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Zohran Mamdani makes his case to Jewish New Yorkers at Congregation Beth Elohim
Tensions ran high Sunday afternoon at Brooklyn’s Congregation Beth Elohim, where dozens of pro-Israel protesters gathered to oppose mayoral frontrunner Zohran Mamdani’s appearance at the synagogue.
Mamdani’s visit, his first speaking engagement at a Jewish institution since before the primary election, was billed to the Reform synagogue’s congregants as an opportunity to hear directly from the candidate that has drawn condemnation from some Jewish New Yorkers for his sharp stances against Israel.
Mamdani has faced backlash from Jewish leaders for his failure to condemn the pro-Palestinian phrase “globalize the intifada,” as well as for his support for the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions movement against Israel. He has since said he would “discourage” use of the slogan and has sought to strengthen relations with Jews in New York.
Some congregants at Congregation Beth Elohim, or CBE, objected to Mamdani’s visit, which directly followed his participation in the NYC Gaza 5K raising money for the Palestinian aid agency UNRWA, held in nearby Prospect Park on Sunday morning.
Elaine Kleinberg, a 25-year member of CBE, joined the ranks of the roughly three dozen protesters gathered across the street of the event out of fear that her temple was being used as a “political prop.”
“I think it’s very clear that any group that wants Israel to be eliminated is not to be embraced by our congregation. It’s like inviting Yasser Arafat into our into our midst,” said Kleinberg. “I feel very tormented right now and conflicted because I felt like this was my welcoming sanctuary, and I’m not so sure.”
A Park Slope pro-Israel activist, Ramon Maislen, helped organize the event. “Does anyone think that CBE would invite a Proud Boy adjacent Republican candidate for Mayor who said that White Power meant different things to different people just 3 weeks before the election?” he tweeted late Sunday, reiterating his comments from the demonstration.
The demonstrators waved Israeli flags and held signs reading “No to Zoh-cialism,” “Jews for Jihadists?” and “Make Love not Intifada.” As the crowd grew, a passing driver yelled “Free Palestine,” prompting one protester to shout back at him.
While the protesters seemed to be mixed between congregants and those unaffiliated with CBE, as the demonstration began singing “Shalom Aleichem,” a song of peace, congregants in line across the street joined the chorus.
Rabbi Rachel Timoner, the senior rabbi of CBE, said she felt that the protesters misunderstood the purpose of Mamdani’s visit.
“I feel that there’s a misunderstanding with the people outside, because I think that they clearly are viewing this as if it’s an act of support, and it is actually an act of expressing the views of the Jewish people as they affect our city,” said Timoner, who spoke last week at an Oct. 7 vigil held by Israelis for Peace that Mamdani attended.
Last month, CBE hosted a member listening circle that centered on congregants’ thoughts about the mayoral race. There, Timoner said many expressed a desire to ask questions to the candidates directly.
In response to that sentiment, Timoner said CBE had invited all the mayoral candidates to speak and take questions from congregants. Mamdani’s appearance, she noted, would be followed by a discussion with Curtis Sliwa next week. (She added that Cuomo’s campaign had not responded to multiple invitations.)
Rabbi Rachel Timoner, the senior rabbi at Brooklyn’s Congregation Beth Elohim, delivers her Rosh Hashanah sermon on Thursday, Oct 3, 2023. (Facebook screenshot)
For Mamdani’s appearance Sunday, Timoner said they had received almost 400 registrations and 82 member-submitted questions to pose to the mayoral frontrunner. Of the questions selected to be asked of Mamdani, she said about half related to his stances on Zionism, Israel and antisemitism while the rest focused on his policies.
Timoner said she received between 15 and 20 emails from congregants urging her to cancel the event, fearing it could be seen as an endorsement.
“This is not in any way about endorsing a candidate,” said Timoner. “This is about platforming our members’ concerns, lifting up our members’ concerns in the conversation about the future of our city.”
Among the synagogue’s most prominent members is Sen. Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader who has not endorsed Mamdani despite criticism from others in the Democratic Party.
To quell concerns that the visit could be seen as a “photo-op” for the candidates, Timoner said Mamdani and Sliwa had both agreed not to post about the events on social media.
Speaking with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency ahead of the event, which was closed to the press, Timoner said she hoped the engagement could offer Mamdani an opportunity to hear from Jewish New Yorkers directly.
“I am hoping that he is going to hear us. We’re going to ask some hard questions, and we’re going to raise some deep concerns, and I’m hoping that he is going to listen with an open mind and an open heart to the real pain and fear and experience of the Jewish community,” said Timoner.
Following the event, as roughly 300 congregants filed out of the synagogue, reactions to his appearance were mixed.
“I walked in on the fence, not feeling comfortable voting for Cuomo, although I voted for him in the primary, and definitely not going to vote for Sliwa,” said one 80-year-old congregant who requested anonymity to protect his privacy as a voter. “I left a little more leaning towards Mamdani. I really want to like him. He’s a likable guy. I think he provides some sense of enthusiasm for big portions of our population.”
When asked how he felt about Mamdani’s responses to questions about his stances on anti-Zionism and antisemitism, the congregant said he was “trying to figure out how to deal with that.”
“The guy has a history of being pro-Palestinian and anti-Zionist, anti-Israel as a Jewish state. I am typical of this community, anti-the prosecution of the war by the current Israeli government. I’m against them, but I am for Israel as a Jewish state, and I’m not quite sure. He’s still sort of vague where he stands or not,” the congregant said.
He described Mamdani’s responses to questions about Israel as including “a lot of nice rhetoric,” but said he was unsure how things would play out if he is elected.
“I’m not sure what happens if there are anti-Jewish protesters, protests or actions against Jewish students,” the congregant said. “I don’t know what he’d do about that. Would he come down hard? Does he lean a certain way?”
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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.
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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.
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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.