(RNS) — After two men, one wearing a kippah and the other Asian, were attacked in Manhattan last week, the New York Police Department announced it would investigate the incident as a hate crime. The double-stabbing happened amid an uptick in antisemitic crimes in the city, which has the largest Jewish population outside of Israel. <\/p>\n
In April, New York Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said more than half<\/a> of all hate crimes in New York City this year targeted Jews. M<\/span>any Jewish leaders and residents have raised concerns about growing antisemitism in the city, with some arguing that Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s recent criticism<\/a> of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has intensified tensions. <\/p>\n The non-fatal stabbing<\/a> on the Upper West Side on July 23, has prompted fear among Jewish New Yorkers, said Rabbi Joseph Potasnik, the executive president of the New York Board of Rabbis.<\/p>\n “I think it’s just very, very sad, or very disheartening, that we’re at a place where the people who have helped build the city now feel the need to leave the city in many cases,” he said.<\/p>\n The mayor condemned the stabbings and praised the NYPD’s response. “These hateful and despicable attacks have no place in our city,” Mamdani wrote<\/a> in a statement. Jewish political leaders, during a press conference<\/a> held the following day on the Upper West Side, also condemned the stabbings.<\/p>\n “We are demanding that the targeting of the Jewish community, that the singling out of the Jewish community, that the endless demonization of this community stop,” said NYC Comptroller Mark Levine, who is Jewish.<\/p>\n At what appears to be a critical moment in the mayor’s short history with the Jewish community and its long history of antisemitism, Religion News Service interviewed 18 Jewish New Yorkers about the impact of hate, their views on the mayor’s statements about the Israeli government and how they are feeling about their safety. Their testimonies reveal growing concerns about the increase in antisemitic acts throughout the city and online, and a broad range of reactions to Mamdani’s comments about Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.<\/p>\n The New York Board of Rabbis reached out to City Hall to express concerns about the mayor’s recent statements about Netanyahu, which Potasnik said endangers Jewish New Yorkers.<\/p>\n “You can be critical of Israel — Jews are critical of Israel,” he said. “… but when it’s all Israel all the time, suddenly the Jews become the scapegoats.”<\/p>\n In his two-minute video<\/a> posted on X last week (July 21), the mayor said despite reviewing legal options to enforce an International Criminal Court warrant for Netanyahu ahead of his visit to the United Nations in September, his administration didn’t have legal authority to arrest him and asked the federal government to do so. (The U.S. isn’t an ICC member, and U.S. federal laws have no mechanism to enforce its warrants.)<\/p>\n “Benjamin Netanyahu is a war criminal, the architect of a horrific genocide against the Palestinian people,” the mayor said in the clip viewed over 100 million times. “Anyone with their eyes, with their heart, with their conscience should recognize the devastation he has wrought and understand that he belongs before a court of law.” <\/p>\n The ICC issued the arrest warrant for Netanyahu in May 2024, for what it deemed were war crimes committed during Israel’s war in Gaza following the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks.<\/p>\n In response<\/a>, Netanyahu said the mayor was “fomenting hate. … I speak to Jewish Americans and New Yorkers, and they are afraid right now, and I don’t think it’s accidental that after he made this hate speech against Israel and against me, the next day a Jew is stabbed coming out of a synagogue.”<\/p>\n Rabbi Max Hollander, a Modern Orthodox rabbi who lives on the Upper East Side <\/strong>and works for the Jewish Federations of North America, said the mayor put the community in danger with his message.<\/p>\n “He’s traded the word ‘Jews’ for Zionism, but it’s the same old antisemitism: that Zionists control the media, that AIPAC controls the government, that AIPAC are monsters. He means Jews,” Hollander said.<\/p>\n Loretta Kendle, a 47-year-old New Yorker who converted to Judaism during the COVID-19 pandemic, also said she was concerned by the mayor’s statements. Kendle, who is African American and a member of the Cherokee tribe, said her experience of both racism and antisemitism often goes overlooked in the community. <\/p>\n “You open the door for people to speak about other communities, it’s like opening Pandora’s box,” she said of the mayor’s statements. “… And unfortunately, there are people with malicious intent who will use those words to justify harming someone.”<\/p>\n Hollander said there has been growing hostility against the Jewish community since Oct. 7, which prompted him to sometimes replace his yarmulke, a Jewish skullcap, with a baseball cap so he doesn’t appear Jewish.<\/p>\n Since January, the NYPD has reported<\/a> 325 hate incidents — half of which targeted Jews. New York is home to nearly 1.4 million Jews and 140,000 Israeli-born New Yorkers<\/p>\n “As Orthodox Jews, we cannot entirely hide who we are,” said Avital Chizhik-Goldschmidt, an Orthodox writer who co-founded The Altneu synagogue on the Upper East Side. “Our principle is to not be afraid of doing so, but it creates a lot of anxiety in a place where we never had any, or certainly nothing close to this.”<\/p>\n She said she believed the mayor was “fanning the flames” by releasing his statement about Netanyahu.<\/p>\n “There is no other people that he has such a fixation on,” she said. “This is a dog whistle. He is whistling to people who hate us and who want to harm Jews — that in this city, it is OK and that it is legitimate for political reasons.”<\/p>\n Ruth Hollander, a Modern Orthodox writer who runs children’s programs at a local synagogue and Rabbi Hollander’s wife, said she has noticed parents taking off their kippot when leaving the shul, schools or their homes.<\/p>\n “There’s the feeling that it’s not safe to wear Jewish objects. There’s a feeling that this is what we need to do to live safely here,” she said.<\/p>\n Ruth Hollander said she was concerned that some pro-Palestinian activists had veered into antisemitism, pointing at the use of cartoons showing Netanyahu drinking blood and other stereotypical images demonizing Jews. She worries more violent incidents would target the community soon.<\/p>\n “I feel it in my bones. I know what’s coming,” she said. “It’s the story of every generation before me. Jews are safe until they’re not. A rabbi I know says, ‘Our vacation from history is over.’ That really resonates with me. I feel sick about the future.”<\/p>\n Rabbi Jill Jacobs, the CEO of T’ruah, a left-leaning rabbinic human rights organization, said the stabbing incident created fear for many Jewish New Yorkers, though the community has felt more vulnerable to hate incidents since Oct. 7. And while she didn’t consider Mamdani’s remarks about Netanyahu to be antisemitic but criticism of the Israeli government, she said she thought the move was reckless since his office didn’t have the capacity to enforce the warrant.<\/p>\n “I don’t think that you can draw a direct line from the mayor’s video about Netanyahu, where he was careful not to talk about Jews or even about Israel, to the stabbing,” she said. “There are unfortunately many people who don’t know how to distinguish between Israel, which is a country with a government, and American Jews and Jewish institutions.” <\/p>\n Jacobs said many Jewish institutions have invested more heavily in security protocols since Oct. 7 — a financial burden that American Jewish communities have already prioritized for decades.<\/p>\n The Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan on the Upper West Side had to invest significantly in top-level security protocols since Oct. 7, said its CEO, Rabbi Joanna Samuels. <\/p>\n “We would love to spend it in some other way,” she said. “But given the current threat environment and the increasing rise in antisemitic crimes, we have no choice. We think of it as the antisemitism tax.”<\/p>\n Antisemitism from different directions<\/strong><\/p>\n Rabbi Lexie Botzum, 28, a Torah educator who has lived in New York for two years, said she believed the mayor had made sure not to conflate Jews and the Israeli government in his statement. <\/p>\n “I think (Mamdani) is incredibly principled in making it very clear that when he is critiquing Israel as a state he is not critiquing Jews,” said Botzum, who was among the 33% of Jews who voted for Mamdani<\/a> last year and who said she agreed with him about Netanyahu being a war criminal.<\/p>\n She said she hasn’t experienced antisemitism in New York but has grown concerned about antisemitic tropes gaining traction in certain corners of the internet, in both far-right and far-left circles.<\/p>\n “It’s hard to tell how much online comments are reflective of real attitudes, but I am seeing Groyper, far-right rhetoric being normalized,” she said, referring to the followers of Nick Fuentes, a far-right antisemitic podcast host. “That is not unique to New York.”<\/p>\nThe Mamdani video <\/strong><\/h4>\n
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\nBeing visibly Jewish and safety<\/h4>\n
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