Uncategorized
Who is Jessica Tisch, the Jewish police commissioner both Mamdani and Cuomo want to keep?
For Zohran Mamdani, the democratic socialist who would be New York City’s first Muslim mayor if elected, promising to keep Jessica Tisch as police commissioner is a key campaign gesture, given his past stance on defunding the police. For many Jewish New Yorkers, still shaken by rising antisemitism since the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks and uneasy about a shifting discourse on Israel, Tisch offers a sense of stability and reassurance.
Tisch, 44, who comes from one of the city’s prominent Jewish families, is widely respected in the Jewish community for her record on public safety since her appointment last year and for her strong support of Israel. Five of her deputies are also Jewish.
Critics brushed off Mamdani’s proclamation that he wanted her to stay — at last week’s televised debate — as a political stunt, given the Democratic nominee’s positions on Israel. He has refused to outright condemn the slogan “globalize the intifada,” has said he doesn’t recognize Israel as a Jewish state, supports pro-Palestinian activism on campus and has pledged to order the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he visits the city.
Tisch’s approach to policing is a stark contrast to Mamdani’s progressive public safety agenda. And her public statements on Israel have been unequivocal. When she was sworn in as NYPD commissioner, she wore a Star of David necklace to the ceremony. “My Jewish identity is not something that I put on and take off,” she said in a speech earlier this year at the Anti-Defamation League’s “Never is Now” conference. “It is who I am and who I will always be.”
Still, Mamdani’s pledge to keep her was seen as a reassuring signal. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who had previously avoided taking sides in the mayoral race, highlighted the promise in his Friday endorsement, calling it a sign of Mamdani’s sincerity and his commitment “to keep every New Yorker safe, including the Jewish community.”
At least four members of the Tisch family contributed to a super PAC that backed former Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s failed mayoral bid in the primary; Cuomo is running for mayor as an independent in the general election. According to Forbes, the Tisch family gave $1.2 million to the anti-Mamdani Fix the City super PAC.
Tisch has not publicly commented on whether she would stay on as police commissioner if Mamdani wins the Nov. 4 election. Cuomo also said he’d want her to stay if he becomes mayor.
Who is Jessica Tisch?
Tisch was born into a family deeply rooted in business and Jewish communal life. Growing up on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, she attended the elite private Dalton School. The family name was originally Tichinsky when her ancestors immigrated to the United States from Ukraine in 1904, later shortened as a nickname when her great-grandfather Avraham was cheered as a captain of the City College of New York’s basketball team.
Her father, James Tisch, serves as president of the Loews Corporation, which the family has led since the 1950s; their fortune is estimated at $10 billion. Her mother, Merryl, is the former chair of the New York State Board of Regents and a longtime leader in Jewish philanthropy. She now serves as chair emeritus of the Met Council on Jewish Poverty.
As a student at Harvard, Tisch was involved with Chabad. After graduating from Harvard with degrees in law and business, she married Dan Levine, a venture capitalist, whom she met at Harvard. The wedding at Central Synagogue in Manhattan was officiated by her grandfather, Rabbi Philip Hiat, a Reform rabbi known for his interfaith work. He served as a police chaplain in the New York City Housing Authority Police Department.
On Rosh Hashanah, Tisch joined services at Central Synagogue and watched her father blow the shofar. Rabbi Angela Buchdahl acknowledged Tisch, thanking her for her service. “You model the best of what it means to serve something bigger than us,” the rabbi said. She also credited Tisch for acting swiftly when the synagogue faced a direct threat in February, arresting the suspect just an hour before Shabbat services, an incident that had not been made public. “What you did was heroic,” Buchdahl said, without providing more details.
Tisch’s grandmother, Sylvia Hiat, was a principal at the Emanuel Midtown Y, a Hebrew school, for 30 years, and called her granddaughter every morning until she died in 2024. On the morning of Oct. 7, Tisch said her grandmother called her and said, ”We are at war.”
After working at a law firm, as a fact-checker in the speechwriting office of President George W. Bush’s White House, and on the editorial pages of The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post, Tisch began her career in government in 2008 as a counterterrorism analyst at the NYPD. She rose through the department’s ranks before leading the city’s departments of information technology and telecommunications and sanitation under Mayors Bill de Blasio and Eric Adams. She keeps her grandfather’s badge on her desk at police headquarters. At her inauguration, she took the oath of office on her grandmother’s Bible.
Speaking before second and third graders at Ramaz School in May, Tisch said about her role at the police department, “You can be anything you want to be, whether you’re a woman, a mother, or an observant Jew.”
Tisch highlighted her Judaism while receiving the Woman of the Year Award from the NYPD Muslim Officers Society in August. “It’s not lost on me what this represents: the first female Jewish Police Commissioner in the history of the NYPD being recognized by our Muslim Officers Society. This could only happen in New York — a city where every faith is practiced, every language is spoken, and every tradition has a home,” she said.
Tom Allon, the Jewish publisher of the City & State magazine who ran for mayor in 2013 and encouraged Tisch to run, called her a “no-nonsense technocrat” like former Mayor Mike Bloomberg.
Tisch has two sons, Harry and Larry.
What Tisch has said about the pro-Palestinian protests and antisemitism
During Tisch’s tenure, the NYPD has handled more than 3,000 pro-Palestinian protests and rising antisemitism. According to the Anti-Defamation League, 68% of the 1,437 antisemitic incidents across the state of New York last year occurred in the five boroughs of New York City. NYPD data shows that antisemitic acts made up 57% of all reported hate crimes citywide this year, though Jews make up only 12% of the city’s population.
At the ADL’s annual summit earlier this year, Tisch noted that on the morning of Oct. 7, reported antisemitic crimes were down 20% compared with the previous year. But from that day to the end of 2023, they jumped 80%, and in 2024 they rose another 7%, accounting for 54% of all hate crimes reported in the city.
Mamdani attended some of the protests just after Oct. 7, and participated in a hunger strike outside the White House to call for a permanent ceasefire in November 2023. He has defended the campus protests and, along with other elected officials, criticized the Adams administration for its crackdown on them.
Tisch called out the antisemitism and defended the policing approach. In the ADL speech, she said that for some of the protesters, “their target was not and is not Israeli policy or geopolitics, or even the horrors of war, but the Jewish people themselves.”
She added, “The NYPD will follow the law, and we will uphold the First Amendment even when the protected language is deeply offensive to our own sensibilities. But make no mistake, anyone who commits a crime will be arrested, they will be held accountable, and our city will not go backward — not on my watch.”
In a recent speech at an award presentation and dedication of a new community center in Borough Park, Tisch said she draws inspiration from the mitzvah of building a fence around the roof when constructing a new home. “When you create something new, you also take on the duty to protect others — not just your family, not just yourself, but every person who enters your space,” Tisch said. She added, “The NYPD will always stand with you, making it clear that you are not alone in this city.”
For Jewish New Yorkers, whether or not Mamdani keeps Tisch as police commissioner, the real test will be whether he keeps his promise to protect all New Yorkers if he becomes mayor when the campaign is over.
The post Who is Jessica Tisch, the Jewish police commissioner both Mamdani and Cuomo want to keep? appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
German Antisemitism Commissioner Targeted With Death Threat Letter After Arson Attack on Home
Andreas Büttner (Die Linke), photographed during the state parliament session. The politician was nominated for the position of Brandenburg’s anti-Semitism commissioner. Photo: Soeren Stache/dpa via Reuters Connect
Andreas Büttner, the commissioner for antisemitism in the state of Brandenburg in northeastern Germany, has been targeted the second attack in under a week after receiving a death threat, sparking outrage and prompting local authorities to launch a full investigation.
According to the German newspaper Potsdamer Neueste Nachrichten (PNN), the Brandenburg state parliament received a letter on Monday threatening Büttner’s life, with the words “We will kill you” and an inverted red triangle, the symbol of support for the Islamist terrorist group Hamas.
State security police have examined the anonymous letter under strict safety measures, determining that a gray substance inside was harmless. Authorities are now probing the incident as part of an ongoing investigation into threats against the German official.
Ulrike Liedtke, president of the Brandenburg state parliament, condemned the latest attack on Büttner, describing the death threats and harassment as “completely unacceptable.”
“Threats and violence are not a form of political discourse, but crimes against humanity,” Liedtke said. “Andreas Büttner has our complete support and solidarity.”
A former police officer and member of the Left Party, Büttner took office as commissioner for antisemitism in 2024 and has faced repeated attacks since.
On Sunday night, Büttner’s private property in Templin — a town located approximately 43 miles north of Berlin — was targeted in an arson attack, and a red Hamas triangle was spray-painted on his house.
The home of Germany’s antisemitism commissioner, Andreas Büttner, was set on fire overnight in a targeted attack.
His family was inside the house at the time.
This is the second attack against Büttner in the past 16 months. His car was previously vandalized with swastikas. This… pic.twitter.com/cAbFnMIwQ7
— Combat Antisemitism Movement (@CombatASemitism) January 5, 2026
According to Büttner, his family was inside the house at the time of the attack, marking the latest assault against him in the past 16 months.
“The symbol sends a clear message. The red Hamas triangle is widely recognized as a sign of jihadist violence and antisemitic incitement,” Büttner said in a statement after the incident.
“Anyone who uses such a thing wants to intimidate and glorify terror. This is not a protest, it is a threat,” he continued.
Hamas uses inverted red triangles in its propaganda videos to indicate Israeli targets about to be attacked. The symbol, a common staple at pro-Hamas rallies, has come to represent the Palestinian terrorist group and glorify its use of violence.
In August 2024, swastikas and other symbols and threats were also spray-painted on Büttner’s personal car.
Uncategorized
Harvard President Blasts Scholar Activism, Calls for ‘Restoring Balance’ in Higher Ed
Harvard University President Alan Garber speaks during the 374th Commencement exercises at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US, May 29, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Brian Snyder
Harvard University president Alan Garber, fresh off a resounding endorsement in which the Harvard Corporation elected to keep him on the job “indefinitely,” criticized progressive faculty in a recent podcast interview for turning the university classroom into a pulpit for the airing of their personal views on contentious political issues.
Garber made the comments last week on the “Identity/Crisis Podcast,” a production of the Shalom Hartman Institute, a Jewish think tank which specializes in education research.
“I think that’s where we went wrong,” Garber said, speaking to Yehuda Kurtzer. “Because think about it, if a professor in a classroom says, ‘This is what I believe about this issue,’ how many students — some of you probably would be prepared to deal with this, but most people wouldn’t — how many students would actually be willing to go toe to toe against a professor who’s expressed a firm view about a controversial issue?”
Garber continued, saying he believes higher education, facing a popular backlash against what critics have described as political indoctrination, is now seeing a “movement to restore balance in teaching and to bring back the idea that you really need to be objective in the classroom.”
He added, “What we need to arm our students with is a set of facts and a set of analytic tools and cultivation of rigor in analyzing these issues.”
Coming during winter recess and the Jewish and Christian holidays, Garber’s interview fell under the radar after it was first aired but has been noticed this week, with some observers pointing to it as evidence that Harvard is leading an effort to restore trust in the university even as it resists conceding to the Trump administration everything it has demanded regarding DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion), viewpoint diversity, and expressive activity such as protests.
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, Garber has spent the past two years fighting factions from within and without the university that have demanded to steer its policies and culture — from organizers of an illegal anti-Israel encampment to US President Donald Trump, who earlier this year canceled $2.26 billion in public money for Harvard after it refused to grant his wishlist of reforms for which the conservative movement has clamored for decades.
Even as Harvard tells Trump “no,” it has enacted several policies as a direct response to criticisms that the institution is too permissive of antisemitism for having allowed anti-Zionist extremism to reach the point of antisemitic harassment and discrimination. In 2025, the school agreed to incorporate into its policies a definition of antisemitism supported by most of the Jewish community, established new rules governing campus protests, and announced new partnerships with Israeli academic institutions. Harvard even shuttered a DEI office and transferred its staff to what will become, according to a previous report by The Harvard Crimson, a “new Office of Culture and Community.” The paper added that Harvard has even “worked to strip all references to DEI from its website.”
Appointed in January 2024 as interim president, Garber — who previously served in roles as Harvard’s provost and chief academic officer — rose to the top position at America’s oldest and, arguably, most prestigious institution at a time when the job was least desirable. At the time, Harvard was being pilloried over some of its students cheering Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel and even forming gangs which mobbed Jewish students wending their way through campus; the university had suffered the embarrassment of its first Black president being outed as a serial plagiarist, a stunning disclosure which called into question its vetting procedures as well as its embrace of affirmative action; and anti-Israel activists on campus were disrupting classes and calling for others to “globalize the intifada.”
Garber has since won over the Harvard Corporation, which has refused to replace him during a moment that has been described as the most challenging in its history.
“Alan’s humble, resilient, and effective leadership has shown itself to be not just a vital source of calm in turbulent times, but also a generative force for sustaining Harvard’s commitment to academic excellence and to free inquiry and expression,” Harvard Corporation senior fellow Penny Pritzker said in a statement issued on behalf of the body, which is the equivalent of a board of trustees. “From restoring a sense of community during a period of intense scrutiny and division to launching vital new programs on viewpoint diversity and civil discourses and instituting new actions to fight antisemitism and anti-Arab bias, Alan has not only stabilized the university but brought us together in support of our shared mission.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
Uncategorized
Holocaust Survivors Sent Care Packages to Oct. 7 Hostages for Hanukkah
The Menorah for Hanukkah on the Square 2025 in Trafalgar Square, London, United Kingdom, Dec. 14, 2025. Photo: Matthew Chattle/Cover Images via Reuters Connect
Survivors of the Holocaust spread holiday cheer this Hanukkah by delivering care packages to a group of 20 hostages whom the terrorist group Hamas recently released from captivity to fulfill the requirements of a ceasefire which suspended hostilities with Israel.
The gifts, dropped off at the Israeli consulate office in New York City, was made possible by The Blue Card, the only US-based charity organization which provides financial assistance and other services to survivors of the Holocaust. Originally founded in 1934 to assist Jews who had fled Germany to escape Hitler’s persecution of the country’s Jews, it has operated ceaselessly for nearly a century.
Over the past two years, the world has seen a revival of antisemitism unlike any since the period in which The Blue Card was founded, sparked by the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre that claimed the lives over of 1,200 Israelis and stole years and even more lives from 251 more who were kidnapped and held hostage in Gaza.
Some of the hostages who survived captivity have been released in stages since Israel and Hamas agreed on a ceasefire in October, and on Monday, Blue Card executive director Masha Pearl said the organization felt it necessary to reach out to them due to their having experienced a plight that is painfully familiar to what its clients endured in Europe during the Holocaust. Pearl also discussed the Bondi Beach mass shooting, in which a father and son inspired by Islamism opened fire on Jews celebrating the start of Hanukkah, murdering 15 people and injuring 40 others.
“Holocaust survivors and former hostages share a uniquely painful bond shaped by survival and resilience,” Pearl said. “After witnessing a mass shooting at a Chanukah event in Sydney, it felt even more urgent for our survivors to deliver these care packages now, spreading light at a moment that feels dark for the entire Jewish world. The resilience of the Holocaust survivors we assist, the former hostages, and now the survivors of the attack in Australia remind us that even in the face of hatred and violence, the Jewish people remain united.”
In a press release Blue Card said the care packages “carried profound meaning,” being filled to the brim with goods of all sorts, from blankets and water bottles to chap stick and even handwritten notes from the Holocaust survivors who sent them.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.