center for Studies, lectured that Israel has somehow “benefited” from Nazism in the aftermath of its extermination of European Jewry. She praised Al Qassam Brigade spokesperson Abu Obaida’s propaganda techniques that had “a specific goal to link Israel to the Nazis” and were “not arbitrary,” “done in stages,” and “well thought out.” Weaponizing Nazi imagery against Israel legitimizes Hamas terrorism and inverts historical truth.

AJCS’s Journal for Communication and Media Studies adheres to the same editorial approach as its conferences. A January 2026 journal article relies on quotes from the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS), a discredited group that requires no expertise to have voting rights, as evidenced by Emperor Palpatine, the villain of the Star Wars franchise, and similar non-experts joining as members. This is important because IAGS touted a resolution it represented as “a definitive statement from experts in the field of genocide studies” that what is happening on the ground in Gaza is genocide.

Al Jazeera and AJCS have two personas. One is radical and platforms Hamas and Islamists like the late Yusuf Qaradawi, the most influential cleric aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood, whose show “Shariah and Life” was on the news channel for 17 years. The other is slick and partners with big tech to leverage modern technology throughout the newsroom, in the field, and online that, in turn, amplifies Islamists and Qatari foreign policy.

AJCS operates under strict Qatari media laws that prohibit criticism of the tiny Persian Gulf nation’s emir and Doha’s policies. Freedom House has rated Qatar “Not Free” for 27 years. Al Jazeera as a whole seeks to appeal to Western sensibilities by crafting a public-facing image of an independent institution that it says “aims to present a balanced understanding” of the Middle East and the Arab world. AJCS has not lived up to any standard of scholarship.

The glitz of Al Jazeera’s flashy conference and global reach should not distract from the perils of treating the Al Jazeera ecosystem like a neutral entity, untethered to a foreign authoritarian state’s policies.

US government agencies should investigate whether Al Jazeera or its center, or others on its behalf, have paid any expenses or provided material support associated with Hamas officials’ participation in any of its programming. If investigators discover such connections, appropriate sanctions, fines, or other measures should be taken.

Likewise, the US Department of Education should assess whether any American educational institutions have partnerships with AJCS.

Congress and the Justice Department should assess if the center’s actions should be disclosed under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. The Justice Department has already determined that other parts of AJMN must register as Qatari foreign agents.

Until Doha stops using any part of the Al Jazeera Media Network to whitewash terrorism, American institutions and companies need to reconsider their relationship with all platforms in its vast ecosystem. Continued collaboration from Western organizations only emboldens the next denials and justifications for violence.

Toby Dershowitz is a senior adviser at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), on whose website this article first appeared. Eitan Fischberger is an independent OSINT investigator. Follow Toby on X @tobydersh. Follow Eitan on X @EFischberger. Follow FDD on X @FDD. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.

Last Saturday night, I went to a Don McLean concert at the Saban Theater. Yes, that Don McLean, icon of popular culture, poster child of whimsical 1970s music. As the lights dimmed and a palpable buzz of excitement murmured through the crowd, I felt the nostalgic anticipation bubble within me, knowing exactly why I was there.

You don’t attend a Don McLean concert to hear something new, and you certainly don’t go for a sound-and-light show. You go to pay tribute to a musical hero, to show up for someone who occupies a real, almost mythic place in the popular culture of your youth.

Don McLean isn’t merely another aging performer touring on old hits. He’s a cultural marker. His No. 1 hit, “American Pie,” isn’t simply a song — it’s a time capsule. Eight and a half minutes meditating on the loss of American innocence: the death of Buddy Holly, the shattering of postwar optimism, the uneasy coming-of-age of an entire generation.

People have been arguing about its meaning for decades — precisely because it meant something. Deeply.

Then there’s “Vincent” — better known as “Starry, Starry Night” — a song about Vincent van Gogh so restrained and tender it somehow made a 19th-century painter’s inner torment feel intimate to late-20th-century listeners.

Very few songwriters have managed to do this without tipping into cloying, overcooked sentimentality. McLean did it effortlessly — no theatrics, no emotional manipulation — and it worked. To this day, “Starry, Starry Night” is played regularly at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, quietly soundtracking the experience of standing before the real thing.

Don McLean, born and bred in the bedroom town of New Rochelle, NY — hardly a breeding ground for folk-music greatness — has somehow come to embody the American folk tradition. Mentored and befriended by legends like Josh White, he absorbed the moral seriousness that defines folk music: the sense that songs can carry memory, protest, grief, and conscience all at once.

And he did it without tipping into angry remonstration or cloying sentimentality. Mclean was never flashy, and certainly never cool in the trendy sense. But he mattered. And for many people, he still does.

There is also something meaningful about the fact that McLean has long been openly supportive of Israel, without apology and without hedging — a position that has become increasingly rare in the showbiz world.

At one point, his significant other was Israeli, a connection that deepened his ties to the country. He has written a song about Jerusalem and another — “Dreidel” — built around the familiar Hanukkah game, and he has never been coy or evasive about where he stands.

Unashamedly pro-Israel and a genuine friend of the Jewish community, McLean belongs to that rare group of artists — including, sadly, only some Jewish ones — who don’t feel the need to hide in the herd, and are openly positive about the miracle of Israel.

So, when I walked into the packed theater — a full house, brimming with goodwill toward an 80-year-old legend of American pop music — I wasn’t just going to a concert. I was acknowledging a nostalgic moment in my own life. A time when songs didn’t merely play in the background but actively framed how I understood the world. Which is precisely why the letdown was such a disappointment.

McLean is long past his sell-by date. His energy was low. The singing was often flat and unenthusiastic. Long stretches felt labored and passionless, as though he was simply going through the motions. Even the comb-over hairstyle — epic in its own stubborn way — felt like an unintentional symbol: a refusal to surrender to time, even when time has clearly won.

And then came “American Pie” — the showpiece, the emotional climax, the song everyone had been waiting for — and it simply didn’t land. You could feel the audience willing it to work, wanting to be generous, desperate to preserve the magic. But there was no magic.

We clapped respectfully. We reminded ourselves that legends age, and that memory is often kinder than reality. And we were forced to confront an uncomfortable truth: maybe some things are better left in the mind’s eye as pristine nostalgia.

Maybe seeing a hero of your youth in a diminished state doesn’t deepen the experience — it diminishes it. Walking out of the theater, that was the thought that lingered most.

And that’s when it hit me: our Jewish sourcebook, the Torah, does something very similar to us — almost intervention-style — in Parshat Mishpatim. This is the portion that comes immediately after the revelation at Sinai, the greatest spiritual moment in Jewish history: thunder and lightning, followed by God speaking directly to His newly born nation.

We’re swept into a moment that is dazzling and overwhelming, the kind of experience every believing Jew would love to freeze in time and relive.

But we barely have time to savor it before the Torah pivots sharply. There’s no lingering on the drama, and no attempt to recreate the high. Instead, we’re dropped straight into the mundane reality of law: damages and injuries, loans and workers’ rights, lost property and personal responsibility.

Mishpatim is dry. It’s technical. And, on the surface at least, it’s deeply uninspiring. The juxtaposition feels like a comedown — a real downer.

But that whiplash is entirely deliberate. Inspiration is always a flash. Even the greatest moments in time are just that: moments. Sinai, like a great song or the vigor of youth, cannot be sustained indefinitely. You can’t live forever in a suspended state of awe, and you certainly can’t build a day-to-day life on peak experiences.

Reality is the true engine of our lives. And reality includes fatigue, complexity, disappointment, human weakness, and long stretches that feel decidedly unremarkable. But it is in these moments that there’s a chance for everyday holiness. The Torah, unlike nostalgia, refuses to pretend otherwise.

Mishpatim is the reminder that the spectacular visions that may once have animated our faith are incapable of sustaining us once those moments have passed.

The Torah is teaching us a crucial life lesson: you were inspired — now let’s see what you do with it. Not when God’s voice is thundering from the mountain, but when you’re arguing over financial liability and damages. Not when everything feels elevated and transcendent, but when life is stubbornly ordinary.

Inspirational experiences define moments. But moments age badly if that’s all they are. Which is why Judaism doesn’t try to recreate the emotional experience of Sinai.

There is no commandment to feel revelation. Instead, the Torah translates revelation into structure — into obligations that don’t depend on energy, charisma, or being at your peak. What ultimately matters is how we conduct our lives once inspiration has faded.

God doesn’t want Sinai to be remembered as an unattainable peak, a moment so overwhelming that everything afterward feels like decline. It was never meant to become the yardstick by which all future religious experience is judged, or the excuse for disengagement from the present.

Sinai only has meaning if it translates into better people, expressed through our loyalty to the laws of the Torah that were given there.

So maybe it was good to go to that concert after all. Not because it preserved the magic — it didn’t — but because it clarified something deeper. I don’t need Don McLean to be great now for his impact on my life to remain meaningful now.

The music fades, the voice weakens, the moment passes. What remains is whether what once inspired me is strong enough to shape how my life is lived once the applause has died away.