The Envoy

Author’s note: I attended SAR from sixth through twelfth grade.

More than 300 students, teachers, and parents from New York’s two largest Modern Orthodox day schools gathered outside Gracie Mansion, the mayor’s official residence. They prayed. Then a series of rabbis and students delivered speeches protesting the mayor’s stance on Israel. They were joined by several pro-Israel local politicians and dozens of journalists. But not everyone in the community was on board. A group of over 380 alumni, parents, grandparents, and current students of the schools signed a letter to the schools’ leadership protesting against the protest.

In a Sept. 9 email, the leaders of two Orthodox Hebrew Day Schools (Ramaz in Manhattan and SAR in the Bronx), told parents that Friday’s event, held during school hours, would be a prayer vigil. They wrote, “our children’s voices will lead the way. They will pray. They will sing. And they will make clear that we are here, we are proud, and we aren’t going anywhere… It is time to show up proudly as Jews, as New Yorkers, and as Zionists.”

In the days before the event, a group of journalists, alumni, parents and current students started questioning the purpose of the event. Members of both school communities drafted a letter to Rabbi Krauss (SAR Academy), Rabbis Harcsztark and Kroll (SAR High School) and Dr. Wasserman (Ramaz), saying:

“The chosen location will likely be interpreted as a political statement against the mayor, rather than as a response to rising antisemitism. This gathering needlessly inflames tensions between the mayor and the Modern Orthodox Jewish community, as opposed to inviting him into conversation as a potential ally working for the shared safety of all New Yorkers. Additionally, members of our community do not all share the same opinions regarding Mayor Mamdani. Choosing to gather outside of his residence, whatever the stated purpose, inaccurately portrays the Modern Orthodox community as a political monolith opposed to the mayor.”

(Underlines were added by The Envoy)

More than 380 alumni, students and parents signed the letter before the event. Only one teacher signed, anonymously. The organizers acknowledged the reaction. Rabbi Krauss wrote in a Sept. 18 article in The Times of Israel: “Since word got out, it has drawn more attention than any of us expected.” Rabbi Kroll told The Envoy, “Our community is not a monolith, and our community has people who are probably on the more progressive side and people who are on the more conservative side and part of running the school is figuring out how to give agency to everybody and have everybody be valued and in conversation, while at the same time being able to give opportunities for people to actually do things and not just talk.”

Friday morning:

At 9 a.m. at the entrance to Carl Schurz Park, at 88th Street and East End Avenue. Police set up barricades facing the street while Rabbi Krauss and other organizers prepared the stage. By 9:30, the crowd had grown to roughly 200, as nearly all of Ramaz’s eighth and 11th graders arrived, along with SAR’s eighth grade and about 25 SAR High School students.

Actor Michael Rapaport, an outspoken pro-Israel activist, was surrounded by a swarm of press. “Zohran the moron doesn’t think Israel has a right to exist,” he said. “He’s antagonistic, and he’s the most divisive mayor of New York City by far.” Rapaport added, grinning: “And this is not a political event! This is a beautiful, beautiful event and I didn’t know exactly what was gonna be here, but I’m so honored to be just to see these kids in real life.”

After mentioning that he is “seriously considering a run for mayor.” Rapaport told the press, Mayor Mamdani’s wife “is an anti-semite. His wife is a racist, and she’s a homophobic [sic].”

Caroline Shinkle, the Republican nominee for New York’s 12th U.S. Congressional District, also addressed reporters, saying that Mayor Mamdani “does not have a mandate. We are taking back our city this November with common sense. And we’re going to restore greatness and the power of private enterprise to the center of global capitalism… This is the center of global capitalism, not the center of global socialism.” Afterward, she was seen chatting with the husband of a Fox News host and asking him to help get her booked on his wife’s show.

Asked about the letter opposing the event, a parent said: “I didn’t read it, but we heard about it. We’re horrified, horrified, horrified, disgusted. You send your kids to Yeshiva and you’re against a rally for peace, for prayer, for being against anti-Semitism? It’s a disgrace, a disgrace that those parents are protesting.”

The parent said she has friends who signed the letter: “And you know what? They’ve been in Yeshiva since they’re three years old. Their parents are Republicans, pro-Israel, Zionists. They’re [the student] pro-Mamdani. Why? Because they sit there in their bedrooms on TikTok day and night and they’re brainwashed.”

Politics also occupied students’ minds, though they were not always up-to-date on issues. An 11th grader complained to The Envoy: “Mamdani revoked the law that said that you couldn’t come and protest in front of synagogues, which doesn’t make sense to a lot of people here.” The student was mistaken. In May, Mayor Mamdani signed legislation creating protest buffer zones around houses of worship. The 11th grader agreed that social media influenced people in the community, especially with respect to Mayor Mamdani. “They honestly believe that he’s fighting for a good cause. So even in a Jewish day school like this, you’ll still see people who are infiltrated in this mindset. But a lot of it is because of social media.”

Progressive jews are not the only ones who disagree with the tone of protest against the mayor. A group of counter-protesters from Neturei Karta, an anti-Zionist sect of Ultra-Orthodox Judaism, shouted “Jews reject Zionism” and other slogans opposed to the conflation of Judaism and Zionism. 

The Soviet Jewry Comparison:

Much of the event’s messaging tried to link it to the protests of the latter half of the 20th century over the Soviet Union’s treatment of Jews. Rabbi Krauss wrote in The Times of Israel: “Jews have always known that where you pray says something. Soviet Jews sang outside the Moscow choral synagogue on Simchat Torah when it was dangerous. Our generation davened [prayed] across from the Soviet embassy in Washington. Those were prayers and they were statements, and nobody at the time thought that made the prayers less holy.”

The best-known student organizer of that movement, Rabbi Avi Weiss, founded the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry in 1964. He has since become a strong and divisive voice in Jewish politics. He coined the term “open orthodoxy” as “open, in that our ideology acknowledges, considers, and takes into account in varying ways a wide spectrum of voices.” In 2009, he co-founded Maharat, the first Modern Orthodox school for women rabbis. He supported the 2015 Supreme Court ruling legalizing same-sex marriage, though he refuses to officiate such marriages. He is also known for his staunch support of Israel and lengthy posts on X denouncing Mamdani.

In one post, on July 23, Weiss wrote to Mamdani: “J’accuse you of a modern blood libel: accusing Israel of murdering Gazans whom Hamas itself murdered, using them as human shields. J’accuse you, in that same breath, of accusing my grandchildren. When you call the Prime Minister of Israel a war criminal and an architect of genocide, you are not speaking only of one man in Jerusalem. You are speaking of the many thousands of children and grandchildren, brothers and sisters of New Yorkers who serve in the IDF army that defends the Jewish state.”

Speaking on Friday, Weiss told those gathered:

“One last word to the mayor: When you use words like genocide, global intifada, Mr. Mayor, do you know who you’re talking about? You’re talking about my grandchildren. You’re talking about hundreds and thousands of Ramaz graduates, of SAR graduates, who are serving in the IDF [Israeli Defense Force],” Over 15 out of 130 students from the SAR class of 2021 joined the IDF. “Genocide? Not only does that put a target on the Jewish backs, but you are maligning my own children. You are maligning graduates of SAR and Ramaz and Park East and all of the yeshivot. And I turn to you and say, respectfully, but I say, how dare you? How dare you!”

A school’s image:

Later on Friday, SAR High School Principal Rabbi Jonathan Kroll told The Envoy he was pleased with the event. “It felt grass roots-y. This is America. You can get a permit and have your voice heard.”

“I would say that it is important for us as a school to have many different voices in conversation and not to be totally pigeonholed as one exclusive story.” According to him, that means allowing “students who want to express politically that they are feeling vulnerable as New Yorkers” because of the Mayor’s rhetoric, but also space for progressive voices who think “people are being perhaps overly sensitive.”

But “sometimes the school is going to take a stand. We brought people to this event today because the school kind of is… putting a flag down and saying ‘listen, this is something that we actually think is important to make a statement about.‘” 

What percentage of the school agrees with that statement? He hasn’t tallied all the emails, but he felt there were more “thumbs up than thumbs downs.” He welcomes “thoughtful and worthy conversations as part of the community discussion.”