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🚨 The JDL ideology ‘has resurfaced’
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The Jewish Defense League, the far-right, now-defunct organization that was labeled a terrorist group in 2001, was thrust into the spotlight after a member of a modern-day offshoot was arrested for an assassination plot targeting pro-Palestinian activist Nerdeen Kiswani.
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Since then, the New York Times spoke with Yisrael Yaacob Ben Avraham, the recent Jewish convert who founded the JDL 613 Brotherhood in 2024. The group, which emphasizes the importance of Jews being able to “block a punch and throw a punch” and “get a firearm if they want to,” was created out of “admiration” for the extremist JDL founder Rabbi Meir Kahane, and “out of anguish over the Oct. 7 attack and anxiety over the rise in antisemitism during the war in Gaza.”
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Ben Avraham condemned the actions of Alexander Heifler, who was arrested for the plot to use Molotov cocktails against Kiswani, and said “illegal violence” hurts “the group, it hurts Zionism, it hurts Judaism.”
- Meanwhile, an organizer from a Chicago JDL offshoot characterized JDL 613 as reckless and amateurish. “The fact that they would even let someone in who would consider making Molotov cocktails is ridiculous, it is insane,” she said.
🕯️ Mamdani marks Yom HaShoah
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Mayor Zohran Mamdani visited the Kupferberg Holocaust Center at Queensborough Community College yesterday to mark Yom HaShoah, or Holocaust Remembrance Day, where he met with survivor Manfred Korman as well as scholars and researchers.
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“On Yom HaShoah we remember the six million Jewish victims of the Nazis’ systematic program of mass murder, along with the millions of others murdered by Hitler’s regime,” Mamdani wrote on X. “New York City is home to more Holocaust survivors than anywhere else in this country, and their resilience is woven into the fabric of our city.”
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In his statement marking yesterday’s significance, Mamdani wrote that antisemitism is rising “once more,” concluding: “’Never again’ is a promise. And it is one we must fight to keep.”
🔓 A Jewish food writer uncovers her family’s Holocaust history
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Joan Nathan, the “Julia Child of Jewish cooking,” spent two hours at a Jewish genealogy institute in Manhattan recently, where secrets about her family’s Holocaust history were uncovered.
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Our reporter Jackie Hajdenberg wrote about Nathan’s discoveries, and about the program, “Histories and Mysteries,” that was launched earlier this year by the Ackman and Ziff Family Genealogy Institute.
📞 ‘Eric Adams’ speaks Yiddish
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Back in 2023, then-Mayor Eric Adams used AI voice cloning software to produce robocalls in a number of languages that would reach New Yorkers who don’t speak English.
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Now, NBC New York has obtained the audio files of those robocalls, and you, too, can listen to an AI-generated Adams address you in Yiddish.
💰 Spending update in NY-12
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Stand for New York, a super PAC boosted by Mike Bloomberg, has spent $3.5 million on ads in support of Micah Lasher, the Jewish State Assembly member running for Congress in the heavily Jewish NY-12 district, Politico reports.
🤳 UWS Jews are not the same as UES Jews, this non-Jewish comedian explains
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In part four of her “Which cultures run NYC” series, comedian Meka Mo gives a pretty thorough breakdown of the city’s various Jewish communities (and gives a shoutout for Katz’s Deli).
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