The moment that many Jewish families feared might one day come has already arrived. It happened on a cold night in Manhattan when Park East Synagogue — a historic and respected Jewish institution — found itself surrounded by a hate mob. Demonstrators pounded drums and shouted “Death to the IDF,” “We don’t want no Zionists here,” and “Globalize the intifada.” One organizer went further and told the crowd, “We need to make them scared.”
The target of their rage was not a politician or a government agency. It was a synagogue. And the reason for the protest was that the synagogue was hosting Nefesh B’Nefesh, an organization that helps American Jews move to Israel.
That alone would have been disturbing enough. But the reaction from New York City’s mayor-elect made the moment even more jarring. According to an i24NEWS report, a spokesperson for Zohran Mamdani suggested that hosting Nefesh B’Nefesh was inappropriate because it promotes “activities in violation of international law” (i24NEWS, November 21, 2025). Mamdani said he discourages the language used at the protest, yet he stopped short of condemning the chants directly.
For many Jewish New Yorkers, this was the moment the ground shifted. If a synagogue hosting a Jewish immigration nonprofit can be accused of wrongdoing while mobs shout threats outside, then the city they trusted no longer feels like the one they grew up in.
And this synagogue incident was not a standalone event. It was the latest flashpoint in a steady rise in antisemitism that began long before that night — and surged after October 7.
According to The Washington Post, antisemitic harassment and intimidation across the United States spiked sharply in the days following the Hamas massacre, which was the deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust (Washington Post, June 3, 2025). The Anti-Defamation League recorded 9,354 antisemitic incidents in 2024, the highest ever recorded since the ADL began tracking these events in 1979 (Anti-Defamation League, “Audit of Antisemitic Incidents 2024”). The FBI’s data tells the same story. Jews account for about 2 percent of the U.S. population, yet they are the target of nearly 70 percent of all religiously motivated hate crimes (FBI Uniform Crime Reporting Program, “Hate Crime Statistics”).
The numbers are staggering, but the lived experiences are worse.
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