New York City Councilman Kalman Yeger points a finger at soft anti-Semitism
Wherever I see that picture — and at times I’ve engaged the Times on Twitter about this — it’s so clear what they’re doing. It’s not about the yeshivah, it’s about the boy. They put the yeshivah in [the background] so they could say it’s about the yeshivah: young boy, black hat, clearly yeshivish, with a yeshivah in the background that probably doesn’t have a single boy with a black hat. More importantly, it’s a frum yeshivah that teaches its children Torah, mitzvos, and a robust secular education.
It’s not about the yeshivos. For those people, it’s absolutely about the boy. It’s about the hatred they have for him, for his family, and for his community. And that’s what I responded to.
I think it has to be said on principle that any time the mayor hears about another attack or an incident or the more heinous crimes, like what happened in Monsey, what happened in Jersey City, I really believe he feels pained. I think there’s an inability for people to separate who the mayor is as a human being versus the government’s response to what’s going on.
The mayor is an incredible friend to the community, and he has been for a long time. I think it’s fair to say, to my recollection, that there hasn’t been a mayor with such a personal relationship with the frum community. That’s the principle from which everything flows.
The government’s response has been lacking. That’s been on all levels. That’s why my colleagues and I have joined together and called on the governor to step in. Because, at the end of the day, a city is but a unit of the state. The state has the ultimate responsibility to do things if the cities are failing, if the municipalities are failing.
In my estimation and based on what I’ve seen, the city is not providing the resources to the local precincts to have visibility on the street. Now, you have police officers standing in front of one shul, and then you go six blocks and there’s not a cop to be found. It just doesn’t make sense. You have to protect all of our houses of worship. You have to protect all of our yeshivos.
I think this is easily accomplished by adding just another 100 cops [to neighborhoods] in the frum communities. But sending five or six here, eight or twelve there… Chaim [Deutsch] and I had to go down to the police department and literally beg for it on our knees. That’s ridiculous.
Why are we not entitled to that protection? We clearly are under attack. And when you see some of the hyperbolic responses from those in the media and elected officials — they criticized us for asking for the National Guard and for additional cops. “More police is not the answer,” they say. I don’t understand. More police are not the answer to people attacking other people on the street? How can that not be the answer? That’s the core answer. If somebody is about to attack somebody, the cop on the street stops it.
So what’s the reality? They want to deny us protection.
There are elected officials in this city — not the mayor — who fight our requests for additional police protection.
What I think happened with the mayor is, he has directed the police department to provide the additional resources. But it’s a blank statement. It’s not clear what that means. What we’ve seen is four, six, eight, or twelve cops here or there. We haven’t seen the influx that is deserving of a city that has a 35,000-member police force.
That’s why Chaim, Simcha Felder, Simcha Eichenstein, and I got together and asked the governor to fix this.
Well, he’s surely one of them and he’s definitely one of the most well-known. Some of the stuff he’s been saying on Twitter is ridiculous. And some of the things he’s been saying at press conferences is insanely ridiculous.
Jumaane spent two days prior to my remarks in front of the council essentially attacking Jews. He had a press conference in the Bronx on Monday claiming that as a community we’re getting resources that other communities are not getting.
He’s lying about that. He specifically referred to an announcement that the governor made. Assemblyman Eichenstein publicly said that that announcement referred to money that was put into the current year’s budget way back, about eight months ago. It’s also not just for the Jewish community, it’s for every community. It’s for security. But Jumaane felt comfortable enough to grab a microphone and say, “the Jews are getting this. Where’s ours?”
I know what it’s about. When a guy of his stature gets up and says those kinds of things about the Jewish community, it has nothing to do with the substance of what he’s saying. It has to do with, like I said on Wednesday, tinkering on the fringes of anti-Semitism. Now, I don’t know which side of the line he’s on right now, but he’s definitely hovering very close.
Well, I don’t like referring to it as a speech. Those who know me know I’m not a speechifier. I don’t spend all day sending out press releases. I don’t run around going to rallies and giving fiery remarks on the floor. It’s not my style.
I think it needed to be said. I think it needed to be said by me. I think it needed to be said on that day. The follow up on that speech is very clear, which is, I’m watching. We’re all watching. And we know who these people are. We know who’s doing this. We know the members of the media who are doing it. We know the elected officials who are doing it.
I think the message has to go forth that we’re not going to be silent anymore. We’re going to call you out. We’re going to tell people who you really are. We’re not going to pretend anymore.
To the elected officials who spend 364 days of the year hanging out with anti-Semites and one day a year taking pictures at a rally, please don’t show up at our next breakfast or at our next dinner or at our next event. Don’t do us any favors. You want to be an anti-Semite, just be an anti-Semite. But stay away from us. Don’t pretend.
(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 794)
