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Eric Adams wants to combat hate in NYC through interfaith dinners. Can that accommodate Orthodox Jews?
(New York Jewish Week) — Mayor Eric Adams is famous for his love of the city’s nightlife, and that mood was on display last Thursday as he hobnobbed with more than 100 people at the 40/40 Club, an upscale bar and restaurant in the Barclays Center, while dining on lamp-warmed samosas and chicken skewers.
The gathering came with a goal: to jumpstart a program, called “Breaking Bread, Building Bonds,” that aims to bring together leaders of the city’s diverse ethnic and religious communities over food. The attendees, mostly city workers and nonprofit employees, were there to experience what such a dinner could feel like, and to learn how to host one of their own.
“We are going to finish with 1,000 dinners,” Adams said, speaking to the crowd. “Ten thousand people will become ambassadors for our city. Then those 10,000 people will branch out and do their dinners, turn into 100,000. We will continue to multiply until this city becomes a beacon of possibility.”
The dinner initiative was conceived with the Jewish community at its center — launching at a JCC in partnership with one of the city’s biggest Jewish nonprofits. Now, it faces an additional hurdle: Engaging the large haredi Orthodox communities in Brooklyn that have experienced a series of street attacks — and that observe a set of strict religious laws surrounding food that could hinder their participation in some interfaith meals.
Some haredi New Yorkers have attended the “Breaking Bread” dinners, and members of at least one large Hasidic community are planning to host one of the meals. But other haredi activists in the city told the New York Jewish Week that they’re skeptical the program can be sufficiently sensitive to their dietary and religious restrictions, which include close adherence to kosher laws and, for some, gender separation at public events.
The first catalyst dinner for New York City Mayor Eric Adam’s ‘Breaking Bread, Building Bonds’ initiative was held at Barclays Center on Thursday, March 2. (Jacob Henry)
Speaking on the sidelines of last week’s dinner, Adams said the initiative does account for the needs of observant Jews. When he held similar dinners as Brooklyn borough president in 2020, he said, the meals were always “considerate of Shabbos.”
“We allow the dinners to happen throughout the week,” Adams told the New York Jewish Week. “Those who can’t come on a Friday night or until sundown, we do that. If they eat kosher, we do that. We keep the meals simple, nothing complicated, so that everyone can feel at home at the same time.”
But the event where Adams was speaking did not, in fact, include kosher food, according to Rabbi Shlomo Nisanov, who leads Kehilat Sephardim of Ahavat Achim, a Bukharian community synagogue in Kew Gardens Hills, Queens.
“It was a mistake,” Nisanov said. “I didn’t eat the food, I only had the drinks. I was complaining about it.”
However, three of the dinners hosted so far have been certified kosher, and many local Jewish activists — including Orthodox leaders — said they support the initiative and believe it can accommodate a broad portion of the city’s Jewish spectrum.
Devorah Halberstam, an adherent of the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic movement and longtime campaigner against antisemitism, said she plans to host a dinner in the future.
“It’s actually not that complicated,” said Halberstam, who serves as director of foundation and government at the Jewish Children’s Museum in Brooklyn. “You invite people to a table and you have conversations. If it’s Muslims, we’ll have halal stuff covered. Kosher food is in another setting. Ultimately, it ends up working.”
The initiative aims to hold 1,000 dinners across the city that bring together community leaders in the hope that eating together will foster mutual understanding that will trickle down to rank-and-file New Yorkers of different backgrounds. At the kickoff event at the Marlene Meyerson JCC on the Upper West Side in late January, Adams called the dinners a “potent weapon” against hate.
Breaking Bread is supported by multiple city agencies and Jewish organizations, including the UJA-Federation of New York; the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York; The People’s Supper, a non-profit that facilitates meals between people of different identities that began holding similar dinners in 2017; and the New York City Office of the Prevention Of Hate Crimes, which is overseen by the mayor. UJA is partially funding the program by reimbursing up to $150 per dinner.
The Adams administration, and organizations supporting Breaking Bread, declined to provide key pieces of information about the initiative, including a budget, list of hosts or people who had signed up or a list of scheduled dinners.
The initiative is designed around dinners of roughly 10 people each. The host is given a guide that includes instructions on how to facilitate a dinner and sample questions to ask fellow diners. One question asks attendees to describe “a time, recent or long passed, in which you were made to feel… fully seen, heard and like you fully belonged.”
Rabbi Bob Kaplan, who is the executive director of the Center for a Shared Society at the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, told the New York Jewish Week that the organization is “taking this program very seriously.”
“We will be looking to encourage as much of this as we can throughout the city,” Kaplan said. “We really think that Breaking Bread opportunities are incredible ways of bringing together leadership and community leaders to really talk to each other.”
The few dinners hosted thus far have included religious leaders, city officials and leaders of nonprofit organizations. Anyone can sign up to host or attend a dinner via a city website. Hassan Naveed, executive director of the OPHC, told the New York Jewish Week that thus far, nearly 500 people have signed up as hosts or participants.
“There is so much interest happening,” Naveed said. “We want this to be something that is movement-building, that brings folks together from different parts of the city, to really build a relationship between communities.”
There have been several dinners in the weeks since Breaking Bread launched, including one that Naveed attended last month at Talia’s Steakhouse, a kosher restaurant on the Upper West Side, where the mayor himself made a brief appearance. Diners ate Jamaican cuisine, served by chef Kwame Williams, in honor of Black History Month. Other attendees ranged from a senior city official to Tenzin Tseyang, a community liaison for Queens City Councilmember Julie Won; UJA’s Rabbi Menachem Creditor and others.
Other dinners have taken place at the Manhattan JCC and at Manhattan College, both of which were also kosher. The JCC dinner included the executive director of the New York City Anti-Violence Project and a representative of the Asian-American Foundation, in addition to Jewish leaders and cosponsors of the initiative.
“Those who are seated around the table with one another will be able to call on one another for both simple and hard things,” said Rabbi Linda Shriner-Cahn of Congregation Tehillah in the Bronx neighborhood of Riverdale, who hosted the Manhattan College dinner. “When we strengthen our own communities, we’re more able to reach out to other communities.”
Bringing New Yorkers together to break bread is one of the best ways we can talk through differences and defeat the pipeline of hate.
Last night’s Breaking Bread Building Bonds event at Talia’s Steakhouse on the Upper West Side did just that. pic.twitter.com/Meugkqdt7Q
— Mayor Eric Adams (@NYCMayor) February 17, 2023
Nisanov, the Bukarian rabbi from Queens, said he believes in the concept and has hosted his own dinners with neighborhood Muslim leaders.
“We sat together at my synagogue with people from the Muslim faith because people didn’t know each other,” Nisanov told the New York Jewish Week. “Now, they know that kosher is the same as halal.” (Jewish and Muslim dietary laws are similar, but they are not the same.)
The initiative has not yet involved some large segments of the Brooklyn haredi community, including a major Satmar Hasidic organization. Moishe Indig, a prominent activist affiliated with another faction of Satmar, and a close confidante of the mayor, has also not attended. City Council member Lincoln Restler, who is Jewish and represents South Williamsburg, which is home to a large number of Satmar Jews, told the Jewish Week in a statement that he is “in touch with City Hall and eager to convene Breaking Bread gatherings” in his district.
“This is a wonderful new initiative building on the mayor’s work as borough president,” Restler said. “We will never arrest our way out of hate violence, so we need to deepen cross-cultural understanding to address our collective safety.”
Adams does have a close relationship with the Hasidic community. The mayor appointed Joel Eiserdorfer to the role of advisor in his administration, the first Hasidic Jew to hold that title. Adams received considerable Hasidic support in his 2021 election victory.
But despite that relationship, some Orthodox leaders and activists still have their doubts that the dinner initiative will successfully engage the haredi community. Some spoke to the New York Jewish Week anonymously, out of a fear that their criticism could hurt their community’s relationship with the mayor.
One Orthodox leader who works in government told the New York Jewish Week that “at this moment, it feels like this initiative doesn’t exist.”
“Personally everyone is rooting for the mayor on this,” the leader said, but he added that the initiative was “not comprehensive” in terms of reaching out to major Orthodox groups.
“Most of us haven’t heard of it,” another Orthodox community activist said. “The mayor’s head is in the right place. I’m sure this program is well-intentioned.” But he added, referring to kosher restrictions and norms of gender separation, that ”on a practical level, it’s hard to see how it will work in this community.”
He added that he believes leaders in the Hasidic community may participate, but “we don’t need to bring together leadership… We need people on the street to understand each other.”
Nisanov believes the Breaking Bread dinners can help accomplish that task by helping community leaders influence their constituents.
“It starts from the leaders and it goes down to the regular people,” he said. “It’s going to take a while, but at least when the elders do it, it will trickle down to the young. We will have to include young people to show and explain.”
He said that there are some people within the Jewish community who “would like to live in a secluded world.”
“That’s not possible,” Nisanov said. “There will always be restrictions. God will not change. We will always have that, but we have to learn to coexist.”
Motti Seligson, a Hasidic communal leader and Chabad spokesman, told the New York Jewish Week that “there are dinners already planned in neighborhoods like Crown Heights that will certainly have participation from the Hasidic Jews.” He added, “Building these bonds is something that Mayor Adams has not only seen and experienced first hand… he also created many of them through events like the Breaking Bread dinners in Brooklyn, which he organized.”
Deborah Lauter, the inaugural director of the OPHC, said Breaking Bread “has enormous potential” but acknowledged that navigating the range of haredi groups takes time.
“There are so many different factions within the haredi community,” Lauter said. “Some will be more inclined to participate than others. There’s a lot more work to get people on the ground to know each other.”
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The mayor missed the Israel Day Parade. Many who went didn’t miss him.
(JTA) — The energy was palpable Sunday as thousands packed a dozen blocks of Fifth Avenue waving Israeli flags for New York’s annual Israel Day Parade. Organizers said the turnout was the largest in the event’s six-decade history.
The procession featured its usual mix of Jewish nonprofits, schools and synagogues marching to blaring Israeli music alongside parade floats sponsored by groups including Nefesh B’Nefesh, the UJA Federation of New York and the Maccabiah Games.
But this year’s parade, which was themed “Proud Americans, Proud Zionists,” unfolded amid growing political polarization over Israel and without New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who became the first mayor in decades to skip the event.
For all the criticism Mamdani has received over his campaign pledge not to attend the event, many of those who did turn out told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency they were glad he wasn’t there.
“He doesn’t like us,” said Andrea Roman, who attended the parade wearing an Israeli flag cape and thought it was “good” that Mamdani hadn’t come. “Why should you be some place where you don’t like? He does not promote peace. This promotes peace, but of course he’s not going to be here.”
Jeremy Bell, 39, also said wasn’t bothered by the mayor’s absence – and that there were many more who felt as he did.
“I don’t think that he was really wanted here,” Bell said, adding, “I don’t want to be here with someone who doesn’t believe in our right to exist and obviously associates with people that don’t have our best interests in mind.”
Despite Mamdani’s absence, the event, known as the largest pro-Israel parade in the world, featured a lengthy roster of political officials and lawmakers. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, New York Attorney General Letitia James, U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and U.S. Rep. Jerry Nadler were among those in attendance, as were former New York City Mayors Eric Adams and Mike Bloomberg.
NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch, who on Thursday said that security preparations for the parade would be “the most extensive” that the NYPD had ever put together, also joined the festivities as an honorary grand marshal.
While many paradegoers said that they never considered staying home because of security concerns, several said they appreciated the presence of thousands of police officers and extensive barricades that blocked the streets surrounding the event.
“We are grateful that tens of thousands of participants and spectators were able to gather safely and proudly in the heart of New York City,” Mitchell Silber, the CEO of the Community Security Initiative, said in a statement. “Today’s success reflects the extraordinary planning, coordination, and professionalism of the NYPD and our law enforcement partners.”
That number was boosted in some cases by participants who said the mayor’s decision to skip the event factored into their own decision to come.
Karene Hermon, 22, said that while previously she would have been more “neutral” about attending, hearing that Mamdani had chosen not to come drove her to “be with my people.”
“I think it sends the wrong message,” Hermon said of the mayor’s refusal to participate. “I think we’re trying to come together, not separate people, regardless of … how you feel about a cause.”
First-time paradegoer Luis Margules travelled to the march from Pennsylvania. He said that he had come because it felt like “a moment to be with Israel.”
“This is my first parade, but I think this year it’s one of the most important ones,” Margules said. “I think the world doesn’t understand the situation with Iran and the Palestinians, and everything is blamed on Israel.”
Ofir Akunis, the consul general of Israel in New York, said in a statement that the parade “delivered a resounding answer to all those who hate Israel.”
“This year’s parade was an unprecedented demonstration of strength by New York’s Jewish community and the people of Israel,” Akunis said. “It sends a clear and unequivocal message: We are here to stay, and we are not going anywhere.”
But not all of the spectators Sunday were there in support.
While there was no large-scale protest visible during the parade, roughly 25 people demonstrated along the route to oppose the inclusion of a record delegation of roughly 10 Israeli Knesset members, including far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and two members of National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir’s ultra-nationalist Otzma Yehudit party.
As the delegation passed the demonstration, which was organized by the progressive groups Israelis for Peace and Friends of Standing Together New York, protesters shouted “shame” and “war criminals,” according to Tamar Glezerman, an organizer for Israelis for Peace.
“We were there to protest against the Israeli Knesset delegation, the largest of its size of all of the parades, that sent members of the coalition and the so-called opposition to do hasbara and march victoriously up a New York avenue,” Glezerman told JTA in a phone interview Sunday, using the Hebrew word for public relations.
While the focus of the demonstration centered on opposing the Knesset delegation, Glezerman added that “a parade that very much champions unexamined, unchecked and non-critical support of Israel is perhaps important for people here. It is not good for Israelis. It sure as hell isn’t good for Palestinians.”
Margules, in contrast, said that seeing the Israeli Knesset members pass by had made him feel “proud.”
“It’s good to know that even in these dark times we can still be together without violence, and we can disagree on many things, but we have to agree on something,” Margules said. “We are here because Israel exists.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post The mayor missed the Israel Day Parade. Many who went didn’t miss him. appeared first on The Forward.
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NY Democratic stalwarts show support for Israel even as Mamdani skips parade
(JTA) — Hundreds of Jewish leaders and New York politicians gathered early Sunday morning ahead of the annual Israel Day Parade to voice their support for the Jewish state, even as anti-Israel rhetoric has proliferated in elections across the United States.
“I stand before you as a proud Jew and a proud Zionist, and those of us who feel that way can never waver,” Rep. Dan Goldman, who is trailing primary challenger Brad Lander in the polls, said to a chorus of cheers. “It should not be momentous to say that, but unfortunately, in many ways, today it is.”
The annual pre-parade breakfast included a demonstration by New York Gov. Kathy Hochul of state power that will better defend Jewish institutions from anti-Israel protests that critics say have at times veered into antisemitism.
Sitting on stage at a desk flanked by a host of New York elected officials and Jewish nonprofit leaders, Hochul signed a statewide law establishing a 50-foot security “buffer zone” around houses of worship. The legislation is more expansive than a city-level law insulating houses of worship from protests that was passed without New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s signature and was watered down after he expressed concerns about the bill.
Mamdani declined to participate in Sunday’s parade.
“We will not just march today in an act of defiance against those who say we have no right, we’ll also sign legislation that says no, we have the power, we have leaders in government who can make changes happen,” Hochul said.
Hochul, who is running for reelection, was not the only non-Jewish politician to join the pre-parade event hosted by the Met Council, a Jewish-run antipoverty nonprofit. Democratic New York Attorney General Letitia James and Republican Rep. Mike Lawler, both of whom are also running for reelection, spoke at the event.
James vowed that “antisemitism will not be tolerated in the state of New York as long as I am the attorney general.” She added, “It is not just the responsibility of the Jewish community to respond, it requires all of us to respond. To stand shoulder to shoulder, arm in arm with the Jewish community.”
Lawler took aim at antisemitism on the political left and right during his remarks, calling out Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Candace Owens and Hasan Piker by name.
“It is imperative, as elected officials, and there are a lot of elected officials in the room today, not just to be here, not just to say that we support a strong U.S.-Israel relationship, not just to speak out against antisemitism, but to root it out, to root it out by exposing the people in our own parties,” Lawler said.
Eric Goldstein, the outgoing CEO of the UJA-Federation of New York, thanked the public officials who showed up for joining in the Israel parade. He stressed, “We need to be open and public at this apolitical gathering to show our love for the one and only Jewish homeland.”
Mamdani’s refusal to participate, in contrast, has drawn condemnation from many Jewish leaders. Goldstein issued a scathing condemnation on Friday, writing in an open letter that the mayor’s absence is “simply the latest in a pattern of demonizing anti-Israel rhetoric and actions that continue to place the Jewish community of New York at greater risk.”
“Mr. Mayor, you cannot close your eyes to the deadly impact of this incendiary rhetoric that is playing out in Jewish communities across the world, from Bondi Beach to Boulder to Washington, D.C.,” Goldstein wrote.
Later Sunday morning, the organizer of the parade said that what really counted was those who did choose to come.
“Let’s give it up for all of our allies and supporters who are here, because that’s what matters, those who actually do show up,” Mark Treyger, the CEO of the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, which organizes the parade, told the crowd as Jewish leaders and politicians gathered on a podium overlooking the parade route on Fifth Avenue.
“We march because of our unwavering, unflinching connection to the Jewish State of Israel,” he declared.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer also gave remarks from the podium before politicians including Hochul, James and New York City Council Speaker Julie Menin began marching down Fifth Ave to speakers blaring Israeli music.
“The Jewish people have yearned for a state of Israel, whilst experiencing the constant anxiety of knowing the place where they live could violently expel them at any moment, as happened again and again,” Schumer said. “We cannot, we must not go back to that era. I believe in the State of Israel. I support the State of Israel.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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For the first time, a kosher restaurant has won a Michelin star
(JTA) — As golden confetti rained down around him Thursday, Israeli chef Raz Shabtai broke down in tears and was embraced by his cheering staff.
Moments earlier, a livestreamed Michelin ceremony had announced that his Miami restaurant, Mutra, had become the first kosher restaurant ever awarded a Michelin star, long regarded as the highest honor in the restaurant industry.
“It’s a moment of joy, it’s a moment of pride, it’s a moment of relief, it’s a moment of confirmation,” Shabtai told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency Friday. “It’s not just about Mustra getting that star, but it’s about the entire Jewish community getting that, and I felt a lot of responsibility.”
Shabtai, who has worked in kitchens across New York and Israel, opened Mutra in February 2025, naming the kosher eatery after his Jerusalem-born grandmother whose cooking he said heavily inspires its menu.
“I really like to call the restaurant Jerusalem cuisine versus Mediterranean and Middle Eastern or Israeli or stuff like that, because the flavors that I’m trying to bring to the table, it’s flavors that came from memories and visiting in the market with my grandma,” Shabtai said. “I have to be very loyal to what my grandma fed me.”
A description of Mutra on the Michelin website praised the restaurant’s “show-stopping plate of beets in a pool of ajo blanco and topped with beetroot sorbet” and “signature lamb kebab with smoked aubergine cream and tomato oil.”
“Israeli Chef Raz Shabtai has brought his take on Middle Eastern cuisine to Miami,” the Michelin inspectors wrote. “Named for his grandmother, this is a place where snagging a seat at the chef’s counter is a must.”
The award places Mutra among the world’s most celebrated restaurants and marks a breakthrough for kosher cuisine, which operates under strict dietary rules. For Shabtai, who has kept kosher for more than a decade, the award proved that culinary excellence can thrive under those constraints.
“Kosher is a beautiful spiritual way of me to bond with God, and the limitation that he gave me, but yet to do amazing good food that everybody can eat,” Shabtai said.
The recognition arrived after months of suspense. Shabtai said that Michelin inspectors visited the restaurant several times before sending an email in February requesting information and photos about the establishment, a sign he said alerted them that they were under consideration.
For Noa Figari, Mutra’s director of operations who joined the team after first working as Shabtai’s real estate agent to find the Miami location, the announcement Thursday was a “release.”
“All the hard work that we put has been, you know, validated,” Figari said. “We carry a responsibility not only just for Raz’s cuisine, but for the whole entire Jewish community and kosher world we made history.”
Looking ahead, Shabtai said he hoped the achievement would inspire other kosher chefs.
“Be proud of where you’re coming from, get connected to those roots that you have,” Shabtai said. “Sometimes it’s not going to be a smooth sail. It’s okay, learn how to fix it, but believe in yourself. Don’t ever compromise, and don’t let other people compromise you.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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