Rep. Randy Fine (R-FL) leaves the US Capitol after the last votes of the week on Sept. 4, 2025. Photo: Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect

A coalition of Muslim organizations across New York has called on the state’s congressional delegation to take a public stand against what it described as “rising Islamophobia” in the US Congress, focusing on comments made by Rep. Randy Fine (R-FL) against New York city mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani.

In a letter sent on Oct. 16 to all 28 members of New York’s congressional delegation, including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, the groups accused Fine of a “racist and Islamophobic attack” on Mamdani, who currently serves in the New York State Assembly. Fine, a Jewish Republican who represents a district in Florida, referred to Mamdani on X as “little more than a Muslim terrorist” and said he should be “deported to the Ugandan s–thole he came from.”

The letter, signed by organizations such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), Emgage Action NY Metro, and Desis Rising Up and Moving (DRUM), called for Fine’s condemnation, censure, and removal from committee assignments.

In the 2000s, CAIR was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism financing case. Politico noted in 2010 that “US District Court Judge Jorge Solis found that the government presented ‘ample evidence to establish the association’” of CAIR with the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas.

The groups urged both political parties to reaffirm that “anti-Muslim, anti-African hate has no place in Congress.”

“This rhetoric is not only Islamophobic and xenophobic but unmistakably anti-Black,” the letter said, arguing that Fine’s comments echoed “colonial language once used to dehumanize African and immigrant communities.”

Mamdani, who has made anti-Israel activism a cornerstone of his political career, has alarmed the Jewish community in New York City by falsely accusing Israel of “genocide” in Gaza, refusing to recognize the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state, and defending the phrase “globalize the intifada” — which has been widely interpreted as a call for terrorism against Jews and Israelis around the world — before walking back his defense of the controversial slogan. The Democratic mayoral nominee has maintained a comfortable lead in the race, according to recent polling, and is expected to win the general election next month.

The Muslim groups tied Fine’s statements against Mamdani, who was born in Uganda, to what they described as a broader pattern of Islamophobic hate on Capitol Hill. The letter cited comments by several lawmakers, including Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN), who said, “I think we should kill them … Everybody in Hamas” when asked about the deaths of Palestinian children in Gaza, referring to the terrorist group that has ruled the enclave for nearly two decades. The letter also cited Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), who recently called to “ban Sharia law” in the US. The organizations compared such proposals to banning Catholic canon law or Jewish Halacha, framing them as a form of religious discrimination. Critics counter that Sharia, or Islamic law, is incompatible with Western values and that Islamist extremists ultimately aim for the system to supersede the US Constitution.

According to the letter, New York’s Muslims make up about roughly 10 percent of the state’s population and are integral to its economy, public services, and schools. “We will not be silenced or scapegoated,” the groups wrote, warning that legislative measures conflating Palestinian advocacy with antisemitism “threaten civil rights and free speech.”

The coalition concluded by appealing to New York lawmakers to “meet this moment with moral clarity,” defending Muslim leaders under attack and rejecting the “weaponization of Islamophobia.”

“For generations,” they wrote, “New York’s congressional delegation has served as a moral compass for the nation. That tradition must continue.”

Since entering Congress, Fine has established himself as an outspoken advocate for Israel and critic of Islam. Earlier this month, Fine posted online that “Fear of Islam is rational. Islamophobia is a lie.” He also wrote that Islam is not “compatible with American values.” He has argued that radical Islam poses an existential threat to the United States and Jewish Americans in particular.

Greenpoint, Brooklyn is known for many things: its extensive waterfront, a tight-knit Polish community and a vibrant arts scene.

One thing it’s not known for: a thriving Jewish community. But that’s rapidly changing.

The Greenpoint Shul — North Brooklyn’s only non-Haredi, brick-and-mortar synagogue — is today home to some 100 member families. That’s twice as many members as just 16 months ago, according to Rabbi Isaiah Rothstein, who has led the community since August 2024.

The congregation is looking to future generations, too: This school year, the Orthodox congregation officially added a Hebrew school serving some 30 children in grades kindergarten through 8. The school provides Jewish families an alternative to the only other option in the area, the Hebrew school that’s run by Chabad of North Brooklyn in nearby Williamsburg.

“I know the power and importance of having a youth department and it being a core pillar of building a thriving and growing community,” said Rothstein, who was previously the youth director at Young Israel of Stamford, Connecticut before assuming the helm of the Greenpoint Shul.

The Hebrew school was initially founded in 2019 by Yoni Kretzmer and his wife, artist Avital Burg, who are members of the synagogue and the parents of three children ages 8, 4 and 2. For five years, the school operated independently but borrowed the space inside the synagogue. As of this academic year, the school was officially “adopted” by the shul, which did not have a Hebrew school of its own.

“We saw that there’s nothing happening in North Brooklyn,” Yoni Kretzmer, who moved to Greenpoint from Israel with his wife in 2015, said of the local Jewish education scene. “So that was basically it — we started because we thought it was possible.”

Six years later, Kretzmer is now employed by the Greenpoint Shul, where one benefit he has seen so far is getting to exchange ideas with the rabbinic leadership team. He no longer has to independently collect tuition from parents, and he can provide students with supplies and snacks directly purchased from the synagogue budget.

“The way that we can present it now is as part of a much larger structure,” Kretzmer said. “When people [are] joining, they’re not only feeling that we’re using the shul, but that they’re part of a community center in the fullest meaning of the word.”

He added, “Now I can really be a teacher and the organizer, but I don’t have to be the accountant.”

With a focus on Torah and art, the school opened with about a dozen students — split into two groups, with Kretzmer teaching the older students, and Burg teaching the younger students — and grew via word of mouth. “It was mainly parents who brought other parents,” Kretzmer said. “So the connections were kind of within the neighborhood, of people who knew each other.”

The Greenpoint Shul was founded in 1886 and moved into its location at 108 Noble St. in 1904. (Courtesy Daphne Lasky)

The new school bucks multiple trends. Across the country, supplementary Jewish school enrollment is down by nearly half over the last two decades, a recent study found, and many of those that remain have reduced the number of days they operate. The Greenpoint Shul’s school holds classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, though different children attend each day.

While enrollment declined early in the pandemic, “once it was deemed safe to return, then it really started growing,” said Kretzmer, who is now the youth director at Greenpoint Shul.

One recent arrival is Andrew Altfest, who moved to nearby Williamsburg in 2014 and enrolled his 5-year-old son, Alden, last year.

“We really like the values that are being taught,” said Altfest, a financial advisor who grew up Reform. “Those values, they range from everything: learning Torah stories, Jewish culture, ethics. And we value the diversity of the families of the kids that are there.”

Like so many parts of Brooklyn, Greenpoint has seen a wave of gentrification and development in recent decades. In Greenpoint, this change was spurred, in part, by a massive rezoning along the neighborhood’s once-derelict waterfront in 2005. While there is no reliable data on the neighborhood’s Jewish population — studies often lump Greenpoint with Williamsburg, which is home to a sizable Hasidic community — locals believe the number of Jews in Greenpoint has grown in recent years.

“Greenpoint is not a famously Jewish neighborhood in New York City,” said Greenpoint Shul president Daphne Lasky. “I think there are other things other than Jewish community that sometimes draw people to Greenpoint: the waterfront location, the scale of the buildings. There’s so much creative energy in the neighborhood. But then you end up with Jewish families who have those interests and they also want to come together around their Jewish life as well.”

As such, other Jewish institutions have grown to meet the needs of the area’s Jewish community. The Neighborhood: An Urban Center for Jewish Life, a Jewish cultural and events hub funded by UJA-Federartion of New York, was founded in 2022 expressly to serve Jews in both central and northern Brooklyn.

“We feel there’s a really significant demand,” said Neighborhood director Rebecca Guber. “Part of it, which is kind of hard to wrap your head around, is that in North Brooklyn, the only Jewish infrastructure is Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox, and that’s just not serving all members of the community.”

For now, at least, The Neighborhood does not have a physical space.

The Greenpoint Shul, meanwhile, has a long history in the neighborhood. Founded at the turn of the last century by German-Jewish immigrants as Congregation Ahavas Israel, the synagogue is in a landmarked Romanesque Revival building at 108 Noble Street whose cornerstone was laid in 1903. Today’s Greenpoint Shul is the result of multiple mergers between two neighboring Reform congregations and one Orthodox synagogue. Its prayer service is Orthodox; women sit upstairs in the balcony while men sit downstairs for prayer services. But the community is multicultural, multiracial and welcoming of all backgrounds, including many members who have recently converted to Judaism. While Orthodox families are likely to send their children to day schools and yeshivas, the Hebrew school is geared toward “children of all ages and backgrounds,” according to its web site.

“The congregation has gone through a lot of changes and growth — and shrinking and growing again — over the last 140 years,” Lasky said. “In particular, in the last 25 years or so, as Greenpoint has had its own renaissance as a neighborhood, there’s been more and more families moving into the neighborhood that need Jewish education for their children and Jewish connection for their children.”

Because of the new, formal relationship between the school and the shul, Rothstein said he’s already seen interest from prospective parents who would like to enroll their kids in the program next year. But the growth of a community isn’t just measured in sheer numbers — Rothstein added that, as a result of the Hebrew school, youth attendance at recent Sukkot and holiday events increased this year.

“We’ve seen, already, crossover, where it’s a pipeline to deeper engagement,” Rothstein said.

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The post As Greenpoint’s Jewish community grows, so does this shul’s Hebrew school appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

(JTA) — This piece first ran as part of The Countdown, JTA’s daily newsletter rounding up all the developments in the New York City mayor’s race. Sign up here to get it in your inbox. There are 15 days to the election.

🗣 Rabbis speak out

• Two leading New York rabbis are using their pulpits to condemn Zohran Mamdani as he holds onto a commanding lead in the last weeks of the race.
• Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove, who heads the Conservative Park Avenue Synagogue on the Upper East Side, decried the frontrunner in a speech to his congregation on Shabbat. “I believe Zohran Mamdani poses a danger to the security of the New York Jewish community,” he said, citing Mamdani’s views of Israel and Zionism.
• Cosgrove also urged his congregants to convince their Jewish friends and family to vote against Mamdani. He said Jewish New Yorkers should “prioritize their Jewish selves” by voting based on their connection to Israel, rather than local issues such as affordability.
• “As Jews, ahavat Israel — love of Israel — does take precedence over other loves,” said Cosgrove.
• Reform Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch, who leads the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue on the Upper West Side, addressed Mamdani in his own video that was shared with his congregation days earlier.
• Hirsch said Mamdani’s “ideological commitments” against Israel served to “delegitimize the Jewish community and encourage and exacerbate hostility towards Judaism and Jews.” He told Mamdani, “I urge you to reconsider your long-held views of Israel’s right to exist.”
• Hirsch also said, “Most Jews are deeply offended by your ongoing accusations of Israeli genocide.” Four in 10 American Jews said they believed Israel was committing genocide in Gaza, according to a Washington Post poll conducted in early September.
• A Fox News survey last week found that Jews were closely split between Mamdani and Andrew Cuomo, who is polling a distant second in the race.
• Other New York rabbis have been plagued by the question of whether to endorse in this election, since the IRS reversed a decades-long policy that barred endorsements from the pulpit. Hirsch previously told our reporter Grace Gilson that he was alarmed by Mamdani but would not make an endorsement, warning fellow clergy that “it diminishes us if we are perceived as being in a partisan camp.”

📣 Sliwa called on to quit

• Curtis Sliwa faced calls to quit the race during a meeting at Fifth Avenue Synagogue on Sunday, where our reporter Joseph Strauss saw attendees pleading with the Republican nominee who is polling third. The day before, on Shabbat, he visited The Jewish Center, an Orthodox synagogue on the Upper West Side. Later in the day, he headed to Congregation Beth Elohim in Brooklyn, where Mamdani spoke last week.
• The Fifth Avenue Synagogue crowd was not unanimously anti-Sliwa, but they convened with the purpose of stopping Mamdani’s rise. One person accused Sliwa of being a “spoiler.”
• “We all love you, we want you to win,” said synagogue president Jacob Gold, who stood by Sliwa at the podium. “But you’re at 15%, and Cuomo’s at what percent? And Mamdani’s at what percent?” Gold said that he wanted Sliwa to “merge with Cuomo.”
• Cuomo himself urged Sliwa to drop out after the first general election debate on Thursday, during which he fielded barbs from both Sliwa and Mamdani.
• “There is no Curtis as a candidate. There’s Curtis as a spoiler,” Cuomo said to conservative Jewish radio host Sid Rosenberg on Friday. “If Curtis is not in the race, I win. And that’s a choice for Republicans. Do you vote for Curtis so you can say ‘I voted Republican’ and wind up electing Mamdani? Or do you vote for me?”
• Sliwa responded to his detractors, including Jewish billionaire Bill Ackman, in an interview with Jewish YouTuber Nate Friedman. He called Ackman a “jerk” who did not understand politics or live in New York City. To Cuomo, he said, “Get your own votes.”

🎂 Mamdani turns 34

• Mamdani celebrated his birthday on Saturday, taking the chance to address voters who express concerns about his age.
• “You’re worried about a 33-year-old becoming mayor of New York City,” he said in a video. “And I want you to know, I hear you. That’s why this weekend I’ll be making a change. I’m turning 34, and I’m committing that for every single day from here on out, I will grow older.”
• Mamdani asked supporters to mark his birthday by signing up for a canvassing shift. “The best gift is to beat Andrew Cuomo a second time,” he said.

👀 Trump watch

• President Trump continues to muse about the race. But after saying that Mamdani “hates Jewish people” and reiterating his threats to cut federal funding from New York under a Mayor Mamdani last week, he suggested over the weekend that the election result wouldn’t make much difference to him.
• “Would I rather have a Democrat than a communist? Barely. They’re almost becoming the same thing,” Trump said on Fox News on Sunday morning. “I don’t know that I’m going to get involved.”

The post Prominent NYC rabbi urges congregants to vote against Zohran Mamdani in Shabbat sermon appeared first on The Forward.