NYC Mayor Adams’ Trip to Israel Highlights Ties to Jewish Community

New York City Mayor Eric Adams (D) on Monday arrived in Jerusalem for a three-day trip to Israel during which he will meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, learn about Israeli technology, and discuss efforts to combat antisemitism, which has been on the rise in Adams’ home city.

Adams’ trip, which highlights ties to the Jewish community that have been central to his tenure in office, follows his participation on Sunday in the Anti-Defamation League’s “Walk Against Hate,” an event held to raise awareness of rising antisemitism in New York City.

After arriving in Jerusalem, Adams met with representatives of the Jewish, Muslim, Christian, and Druze communities at an interfaith reception held by the Combat Antisemitism Movement, a research nonprofit that tracks antisemitic incidents across the world.

“We are now at a moment that I believe we have to transcend our desire and our faith to move from being worshipers to practitioners,” Adams said during a speech at the event. “What we learn in our synagogues, our churches, our mosques, our temples, cannot merely remain in the sterilized environment of our places of faith. We cannot be a globe with so much faith, but we see so much devastation. We must live who we say we are. It has to be more than just reading, we have to now start believing.”

Adams’ trip — which was sponsored by the New York UJA-Federation and the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York — comes amid divisions in the Democratic Party over a judicial reform law recently passed by the Israeli Parliament — a topic the mayor did not address in a press release announcing the trip. The law has triggered large-scale protests opposed to the measure, which critics argue undermines Israel’s democracy.

Earlier this month, US House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) was criticized by opponents of the law for leading a trip to Israel that was sponsored by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which is America’s most prominent pro-Israel lobbying group, and for meeting with Netanyahu.

As for Adams, his electoral success has been driven in part by steady support from New York City’s Jewish diaspora community, which is the world’s largest. In 2021, he routed his Republican opponent, Curtis Sliwa, in a district comprising the heavily Orthodox Crown Heights neighborhood, winning at least 15,340 votes to Sliwa’s 1,503.

In June, Adams appointed the city’s first ever Jewish Advisory Council, to which he appointed at least 23 Orthodox community members. Additionally, he has appointed several prominent Jewish officials to his senior staff, including Menshe Shapiro, a political consultant, and Fred Kreizman, who served in the administration of former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and is an alumnus of Yeshiva University.

As mayor, Adams has emphasized the need to combat antisemitism. In December, during an event organized by the Orthodox Union, he criticized the city’s prosecutors for downgrading hate crime assault charges and called for improving relations between the Black and Jewish communities. Then in May, Adams publicly opposed a City University of New York (CUNY) Law School commencement speech in which a graduate repeatedly attacked Israel and Zionism, saying that it had spread “negativity and divisiveness.”

However, New York City continues to see historic increases in antisemitic hate crimes, over 100 of which have been committed this year alone, according to an analysis of police crime statistics conducted by The Algemeiner. The number of incidents peaked in March, when there were 31 such hate crimes — a 52 percent increase from the previous year.

In 2022, antisemitic hate crimes throughout New York City increased by 42 percent, with notable attacks including the shooting of a Jewish man and his seven-year-old son with a BB gun outside a kosher market in Staten Island, an attack on three yeshiva students who were walking home in Brooklyn, and a spree of shootings with gel guns on Orthodox Jews in Williamsburg.

While Adams is in Israel, he’s facing a host of problems back home as his administration struggles to manage an influx of over 100,000 illegal immigrants in the past year. The asylum seekers have been forced to shelter in various locations throughout the city, leading to the anger and disapproval of local residents.

New York media has also scrutinized members of Adams’ inner circle after six people were charged last month in an illegal campaign-finance scheme to make straw donations to Adams in hopes of gaining favor with his administration. Neither Adams nor any member of his campaign was accused of wrongdoing.

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

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