Hundreds of protesters waving Israeli and American flags gathered Tuesday night, just steps from Gracie Mansion on Manhattan’s Upper East Side to rally against Democratic Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

Speakers at the rally accused the mayor of failing to protect the city’s Jewish population and ignoring antisemitism. The protest featured a long list of speakers, including former “Big Time Rush” star James Maslow, artist Scott LoBaido, Lawfare Project founder Brooke Goldstein and several pro-Israel activists.

The rally was organized by #EndJewHatred, a grassroots group focused on combating antisemitism.

In between the speeches, the crowd broke into chants of “Remove Mamdani” and “USA, USA,” and sang “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

“This is not the New York City I knew and loved,” Ari Ackerman, an entrepreneur and outspoken pro-Israel advocate, told Fox News Digital.

“There’s a different ideology that has taken over by the man who’s living in that house right over there,” he added, pointing at Gracie Mansion, “and it’s not good. It’s changed everything.”

Mamdani’s friction with the city’s Jewish community came into focus during his campaign as some questioned his stance on Israel, refusal to condemn the phrase “globalize the intifada” and his ties to activists like Hasan Piker and Mahmoud Khalil.

Antisemitic incidents have surged in New York City since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attacks in Israel. Recently, there have been anti-Israel protests outside Jewish institutions and synagogues.

Since Mamdani took office in January, tensions have remained high, with many Jewish New Yorkers saying they do not feel safe in their own city. New York City is home to the largest Jewish population in the world outside Israel.

Just days after another wave of antisemitic threats and increasing security fears at Jewish places of worship across America, religious leaders descended on Capitol Hill this month with a blunt message for lawmakers: houses of worship are under siege and many congregations simply cannot afford to protect themselves alone. They need help…and financial assistance.

Rabbis, pastors, Muslim leaders and other religious and security officials spent the past week urging the U.S. Congress to significantly expand federal funding for synagogue, church and mosque protection. The vehicle for doing so is the Nonprofit Security Grant Program.

The request is pretty massive – an increase of funding to $1 billion annually as threats against faith communities continue to rise nationwide.

The coalition includes multiple religious groups, but the reality is that much of the urgency surrounding the push centers on the Jewish community.

For many Jewish Americans, synagogue life today comes with armed guards, metal barriers, surveillance cameras and active shooter drills. In some cases, Jewish schools resemble hardened security compounds more commonly associated with government facilities than religious education centers.

Rabbi Yaakov Menken, Executive Vice President of the Coalition for Jewish Values, told ALL ISRAEL NEWS that the transformation of Jewish life in America is painfully obvious.

“It is very common today for a synagogue to have a combination lock on the door, to deter an invader. How many other American houses of worship have to lock their doors?”

Menken says the changes extend far beyond synagogue entrances. “My children all went to school in what you would describe as an armed compound, with high metal gates. Some even have guards with automatic rifles strapped to their chests. That has become the new normal.”

That “new normal” is visible at synagogues across America. The concern is not theoretical anymore. Jewish institutions across the country remain on edge following months of escalating antisemitic incidents tied to the aftermath of the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attacks against Israel and the war in Gaza.

Protest activity outside synagogues, threats against Jewish schools and rising online extremism have forced many congregations to significantly rethink security.

The truth of the matter is that for many Jewish Americans, especially, it can feel more like entering a hardened security zone. Welcome to the new reality of Jewish life in America.

During the recent Capitol Hill lobbying effort, Jewish leaders warned lawmakers that demand for security funding has far outpaced available federal resources.

Synagogues are applying for grants to install reinforced doors, bullet-resistant glass, panic buttons, fencing, surveillance systems and trained security personnel – but many are being turned away simply because the money is running out.

According to reports tied to the recent Capitol Hill push, only about one-third of applicants for the Nonprofit Security Grant Program received funding last year because demand vastly exceeded available resources.

The effort to increase federal funding comes as antisemitic incidents continue to surge nationwide. Jewish leaders argue the security burden on synagogues has become financially overwhelming and emotionally taxing.

At a recent Shabbat service in West Bloomfield, Michigan, Rabbi Jen Lader of Temple Israel spoke openly about the growing fear many Jewish families now carry with them into synagogue life. Temple Israel itself became the site of a frightening attack earlier this year. It helped fuel the lobbying push in Washington.

Eric Fingerhut, president and CEO of the Jewish Federations of North America, says synagogues increasingly operate under conditions once associated with airports, embassies or government buildings.

Take the Tree of Life Congregation in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, as an example. After the 2018 massacre that killed 11 worshippers there, security became key to rebuilding the synagogue in the safest way possible.

Armed security personnel, controlled entry systems and enhanced surveillance are now considered essential components of any future reopening effort. The attack permanently altered how many Jewish institutions nationwide approach security planning.

Meanwhile, Temple Emanu-El in New York City has invested heavily in layered protection measures, including expanded camera systems, reinforced entrances and close coordination with the NYPD.

Security officials at the synagogue consistently assess threats tied to anti-Israel demonstrations and online rhetoric targeting Jewish institutions.

In Los Angeles, Wilshire Boulevard Temple has dramatically increased physical security in recent years. The synagogue now employs extensive surveillance systems, controlled-access entry points and visible armed security presence during major events and Jewish holidays.

Leaders there say the climate changed substantially after antisemitic protests increasingly targeted Jewish neighborhoods and institutions following Oct. 7.

The federal grant program at the center of this additional funding was originally designed to help nonprofits vulnerable to terrorist attacks.

Funds can be used for fencing, reinforced doors, security cameras, alarms, training and armed personnel, but nowadays, the demand has exploded in ways that many religious leaders, especially Jewish officials, would rather not see.

Cover image: Temple Sherith Israel, 2266 California St., San Francisco by Sanfranman59, accessed via Wikimedia Commons with CC BY-SA 3.0 Deed

BALTIMORE (VINnews)-U.S. Rep. Randy Fine, R-Fla., lauded the Coalition for Jewish Values as a steadfast supporter of Jewish causes during a Zoom event this week launching the organization’s successful fundraising drive.

“There’s been no better ally in the work that I’ve done to fight for the Jewish people than the CJV,” Fine said in his keynote address.

Military action between the United States and Iran remains in limbo as anti-Semitism in the U.S. continues to surge, driven in part by the conflict. President Trump recently encouraged Jewish Americans to observe Shabbat in honor of Jewish Heritage Month and the upcoming 250th anniversary of American independence.

FOX’s Eben Brown speaks with Rabbi Yaakov Menken, Executive Vice President of the Coalition for Jewish Values, who denounces the rise in anti-Semitic incidents and praises the president’s proclamation.

Cover Image: Iranian Flag over Archaeological Site – Bishapur – Southwestern Iran by Adam Jones accessed via Flickr with CC BY 2.0

BALTIMORE (VINnews)-The Coalition for Jewish Values on Wednesday thanked President Donald Trump for his May 4 proclamation marking Jewish American Heritage Month, which encourages Jewish Americans to observe a “national Sabbath” in keeping with Jewish tradition.

In the proclamation, Trump called on Jewish Americans to mark the occasion by observing the Sabbath from sundown Friday through nightfall Saturday. The Coalition for Jewish Values, which represents more than 2,500 traditional and Orthodox rabbis, described the gesture as especially meaningful amid rising antisemitism in the United States.

“It is a profound gesture of support for the Jewish community,” said Rabbi Yaakov Menken, executive vice president of the CJV.

Menken said the idea originated from discussions within the Jewish community about how to express patriotism this year, noting that Independence Day 2026 falls on the Sabbath.

“Noting that July 4 will be on the Sabbath this year, we suggested to friends in the Trump Administration, and to other Jewish organizations, that our community might express our patriotism on that Sabbath,” Menken said. “It is truly remarkable that President Trump is, instead, encouraging the Jewish community to express our patriotism simply by observing the Sabbath itself.”

The organization is urging Jewish Americans to observe the Sabbath on May 15-16 in response to the president’s call and to continue the practice in the weeks ahead.

Cover Image: Donald Trump by Gage Skidmore, accessed via Wikimedia Commons with CC BY-SA 2.0 Deed 

Last week, a federal grand jury indicted the SPLC on wire fraud, bank fraud, and conspiracy charges for sending money to members of the very white supremacist groups the center claims it exists to dismantle. The SPLC did not deny funding members of the Ku Klux Klan and the Aryan Nations, but insisted the funds were part of an informant program that it used to prevent violent attacks.

The Forwardopens in a new tab, a Jewish news outlet, cited multiple Jewish organizations condemning the indictment and featured historian Steven J. Ross, whose book “The Secret War Against Hateopens in a new tab: American Resistance to Antisemitism and White Supremacy” was published Tuesday. Ross’ book covers the history of Jewish groups embedding informants in white nationalist organizations.

Yet Rabbi Yaakov Menken, executive vice president of the Coalition for Jewish Values, insisted that any tie between the history of Jewish groups using informants to prevent violence and the SPLC’s defense of funding KKK members is “ludicrous.”

“It’s a ludicrous comparison, for the simple reason that not all transactions are created equal,” Menken told The Daily Signal in a statement Tuesday. “Infiltration and use of paid informants have been used throughout history to learn enemies’ intentions and capabilities. The SPLC is accused of advising and funding hate in America in order to have causes against which to fundraise. If true, this is simply reprehensible.”

A History of Private Informants

Ross defended the practice of nonprofit organizations hiring informants to defend against violent threats.

“If a government cannot protect the lives of its citizens, it is up to the citizens to protect their own lives,” the author told The Daily Signal in a Tuesday interview.

Ross’ earlier book, “Hitler in Los Angelesopens in a new tab: How Jews Foiled Nazi Plots Against Hollywood and America,” outlines the history of the informants hired by the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee, and the Non-Sectarian Anti-Nazi League from the 1930s into World War II. “The Secret War Against Hate” covers the end of the Second World War to Jan. 6, 2021.

The AJC maintained informants until the 1960s, the Anti-Nazi League maintained them until the 1970s, and the ADL still maintains them, Ross told The Daily Signal. Neither the AJC nor the ADL responded to The Daily Signal’s request for comment.

He said most organizations require paid informants to sign a document stating something to the effect of “I will not pretend to be a government authority, nor will I break any law.”

“They want you to go undercover, find out what’s going on, if you can accumulate evidence, and then report it back,” and they would forward that information to law enforcement, Ross explained.

According to the Justice Department indictment, the SPLC was paying some of the same activists it highlighted in “extremist profiles.” Ross said that “isn’t odd.”

“If you want to give somebody legitimacy within that group, the fact that they are put on a most wanted list by the Southern Poverty Law Center only strengthens their position within that group,” he argued.

All the same, he said neither the ADL nor the AJC nor the Anti-Nazi League ever engaged in that kind of behavior, to his knowledge.

Ross condemned the indictment against the SPLC, saying, “I think this is a harassment case. To my mind, it’s not a legitimate case.”

He condemned what he called the “hypocrisy” of the FBI working with the Justice Department to bring charges against the SPLC when the FBI also pays informants.

Are They Really Informants?

The indictment suggests the recipients of SPLC cash were more than mere informants, however. The indictment claims the SPLC supervised the “racist postings” of an organizer of the 2017 Charlottesville “Unite the Right” rally, for instance.

Critics have long faulted the SPLC for placing conservative and Christian nonprofits that do not advocate for violence on a “hate map” alongside Klan chapters. The SPLC bills the map as revealing the “infrastructure upholding white supremacy.”

The indictment suggests that the funding to members of the KKK has more to do with propping up a false “hate” threat to use in fundraising than to actually combat violence.

Menken, the leader of the Coalition for Jewish Values, accused the SPLC of effectively abetting antisemitism.

“We have long pointed out that the SPLC is itself acting as a hate group,” he told The Daily Signal. “Not only does it vilify those with biblically based viewpoints on family values, it also calls out causes as ‘anti-Muslim’ for opposing radical Islamic groups which ally with designated foreign terror organizations and engage in antisemitic expression.”

Photo credit: DC Area KKK Parade, 1922, provided by Washington Area Spark with CC BY-NC 2.0 license on Flickr.

An adviser to the Trump administration’s Religious Liberty Commission announced her resignation on Friday, accusing the administration of committing crimes and suppressing the free expression of Muslims on behalf of a “Zionist political agenda.”

Sameera Munshi, who is Muslim, wrote in a pair of social media posts that “the injustice and atrocities of this administration at home and abroad” and the removal of a commissioner who used a hearing on antisemitism to express her opposition to Zionism compelled her to resign.

Rabbi Yaakov Menken, executive vice president of the Coalition for Jewish Values and a member of the commission’s advisory board of religious leaders, applauded Munshi’s resignation and Boller’s removal on Friday.

“Goodbye and good riddance,” Menken wrote. “Munshi and Carrie Prejean Boller are not united by a common background or common beliefs but by a common hate.”

“The Religious Freedom Commission will be able to do its productive and important work more effectively because she has left,” he added. “Let the door not hit her on the way out.”

Read full article at JNS

Radio host Sid Rosenberg deleted a social media post calling New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani a “cockroach” and later issued an on-air apology after the remarks drew widespread condemnation.

Rosenberg, who hosts a program on WABC Radio, had written on X that Mamdani is an “America-hating, Jew-hating, Radical Islam cockroach,” as well as a “terrorist sympathizer” and “jihadist.” The post was later removed.

Addressing the controversy Wednesday morning, Rosenberg said, “Not nice to call somebody a bug, I get it,” adding that the remark “had nothing to do with anybody’s religion or faith.”

Mamdani, the city’s first Muslim mayor, called the language “painfully familiar” but said he has more pressing responsibilities than responding to provocations. He added that he is not ashamed of his faith and that “time will tell” whether Rosenberg’s apology is sincere.

New York City Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch told Politico the comments were “wholly inappropriate and deeply harmful,” adding that rhetoric demeaning someone’s religion “cannot be tolerated.”

Julie Menin, speaker of the New York City Council, also condemned the remarks, stating that Rosenberg’s “latest comments are vile, hateful and deeply divisive.”

“Referring to the mayor as a ‘jihadist’ based simply on his faith or background is abhorrent, and using the term ‘cockroach’ is beyond the pale,” she wrote. “We can have substantive policy debates where we don’t agree. But we cannot normalize rhetoric that dehumanizes people because of their religion.”

Rabbi Yaakov Menken, executive vice president of the Coalition for Jewish Values, called Menin’s remarks “false, antisemitic and disgusting.”

“At no time did Rosenberg call Mamdani a jihadist due to his ‘faith.’ He called him a jihadist due to Mamdani’s support for jihad, e.g., his inability to condemn the slaughter of Jews around the world, which is the simple meaning of ‘globalize the intifada,’” Menken wrote.

“This is demonizing the victim,” he continued. “Mamdani refused to condemn a call for the murder of Rosenberg and his family, and Menin has decided that it is Rosenberg who is the bigot. New York deserves better.”

Cover Image: New York by George Hordan, accessed via Public Domain Pictures with CC0 1.0 Universal Deed

Published by Jewish News Syndicate

Approaches to understanding and fighting Jew-hatred, including the widely-adopted International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition, should focus more on the ways that antisemitism today may be traced back to centuries of rabbinic writings and to the Torah, according to a new scriptural guide on the subject.

Rabbi Yaakov Menken, executive vice president of the Coalition for Jewish Values, told JNS that major Jewish organizations weren’t formed by Orthodox Jews, and the latter had “long been regarded as an afterthought, until crime statistics from New York and New Jersey made it obvious that visibly-observant Jews were extraordinarily likely to be targeted.”

“I don’t think that was deliberate,” said Menken, who is a member of the advisory board of religious leaders to the U.S. Religious Liberty Commission. “It’s just that these very well-motivated Jewish people were not likely to refer to biblical or rabbinic sources.”

The coalition shared an exclusive copy of its new, 32-page scriptural guide “The Jew-Hatred Mindset,” which took six months to compile, with JNS. Menken penned the guide with Rabbi Moshe Baruch Parnes.

“Many Jewish organizations basically reinvented the wheel on antisemitism, which was trivial when anti-Jewish bias was open and blatant,” Menken told JNS. “Nazis characterized Jews as an inferior race.”

But Jew-hatred today is “dressed up as a human rights cause, and examples mentioning Israel, such as found in the IHRA definition, are dismissed by antisemites as politically motivated,” according to Menken.

“Whether or not one is religious, it is impossible to claim that models of antisemitism from millenia ago were written to support Israel,” he said.

The coalition’s publication notes that Sinai, the mountain at which the Torah was given, was selected, per the Talmud, because its name sounds like sin’ah, the biblical Hebrew for “hatred.”

“What the sages meant by this is that antisemitism is not simply an ethnic hatred of Jews but begins from hatred of Judaism and the teachings that Judaism brought to the world,” per the guide.

Menken told JNS that it is “quite empowering” to understand Jew-hatred that way.

“The people who hate Jews have it out for values and civilization. Fidel Castro and Kim Jong Un are both fanatically anti-Israel. Why? Because totalitarian dictators don’t like to acknowledge an authority greater than themselves,” he said.

“At the same time, every person has to make their own choices,” Menken told JNS. “We hope this document will help steer people, including young Christians and avowed atheists, away from hate. That is more easily accomplished when they realize that the rants of Rep. Ilhan Omar, Tucker Carlson and Adolf Hitler share a lot in common.”

Twin foundations of Jew-hatred

Among the scriptural texts that the guide discusses are those related to the Passover—the idea that Jew-hatred endures in every generation—and Purim stories, and Laban’s efforts to trick Jacob, believing that all Jewish property is stolen.

It traces claims that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) has made about Israel “occupying” Palestinian land to ideas about antisemitism that Rabbi Naftali Tzvi Yehuda Berlin, known as the “Netziv,” laid out in the 19th century.

It isn’t known when the rabbi penned “The Remnant of Israel,” but “we know the term ‘antisemite’ was so new at that time that he was compelled to define it,” per the guide.

“The Netziv described the antisemitic outlook of Laban as resting upon two fundamental falsehoods: that Jewish property is inherently stolen and that due to the special service of God that Jews do, Jews feel entitled to treat others as lesser humans and to swindle, deceive and defraud them,” according to the guide. “In the Netziv’s view, it is upon these twin foundations that all the lies of antisemitism rest.”

Ocasio-Cortez, known as AOC, “despite having a degree in international relations, disclaimed any knowledge of the Middle East or foreign policy except that Israel (the Jews) is taking land away from non-Jews, and Israel is trampling the rights of non-Jews,” according to the guide.

“These are, of course, the two root lies of antisemitism as identified by the Netziv, a leading rabbinic scholar writing a century before her birth, conveyed to her in modern language by the Democratic Socialists of America, which selected and trained her to run as its candidate for New York’s 14th District,” the guide states.

Menken told JNS that although the guide argues for more focus on the Torah and rabbinic writings when understanding Jew-hatred, that doesn’t mean that antisemitism spares Jews who aren’t Orthodox.

“Biblical and rabbinic teachings about antisemitism don’t speak about religiosity,” he said. “On the contrary, it’s pretty obvious that entirely secular IDF soldiers are being targeted with precisely the antisemitic invective that has followed Jews throughout history.”

Jew-hatred is “a virus,” according to the rabbi.

“It’s that they being with the same hateful ideas, finding a new facade to make the same grotesque ideas palatable and even appealing to a modern audience,” he told JNS. “That’s not a ‘new antisemitism,’ as some have said. It’s precisely what we were taught to expect.”

The word “antisemitism” comes from the German “pretense that they disliked Jews not due to religion, which was acknowledged as bigotry due to the European Enlightenment, but rather due to their ‘inferior, semitic’ race,” Menken added. “That euphemism was merely a good way to make Jew-hatred appealing again.”

Rabbi Yaakov Menken, executive vice president of the Coalition for Jewish Values, told Newsmax on Sunday that the Heritage Foundation has “continued down the same very dangerous path” after he and others cut ties with the organization over President Kevin Roberts’ refusal to distance himself from Tucker Carlson following Carlson’s interview with Nick Fuentes.

Menken, who said he was part of the Heritage Foundation’s National Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, said on Newsmax’s “Sunday Agenda” that he left in early November and has not seen meaningful change since.

“Very sadly, what we’ve seen is an abandonment of Heritage by some very good people,” Menken said.

He described those departures as significant, adding that staff and allies he viewed as key to the conservative movement “are now found at [former Vice President] Mike Pence’s foundation Advancing American Freedom.”

Menken said some “literally sacrificed an office at Heritage Foundation for a desk, at a conference table, at Advancing American Freedom,” because “they just couldn’t handle being under Kevin Roberts anymore.”

He said the shift underscores, in his view, “how adamant it has been about maintaining Roberts as the president, when he really should have left.”

Menken said he and others repeatedly warned leadership, “wait a minute, you’re platforming antisemitism, you’re allowing this to go forward,” but claimed Roberts “is continuing down the same very dangerous path.”

Rather than pulling back, Menken said, “it’s like quite the opposite. Heritage is like doubling down on following this new path,” adding, “that is why nearly half the board has quit.”

Asked why he believes Heritage has taken this direction, Menken said it reflects a conscious shift in philosophy.

“They say, ‘Well, we’re going to allow anybody who claims to be on the conservative Republican side to be part of our movement,'” he said.

He added that Heritage leadership has signaled “they will always stand with Tucker Carlson,” before sharply criticizing Carlson’s role.

“Nothing says valuing American values and freedom like buying a home in Qatar, where you’re under an Islamic regime that doesn’t allow non-Arabs to become citizens,” Menken said.

He called it “outrageous” that Carlson would be “considered the exemplar of the conservative movement.” He said he believes antisemitism has already been tolerated on the left and is now being pushed on the right as well.

“We have seen, obviously, the left allow antisemitism to simply take over the party,” Menken said. “But now Tucker and Nick Fuentes and his ilk are trying to do the same thing on the right.”

He said he sees Roberts as playing a central role in that shift.

“We see from Kevin Roberts that he is making nice with these guys and trying to say they’re part of the conservative movement going forward,” he said.

This approach, Menken warned, alienates “all Jews and anybody who values the relationship with the Jewish community,” including “a lot of evangelicals in this country and a lot of Catholics.”

Menken said the antisemitism task force has resumed its work only after severing its ties to Heritage.

“We’ve already resumed being part of that task force to combat antisemitism, because the task force itself was forced to leave,” he said. “Now that that relationship and that cord have been cut, the question is, will Heritage move in a direction to reinstate that?”

“Sadly,” Menken added, “I haven’t seen any progress thus far.”