Advocates rally in Albany for 25-foot ‘buffer zones’ meant to limit synagogue protests

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🕍 Advocates rally for buffer zones in the Capitol

• Micah Lasher, the Jewish Assembly member running to replace Rep. Jerry Nadler in Manhattan, joined advocates and faith leaders pushing for a bill that would establish 25-foot buffer zones around houses of worship at the state Capitol on Wednesday.

• Lasher told Spectrum News that he introduced the bill directly “in response to a pretty horrible incident outside of Park East Synagogue where people entering the synagogue were subjected to really violent vitriol.” The pro-Palestinian demonstration he referenced, from November, was followed by another protest outside a Queens synagogue in January.

• Mark Treyger, CEO of the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, also gave impassioned remarks about what transpired at Park East Synagogue. “The so-called protesters got to the door, put flashlights in people’s eyes, called for their death,” said Treyger. He added, “Targeting worshipers at the door of their house of worship is not persuasion, it is intimidation.”

• Some organizations have panned the buffer zone legislation, including anti-Zionist Jewish groups and the New York Civil Liberties Union, which called it an “assault on public expression.”

📚ADL’s rates local universities on campus antisemitism

• The Anti-Defamation League raised its scores of several schools in New York and New Jersey on its campus antisemitism “report cards,” released this week.

• New York University made an A grade, up from a B in 2025 and a C during widespread pro-Palestinian campus protests in 2024. The ADL praised NYU’s support for Jewish life on campus and flagged “hostile anti-Zionist” staff, faculty and student groups as ongoing “climate concerns.”

• NYU spokesperson Joseph Tirella celebrated the grade, telling the student newspaper Washington Square News that the school was “proud to have earned an A” as a “community that takes antisemitism seriously.”

• The New School was an exception to the upward trend, earning an F from the ADL. The report cited gaps in enforcement, limited transparency and an absence of durable systems to support Jewish life on campus.

• This was the ADL’s third year of grading universities on antisemitism, and the first to reflect the Trump administration’s campus antisemitism policies. Schools that reached settlements with the White House last year to preserve federal funding mostly received higher marks on the report cards, our reporter Andrew Lapin found. These included Columbia University, which improved from a D to a C.

• The report card project has been criticized by several Jewish campus groups as over-simplified and unnuanced, but schools are taking it seriously. The ADL said that 89% of universities it graded this year “engaged with ADL during the assessment process.”

🗣 What happened at a meeting of ‘the faithful left’

• The United States chapter of Smol Emuni, or “the faithful left,” recently held its second annual gathering of religious Jews who are frustrated with Israel’s political direction at B’nai Jeshurun in Manhattan.

• Sparring arose between some participants, who included both Zionists to anti-Zionists, reported The Forward. Rabbi Saul Berman, who famously led a Megillah reading in jail after marching for voting rights in Selma in 1965, was publicly rebuked by a conference organizer after he criticized Islam. Several attendees also walked out during his remarks.

• Our Andrew Silow-Carroll attended last year’s Smol Emuni meeting, where he found Modern Orthodox and observant Jews grappling with conversations about Israel that they said were sparse in their synagogues.

👀 Morris Katz’s past

• Morris Katz, the Jewish 26-year-old political whisperer known for powering Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s successful campaign, only recently developed his progressive views, reported Politico.

• In 2020, Katz praised Andrew Cuomo (Mamdani’s former rival) and criticized Sen. Bernie Sanders (Mamdani’s political idol) in dozens of social media posts.

• Now working on the congressional campaigns of progressives such as Graham Platner and Claire Valdez, the strategist said his old posts no longer represent his beliefs and he has “spent the last five years on the front lines of the fight for a Democratic Party that has the courage to stand up to the oligarchy, and against AIPAC.”

🕯 Remembering Angelika Saleh

• Angelika Saleh, the Jewish film producer who gave her name to the famed indie Angelika Film Center, has died at 90 in her home on the Upper West Side.

🥢 ‘Mazel Tofu’ joins Jewish Chinese speakers

Jewish Mandarin Chinese speakers gather in New York City roughly once a month to speak the language and share their experiences. (Jackie Hajdenberg)

• Our Jackie Hajfdenberg checked in on Mazel Tofu, a collective of Jews who meet up to speak Mandarin in NYC.

• The group includes an accordionist who performs folk songs in Yiddish and Chinese, a former Chinese talent show contestant and a TikTok celebrity.