Revving up the battle against antisemitism in Cedarhurst

For the third time in more than two years, Cedarhurst village was the backdrop in the battle against antisemitism.

On Aug. 23, Jewish elected officials, including Republican gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin, Assemblyman Ari Brown and Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, along with others, decried the volume of antisemitism that has occurred recently, including antisemitic flyers that were found in mailboxes and public places in Cedarhurst, Long Beach, Oceanside and Rockville Centre during the summer months.

Blakeman said the county is not lying down against these attacks.

“We’re not taking any of this without there being a reaction to the action,” he said. “When we see flyers that are purely antisemitic, our great Nassau County Police Department led by Commissioner (Patrick) Ryder, we know who they (the suspects) are and we’re watching them. And you know what? They’re not stupid. They don’t cross the line. They come right to the line. They go and they say: we’re protected by freedom of speech. But when they cross that line, trust me. We will arrest them. We’ll lock them up and we’ll prosecute them.”

Noting the county’s Commission against Antisemitism, Blakeman said along with supporting law enforcement, another way to combat antisemitism is to educate young people.

New York state has taken a step in that direction as Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, recently signed a law mandating schools provide in-depth Holocaust education. New York is now one of 23 states requiring public schools to teach the Holocaust. 

“Nobody should feel unsafe on our streets or in subways because they wear a yarmulke or they look different,” said Zeldin, who serves in the House of Representatives. “We’re seeing violence targeting Asian Americans, violence targeting Sikh cab drivers and the list goes on where people are being targeted with all violent hate. We all have to stand up together to confront this hate. We are stronger when we do so, together.”

In January 2020, Cedarhurst Village Hall hosted a news conference about antisemitism after at least 13 attacks occurred in 2019, underscored by the fatal shooting of three people in a Jersey City kosher supermarket, along with the killing of a Jersey City police officer and the stabbing of five people at rabbi’s house in upstate Monsey. Those incidents happened within 20 days of each other in December 2019.

Also harking back to that year, Jeffrey Lax, a professor at Columbia University, spoke on the antisemitic experiences he faces at his workplace as a Jewish man. He recalled a 2019 incident during a faculty meeting, when Lax said, “Five radical leftists in a group called ‘Progressive Faculty Caucus’ surrounded me.” The group claimed Lax was “an orthodox Zionist because he kept kosher.”

He recounted, “I was trying to leave — I was trying to get up and move out. One of them held his hand over my head and said: we’re just starting.”

Lax said his workplace has become more hostile. It appears the administration only issues statements on antisemitic behavior without taking genuine action.

Brown, who also serves as Cedarhurst’s deputy mayor, said his take on the fight against antisemitism took a new turn after meeting Lax. “(He) started this whole conversation for me in a much bigger and deeper way than ever before,” Brown said, adding that voting Republican, in his opinion, is the better option for Jewish people in the fight against antisemitism.

In May of last year, at least 3,500 people gathered in Andrew J. Parise Cedarhurst Park supporting Israel and Jewish people around the world following another spasm of antisemitic violence, including the assault of Lawrence native Joseph Borgen, who was attacked by five pro-Palestinian men in Manhattan that same month.

At the news conference, Jeff Ballabon, senior counsel for government and international affairs for the American Center for Law and Justice, noted that until former president Donald Trump issued an executive order to combat antisemitism in December 2019, “Jews were not protected under the Civil Rights Act, Title VI, because it doesn’t refer to religion,” Ballabon said.

He added that the Trump White House worked closely with ACLJ to extend Title VI to “protect Jews on campus,” with colleges across the nation having become hostile environment for Jewish people and discussion of issues surrounding Israel.