America’s City – and Its Jewish Residents – at a Crossroads

I lived in Jerusalem. I worked at the Bank of Israel, walked the streets of that ancient and extraordinary city, and understood in a way that is hard to put into words why the Jewish people’s connection to that land is not political, it is existential. When Jews around the world say “L’shana haba’ah b’Yerushalayim,” next year in Jerusalem, they are expressing something that no election, no policy, and no mayor can undo.

But this Tisha B’Av, the Jewish people’s most solemn day of mourning, a man wearing a kippah walked out of his synagogue on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, in the congressional district I am running to represent, and was stabbed in the chest with a screwdriver. The attacker shouted “Allahu Akbar.” He has since been charged with hate crimes.

This violent act did not happen in a vacuum.

New York is America’s city. It is the center of global enterprise, home to the largest Jewish population outside of Israel, and a place where millions of people have built their lives on the promise that hard work and talent are rewarded regardless of who you are or where you came from. That promise is now under direct threat – not just from crime, but from the political climate that enables it.

New York City’s mayor has spent months excoriating Israel from his official platforms, calling AIPAC “monsters,” refusing to condemn the phrase “globalize the intifada,” and backing congressional candidates whose campaigns were built on anti-Israel rhetoric. His viral video accusing Israel of war crimes, released days before the stabbing, was viewed nearly 90 million times. Jewish organizations warned immediately that it placed New Yorkers at risk. They were right.

The silence and failure of my Democratic opponent and many other politicians in our city to quickly and in no uncertain terms condemn the mayor’s rhetoric before the violence that ensued is telling. Enough is enough.

I am not running to make a political point. I am running because I believe in New York City and the promise and opportunity it represents to all of us and to the world. I am running because New York City cannot afford to become a place where anyone lives in fear and where Jewish residents are afraid to walk home from synagogue. I believe that leadership requires saying difficult things clearly, without qualification and without one eye on the political winds. At a time when antisemitism is rising in our streets, on our campuses, and across our culture, silence is not leadership. Neither is looking away.

New York’s 12th Congressional District, which includes the Upper West Side, the Upper East Side, and Midtown Manhattan, is one of the most Jewish districts in America. It is also, right now, one of the most important races in the country. The question voters will answer in November is not simply one of Republican versus Democrat. It is whether a district that has been home to Jewish life for generations will send a voice to Washington that will stand unambiguously for its community and right to live in peace, or whether it will ratify the political forces that have made that community feel increasingly unwelcome in the party it has supported for decades.

I am a corporate attorney and economist. I have advised financial institutions on both sides of the Atlantic. I have worked at the Federal Reserve in Washington, D.C., and spent time at the European Central Bank in Frankfurt, the Bank of Israel under Stanley Fischer in Jerusalem, and the Bank for International Settlements in Basel. I understand capital, regulation, and the real-world consequences of policy choices. I know what it means when firms decide where to domicile, where to expand, and where to create jobs, and I know that a city governed by fear and ideological extremism does not win those decisions. 

I am also someone who has stood in Jerusalem. Who has seen what it means to build and defend something precious against forces that would destroy it. And who understands, deeply, that the security of Jewish communities in New York and the security of Israel are not separate issues. They are the same issue, viewed from different angles.

New York’s Jewish community deserves a representative who will never have to be asked to “bring down the temperature,” because the temperature was never raised in the first place. Someone who sees the rise of antisemitism not as a talking point but as a moral emergency and someone who has a plan to actually combat antisemitism at its root source. Someone who will stand with Israel not when it is convenient, but because it is right.

Manhattan is a long way from Jerusalem. But when a Jewish man is stabbed leaving his synagogue on Tisha B’Av on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, the distance collapses. The ancient words become immediate. The mourning becomes present tense.

New York City is America’s city. It must remain a city where Jewish life, and all life, flourishes, in the synagogues, on the streets, and in the halls of Congress. I intend to make sure it does.

L’shana haba’ah b’Yerushalayim. This year, we fight for Manhattan.