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Meet the rabbi running for State Assembly on the Upper West Side
(JTA) — Rabbi Stephanie Ruskay has worked for American Jewish World Service and the Jewish Service Corps. She’s been an associate dean for the last 10 years at the Conservative movement’s Jewish Theological Seminary.
Ruskay has made a point of centering justice at each of those organizations, including in the curriculum at JTS, where community organizing and social justice are part of her fourth-year seminar.
Now, Ruskay is hoping to bring that commitment to justice to a new, wider stage as she runs for State Assembly in Manhattan.
Ruskay, a self-described progressive, is running to represent the 69th district that includes parts of the Upper West Side, Morningside Heights and West Harlem. A victory would make her the first female rabbi to hold elected state office in American history.
In a phone interview, Ruskay said she would view being elected to the State Assembly as “an extension of her rabbinate.”
“I don’t feel like I’m changing careers,” she said.
The Assembly seat opened up in the fall when current Assembly member Micah Lasher, whom Ruskay praised, decided to run for Congress.
Ruskay has been endorsed by former Manhattan borough president and onetime Democratic mayoral nominee Ruth Messinger, a longtime Jewish mentor of Ruskay, and City Council member Shaun Abreu.
In a conversation this week, Ruskay talked about rabbis who sign petitions, the Jews who are wary about Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, and why running for State Assembly is the next step in her career.
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length.
What prompted you to run for State Assembly? Why now?
I have felt like the country and the world are in a difficult spot, and I have been civically engaged and doing multifaith justice work for many years. And I felt like I needed to and wanted to be doing a bit more than I’m able to currently do. I’ve been watching the New York legislators and feeling like [they’re] doing a formidable job trying to make New York the safest it could be for all people in the face of real difficulty in the country, and I wanted to be part of that.
What would be your biggest priorities in office, and how do you describe yourself on the political spectrum?
First of all I would describe myself as a community organizer who listens to people and looks for the intersection of what they care about and I care about and meet it together. I’m a progressive and a Democrat. My priorities are immigration, housing, education, environment. In some ways they’re all bastions of democracy. Democracy did not used to be a thing we had to say was overtly a goal — it is today.
You’ve been endorsed by former Manhattan borough president Ruth Messinger, who was president of American Jewish World Service from 1998 to 2016. What’s your relationship with Messinger like, and have you spoken with other current or former elected officials or public figures?
Ruth has been my mentor and friend and teacher for many years. I worked for her at AJWS, and that was a place that really shaped my philosophy around how you partner with people. They work in the developing world with the philosophy that people know best what they need — we won’t tell you what you need, we’ll bring the resources we have and we’re going to work together. And the reason it’s in our self-interest [as Jews] is that we don’t think we can live in a world where other people’s dignity is not valued; it’s a diminishment of our ability to be human and Jews in the world. I was 22 then, I’m 51 now, so that was a formative time in my life.
I’ve been talking to current and former elected officials. We do plan to announce other endorsements in the coming weeks. I am a person who believes you can and should learn from everyone. I think my campaign is going to be a combination of lots of things I hear from other people who served over many decades.
The incoming Zohran Mamdani mayoral administration will take over in just a few weeks. There are many Jewish constituents who have concerns about a mayor whose views on Israel are completely opposed to theirs on Israel. What do you make of this moment for Jewish New Yorkers, and how do you view your role as a Jewish leader?
I feel like choosing to run for State Assembly is actually an extension of my rabbinate. I don’t feel like I’m changing careers. I feel like, if I take seriously the things that I teach about and preach about and study about related to caring for people who are poor and making a community that is safe for people and where people can thrive — that is some of what our texts teach, and the way you do that is you go be involved in how their lives unfold and be partners.
I’m doing this like I’ve done everything — you listen to people. So, of course, I have my own perspective on the election and voted. And if I want to be people’s representative, I have to listen to what’s on their minds, and take that into account in a serious way. So I’m hearing from people who are very excited, I’m hearing from people who are very anxious. And I’m hoping to be the representative of all those people. And you come in and bring their voices into the room.
What was your perspective during the election?
I think this is an exciting and anxiety-provoking time all at the same time, and so we now have a mayor-elect, and I think that you go in and you be a partner and you represent your people. And when we agree, I’ll be very excited to work together, and when we don’t agree or when I know that I represent people who have a very different perspective from what’s happening, then my job is to bring that into the room. In organizing, we say no permanent friends and no permanent enemies. You work with people who you can work with at every moment, and that’s what I’ll do as an assemblyperson.
Earlier in the fall, there was a letter signed by 1,100-plus rabbis from New York and around the country, which called out anti-Zionism and specifically named Mamdani. I’m curious what went into your decision not to sign the letter, and what you made of this huge open letter as it was circulating?
I’m an administrator at the [Jewish Theological] Seminary, so we don’t sign letters at all, it’s just the institutional policy. I think the war of the letters is a challenging thing. I understand what would move somebody to sign on, either they feel personally very moved or they’re getting a lot of pressure from constituents and they want to go on the record. I don’t know, I guess in 50 years we’re going to look back at this time and decide if all the letter-signing was productive or not.
In my time working, I have seen people choose to sign letters and then have enormous ramifications in looking for jobs. It’s very complicated, and at some point there’s too much noise of too many letters and it’s hard to keep track of. And you have to ask yourself, are all the letters making an impact, and in what way?
According to your campaign site you would be the first female rabbi elected to state office in American history. What does that mean to you?
I’m not doing it to be history-making, I’m doing it because I feel like I don’t know what else to do in this time. It happens to be that a female rabbi has not done that before — maybe I’ll start a trend and there will be tons of us, you know, the first of many. But I think if you want to walk the walk, you have to not be inhibited by not having seen it before. This is my idea of what I could do that would have even more impact than I’m having now.
Could you tell me more about your experience as associate dean of JTS? What have you learned from the role, and how might that inform how you operate as a State Assembly member?
I love my job. I feel like it’s always different. The student body is constantly changing, you’re constantly having to ask, ‘Why are we doing it this way?’ We are continuously experimenting. And the world doesn’t stay still — I’ve been there 10 years, you don’t do the same thing for 10 years. You’re constantly trying to meet the moment, and the moment has changed a lot.
I recently had a chance to meet someone who’s an Assemblyperson, and watching how they interacted in the community made me think there was a lot of similarity between constituent services and what we do in the dean’s office. In the dean’s office, students come in with individual issues — it could be about money, course requirements, a lot of things. And you have to try to help the person who’s right in front of you, but you also have to think, ‘Who else is struggling with this issue?’ And is there a policy that would help alleviate this issue for more people?
What’s been your career journey as a rabbi, and how did that lead you to your role with JTS?
I grew up in the Conservative community. I was born in Manhattan, lived in a Mitchell-Lama building [for moderate and middle-income families], 50 West 97th St., until I was 7, and then we moved to Mahopac, which is in Putnam County. We spent a lot of time at our synagogue, and we learned about tradition and history. But justice at that time was not a piece of Jewish life that we talked about in a big way. I thought, how come these feel like separate endeavors? And so I think a lot of my career is about trying to integrate those two things and be part of leading in the Jewish community in a way in which justice and service were as important as all of the other halachic observances — not more important, but as important.
So prior to rabbinical school, I served for a year in Bulgaria in the Jewish community for the Jewish Service Corps for the Joint Distribution Committee, and then worked at American Jewish World Service. Part of my role with AJWS was communicating with rabbis around the country, trying to raise up justice work and civic engagement and international development into what they were doing in communities. I thought, ‘Rabbis play a really important role in setting the agenda for the Jewish community,’ so I thought, ‘I would like to become one!’
I went to rabbinical school at JTS, I worked at Auburn Theological Seminary running their multifaith conflict resolution and leadership program for teenagers — Israelis, Palestinians, South Africans, Northern Irish and American kids. After rabbinical school, I worked at Avodah, the Jewish Service Corps, and led alumni and community engagement. And through that work, I ended up having a relational meeting with someone at JTS — and the next thing I knew, I worked there. The challenge was: Maybe you can come here to make justice more central to how we train students. And I thought, I don’t know if I can. But if I don’t try, I definitely won’t.
Favorite spot for Jewish food in the district?
I’m going to say I spend an equal and large amount of time at both Kosher Marketplace and Six 60 One. And I meet people I know at both places regularly.
The post Meet the rabbi running for State Assembly on the Upper West Side appeared first on The Forward.
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‘Shameful’: California Jewish Advocacy Group Denounces Challenge to K-12 Antisemitism Law
Students from Encinal High School and St. Joseph Notre Dame High School in Alameda, California, participating in anti-Israel demonstration on Jan 26. 2024: Photo: Michael Ho Wai Lee / SOPA Images via Reuters Connect
A California state legislator has introduced a bill aimed at gutting a recently passed K-12 antisemitism law (AB 715), which strengthened civil rights protections for Jewish students amid a pandemic of bullying, harassment, and extreme anti-Zionist activity in public schools.
Robert Garcia, a Democrat and member of the California State Assembly, introduced the measure — Assembly Bill (AB) 2159 — on Wednesday, and it has already amassed support from a number of groups which have opposed the Jewish community’s efforts to address antisemitism in education.
In October, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law which requires the state to establish a new Office for Civil Rights for monitoring antisemitism in public schools at a time of rising anti-Jewish hatred across the US. As previously reported by The Algemeiner, the bill confronted Newsom, a Democrat rumored to be interested in running for US president in 2028, with a politically fraught decision, as it aims to limit the extent to which the state’s ideologically charged ethnic studies curricula, supported by progressives and many Democrats, may plant anti-Zionist viewpoints into the minds of the 5.8 million students educated in its public schools.
Newsom, who has since endorsed the false charge that Israel is an “apartheid” state, approved the measure amid these cross currents, paving the way for state officials to proceed with establishing an Antisemitism Prevention Coordinator, setting parameters within which the Israeli-Palestinian conflict may be equitably discussed, and potentially barring antisemitic materials from reaching the classroom.
“Specifically, this bill removes reference to a definition of antisemitism that could include criticism of Israeli government policy, requires the Antisemitism Prevention Coordinator to be selected through an unbiased, merit-based civil service process, and removes vague and subjective language that exposes schools and teachers to discrimination complaints,” Garcia’s new bill says.
Garcia is a former trustee of the Etiwanda School District, located in the southern region of state, which has already been the subject of a civil rights complaint alleging harrowing incidents of “vicious antisemitism” in which a 12-year-old Jewish girl was flogged with a stick, told to “shut your Jewish ass up,” and teased with jokes about Adolf Hitler. During the period of the alleged abuse the girl’s bullies stated that it would not have occurred were she non-Jewish. According to the complaint, filed by the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law in March 2025, the school district never punished her tormenters despite receiving a torrent of complaints.
“It is shameful that Assemblymember Garcia not only introduced a bill that would harm Jewish students, but ‘worked closely’ on it with organizations that have promoted or enabled antisemitism,” StandWithUs, a California-based Jewish advocacy group, said in a statement denouncing the measure.”
The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), the far-left Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), the California Faculty Association, and the California Labor Federation were among the groups specifically called out by StandWithUs.
“All legislators should reject efforts by these groups to influence policy on the state of California,” StandWithUs continued. “The assemblymember should apologize and withdraw AB 2159, which is a transparent ploy to prevent extremists from being held accountable for spreading hate in K-12 schools.”
Garcia is not alone in attempting to effectively overturn the K-12 antisemitism law. California Middle school teacher Andrea Prichett, joined by the Los Angeles Educators for Palestine group, challenged it in a lawsuit last year, arguing that it violates the First Amendment, was “hastily written,” and “singled out” anti-Zionist viewpoints for punishment. A federal judge, Noël Wise, appointed by former US President Joe Biden, struck down the complaint, noting that teachers working as government employees do not enjoy unfettered free speech. In her ruling, Wise stated that while teachers may comment on matters of public interest, previous jurisprudence prohibits their uttering statements which obstruct government’s “legitimate interests.”
She continued, “As public school education belongs to the government, the government may regulate Teacher Plaintiffs [sic] speech to accord with the government’s education goals. It is of no significance that the curricula and the attendant speech required to teach it may advance a single viewpoint to the exclusion of another.”
Another lawsuit was filed in November by the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), whose national legal director, Jenin Younes, has said on social media that Jews “fake…hate crimes” and endorsed claims that “Zionists” control the media and played a role in assassinating former US President John F. Kennedy.
“It’s dawning on me recently how insane it is I just accept that I’m subservient to them,” Younes wrote.
In a statement announcing its lawsuit, the ADC argued that Arabs are victims of discrimination and said that the California law amounts to a hijacking of American policy by Israel, an argument advanced by neo-Nazis, including Nicholas Fuentes, and commentators who promote their views such as Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens — both of whom claim that proliferating antisemitism is an exercise of free speech.
In Wednesday’s statement, StandWithUs said that if the latest assault on AB 715 succeeds it would “harm the Jewish community and public trust in California’s education system.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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US CENTCOM Chief Says Iran Attacking Civilian Sites as Regime Grows Increasingly Desperate
US Central Command (CENTCOM) chief Admiral Brad Cooper speaks to Iran International’s Samira Gharaei, March 22, 2026. Photo: Screenshot
Iran has increasingly targeted civilian sites across the Middle East out of “desperation” as the regime’s internal cohesion and military capabilities crumble amid intensifying pressure from the US-Israeli campaign, according to the head of US Central Command (CENTCOM).
In his first one-on-one interview since the outbreak of war with Iran late last month, Admiral Brad Cooper told Iran International on Sunday that, “in the last couple weeks,” Tehran has carried out more than 300 strikes on civilian, non-military sites, describing the pattern as a shift driven by battlefield setbacks.
“They’re operating in a sign of desperation” Cooper said, arguing that Iran’s ability to sustain large-scale offensive operations has diminished under sustained US and Israeli strikes. Cooper added that Tehran’s rapidly degrading military capabilities have pushed the regime to begin targeting civilian infrastructure and residential communities.
US and Israeli officials have said the initial days of the conflict, which began on Feb. 28, were marked by coordinated barrages of drones and missiles. Those Iranian attacks, however, have now given way to smaller, less intense launches, a change they attribute to deteriorating Iranian capabilities.
“At the beginning of the conflict, you saw large volumes in the dozens of drones and missiles. You no longer see that. It’s all one or two at a time,” Cooper said.
Iran, however, has vowed to continue its military operations against Israel and the US, while also targeting Gulf countries.
Meanwhile, concerns are growing over the security of the Strait of Hormuz, a critical global shipping route through which about a fifth of the world’s oil flows. According to Cooper, the waterway remains technically open but commercial traffic has dropped sharply as vessels avoid the area due to Iranian drone and missile activity.
“The Strait of Hormuz is physically open to transit,” he said. “The reason ships are not transiting right now is because the Islamic Republic is shooting at them with drones and missiles.”
The United States and its allies have stepped up efforts to secure the corridor, part of what Cooper described as the “largest umbrella of air defense in the Middle East history.”
The conflict has also raised fears of broader escalation. US officials had previously warned that additional strikes could target key Iranian infrastructure, while Tehran has threatened retaliation against regional energy and water facilities.
However, US President Donald Trump stated on Truth Social Monday that he and Iranian leaders had “VERY GOOD AND PRODUCTIVE CONVERSATIONS REGARDING A COMPLETE AND TOTAL RESOLUTION OF OUR HOSTILITIES IN THE MIDDLE EAST.” Trump added that due to the purported success of the meetings, he has “INSTRUCTED THE DEPARTMENT OF WAR TO POSTPONE ANY AND ALL MILITARY STRIKES AGAINST IRANIAN POWER PLANTS AND ENERGY INFRASTRUCTURE FOR A FIVE DAY PERIOD.”
Iranian officials declined any dialogue with Trump, claiming that the president had “retreated” from his military posture “out of fear of Iran’s response.”
The statement came after Trump threatened on Saturday to “obliterate” the country’s energy infrastructure if the regime did not agree to an ultimatum to reopen the Strait of Hormuz within 48 hours. Iran said it would retaliate to such an attack by targeting critical infrastructure across the Middle East.
Some analysts have speculated that Trump’s apparent shift in tone was a way to buy time to make preparations for the next US military moves.
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UK Art Exhibit Condemned for Displaying Drawings With Antisemitic Tropes ‘Worse Than Nazi Propaganda’
Demonstrators hold Israeli and British flags outside the Law Courts, during a march against antisemitism, after an increase in the UK, during a temporary truce between the Palestinian Islamist terrorists Hamas and Israel, in London, Britain, Nov. 26, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Susannah Ireland
An art exhibition that opened this weekend in Margate, a seaside town in England, features nearly 100 drawings that promote antisemitic tropes, feature swastikas, target Jewish or Israeli individuals, and deny violence that took place during the Hamas-led terrorist attack in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
“Drawings Against Genocide” at the Joseph Wales Studios will be open until March 29 and is organized by the groups Art for a Free Palestine and Thanet for Palestine. The artist behind the drawings is Matthew Collings, a 70-year-old writer and former art critic who has been openly critical of Israel. There are roughly 100 drawings in the exhibit critical of Israel, Jews, the “Israeli lobby,” and more, according to Art for a Free Palestine.
One drawing in the exhibit shows members of a so-called Israel lobby that is “nuts and utterly in control,” while other drawings accuse Israel of apartheid and committing a genocide against Palestinians. Several drawings feature a Nazi swastika, often alongside the flag of Israel, while one artwork in particular depicts ancient Israelites with horns. A separate piece shows two Sotheby’s auctioneers eating babies with blood dripping from their teeth and one of them is Sotheby’s French-Israeli owner Patrick Drahi. The drawing claims he is a “fanatic Zionist” who eats babies alive.
Another picture targeting an individual – the owner of @Sothebys – suggesting he eats babies alive. This sickening and medieval antisemitic hate is ok according to Kent police. pic.twitter.com/JpgiseKisD
— Stop The Hate UK (@StopTheHate_UK) March 22, 2026
Another drawing in the exhibit shows an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldier spewing blood from their mouth and hands, while another shows an IDF soldier standing over a pool of blood and a human skull. A separate drawing denies that sexual violence took place during the Hamas terrorist attack in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, while another falsely claims there is “no reliable evidence whatsoever” about some of the violence that took place during the massacre.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is depicted naked in one drawing while spewing blood from his mouth and the piece suggests that he is trying to “change reality” with hypnotism in his desire to “invade Iran.” Other drawings target the chief executive of the Jewish organization Community Security Trust, pro-Israel writer and journalist David Collier, and even film director Quentin Tarantino, who lives in Israel with his family.
“This is the recycling of classic antisemitic tropes dressed up as activism,” Collier told The Algemeiner. “When swastikas and dehumanizing imagery are normalized in an art gallery, it tells you something has gone badly wrong.”
“I am currently looking out at a UK landscape in which Jewish people are murdered while going to pray on Yom Kippur, and ambulances owned by a Jewish charity are torched,” he added. “If the government and the police do not start connecting the dots between antisemitism masquerading as pro-Palestinian activism and the real-world violence we see unfolding before us, then the situation for British Jews will only get worse.”
The Combat Antisemitism Movement said the drawings are “worse than Nazi propaganda” and feature “monstrous blood libels.” The grassroots nonprofit organization Stop the Hate UK said the drawings display the artist’s “obsessive hatred of Jews” that is “dressed up as art.”
“The artist makes sure to include lots of bank notes and blood. All the old tropes,” the group noted in a post on X. “The British Jewish community are fed up of being told this sickening hate is ok. It’s not.” Stop the Hate UK also shared on X a video of the exhibit’s alleged curator saying “globalize the intifada” and “from the river to the sea,” a slogan that calls for the dismantling of the State of Israel and for it to be replaced by “Palestine.”
The exhibit has also been publicly condemned by the UK’s Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp and several other groups, including the Jewish Leadership Council, Labour Against Antisemitism, and Campaign Against Antisemitism in statements given to The Telegraph. The exhibit was reported to local police, but they have taken no action, and it remains open.
The Thanet district council, led by the Labour Party, was criticized for promoting the exhibition after its tourism website, Visit Thanet, provided information about its dates and venue, but the webpage has since been deleted.
Collings said in an Instagram post that the drawings are “directed against the horrific genocide against the Palestinians being perpetrated by Israel.”
Art for a Free Palestine said the exhibit “is about raising consciousness and welcoming people to learn about the UK government’s connections to the Israeli lobby and its continued manufacturing of precision weapons on UK soil that are used to target and murder civilians in Gaza.” The drawings, the group added, “teach us the way in which our politicians and mainstream media use propaganda to lie and manipulate the general public in order to cover up the slaughter of thousands of Palestinians.”