Letters To The Editor - August 14, 2026

Our Community Can’t Outsource Our Security

Regarding the article “J’Accuse, Mayor Mamdani,” by Rabbi Avi Weiss (July 31):

Certainly, the rise of antisemitism and anti-Zionism demands a serious response. Unfortunately, my own decades of work fighting antisemitism have convinced me that education alone is not enough.

I have written more books and articles on the Holocaust than any living rabbi, served for nine years on the New Jersey Holocaust Commission, and co-edited the state’s Holocaust curriculum. Yet antisemitism remains rampant, including on college campuses. Whatever the merits of Holocaust education, it has clearly not eliminated hatred of Jews.

We therefore need to think seriously about Jewish security and self-defense. Our rabbis and communal leaders should explore, within halachic guidelines, every responsible measure that can protect Jews and our synagogues. We also need strong, organized community security efforts. Strength in numbers matters.

The issue of Mayor Mamdani’s position regarding the possible arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is particularly troubling. As U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., Mike Waltz has pointed out, there are serious legal and diplomatic questions concerning any such action, including U.S. obligations and head-of-state protections. Jewish leaders should speak out clearly on the fact that an Israeli prime minister must not be treated as a criminal by a local mayor acting on his own political agenda.

I was among the first rabbis to condemn Mamdani’s positions, and I remain deeply concerned about the precedent they could set beyond New York. At the same time, the fact that so many Jewish voters supported him should be a wake-up call to the Jewish community. We must engage our fellow Jews and explain why these issues matter.

As the only child of Holocaust survivors who lost most of their families in the Shoah, I cannot dismiss the warning signs of rising antisemitism. We must never assume that what happened once cannot happen again. The Jewish people need both moral clarity and the strength to defend themselves.

I served as a rabbi for President Trump beginning with his first campaign, and I remain grateful for his support of Israel. But I also believe Jewish leaders should be willing to speak honestly when they disagree with any administration's policies toward Israel. I especially urge our leaders to do everything possible to protect innocent Iranian civilians from unnecessary suffering.

Rabbi Dr. Bernhard Rosenberg

Edison, N.J.

Jews in America

The numerous articles, columns, and editorials castigating Zohran Mamdani and the DSA wing of the Democratic Party in the July 31 issue of The Jewish Press finally highlight the greatest threat to American Jews today.

Throughout much of recorded history, the tiny population of Jews have been constantly singled out for blame for all the world's ills and often viciously attacked. In between these massacres, they have had many golden periods of growth and contributions to the world's civilization. Unfortunately, as eventually happens, their golden periods come to an end in one place but begin to flourish in another. One such period is their extraordinary success in America in the last century, which has been termed the "Goldene Medina." Despite latent antisemitism, quotas, biases, restrictions, and discrimination, they thrived here as never before in history.

However, that run seems to be under jeopardy with the explosive rise of widespread violence and attacks after October 7. Because they still remember the Holocaust, events in America today caused many Jews to automatically compare them with those of Nazi Germany in the 1930s, like Kristallnacht, the Nuremberg Laws, and widespread street violence, which led up to the Holocaust nightmare.

However, it is a big mistake for Jews to be fixated only on the actions of Nazi Germany in the 1930s. They must also be reminded of what happened in the Muslim Mideast and Marxist Russia immediately following the Holocaust. 

In the Mideast between the years 1947 and 1957, more than 650,000 Jews were forcibly displaced from their ancestral homelands and relocated to Israel and elsewhere. Today, Muslim Mideast is entirely Judenfrei. More so than even Germany.

In Communist Russia, the Jewish population after pogroms and purges dropped from over 2,000,000 in the year 1945, to less than 500,000 in the year 2000. Most of us still remember the mass exodus of Jews to America and the plight of the refuseniks in Russia during those years.

This brings us today to the combination of virulent Jew haters, Muslims and Marxists, that has fused into one movement under the label Democratic Socialists of America or DSA. The Democratic Party constitutes almost one half of the entire United States population and the far left radical wing the DSA, with the likes of Mamdani, AOC, Ilhan Omar and the "Squad" are increasingly gaining control of the party and political offices. Yet an overwhelming number of Jews, after almost 100 years, still support the Democratic Party. They are blindly following in the footsteps of their revered false saint, Franklin Roosevelt, having been taken in by his eloquence and fatherly figure, in spite of the fact that he never lifted a finger to save a single Jew during the Holocaust. 

Hopefully today's American Jews will finally recognize the existential threat posed by the fusion of Marxixts and Muslims, which is infiltrating into the highest levels of American society. For if they don't, and continue to myopically fixate on the lesser evils of political, intersectional, rightwing radical, and personal biases (as valid as some of them might be) it could lead to the very catastrophe they wish to avoid. 

Max Wisotsky

Highland Park, N.J.