By: Fern Sidman

New York City has long prided itself on being a refuge—a mosaic where ethnicities, faiths, and cultures coexist amid the din of daily life. Yet in recent months, that self-image has been profoundly shaken. A troubling surge in antisemitic incidents—ranging from harassment and vandalism to outright physical violence—has left Jewish New Yorkers unnerved, angry, and increasingly fearful that their city is no longer as safe as it once was.

As The New York Post reported on Wednesday, Jewish residents across the five boroughs describe an atmosphere in which bigotry feels newly emboldened. The change is not merely statistical, but visceral: slurs shouted on subways, threats barked in restaurants, knives brandished in residential neighborhoods, and holiday celebrations shadowed by fear. Community leaders warn that the cumulative effect of these incidents is eroding a basic civic promise—that no New Yorker should fear for their safety because of who they are.

“There are people who are doing that violence and harassment who seem to be emboldened by the public discussion, by lack of accountability,” Oren Segal, senior vice president of counter-extremism and intelligence at the Anti-Defamation League, told The New York Post. His words capture a central anxiety reverberating through the Jewish community: that hateful rhetoric, when left unchecked, metastasizes into action.

Segal underscored a point that has become painfully resonant. “Walking down the street, going to class, or celebrating a holiday, or just otherwise being visibly Jewish should not be an act of courage,” he said. Yet for many, it increasingly is.

According to the information provided in The New York Post report, the current spike in antisemitic incidents traces its roots to the aftermath of Hamas’ October 7, 2023, attack on Israel—a moment that ignited global passions and polarized public discourse. In New York, that discourse has often spilled out of classrooms, protest sites, and social media platforms into everyday life. Jewish New Yorkers report that slogans once confined to demonstrations now echo in subway cars and city streets.

Segal revealed to The New York Post that the ADL has received reports of Jews so fearful they have stopped wearing kippahs or other visible symbols of their faith. For a city whose Jewish population numbers more than one million—the largest outside Israel—that retreat from public identity represents a profound rupture.

The timing has been especially cruel. Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights, is traditionally a period of public celebration, marked by menorah lightings in parks, plazas, and windowsills. Yet as The New York Post has reported, Jewish holidays have increasingly become flashpoints for violence rather than moments of communal joy.

“The days in which the Jewish community is celebrating or observing the holidays tends to be the times when they seem to be in most danger,” Segal noted. The symbolism is stark: a festival commemorating survival against ancient persecution now observed under modern threat.

The incidents catalogued by The New York Post read like a grim ledger. Earlier this week, Brooklyn resident Elias Rosner, a member of the Lubavitch Hasidic community, was stabbed in Crown Heights by a knife-wielding assailant who shouted, “I’m going to kill a Jew today.” The brazen specificity of the threat, combined with the randomness of the attack, sent shockwaves through the neighborhood.

Just hours later, eight Jewish youths returning from a Hanukkah celebration in Union Square were accosted on the subway while heading back to Chabad Lubavitch headquarters. Video footage, widely circulated and reported on by The New York Post, shows a pair of attackers hurling slurs, grabbing at clothing, and threatening violence. The victims escaped physically unharmed, but emotionally shaken.

In another incident captured on video and highlighted by The New York Post, a man at Mole Mexican Bar & Grill in Manhattan’s West Village unleashed a torrent of abuse at a Jewish woman dining with a friend. Leaning into her face, he screamed threats and obscenities, invoking violence against “Zionists” in language that left no doubt about its antisemitic core. The woman, visibly trembling, became an unwilling symbol of how suddenly a casual evening can turn terrifying.

These are not isolated events. Earlier that same day, Rabbi Meir Pape of Jackson Heights discovered that a neighborhood menorah had been defaced—another entry in a year-long pattern of antisemitic graffiti and vandalism in the area, as documented by The New York Post.

What is happening in New York does not exist in isolation. As The New York Post report emphasized, the local surge in antisemitism is unfolding against a global backdrop of escalating violence. During the opening nights of Hanukkah, a terrorist attack at a Jewish celebration on Bondi Beach in Australia left 15 people dead and dozens wounded. The atrocity reverberated across Jewish communities worldwide, amplifying fears already simmering in cities like New York.

“The fact that people have to have their head on a swivel when they are engaging in a public Hanukkah lighting or putting [a menorah] in their window tells you a lot about the atmosphere in which the Jewish community finds itself,” Segal told The New York Post. “People are feeling vulnerable, and people are feeling scared.”

For many, the Bondi Beach massacre transformed abstract anxieties into concrete dread. Jewish leaders in New York told The New York Post that the attack underscored how quickly hate-fueled rhetoric can escalate into mass violence.

Evan Bernstein, vice president of community relations for the Jewish Federations of North America, told The New York Post that language plays a critical role in shaping behavior. “Words matter,” he said. “When Jews hear chants of ‘Globalize the intifada’ and ‘resistance by any means,’ and then see a spate of serious assaults and killings targeting our community, it absolutely puts fear into our community.”

Daniel S. Mariaschin, CEO of B’nai B’rith International, echoed that sentiment in comments to The New York Post. He warned of a “trigger mechanism” whereby inflammatory rhetoric—especially when amplified by social media and influential voices—lowers the threshold for violence. “People who are in positions of responsibility need to mind their language and mind their words,” he said. “Because words do matter.”

This concern extends beyond fringe actors. Jewish leaders argue that when public figures fail to clearly condemn antisemitism—or worse, excuse it under the guise of political critique—they contribute to an environment in which hatred feels permissible.

New York’s political leadership has pledged increased security around Jewish institutions and holiday events, and police patrols have been visibly intensified in neighborhoods like Crown Heights. Yet, as The New York Post reported, many in the Jewish community worry that enforcement alone cannot address the deeper currents driving this resurgence of hate.

The challenge, they argue, is cultural as much as criminal. It involves confronting antisemitism wherever it appears—whether cloaked in ideological rhetoric, expressed through vandalism, or enacted in violence. It also requires reaffirming a civic norm that once seemed self-evident: that targeting Jews is not just offensive, but an assault on the moral fabric of the city.

For now, Jewish New Yorkers continue to live their lives, attend synagogue, send their children to school, and light menorahs in windows—sometimes defiantly, sometimes anxiously. As The New York Post has repeatedly underscored, the question is not whether antisemitism exists in New York—it plainly does—but whether the city will summon the resolve to confront it before fear becomes a permanent companion in daily life.

In a city built by immigrants fleeing persecution, the stakes could hardly be higher.