Adams: Guest from Gracie Mansion

The black-and-white newsreel of New York mayor Vincent Impellitteri’s 1951 Israel tour shows him visiting a Haifa car factory and receiving the red-carpet treatment from David Ben-Gurion, in a young, long-gone country. The trip set a precedent, establishing the Israel visit as a standard practice for mayors intent on burnishing their pro-Jewish credentials.

Last week, though, Gracie Mansion’s current resident departed from that formulaic script. While his three-day tour included the standard homages to Israeli politicians and the tech scene, Eric Adams also struck a distinctly chassidic note. An early stop was a visit to Jerusalem’s Hadassah Hospital, where he went to pay his respects to the Toldos Avraham Yitzchak Rebbe, in a meeting arranged by Joel Eisdorfer, a chassidic senior aide.

“When I heard that Rabbi Kohn was ill, I immediately wanted to show my respect, because I know he has followers in Brooklyn and throughout New York City,” Adams told Mishpacha in an interview at the Aish HaTorah World Center. “The rabbi thanked me for my support for the community, and for dealing with anti-Semitism. It uplifted me that someone going through his own crisis was willing to bless others.”

While the event was at most a footnote in the mainstream media coverage of Adams’ trip — which focused heavily on whether the mayor would insert himself into Israel’s ongoing judicial reform controversy — the hospital visit was widely noted in Orthodox media in America and Israel.