New York is facing a surge in antisemitism, and the numbers are impossible to ignore.
According to the NYPD, antisemitic hate crimes jumped 183% last month. There were 31 reported attacks against Jews in January alone, compared with just 11 during the same month last year. These are not abstract figures. They represent real victims, shaken families, and communities living with fear.
This crisis is magnified by a simple fact. New York is home to more than one million Jews, the largest Jewish population anywhere outside Israel. What happens here sets the tone for the rest of the country. If Jews are not safe in New York, where are they safe?
This surge did not happen in isolation. It followed a series of deliberate decisions by Mayor Zohran Mamdani that weakened the city’s defenses against antisemitism.
On day one, the mayor repealed key executive orders enacted under Mayor Eric Adams, including New York City’s adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism, the global standard for identifying modern anti-Jewish hatred.
He also lifted restrictions on threatening demonstrations near synagogues and Jewish institutions, effectively allowing intimidation to take place at the doors of houses of worship.
Mamdani ignores antisemitism in NYC
The mayor then moved to allow New York City employees to openly participate in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel. No other protected group in New York is subjected to a city-sanctioned political boycott of its ancestral homeland.
At the same time, city agencies appear increasingly distracted from their core responsibilities.
The Department of Health recently formed a taxpayer-funded “global oppression” working group that accused Israel of genocide.
While antisemitic attacks surge across the city, the Health Department is weighing in on international political accusations instead of focusing on public health, safety, and crisis response. City agencies should be helping New Yorkers, not engaging in ideological activism that falls far outside their mandate.
Words matter. Silence matters more.
Mayor Mamdani has refused to march in the Israel Day Parade. He has refused to condemn chants like “from the river to the sea” and “globalize the intifada.” These are not slogans of peace. They are calls for violence and erasure. When leaders refuse to draw clear lines, extremists feel emboldened.
The results are already visible.
In January, two teenagers scrawled 73 swastikas across a playground used by Jewish children. A rabbi was assaulted in Queens on International Holocaust Remembrance Day. In Brooklyn, a driver rammed a vehicle into the entrance of Chabad headquarters. These incidents are not isolated. They are symptoms of a broader failure.
That failure was reinforced by the mayor’s appointment of Phylisa Wisdom as antisemitism czar. Wisdom previously worked for YAFFED, an organization whose advocacy many Orthodox Jews experienced as stigmatizing and discriminatory. She has also accused Israel of committing “state-sanctioned violence.”
Appointing someone with that record does not build trust. It deepens division at a moment when unity is essential.
Dismantling protections, legitimizing extremist rhetoric, and appointing figures who alienate large segments of the Jewish community are not combating antisemitism.
New York should be the safest place in America to be Jewish. Right now, it is becoming a warning sign of what happens when leadership looks away.
Jewish families are asking questions no New Yorker should ever have to ask. Is it safe to wear a kippah? To send children to Hebrew school? To walk home from synagogue?
With more than a million Jews calling this city home, the stakes could not be higher.
History is watching. Silence is a choice. And once again, it is the wrong one.