by Debra Nussbaum Cohen
“I want to make no apology about insisting on a proportionate response to disproportionate discrimination,” Julie Menin said.
The New York City Council intends to pass a bill creating a protest-free “buffer zone” around houses of worship and a measure to create a hotline for reporting antisemitic and other hate crimes this week, according to Julie Menin, the council speaker.
Both bills were debated during a recent 10-hour city council hearing, during which officials from the city, NYPD and Jewish organizations testified, as well as members of the public, including those who opposed and supported the proposed laws.
The first Jew to serve as speaker of the 51-member council, Menin announced the impending passage of the bills at an annual legislative breakfast held by the Council of Jewish Organizations of Flatbush, Brooklyn, on Sunday.
COJO gave the council member its distinguished leadership award. Menin opened her remarks by citing the upsurge of Jew-hatred in New York and nationally, most recently the attack on a Reform synagogue with a preschool in West Bloomfield, Mich., a Detroit suburb.
“With hate crimes against Jews constituting more than any other group of hate crimes in our great city combined, I want to make no apology about insisting on a proportionate response to disproportionate discrimination,” Menin said.
She noted that for her, it is personal.
“My mother’s mother barely made it through” the Holocaust in Hungary, she told attendees. Her mother’s father was murdered “just because he happened to be born Jewish,” she said.
She promised increased funding for “small schools and houses of worship that do not have adequate resources.”
“We will provide those security resources,” she said.
NYC Comptroller Mark Levine introduced Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.), who was awarded COJO’s distinguished statesman award.
Levine began by speaking Hebrew. “Boker tov,” he said, “good morning.”
He also spoke Hebrew when he was sworn in on a Chumash, a Five Books of Moses, on Jan. 1.
“I got a lot of heat for it online,” he said. “So I decided I’m just going to speak more Hebrew. I really don’t care.”
Levine, whose role is essentially that of New York City’s chief financial officer, said that he is committed to investing the city’s pension funds in Israel, among investments in many other countries.
“We have a diversified portfolio invested in every economy including investments in the State of Israel,” he said. “I have a fiduciary responsibility here beyond politics, and I promise you I will never back down on that commitment.”
Levine’s predecessor as comptroller was Brad Lander, who is now facing off against Goldman in the upcoming Democratic primary election to represent New York City’s 10th District, which encompasses lower Manhattan and communities along the western edge of Brooklyn.
Lander, who endorsed Zohran Mamdani during the latter’s successful mayoral run, has criticized the Israeli government. Mamdani has said that the city should boycott Israel financially and that he would have the Israeli prime minister arrested in New York City.
Goldman was elected in 2022 to Congress, where he now co-chairs the House Bipartisan Task Force on Combating Antisemitism.
In his remarks accepting COJO’s award, Goldman said that “antisemitism isn’t rising. It is skyrocketing on both the left and the right.”
“It is my firm belief that fighting antisemitism must be a bipartisan effort, because if fighting antisemitism or even supporting Israel becomes a partisan football, then Jews lose and Israel loses,” he said.
“I will always stand up for the Jewish community and always stand up for the State of Israel, the only Jewish state in the world,” he said.
Goldman promised “to push bills that increase funding to combat antisemitism on campus and to expose who is giving and what countries are giving money to our universities, and what they are getting back.”
That has also been a focus for the Trump administration, which has released extensive data on which countries are funding which U.S. universities and to what extent.
“I will continue to call out antisemitism wherever it exists, on the left or the right,” Goldman said. “That is how we must lead on this issue.”
At the event, Letitia James, the state attorney general, introduced New York City Police Department Commissioner Jessica Tisch.
After receiving COJO’s distinguished public service award, Tisch spoke about the double Torah portion, about constructing the Tabernacle in the desert at the end of the book of Exodus, read in synagogues worldwide on the prior day.
Tisch, who like the other honorees is Jewish, likened it to the work that COJO’s lay leadership does to support social services for the Brooklyn Jewish community.
“Moses gathered the people to contribute their talents and resources so that the entire community could build something sacred together,” she said.
Debra Nussbaum Cohen
Source: https://www.jns.org/buffer-zone-bill-will-pass-into-law-this-week-nyc-council-chair-says/
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