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“Voters will be looking at that ballot, and they are going to see ‘Eric Adams,’” the mayor insisted in a 15-minute video conversation with JNS on Friday. (JNS spoke with Adams hours before a former U.S. solicitor general, tasked with reviewing a federal probe of the mayor for alleged criminal corruption, recommended it be dismissed with prejudice.)
Adams told JNS about Jew-hatred on campus and antisemitic hate crimes, both of which he said should be met with tough prosecution.
“Our district attorney’s office should have a ‘no plea bargaining’ rule for anyone that carries out a hate crime and should not offer to drop a charge down to harassment,” Adams told JNS. “They need to be held accountable, and we’re going to make sure we investigate, arrest and apprehend anyone who carries out a hate crime.”
JNS asked Adams about campus antisemitism, particularly recent disruptions on the campuses of Columbia University and Barnard College, which share a historic connection.
Adams said that it is “important” that the federal government is probing schools over Jew-hatred. He said New York City has a limited role in monitoring campuses, whether private institutions like Columbia or public ones like the City University of New York.
“Many people have asked me, not only just the police commissioner but have asked me, ‘Why can’t we do more,’ without fully understanding that we don’t have the authority to go on these college campuses without a request from the president of the college,” Adams said.
The city can only do so if “there are exigent circumstances where someone’s life or property is being damaged,” he said.
The New York City Police Department addressed a bomb threat at Columbia this past week, upon the request of the university’s administration, Adams noted.
“To enforce the law, I believe that there needs to be a clear communication with college presidents that they must have zero tolerance for this form of disruption, which is not only anti-Jewish, anti-Israel, but much of it is anti-American,” Adams said. “We need to stop the indoctrination of our young people.”
“But it really must be in collaboration with our college presidents,” he said.
‘Spiritual energy’
Adams told JNS that he developed strong ties with the Jewish community when he served as Brooklyn borough president and as a state senator representing the heavily Jewish neighborhoods of Borough Park and Crown Heights.
“New York City has the largest Jewish population outside of Israel, and if that’s the case, then Brooklyn is the capital of the New York Jewish community,” he said. “There are various Jewish sections of a well-organized, powerful community that believes in family, believes in faith, believes in public safety and business.”
Adams told JNS that he also has deeply personal connections to Jewish communities.
The mayor has often visited the burial site (the “Ohel”) of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson—the Lubavitcher Rebbe—in Queens, N.Y. He told JNS that he finds solace in prayer and reflection at that site during difficult times.
“I’m a believer that there is one God, and if there’s one God, then the presence of that God is in every place where people of faith gather,” he said. “There have been many individuals who have had a strong connection with God, and the grand Rebbe is one of them.”
“If you look at some of the difficult things I’ve overcome, you see that it is obvious that visiting the grand Rebbe is part of what I believe has been successful for me,” he told JNS. “I go there and spend time and just connect with his energy and the spirit because it is said in my Bible, ‘Absent from the bodies, present in the spirit.’”
Scholars have recorded that “energy could never be destroyed or created. It only transforms,” Adams said. “So although the grand Rebbe’s physical presence is no longer here, his spiritual energy is still present. It’s just transformed, and I believe that’s a place of receiving that transformation.”
Adams told JNS that being invited to Jewish holiday celebrations, including on Passover and Purim, helped him see commonalities between the Jewish and African American communities.
“We all want the same things—to raise healthy children and families,” he said. “I want the Jewish community to know that I understand their concerns and unique history of constantly being a victim of unprecedented and unwarranted attacks.”
According to the NYPD, Jews were victims of 28 hate crimes in New York City in February—more than any other minority group.
The total number of antisemitic incidents last month was twice the amount reported to police during February 2024. Adams told JNS that many of those crimes did not involve violent assaults, but they included other discriminatory acts, such as drawing swastikas. He acknowledged that such acts remain a serious issue, but he sees it as a form of progress, to which he credits his administration’s policies, to have curbed the tide of more severe attacks.
“There’s been a pattern in the past where these crimes are downplayed and we want every crime investigated, and if the person is found guilty, we want them brought to justice and held responsible,” he told JNS.
“We have also been doing preventive measures, like our administration’s ‘breaking bread, building bonds,’ where we have had 1,000 or more dinners across the city with different groups to come together, so we can learn from each other,” he said.
“We’re finding that far too many people are showing antisemitic actions without really knowing what they represent, particularly young, black and brown people, drawing swastikas, not knowing what it means, hurling slurs towards Jewish residents,” he said. “Not knowing exactly what they’re saying.”
