Uncategorized
A scholar sees a common root for antisemitism and racism: ‘Christian supremacy’
(JTA) — Magda Teter’s new book, “Christian Supremacy,” begins in Charlottesville, Virginia, on Aug. 11, 2017. Hundreds of white nationalist neo-Nazis who ostensibly gathered to protest the removal of a statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee from a local park broke into a chant: “Jews will not replace us.”
Other writers and scholars would note how antisemitism shaped white nationalism. But Teter, professor of history and the Shvidler Chair of Judaic Studies at Fordham University, saw something else: how centuries of Christian thought and practice fed the twin evils of antisemitism and racism.
“The ideology espoused by white supremacists in the US and in Europe is rooted in Christian ideas of social and religious hierarchy,” she writes. “These ideas developed, gradually, first in the Mediterranean and Europe in respect to Jews and then in respect to people of color in European colonies and in the US, before returning transformed back to Europe.”
In the book, subtitled “Reckoning with the Roots of Antisemitism and Racism,” she traces this idea from the writings of the early church fathers like Paul the Apostle, though centuries of Catholic and Protestant debates over the status of Jews in Europe, to the hardening of racist attitudes with the rise of the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
Antisemitic laws and theology, she argues, developed within Christianity a “mental habit” of exclusion and dominance that would eventually be applied to people of color up to and including modern times.
Teter is careful to acknowledge the different forms antisemitism and racism have taken, distinguishing between the Jews’ experience of social and legal exclusion and near annihilation, and the enslavement, displacement and ongoing persecution of Black people. And yet, she writes, “that story began with Christianity’s theological relation with Jews and Judaism.”
Teter is previously the author of “Blood Libel: On The Trail of an Antisemitic Myth,” winner of the 2020 National Jewish Book Award. At Fordham, the Catholic university in the Bronx, she is helping assemble what may be the largest repository of artifacts and literature dedicated to the Jewish history of the borough.
We spoke Thursday about how groups like the Proud Boys embrace centuries-old notions of Christian superiority, how “whiteness” became a thing and how she, as a non-Jew raised in Poland, became a Jewish studies scholar.
Our conversation was edited for length and clarity.
Your book was conceived and written during the COVID lockdown. Where did the idea for the book come from?
It’s an accidental project. I’ve been teaching the history of antisemitism for years, and I live in Harlem so questions of race and racism are very stark in my daily life. And since I grew up in Poland, and American history was not something we were taught or studied, I’ve never been satisfied with the various explanations for the strength of antisemitism and history of racism. And as I mentioned in my prologue, I watched the Raoul Peck documentary, “I Am Not Your Negro,” which has a clip with James Baldwin saying that white people have to figure out why they invented the idea of the N-word and must “embrace this stranger that they have maligned so long.” You could also say that the European Christians created the idea of “the Jew” and that sort of caricature had absolutely nothing to do with flesh and blood Jews. I kept noticing these parallels, as an outsider, reading American and African-American history.
I was also thinking about this idea of servitude that was attached to Jews in Christian theology, and then in law.
You write in your book that “Over time, white European Christians branded both Jews and people of color with ‘badges of servitude’ and inferiority.” What do you mean by servitude in this context?
In Christian theology, from the earliest Christian texts, the idea of servitude and slavery is attached to the concept of Jews and Judaism. Paul does it in his Epistles. He uses this quote from the book of Genesis that “the elder shall serve the younger,” which becomes really embedded in Christian theology. It is the Jews, the elder people, who should serve the Christians, the younger people. Later on in medieval theology and canon law, Jews are in a servile position, consigned for their sin of rejecting Jesus to perpetual servitude. So even though Jews were free people and could live mostly where they wanted to live, marry whoever they wanted to marry — nobody was sold and some even had slaves — that idea of Jews as confined to perpetual servitude to Christians created a habit of thinking of Jews as having an inferior social status.
That language became secularized in modern times, and we see the development of the [antisemitic] trope of Jewish power: that they are in places where they shouldn’t be. I worked on fleshing out the parallels between the idea and then legal status of Jewish servitude and the conceptual perception of Black people in servile and inferior positions.
Magda Teter’s new book explores how “white European Christians branded both Jews and people of color with ‘badges of servitude’ and inferiority.” (Chuck Fishman)
What other kinds of parallels did you find between racism and antisemitism?
In the Christian theology, Black people, like Jews, will be seen as cursed by God. Jews were [portrayed as] lazy because they didn’t work physically — they made money and exploited Christians. Black people were [portrayed as] lazy because they were trying to avoid physical labor at the expense of white men. Both people were seen as carnal, both as sexually dangerous, and so on.
I was struck by the fact that the racist turn of Christian supremacy — justifying the enslavement of Black people on theological grounds — is a fairly late development, taking hold in the early modern period when Europeans established slaveholding empires.
That’s right. In the summer of 2020, the summer of George Floyd and Black Lives Matter, we were all thinking about these issues of race and racism and America. And as I was in the middle of writing the article that became the book, I felt that there was a deeper history that needed to be told, and that slavery is not bound by color until the enslavement of Black Africans by Europeans during the colonial expansion of Europe.
After the French Revolution, when Jews were offered “emancipation” in much of Europe, there were deep debates about whether they could be citizens and be entitled to the same rights and protections as Christian citizens of France and England and other countries. How was that debate informed by Christianity?
In pre-modern Europe, there was obviously both a religious and legal framework under which Jews existed. They had their place in a social hierarchy. After the French Revolution, people are creating a new political reality. The idea of equality obviously challenged the social hierarchies that existed, including the idea that Christians were the superior religion. And that begins to play a role on two levels. One is the level of, well, “how can you be equal and be our judges and make decisions about us?” It’s fear of power — political power and political equality. That challenges the habit of thinking that sees Jews as inferior, in servitude and otherwise insolent and arrogant.
The other level comes from Enlightenment scholars who begin to place Jews in the Middle East and in the Holy Land, in Palestine. Jews are no longer seen as European. They are seen as “Oriental,” and they are compared to the non-European religions and practices that these Enlightenment scholars have been studying. Their differences are now also racialized. “They are not like us, they can’t assimilate. They can never be Frenchmen, they can never be Germans.”
And I guess it’s a short step from that to regarding people with dark skin as inferior and subordinate.
That’s right. Enlightenment scholars are also trying to to understand why it is justified to enslave Black Africans and they do it through “scientific” and other means. They classify Africans as inferior intellectually and they create this idea of race.
I began to think about these European politicians and intellectuals in terms of creating their identities, and what I ended up arguing is what we saw in Charlottesville, what we’re seeing in Europe. It’s not necessarily just about hate, but it’s about exclusion and rejection of Jews and people of color from equality, from citizenship.
And the common thread here is that whiteness and Christianity become inseparable. You write that “freedom and liberty now came to be linked not only to Christianity, but to whiteness, and servitude and enslavement to blackness.”
That’s right. White Christian “liberty” becomes embedded and embodied in law.
Did you see any pitfalls in drawing parallels between the Black and Jewish experiences? I am thinking of those in either community who might say, “How dare you compare our suffering to theirs!”
Yes, I was tempered. I think what some call “comparative victimhood” has paralyzed conversations about this subject, and I kept it in my mind all the time. What I hope comes through is that there’s incredible value in a comparative approach. Coming from Jewish studies as my primary field, the comparison with the Black experience gave me clarity on the nature of antisemitism as well as on the nature of the Jewish experience, and vice versa: The Jewish experience can also give clarity to some of the aspects of anti-Black racism.
What’s an example?
So, for instance, questions like, “Are Jews white? Are they not white? When did they become white?” That’s a whole genre of scholarship. And when you look at it through the lens of law and ideology, you begin to see that from a legal perspective, Jews were considered white in the United States because they could immigrate and they could be naturalized according to law. They did not have to go to court to become American. Their rights to vote were not challenged. There was discrimination, they couldn’t stay in hotels and in some places they couldn’t find employment, but by law, they were considered citizens. The debate about the whiteness of Jews is creating a fog of misunderstanding.
Black Americans were targeted by specific legal statutes from the very beginning in the Constitution and then in naturalization law and so on. And then there was the backlash even after the Civil War to the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments [aimed at establishing political equality for Americans of all races].
Statues at the Strasbourg Cathedral depict Ecclesia and Synagoga, representing the triumph of the church, at left, and the servitude of Judaism, which is represented by a blindfolded figure, drooping and carrying a broken lance. (Edelseider/Wikimedia Commons)
How much do modern-day white supremacists, like the Oath Keepers or the Proud Boys, see themselves as Christian? Or is this a kind of white supremacy that doesn’t name itself Christian but doesn’t even realize how many of its ideas are based in theology?
I think they might not be conscious of this legacy, but neo-Nazis take from the legacy of the Nazis who themselves were not thinking of themselves as Christian necessarily. But what I argue in the book is that white Christian supremacy becomes white supremacy. It never discards the Christian sense of domination and superiority that emerges from its early relationship with Jews and Judaism.
In the United States, Black people serve as contrast figures to whiteness, in the law and in the culture. You cannot have whiteness without Blackness. For Christians, Jews serve as that contrast figure. Consciously or unconsciously, the Proud Boys are embracing that. They talk of “God-given” freedoms for white people. That is the Christian legacy.
You said that the Nazis didn’t necessarily see themselves as a Christian movement. But I must ask, even though it is not the scope of your book, was the Holocaust a culmination of white Christian supremacy? Because I think many Christian theologians would want to say that Nazism was godless, and a perversion of the true faith.
I’ll say that when exclusionary ideology is coupled with the power of the state, that’s where it can lead.
In the years since the Holocaust especially, there have been many efforts by Christian leaders to address the ideological failings of the past. You write about Nostra Aetate, the 1965 declaration by the Catholic Church absolving Jews of collective guilt in the death of Jesus and some Protestant documents of contrition. But I got the feeling you were disappointed that many denominations haven’t gone far enough in reckoning with the past.
There was a sort of a moral sense that something needs to be addressed after the Holocaust. But then it is not fully addressed. I don’t think anybody has addressed the issue of power — the roots of hate, yes, but not the dynamics of power. We’ll see where the book goes, but maybe theologians will begin to grapple with this legacy of superiority and domination, and the way hierarchical habits of thinking have been developed through theology and through religious culture.
What other impact do you hope the book may have?
White supremacy is very much in the air. We need to speak up against it, and make connections and allyships. I hope that maybe because the book deals with law and power, it may create bridges among people who care about “We the People” as a vision of people who are diverse, respectful and equal, and not the exclusionary vision offered by white and Christian supremacy.
A cross burns at a Ku Klux Klan rally on Aug. 8, 1925. (National Photo Company Collection)
I’d love to talk about your background. You’re not Jewish but you are chair of Jewish Studies at Fordham, a Catholic university. What drew you to the study of Judaism and the Jews?
I grew up in Poland with a father who from the time I was a little girl would point out to me that there had been Jews in Poland. We would drive through the countryside, and he’d say, “This used to be a Jewish town and there used to be a synagogue and there was the Jewish cemetery.” I grew up being very conscious of the past’s presence and this kind of stark absence of Jews in Poland, where in the 1970s when I grew up Jewish history was taboo.
As soon as Jewish books on Jewish subjects began to be published, including those that dealt with antisemitism, we would read it together. We would talk about it. He wouldn’t just shift the destruction and murder of Jews in Poland on to the Nazis.
There was no Jewish studies program in Poland when I was applying to universities, so I studied Hebrew in Israel, and then studied Yiddish in New York at YIVO. I came to Columbia University to get my PhD in Jewish history and my career went in the direction it did. I was a professor of history and director of the Jewish and Israel studies program at Wesleyan University. I came to Fordham eight years ago and created a program in Jewish studies.
Your previous book was about the blood libel, the historic canard that Jews murdered Christian children to use their blood. This one’s about antisemitism. I don’t want to presume, but is your interest in these subjects in any way an act of contrition?
I grew up in a very secular household. I did not grow up Catholic. But I think growing up in Poland made me very, very aware of antisemitism and the history of antisemitism. I got my PhD from Columbia University in Jewish history, which did not emphasize Jewish suffering, but Jewish life, and I have studied Jewish life and teach about Jewish life — not just about Jewish suffering.
However, in the last few years, antisemitism has certainly been on the minds of many of us. I also am committed to the idea of shared history, and therefore all my scholarship, as much as it is about Jews, it is also about the church and Poland and the law. Jews are an integral part of that history and culture. And, as such, I’m committed to that, to teaching about the vibrancy of Jewish life as much as the dynamics of what made that life difficult over the centuries.
—
The post A scholar sees a common root for antisemitism and racism: ‘Christian supremacy’ appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
Yiddishkayt LA and New Lehrhaus merge — but is this good for Yiddish?
For most Jewish institutions, “partnership” might mean a shared event or a guest lecture. But for Yiddishkayt LA and the Bay Area’s New Lehrhaus — two organizations separated by 370 miles and decades of distinct histories — this merger represents something far bolder. They are fusing identities, communities and visions of what West Coast Jewish culture can become.
Rob Adler Peckerar, formerly a key figure at Yiddishkayt LA, has now been appointed director of New Lehrhaus. In an interview he said that the merger strengthens both institutions rather than diluting either one.
Aaron Paley, the founder of Yiddishkayt LA, agrees. “We’re not amplifying one approach at the expense of the other; we’re amplifying both,” he said, adding that he first encountered the Lehrhaus tradition as a UC Berkeley student in the 1970s. The merger, he added, “immediately felt like a homecoming.”
Officially launched November 1, the merger wasn’t born of crisis. It grew from two organizations with parallel instincts: Yiddishkayt LA’s eclectic cultural programming and New Lehrhaus’s commitment to text, dialogue, and community learning.
A celebration — but not without concerns
But some Yiddish fans are concerned about the merger. “We’re 114 neighborhoods in a trench coat pretending to be a cohesive city,” said Aaron Castillo-White, director of the Yiddish culture organization Kultur Mercado and a former member of the Forward’s development staff.
“Yiddishkayt LA was one of the few forces stitching its Yiddish community together.” Now that it will no longer be a separate institution, he’s worried that the “already fragile cohesion” might suffer even more.
The question is: If Yiddishkayt LA becomes absorbed into New Lehrhaus’s broader educational framework, what will happen to LA’s uniquely local Yiddish culture — the concerts, neighborhood pop-ups, cross-art collaborations, and street-level programming? They may not easily transplant into a text-centered institution.
But Adler Peckerar isn’t worried, noting that, in recent years, newer groups like Der Nister and Kultur Mercado have already begun organizing on-the-ground Yiddish programming. Yiddishkayt LA, on the other hand, had moved away from local, place-based events toward livestreamed programs, online archives, virtual learning and broader national audiences who would never attend in-person Los Angeles events.
To understand the stakes, it’s important to understand who these two merging organizations are.
Two genealogies, one experiment
Yiddishkayt LA, founded by Paley in the 1990s, helped define a distinct West Coast model of Yiddish culture: contemporary, experimental and rooted in doikayt — “being present” in one’s milieu. Its Helix Fellowship shaped young artists who saw Jewish culture not as nostalgia, but as creative raw material.
New Lehrhaus, launched in 2021 by Rachel and David Biale, has different roots: In the early 20th century, the Jewish philosopher Franz Rosenzweig founded an informal educational institution in Frankfurt, Germany, called Lehrhaus, that brought assimilated German Jews into engaging Judaic study without demanding any background knowledge or religious observance.
In the new incarnation, based in the Bay Area, the New Lehrhaus became a home for Jews seeking text and dialogue across denominations and backgrounds.
Last year, after Rachel Biale stepped down as director of the New Lehrhaus, the incoming director, Adler Peckerar, saw the joining of forces as a natural evolution. “Merging two strong organizations isn’t about defeat or one absorbing the other,” he said. “It’s strategic thinking about how to build something that can weather today’s volatile nonprofit landscape.”
But that innovation also sharpens Castillo-White’s concern: What disappears when two distinct ecosystems become one?
Diverging visions of the merger’s impact
Castillo-White described Yiddishkayt as “one of the only cultural bridges” in Los Angeles. He worries that a merger, even one made in good faith, could dilute that hyper-local energy.
Adler Peckerar disagrees. Unlike Castillo-White, he argued the merger will expand — not shrink — opportunities for Yiddish. “We’re broadening the ecosystem,” he said.
Biale framed the merger around a larger question facing Jewish institutions: How do they stay relevant without losing depth? She believes that the merger could bring Yiddishkayt LA fans into a much larger orbit of learning, featuring sessions with scholars like the University of Toronto professor Naomi Seidman who writes about the relationship between Judaism, literature, gender studies, translation studies and sexuality.
The new organization plans to dive into an eclectic range of fields in contemporary culture — physics, poetry, Leonard Cohen — as a doorway into Jewish texts. Adler Peckerar believes this approach could make Jewish learning feel relevant for Jews who may otherwise have little or no connection to Jewish learning.
They’re also planning intimate reading circles on radical Jewish thinkers such as Isaac Deutscher, Rosa Luxemburg and Gustav Landauer; classes on endangered Jewish languages and Hasidic history and experimental Yiddish theater and new one-act plays.
What remains to be seen is how the new Lehrhaus-Yiddishkayt will balance its broadened reach with the local energies that shaped each institution. Many in the community will be watching to see which parts of the old ecosystems endure, and what new forms of Yiddish culture might emerge.
The post Yiddishkayt LA and New Lehrhaus merge — but is this good for Yiddish? appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
At long last, a TV show captures the experience of multi-racial Jewish families like mine
The new CBS television series Boston Blue has achieved what I long thought impossible — something close to an accurate portrayal of a multi-racial Jewish-American family.
The show, which quietly debuted last month as a spinoff of the hit series Blue Bloods, centers around the Silver family — a clan of police officers and elected officials helping to maintain safety and order across Beantown. They include siblings Lena, who is Black, Sarah, who is white, and Jonah, who is bi-racial.
“We’re just one big happy kinda confusing family,” Lena declares in the pilot episode, as she explains that her mother married Sarah’s father — with Jonah arriving shortly thereafter. And by establishing the Silver family tree so early on, Boston Blue softens the audience up for its real wild-card: The Silvers are all loudly, proudly and unapologetically Jewish.
Their family reminds me of my own. And I think the show got just about everything about our experience right.
In the pilot episode, Detective Danny Reagan (Blue Bloods veteran Donny Wahlberg) arrives in Boston to care for his injured son — who happens to be Jonah Silver’s partner — and is invited by family matriarch, District Attorney Mae Silver, to the type of “family dinner” made famous by Reagan’s own family on Blue Bloods.
Which is how Reagan unexpectedly finds himself at a Shabbat dinner.
When Mae married Sarah’s father — District Judge Ben Silver — she and Lena converted to Judaism, Reagan learns. Jonah was raised in the faith. But Judge Silver was killed a year earlier, leaving Mae’s father, Rev. Edwin Peters, as the de-factor paterfamilias — a Black pastor at one of Boston’s oldest Black churches, kippah-clad and leading a family of Jews as they light Shabbat candles and recite traditional prayers.
It might all seem a bit far-fetched. Unless you know my own family.
We have white Jews, Black pastors, Asian uncles, Latino ex-husbands and mixed-race Jewish twins — that would be my sister and I. Separated on both coasts, it’s been awhile since we all came together for Shabbat like the Silvers. But if we did, our gathering would look a lot like theirs — minus the mansion on Beacon Hill.
This is what makes Boston Blue so refreshing and unexpected. The Silvers’ Jewishness never feels confrontational or contrived.
There are close to 1 million “Jews-of-color” in the United States today, but Boston Blue accurately understands that the family would still be an enigma to most American viewers. But rather than dwell on this potential narrative hiccup, the show’s writers cannily deployed it as a narrative device instead. These are folks who understand they must often explain their unique family dynamics, but ultimately have nothing to prove. They are both confident and casual in their faith.
As a Jew whom many other Jews often fail to recognize as one of their own, I’ve too often felt I’m not allowed to just be Jewish. So it thrills me to see the Silvers so matter-of-fact and well-adjusted in their Judaism — even if it’s only onscreen.
Two years after the Hamas attack of Oct. 7, 2023, and Israel’s subsequent war with Hamas in Gaza, I went into Boston Blue worried about how Israel, antisemitism, Zionism and anti-Zionism might unfold within the show. Owing to the burdens of identity politics and intersectionality, Jews of color are often tasked with bridge-building amid these fractious and conflicted arenas.
Would they be forced to do the same on TV?
Former Law and Order star Ari’el Stachel — whose Israeli father is of Yemenite heritage — speaks of this duty in his new one-man show Other, now playing in New York. Stachel’s parents are both Jewish. But owing to his darker skin, he possesses a fluency in the optics of ethnicity that often sees him forced to field questions about cross-cultural discourse — even when, like me, he so often wishes the askers would just leave him alone.
I think Stachel would be satisfied by Boston Blue, whose showrunners aptly decided to keep war and hate away from the Shabbat table. Rather than try to shoe-horn the current political climate into the narrative, they avoided it all together. I, for one, was relieved: it’s a gift to see a family like mine onscreen, just being together, without being forced to try and solve all our myriad cultural problems at the same time.
I’ve always been leery of the entire concept of “Jews of color”; I worry it can impede us from understanding that all Jews are equally Jewish. So I was nervous heading into Boston Blue. For so long, so many in Hollywood have gotten our stories wrong at best, and been downright offensive at worst. They’ve tokenized and politicized and fetishized our experiences, while failing to actually humanize families like the Silvers and my own. But Boston Blue got it right — and it’s a step, long overdue, in the right direction.
The post At long last, a TV show captures the experience of multi-racial Jewish families like mine appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Mamdani: Israel immigration event at NY synagogue misused ‘sacred space’
(JTA) — Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s team has responded to a protest targeting an event promoting migration to Israel at an Upper East Side synagogue on Wednesday night, suggesting that the event was an inappropriate use of a “sacred space.”
The protest was organized by a group called Palestinian Assembly for Liberation has drawn allegations of antisemitism from Jewish leaders in the city. During it, participants shouted phrases including “globalize the intifada” and “death to the IDF” as well as insults toward pro-Israel counter-protesters like “f—king Jewish pricks,” according to reports from the scene. Police separated the protesters and counter-protesters but did not halt the demonstration.
“The Mayor-elect has discouraged the language used at last night’s protest and will continue to do so,” Mamdani’s press secretary, Dora Pekec, said in a statement Thursday afternoon.
She went on, “He believes every New Yorker should be free to enter a house of worship without intimidation, and that these sacred spaces should not be used to promote activities in violation of international law.”
Pekec did not offer further comments about whether or why Mamdani believed the event at Park East Synagogue, a prominent Orthodox congregation, violated international law.
The event was organized by Nefesh B’Nefesh, the nonprofit that facilitates immigration to Israel for North American Jews. The organization bills its open house events as a chance to “get your questions answered, learn about the process, and discover what life in Israel could look like for you and your family.”
The group is considered a semi-governmental agency in Israel, receiving funding from the Israeli government and works closely with its ministries. It does not assign immigrants to particular communities, but has showcased West Bank settlements — which most of the world, though not Israel or the United States, considers illegal under international law — in events and on its website as possible destinations for new immigrants. (Previous protests in New York and beyond have targeted events at synagogues advertising real estate for sale in the West Bank.)
The organizing group suggested that all of the Jews who have moved to Israel with Nefesh B’Nefesh’s support are “settlers,” a term that some pro-Palestinian activists apply to all Israelis, not just those living in the West Bank.
“Nefesh b Nefesh is an affiliate of the Israeli government and the Jewish Agency for Israel, mainly responsible for the recruitment of settlers to Palestine from North America. Since 2003, they have recruited over 80,000 settlers of which over 13,000 served in the IOF,” Palestinian Assembly for Liberation said in an Instagram post advertising its demonstration, using an acronym by which anti-Israel activists refer to the Israeli army as the “Israel Occupation Forces.” It also called El Al “Genocide Settler Airlines.”
The demonstration is providing an early window into how Mamdani’s long- and deeply held pro-Palestinian views might influence his leadership of the city.
As a state Assemblyman, he sponsored legislation aimed at blocking nonprofits from funding Israeli settlements in the West Bank that some, including critics of the settlement movement, decried as casting an overly broad net.
During the campaign, he initially declined to condemn the protest phrase “globalize the intifada,” drawing allegations of antisemitism. He later shifted to say that he would “discourage” the phrase’s use in New York City, saying that he had learned from a rabbi that many Jews interpret it as a call to violence against them.
Now, Mamdani’s response to the Park East demonstration offers a stark contrast to two robust condemnations of antisemitism he has offered up since being elected, after a swastika was painted on a Brooklyn yeshiva and after the words “F–k Jews” were painted on a Brooklyn sidewalk. Both times, he quickly offered a full-throated denunciation on social media.
This time, even as prominent Jewish voices in the city alleged antisemitism on the part of the pro-Palestinian demonstrators, Mamdani did not make a public comment himself. His office’s statement did not address allegations of antisemitism.
Mayor Eric Adams, who is in Uzbekistan after a visit to Israel this week, said in a statement that he planned to visit Park East upon his return to the city. Calling the rhetoric shouted there “desecration,” he suggested that the protest augured a grim future for the city under Mamdani.
“Today it’s a synagogue. Tomorrow it’s a church or a mosque. They come for me today and you tomorrow,” Adams tweeted. “We cannot hand this city over to radicals.”
The event came the same day that Mamdani announced that Adams’ police commissioner, Jessica Tisch, would stay on once he becomes mayor. Tisch, who is Jewish, has previously criticized the conduct of pro-Palestinian protesters in the city.
Rabbi Marc Schneier, who has been staunchly critical of Mamdani and whose father is the longtime senior rabbi at Park East Synagogue, said he was distressed by how the police allowed the confrontation to unfold.
“What I find most disturbing is that the police, who knew about this protest a day in advance, did not arrange for the protesters to be moved to either Third or Lexington Avenues,” he said. “Instead, they allowed the protesters to be right in front of the synagogue, which put members of the community at risk.”
One of the demonstrators repeatedly shouted about the Nefesh B’Nefesh event attendees, “We need to make them scared,” according to video from the scene.
“This kind of intimidation of Jewish New Yorkers is reprehensible and unacceptable,” tweeted Mark Levine, the Jewish comptroller-elect. “No house of worship, of any faith, should be subjected to this.”
Mark Treyger, CEO of the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, decried the demonstration as “reprehensible.”
“It is not a violation of any law, international or otherwise, for Jews to gather in a synagogue or immigrate to Israel,” he said.
“Using violent rhetoric and hurling antisemitic insults in front of a crowded synagogue was a direct threat to our community’s safety,” he added. “JCRC-NY reached out to city officials and we have confidence that the NYPD will thoroughly investigate this serious matter. No one should ever have to fear entering or leaving their house of worship and that includes our Jewish neighbors. We stand with the Park East community and with all New Yorkers who reject hate.”
In a statement from a spokesperson, UJA-Federation New York said they were “outraged by the demonstration outside Park East Synagogue.”
“We’ve been in contact with our partners at the NYPD, and they are taking this matter very seriously,” the statement reads. “Calls to ‘globalize the intifada’ and ‘death to the IDF’ are not political statements—they are incitements to violence against Jewish people. Every leader must denounce this heinous language, and the choice to target a house of worship makes it especially vile.”
The post Mamdani: Israel immigration event at NY synagogue misused ‘sacred space’ appeared first on The Forward.