A proposed New York state law to protect synagogues from angry demonstrations with a 25-foot buffer zone signals a defeat for American Jewry. Indeed, the mere introduction of such legislation is an admission that incoming mayor Zohran Mamdani has already inaugurated bleaker times for the city and, perhaps, for the nation.
It’s not the text of the legislation that is the main problem, of course. It’s the fact that it’s perceived as necessary at all. The sponsors of the bill are responding appropriately to a fast-changing security picture on the ground. It’s just a shame—and it is to the eternal disgrace of Mamdani and the “pro-Palestinian” movement of which he is a part—that this is where we are in America in 2025.
The bill itself would establish a protest buffer zone of 25 feet around houses of worship and abortion clinics. (There is more to be said, though it is not for this post, about the conflation of those two types of institutions.)
To recap, two weeks ago an anti-Semitic mob besieged the historic Park East Synagogue in Manhattan. The shul was hosting an event by Nefesh B’Nefesh, an organization that helps ease the process of moving to Israel for Jews around the world who seek to make aliyah.
The mob chanted explicit encouragement to attack Jews in New York City and elsewhere: “From New York to Gaza, globalize the intifada” and “Resistance you make us proud, take another settler out”—entirely unambiguous calls for the murder of Jews. This was the crossing of a Rubicon in the most Jewish city in the world outside of Israel.
The mob’s actions received an appalling half-defense from Mamdani, in a moment that vindicated his critics. Mamdani, his spokesperson said, “believes every New Yorker should be free to enter a house of worship without intimidation, and that these sacred spaces should not be used to promote activities in violation of international law.”
To be clear, there was no promotion whatsoever of activities that violate international law, even according to the skewed worldview of anti-Semites like Mamdani. Nefesh B’Nefesh is not a “settler” organization. Even if it were, Mamdani’s response would be inappropriate.
Mamdani’s response is a big part of the reason that a buffer zone has now been deemed necessary, because a normal human being with a shred of decency would have looked at that mob’s actions and statements and said “Not in my city,” full stop, and he would have walked to the Park East Synagogue himself and stood outside its doors.
Instead, he suggested the mob had a point. This type of insanity can get normalized at lightning speed. And right on cue, pro-Palestinian protesters turned violent inside and outside the Wilshire Boulevard Synagogue in Los Angeles yesterday. The shul was hosting an event for the Korean community (it is located in Koreatown), and it was disrupted by anti-Semitic protesters. As the Jewish Journal reports, some were shouting outside, and some had signed up as attendees only to stand up during the program and start threatening the others in the room and destroying property. All this was done while nursery-school children were downstairs.
One Jewish activist asked a protester why she was there, and the protester responded: “We are protesting in front of a site that holds genocide supporters, and they are trying to bring it to K-town.”
In other words, synagogues and the Jews inside them are fair game because Jews are “genocide supporters.” Suddenly everyone’s an “international law” enforcer. The Mamdani logic makes every Jew a valid target.
I recently spent a week in Greece, and traveling to Jewish establishments in Europe is always eye-opening. The level of security required to, for example, eat in a kosher restaurant or pray in a synagogue is a reminder of Europe’s dark past and the dark future many there seek to bring about. Mamdani is in the process of nudging New York City in that direction: Now, apparently, Jews seeking to worship in Gotham need a buffer zone.
It should be noted that it is a violation of civil-rights law to prevent people from entering a house of worship. That is because such behavior is a direct assault on the First Amendment.
Though Mamdani has exacerbated the problem, he did not create it. Even before his lies about “international law,” the protest itself shattered civic norms. The result is a proposed law on top of a law. And that law might pass and it might make going to shul safer. But what kind of society needs such a law?
