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How many Hebrew Israelites are there, and how worried should Jews be?
(JTA) — Dressed in matching purple hoodies and shirts, with gold fringes attached to the bottom in observance of Deuteronomy 22:12, hundreds of members of a controversial Hebrew Israelite group marched through the streets of Brooklyn on Sunday.
“Hey Jacob, it’s time to wake up,” they chanted, using a term for people of color who have yet to embrace their “true” identity as descendants of the Biblical Jacob, later called Israel. “We got good news for you: YOU are the real Jews.”
The march and a demonstration that followed at the Barclays Center were organized by Israel United in Christ in solidarity with Brooklyn Nets star Kyrie Irving, who was suspended for eight games after he posted a link to an antisemitic film on social media last month and then was slow to apologize. But IUIC has also used the controversy to promote its incendiary ideology and recruit new followers into what it calls “God’s army.”
After the demonstration — the second held by IUIC outside of the Brooklyn arena this month — the group’s founder posted a message on his Twitter account. “We are not here for violence,” Bishop Nathanyel Ben Israel wrote, “we are here for the spiritual war.”
Before 2019, those American Jews who were even aware of the once-obscure Black Hebrew Israelite spiritual movement likely associated it with the loud but non-violent street preachers who would harangue pedestrians in city centers. In December of that year, however, extremists professing Israelite beliefs attacked a kosher grocery store in Jersey City, New Jersey and a Hanukkah party in Monsey, New York. Two Jews were killed in Jersey City, and a 72-year-old rabbi who was stabbed in the head in Monsey died from his injuries three months later.
With the memory of those attacks still fresh, and against the backdrop of a surge this fall in public expressions of antisemitism combined with threats of violence against Jewish communities emanating from other extremist corners, the militant posturing of IUIC has alarmed many Jews already on edge.
Rabbi Mordechai Lightstone of Crown Heights observed on Twitter that the Israelites who regularly preach near his home on Shabbat have been “particularly aggressive” of late, heaping verbal abuse on both him and his children. On Sunday afternoon, Lightstone posted a video of IUIC members assembling for their march and rehearsing their chants in Grand Army Plaza.
“Terrifying,” commented Elisheva Rishon, a Black and Jewish fashion designer who blames Hebrew Israelites for inflaming tensions between the two communities to which she belongs. A few Twitter users compared the march to the 2017 far-right rally in Charlottesville, at which participants chanted “Jews will not replace us.”
The recent IUIC rallies give the impression that the radical wing of the Hebrew Israelite movement is large and riled up. Meanwhile, recent comments by Kanye West, the rapper who now goes by Ye, and Irving that align with elements of Hebrew Israelite doctrine suggest the movement has broad support among powerful Black celebrities.
But how big is the movement in reality? What percentage are extremists who assail Jews as impostors who stole their heritage from them? And if Black Israelism has entered the marketplace of mainstream religions in the United States, should Jews be concerned?
The numbers
The only available statistics on Israelite identification in the United States were collected as part of a small national survey conducted by an evangelical Christian research firm in 2019. For that survey, which sought to capture African-American attitudes toward the state of Israel, Lifeway Research asked 1,019 African Americans, “Which of the following best describes your opinion of Black Hebrew Israelite teachings?”
Most respondents (62%) said they are not familiar with the teachings, but 19% said they agree with “most of the core ideas taught by Black Hebrew Israelites,” and 4% said they consider themselves Hebrew Israelites. The remaining 15% said they either “firmly oppose” the teachings or disagree with most of them. (The survey did not specify what those teachings are.)
The 2020 U.S. Census put the Black population at 41.1 million, so extrapolating from the Lifeway data, there are approximately 1.6 million Hebrew Israelites in the U.S. — not counting the small numbers of Latinos and Native Americans who also belong to Israelite groups — and 7.8 million people who may not identify as Israelites but who agree with the spiritual movement’s main teachings.
For lots of these people, the attention that West and Irving have brought to their belief system has been validating.
“Israelism is becoming part of the plausibility structure of Black America,” Christian activist and author Vocab Malone told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, referring to a social context in which certain ideas are considered credible. “The suspicions that a lot of folks have toward the Jewish community, they think they’re vindicated now.”
Scott McConnell, Lifeway’s executive director, told JTA that the survey’s sponsor, the Christian Zionist organization Philos Project, supplied the question about Hebrew Israelite teachings. Asked if there are plans to include similar questions in future surveys, he replied, “I know there are some pastors at African-American churches that have concerns about some of their parishioners being led astray by the teachings of the Hebrew Israelites, so we’ll keep it on our radar.”
Malone, who uses an alias in keeping with hip-hop culture, is a close observer of the Israelite world. The Phoenix resident frequently engages in debates on the street and online with members of groups described as hateful by the Southern Poverty Law Center — including IUIC, Israelite School of Universal Practical Knowledge, Israelite Church of God in Jesus Christ, and The Sicarii — in hopes of convincing them to follow what he considers to be the true path of Christianity.
Founded in 2003, IUIC has proven the most adept at creating public spectacles and garnering media coverage. The group operates 71 U.S. chapters and 20 international ones, according to the Anti-Defamation League, and it holds men’s conferences each year that culminate in choreographed marches on city streets, like the one on Sunday in Brooklyn. Based on the size of those marches, Malone estimated that national membership has grown from around 5,000 in 2015 to around 10,000 today. Other radical groups likely have much smaller memberships but don’t share any figures, preferring to “play their cards close to their chest,” Malone said.
These estimates suggest that the extremists comprise a very small percentage of the 1.6 Hebrew Israelites living in the United States.
Ultimately, IUIC has a goal of recruiting 144,000 Black, Latino and Native American people who will be spared by God during the end time, as foretold in the book of Revelation. In order to achieve this goal, the group sends representatives to proselytize overseas, including in parts of Africa and the Caribbean. (IUIC did not respond to requests for comment from JTA.)
Both the Southern Poverty Law Center and the ADL monitor the activities of IUIC and other radical camps, as Israelites call their groups. However, spokespeople for both organizations told JTA they do not know how many people belong to these camps.
An online movement
What is clear is that the camps have greatly expanded their reach in recent years, taking their message from street corners to the entire globe thanks to the internet and social media. IUIC members run dozens of YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter accounts where they post a constant stream of videos and memes, many containing antisemitic tropes. One recent Instagram post shows a startled-looking Hasidic Jewish man holding his hat above the words “The Synagogue of Satan.” (Louis Farrakhan, the leader of the Nation of Islam, uses similar language about Jews. A video he recorded this month defending West and Irving has been viewed millions of times.)
The main IUIC YouTube channel, @IUICintheClassRoom, has 126,000 subscribers and 29.4 million video views. A series of videos posted three years ago on the channels of local chapters provide some insight into how members hear about IUIC and why they join.
The most common way these members say they found their way to the camp was via videos they watched online. “Prior to actually coming to IUIC, I did do some Israelite window shopping,” recounts Officer Joshua of IUIC Tallahassee. “I always questioned myself, why is it that our people are at the bottom? How come we get the worst jobs and so forth? I knew Christianity wasn’t answering my questions, so what I did was I just started soul searching.”
As part of his quest, Joshua says he stumbled upon a video of Bishop Nathanyel and other IUIC leaders preaching on the street. “I was like man, these brothers really know what they’re doing, they really have our history,” he says. “That’s what actually made me do more research on IUIC and the truth.”
Sar (“Minister”) Ahmadiel Ben Yehuda speaks at the African Hebrew Israelites’ annual New World Passover celebration in Dimona, Israel, May 2013. (Andrew Esensten)
In another video, Sister Ezriella from the Concord, North Carolina, branch explains that as a young adult, she felt uncertain about her life’s purpose. Then her mother shared information with her about IUIC. “She was so happy it changed her life, I had to take notice and I had to come check it out for myself,” she says. “I fell in love with it. I fell in love with finding out who I am.”
A number of Black, male celebrities have also been drawn into the wider Israelite orbit in recent years, including rappers Kendrick Lamar and Kodak Black, TV host Nick Cannon, boxer Floyd Mayweather and retired NBA player Amar’e Stoudemire.
Some of these celebrities appear to have been exposed to Israelite teachings by relatives and other acquaintances. Lamar, who famously rapped “I’m a Israelite, don’t call me Black no mo’” on a 2017 song, learned about Israelism from a cousin who was involved with IUIC. Black began identifying as a Levite in 2017 after studying scripture with an Israelite priest while serving a jail sentence in Florida. Stoudemire has said his mother taught him he had “Hebraic roots.” (He officially converted to Judaism in 2020, a step most Israelites reject because it contradicts their claims of already being authentic Jews.)
Isabelle Williams, an analyst at ADL’s Center on Extremism who tracks radical Israelite camps, said celebrity endorsements of the ideology can have a big impact because they come from figures who are widely respected.
“If people came upon an extremist Black Hebrew Israelite group street preaching, it might be easier to dismiss it and recognize the extreme ideology behind it,” she said. “But when it’s being shared by these influential figures, people might be less likely to recognize the really insidious ideology and dangerous antisemitic conspiracy theories that are behind these statements.”
Williams added that a range of extremist groups have seized on comments made by West and Irving. “It’s not just BHI and NOI groups that are leveraging this moment,” Williams said. “We’ve seen white supremacists who are also using this recent attention and circulation of antisemitic conspiracy theories to promote their own agenda.”
Rabbi Capers Funnye is the most prominent Israelite leader in the U.S. He serves as chief rabbi of the International Israelite Board of Rabbis, an organization that provides spiritual guidance to about 2,500 people in the United States, along with tens of thousands of Israelites in southern and west Africa.
In an interview, Funnye condemned West, Irving and the radical Israelite camps that have rallied around them. “God is never about divisiveness,” Funnye said. “God is never about hatred. God is never about, ‘You ain’t.’ I don’t have to say what you aren’t to make me who I am.”
A member of the Chicago Board of Rabbis and the leader of a Chicago synagogue with a mixed membership of around 200 Jews and Israelites, Funnye was at pains to differentiate his community from IUIC and its ilk: His follows the Torah and supports the state of Israel, he said, while others follow both the Old and New Testaments, worship Jesus and reject Israel’s government as illegitimate.
“Whatever army that Kyrie is speaking about, we are not a part of his army,” he said, referring to a comment Irving made during an Oct. 29 press conference about how he has “a whole army” behind him.
But Funnye said another of Irving’s recent statements — “I cannot be antisemitic if I know where I come from” — resonated with him and his congregants.
“We are Semitic,” he said of Black people who identify as Israelites, “so now we really have to draw a line when antisemitism is only defined by one’s complexion or ethnicity. We were not the ones that racialized Judaism, and we will never racialize it because Jews are not a race.” (“Semitic” refers to people who speak Semitic languages, such as Hebrew and Arabic.)
Outside of the United States, the largest organized group of Hebrew Israelites is located in Israel. The African Hebrew Israelites of Jerusalem are a Dimona-based community of more than 3,000 African-American expatriates and their Israeli-born offspring.
African Hebrew Israelite youth serve in the army — not Kyrie Irving’s or IUIC’s army, but the Israel Defense Forces. After 53 years in Israel, the community has never been fully accepted, in part because they are not Jewish according to halacha, or Jewish law. Currently, some 100 community members are being threatened with deportation for living in the country illegally.
Ahmadiel Ben Yehuda, the African Hebrew Israelites’ minister of information, said he interpreted Irving’s remarks as a reference to “the global awakening of people of African ancestry to their Hebraic roots.” He said the backlash Irving has faced shows that the conversation around this awakening must involve qualified representatives of communities who can cite reputable sources — not documentaries such as the one Irving boosted — “Hebrews to Negroes: Wake Up Black America” — in support of their claims of Israelite ancestry.
“What is certain is that Israel and Judaism must figure out a way to better accommodate these communities,” Ben Yehuda said. “This is not going to fade away, and it shouldn’t. It will intensify as the awakening continues.”
How this awakening will affect Jews and established Jewish communities remains to be seen.
In September, George Washington University’s Program on Extremism released a report titled “Contemporary Violent Extremism and the Black Hebrew Israelite Movement.” The report noted that the “predominant threat” today comes not from Israelite groups themselves but from “individuals loosely affiliated with or inspired by the movement.”
Malone, the Christian activist, cautioned that as the extremist wing of the Israelite movement grows, more violent lone wolves may emerge.
“There’s a big funnel with any movement, and the bigger the funnel is, you get certain things down at the bottom,” he said. “This is not Buddhism. This is a different kind of thing with a different kind of rhetoric.”
—
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On my first Shabbat in NYC, the sanctuary was attacked
I don’t often go to synagogue. Outside of the High Holidays, it is not somewhere I would ordinarily find myself on a Friday night.
In the last few years, I have made a point of spending Shabbat with my grandmother. We light candles, eat together and let the week recede for a few hours. I don’t see it as an obligation so much as the comfort of doing something that has been done before, by people I love, in a rhythm that existed long before I did.
And yet, synagogues have a strange way of finding me when I need them.
Last summer, while travelling through Europe to visit two of my closest friends, I found myself in London, exhausted from weeks of constant movement. I happened to walk past a synagogue and realized that Shabbat was the following day. I reached out and asked if I could join their services. I remember thinking that perhaps this was exactly what I needed: a few hours to sit still, focus, and breathe.
And I was right.
There is something uniquely grounding about entering a synagogue in an unfamiliar place and discovering that the ritual is familiar. You may be thousands of miles from home, surrounded by people you’ve never met, but you know when to stand. You recognize the melodies. You open the same prayers. You know that somewhere else in the world, other Jews are doing some version of the same thing.
So when, only a few days after moving to New York, I was connected with a member of Central Synagogue through a potential landlord and they invited me to join them for Shabbat services, I thought: Why not?
I had just arrived in a city where I was beginning a new job at the Forward, a new life, one that, for the first time, was entirely mine to shape. That is a daunting task. What better way to spend my first Friday night than doing something that has always made the unknown feel a little more manageable.
Moments after services began, I was sitting in the sanctuary, allowing myself to take in the week that had just passed — my first week in New York — when a man entered and began moving violently through the congregation.
He knocked down the Shabbat candles that had just been lit. He moved through the rows of congregants. I watched him strike another person.
People around me ran toward the sides of the sanctuary. My own body went into the same instinctive state of shock and survival: Where is the danger? Where can I go? What do I need to watch for?
The security response was swift. The intruder was stopped, we re-lit the candles, and services continued.
Those around me who knew I was new to the synagogue immediately went into protection mode. They checked on me, expressing disbelief that something like this could have happened there, especially given the level of security they pride themselves on maintaining. They told me that in the nearly three years since October 7, nothing like this had happened.
The clergy, too, seemed to understand what the moment required. They gave us strength and courage, using the same voices that had moments earlier been leading us in song and prayer to restore some sense of calm. Throughout the service and again afterward in their online response, they returned to the same idea: it was our duty to keep joy alive.
Joy, one of the rabbis said, is itself an act of resistance.
I understood the sentiment. But my body hadn’t quite caught up.
Shabbat is one of the rare times when I allow myself to become completely uninhibited. I sing. I look up from the prayer book. I watch the rabbis and the people around me. I let myself become absorbed in something larger than whatever has been occupying my mind that week. For a few hours, I am not thinking about work, or apartment hunting, or navigating a new city. I am simply there.
That is also why the disruption was so jarring. I had come to Shabbat to let my guard down, and suddenly I found myself unable to do so.
I kept my eyes toward the front of the room, watching for movement. When it came time to turn around during Lecha Dodi, I felt a jolt of anxiety at the thought of putting my back toward the congregation. I could no longer surrender myself completely to the moment and what it required of me. I knew, rationally, that the threat had passed. But my body had learned something different: that even here, even now, even in this room, I might need to be ready.
For a moment, I considered leaving. But the people around me seemed to embody a quiet confidence that everything was going to be okay. They had chosen to stay, and I followed their lead. There is a certain strength in knowing that you are not standing alone.
I had come to Central Synagogue because I wanted to feel at home in my new city. Instead, on my first Shabbat in New York, I was reminded how quickly the simple act of practicing Judaism can become an exercise in vigilance. And yet, looking around the room that evening, I also understood that vigilance does not have to mean retreat.
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Anti-Israel Republicans tests their strength in Florida primaries
Some insurgent Democrats have found success by making criticism of Israel central to their campaigns. Now a group of Republican candidates is trying to tap into a similar movement on the right, even if they are unlikely to win.
That divide is on display in Florida’s Republican primaries, set for Tuesday, where several long-shot candidates are challenging the party’s traditionally strong support for the Jewish state. Congressional candidates Dan Bilzerian and Jake Lang and gubernatorial hopeful James Fishback have made opposition to Israel and AIPAC part of their political identity. But they have also gone further than most progressive critics of Israel, using rhetoric that has been widely condemned as antisemitic.
Bilzerian is a professional poker player and a social media personality once known as the “King of Instagram” for flaunting a lifestyle of luxury, fast cars, women, and guns. He is challenging incumbent Rep. Randy Fine, one of four Jewish Republicans in Congress. Fine has made support for Israel central to his political identity, while also drawing condemnation for inflammatory rhetoric about Muslims and Palestinians.
Fine is a favorite to win reelection, has the endorsement of President Donald Trump and has a large fundraising advantage. He represents District 6, which is located just under the northeast part of the state and includes Daytona Beach, and is facing four primary challengers. Among them are Aaron Baker, an “America First” candidate who has criticized the “influence of foreign lobbies” and what he calls America’s “endless wars.” Baker also said he would oppose providing Israel with offensive weapons.
But Bilzerian’s attacks on Fine, who often wears a yarmulke in public, have gone well beyond criticism of Israel. He has repeatedly promoted conspiracy theories about Jews, including that Jews killed President John F. Kennedy. On social media, where Bilzerian has more than 30 million followers, he has asked if Adolf Hitler was a “good person,” has called Jews “dumb,” Judaism a “terrible” religion and referred to Fine as a “fat Jew.”
Bilzerian’s campaign treasurer, Patrick Krason, also served as treasurer for Kanye West’s short-lived 2024 presidential campaign. The rapper, who changed his name to Ye, engaged in a spate of antisemitic remarks and Holocaust denial in recent years. A Combat Antisemitism Movement report found that 33% of Bilzerian’s content on his campaign account was anti-Israel and antisemitic.
In recent days, Bilzerian posted antisemitic dog whistles, including that Florida’s “District 6 understands the Jewish problem,” and that “a vote for Randy is a vote for Israel.”
The imagery in Bilzerian’s closing campaign message has become quite provocative. In one AI-generated video, Bilzerian accuses Fine and his wife of engaging in “transgender pride groups that perform for children.”
Another AI video, posted Thursday, says Fine “wants you to die for Israel” and calls the congressman a “psychopath” who wants to watch “goyim cattle” die. He labels Fine a “Jewish supremacist” and “Satan’s creepy little minion” and says that the “fat Jew Randy” needs to be “tarred and feathered.” The video also includes AI-generated imagery of Fine dressed in a cheerleader’s outfit emblazoned with the Israeli flag and says it’s time for voters to “throw out Shylock and all his tricks.”
Fine said the video is “celebrating Hitler,” adding: “We have a choice on Tuesday, to embrace the kind of Nazism that led to the Holocaust or to repudiate this filth and reaffirm American values and character.”
Wonder if I can get them to play this on the radio in the district pic.twitter.com/IAXVV7pNp7
— Dan Bilzerian (@DanBilzerian) August 13, 2026
Other Republican primaries
A similar, if less blatantly antisemitic, theme is also showing up in the Republican primary for Marco Rubio’s former Senate seat.
Jake Lang, a far-right provocateur who was pardoned by Trump for his role in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, is running for the Senate seat held by Republican incumbent Sen. Ashley Moody. Lang, who said his mother is Jewish, renounced his connections to Judaism and Israel and built an online following around Christian nationalism and attacks on both Muslims and Jews. This included performing a Nazi salute outside AIPAC’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., and an “anti-Islamification” rally against New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani outside Gracie Mansion.
In the crowded Republican primary for governor to replace the term-limited Gov. Ron DeSantis, James Fishback has made opposition to Israel and AIPAC central to his campaign. Fishback, who said “Americans shouldn’t die for Israel,” has attacked the frontrunner, Rep. Byron Donalds, over support from pro-Israel donors. Fishback, who is polling at 18%, promised to pull Florida’s investments from Israel Bonds. Running what The New York Times described as a “rage bait” campaign, Fishback has associated himself with antisemitic personalities on the far-right. He also criticized politicians who “visit another country” only to end up “kissing a stupid wall,” a reference to prayer visits to the Western Wall.
Florida Republicans are not expected to abandon their party’s longstanding alliance with Israel when they vote in Tuesday’s primary. But these long-shot candidates have large online followings, and their campaigns are testing whether the growing anti-Israel movement on the right can also find its place in electoral politics.
In his recent memoir, Vice President JD Vance recounted a conversation with conservative activist Charlie Kirk months before he was fatally shot, in which Kirk warned about a growing strain of anti-Israel sentiment on the American right that has at times slid into outright antisemitism.
Fine’s stance
Meanwhile, since winning the special election in 2025 to replace now-Ambassador to the U.N. Mike Waltz, Fine has made his Jewish identity and support for Israel central to his political persona. Fine also served as Ron DeSantis’ Jewish outreach chair during the 2018 gubernatorial election.
Known for his combative nature, Fine has built his political brand as one of Israel’s most outspoken defenders in Congress, frequently using social media to target his critics. He has also said he began wearing a yarmulke in solidarity with Jewish students facing antisemitism on college campuses after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel.
Last week, vandals spray-painted a swastika on one of Fine’s campaign signs outside an early voting location in Flagler Beach. Police are investigating the vandalism, which Fine described as an antisemitic attack.
There are roughly 750,000 Jewish residents in Florida, making it the third most-populous Jewish state after New York and California. Jews make up 4% of the Florida electorate. Nearly 60% of the state’s Jewish electorate identify as Democrats or lean Democratic, according to the American Jewish Population Project at Brandeis University.
Some Florida Democrats have also shown less interest in following the anti-Israel shift seen among progressives elsewhere, like in the Michigan Democratic primary win of Dr. Abdul El-Sayed for U.S. Senate.
Last week, the Hillsborough County Democratic Party canceled a planned keynote address at its annual gala by former New York Assemblyman Michael Blake, who made attacks on AIPAC a major part of his unsuccessful congressional campaign against Rep. Ritchie Torres. The Florida event also featured Democratic gubernatorial candidate, former Rep. David Jolly, a longtime supporter of Israel.
The contrast ahead of Tuesday’s primary is striking: In Florida, the loudest challenge to bipartisan support for Israel is coming not from the progressive left, but from the Republican right.
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Jewish watchdog urges NYPD to use cutting-edge detection tech after synagogue attack
(JTA) — A Jewish security watchdog is doubling down on safety measures in the wake of a Friday night attack against worshipers at Manhattan’s Central Synagogue, calling on police to identify cutting edge tactics to identify hot spots for potential hate crimes and to place more officers in those areas.
But Mitchell Silber, CEO of the Community Security Initiative, acknowledged that preventing situations like Friday’s is not straightforward.
“It’s difficult, because you’re trying to balance being open for the public for worship, and at the same time, keeping our sanctuary safe,” Silber told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on Sunday.
On Friday night Larry Montes, 46, was able to make his way into Central Synagogue’s main sanctuary before he disrupted the service with antisemitic slurs and was apprehended by a security guard. Silber said he’s been in contact with Central Synagogue security leadership about the incident and understood that Montes had not initially raised any red flags when he entered the building.
“There wasn’t something so out of place that it required them to pull him aside, but they noticed him as not someone they were familiar with,” he said. According to CSI, the synagogue’s team was able to quickly defuse the situation anyway due to the training it had received.
In the wake of the incident, Silber said the CSI is sending a bulletin to synagogues about steps to improve synagogue safety, a copy of which was shown to JTA.
The CSI has begun discussions with the NYPD about using tools like “datamining, crime cluster mapping and pre-emptively deploying against hot spots” in order to prevent hate crimes before they can happen. The CSI coordinates security for Jewish institutions and communities in the New York area, and is jointly funded by the UJA-Federation of New York and the Jewish Community Relations Council. (70 Faces Media, the parent company of the JTA and New York Jewish Week, receives UJA funding.)
The CSI bulletin is also encouraging other synagogues to partner with the Community Security Service, another Jewish nonprofit that trains congregants to volunteer as greeters who can provide more personalized discernment of possible threats.
“Central Synagogue isn’t Park East, Park East isn’t KJ, KJ isn’t Congregation Beth Elohim — they’re all so different, and that’s why having members of the synagogue trained can really be a force multiplier,” Silber said, listing some of the city’s most prominent congregations.
In the incident on Friday night, Montes yelled during the service, disrupting it, and then struck a 63-year-old congregant and headbutted a member of security personnel who was escorting him out.
Rabbi Angela Buchdahl, the congregation’s senior rabbi, was away for a family event when the incident occurred on Friday, according to The New York Times. But she wrote on Instagram that the security director “heroically restrained and escorted” Montes out of the synagogue, which occurred within one minute of him disrupting the service.
Montes has three previous arrests in New York City, each for a robbery between 2019 and 2023, according to police.
He was arrested at the scene and arraigned in criminal court immediately that night, where, according to police, he was charged with four counts of assault as a hate crime, two counts of assault, criminal mischief as a hate crime, criminal mischief, disruption of a religious service, criminal trespassing as a hate crime, two counts of aggravated harassment and two counts of harassment.
The District Attorney’s office requested bail at $50,000 cash with $150,000 bond and the judge set bail at $10,000 cash with $30,000 bond. Montes’ next court date is August 20, according to the DA’s office.
The attack comes as antisemitic hate crimes against Jews in New York City have risen by 8.5% compared to 2025, as of the end of July. Debate has swirled this year over whether North American synagogues need to step up their security in the mold of European congregations in the wake of attacks like the attempted one in West Bloomfield, Michigan, in which a man drove a fireworks-laden truck into a synagogue.
A number of politicians have weighed in to condemn Friday’s attack.
New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, the highest-ranking Jewish official in the U.S., wrote, “When American Jews say they feel unsafe, this is why. Antisemitism is real and it’s increasing by the day.”
Some have ascribed a lack of safety to rhetoric used by the city’s mayor, Zohran Mamdani, a longtime Israel critic who turned heads with his recent video panning Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Ofir Akunis, consul general of Israel in New York, called the attack “a direct result of Mayor Mamdani’s sustained campaign of incitement” in a post on X.
Meanwhile, some of Mamdani’s Jewish allies have pointed out that a Facebook profile that appears to belong to Montes has shared a number of posts criticizing the mayor.
Mamdani wrote that he was “horrified by the assault” at the synagogue, and that all New Yorkers “must be able to observe their religion without fear of violence.”
Montes’ social media posts include sharing a video of a Prager U commentator taking down Israel critics and multiple photos that suggest support for Israel, including a hand shaded with the Puerto Rican flag shaking another hand shaded with the Israeli flag.
His aunt, who lives in Puerto Rico, told the New York Post that her nephew “might not have been in his right mind,” and that he has expressed a desire to become Jewish.
“I told him he had to be careful with that because those things are sacred — you have to approach them seriously,” she told The Post in Spanish.
A woman named Michele Anenberg-Poma posted a photo of herself on Instagram with wounds on her lip and arm, and wrote, “I am the woman who was assaulted last night at Central Synagogue.”
She added, “You will not punch out our Jewish light. You will not stand and cause harm to our eternal light.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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