What I saw on the Park East Synagogue night, and why Jews must show up

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By REUVEN KAHANE- originally published in Jerusalem Post

From long-time members to those who joined recently, the dedicated showed up. I call it a “night” because the press couldn’t agree on what happened, calling it everything from a pogrom to an uprising to “no big deal.”

Conservative outlets spun a story about a city losing its Jews and control under a new socialist mayor. Liberal papers painted a tiny, terrified group confronting hundreds of violent protesters.

Despite the protesters’ week of planning, the assembled outnumbered them by several dozen, with only 24 hours’ notice. Park East members, day school parents, and steadfast Jews from Brooklyn and Queens who never get their due faced around 90 masked protesters and 10 Neturei Karta members from parts unknown.

On the sidelines, as they paused for breath, they spoke to me with hollow accusations in Midwestern and Irish accents: “Israel stole the Arab land in 1865,” one said.

“Now they’re bombing Gaza’s capital – Beirut,” said another.

Park East Synagogue (credit: Wikimedia Commons)

They came with rehearsed slogans and a paycheck. We came with cause and conviction – the kind that wins every time.

Walking home that night, I felt fine – yet I shuddered thinking about what could have been if this chaotic mob, leaning against the synagogue wall just a few handbreadths from its doors, had been a group of 500 organized, vicious protesters. They could have walked down from Columbia, been bused in from Cambridge, flown in from London, past the flimsy barricades. They could have pushed past the handful of brave guards and limited police presence, stormed into the synagogue, attacked children, burned Torah scrolls, or taken a hostage or two back to Toronto – sound familiar?

So as not to be just another eyewitness, I offer the beginning of one modest solution – shaped, as some might say, by naïveté but offered in good faith and guided by history and personal experience. One clear rule emerges, echoed in the Ethics of Our Fathers: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me?”

There will always be a duke, mufti, bishop, or mayor. History never needed “big titles” to create danger. It only requires Jews to stop waiting for someone else to protect them.

When the winds turn against you, you must show up. Mussolini’s Blackshirts were a fraction of Italy. Hitler’s Brownshirts were the same in Germany. Those who control the streets control the country. We’re not trying to control it – but we cannot abandon it to others.

You can turn off tweets and podcasts. You can boycott a sham election. You can fight legislation. But you cannot ignore – or forget – a wall of people closing in, surrounding your family. It’s terrifying.

Protesters at the entrance of the synagogue

A collection of students, contrarian Jews, and professional protesters at the synagogue entrance that night terrified New York Jewry far more than 10 million people hearing Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, and Nick Fuentes scream “genocide” and “Jewish control.”

With a thousand Jews, everything changes. “Had we been 1,000 strong that night, those protesters wouldn’t have had an inch to move or the voice to scream ‘globalize the intifada.’ They would have been the ones trembling – not from violence, that’s not us – but from claustrophobia, realizing their flimsy barricades suddenly protected them, not us.”

A minyan from every Manhattan synagogue would have done it that night. Moving forward, we need everyone: from Lakewood to Park Avenue to Rego Park and Boro Park. If everyone gives just two hours every five years – we have our thousand.

Despite her resolve, Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch cannot be our last line of defense. Condemnations and cameras come after the fact; we need to make sure there is no fact.

Being a thousand strong doesn’t just deter – it transforms us. Fear dissolves. Purpose grows. Identity strengthens. Community brings joy. I remember standing at the front as a Ramaz student on Solidarity Sunday – hundreds of thousands gathered to free Soviet Jewry. The message beneath the message was simple: We are responsible for one another. That stays with you for life.

The clarity of Ethics of Our Fathers exceeds any mayor’s declaration or protester’s chant. We must stand. We must show up. We must be proud. We must stop waiting for anyone else.

Because in the end, it’s about us. Not them.

Am Yisrael chai.

The writer is the president of RKRE, a real estate investment company. He holds a J.D. from Cardozo School of Law and a rabbinical degree from Yeshiva University and has occasionally led Shabbat and holiday services at Park East for the past decade. He is the author of the upcoming novel Amerikan Holocaust.

tjvnews.com

What I saw on the Park East Synagogue night, and why Jews must show up

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