Mayor Adams Tells Why He Keeps Going Back to the Rebbe’s Ohel

Photos, Video: Itzik Roytman/COLlive

New York City Mayor Eric Adams hosted journalists and reporters from Jewish media in New York City last week, including Mica Soffer, Publisher and Editor of COLlive.com, for a roundtable discussion on issues affecting the Jewish community.

Joining the Mayor was NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch, Deputy Chief of Staff and Senior Advisor to the Mayor Menashe Shapiro, Deputy Mayor for Communications Fabien Levy, Fred Kreizman, Commissioner of the Community Affairs Unit; Moshe Davis, Senior Liaison for Community Affairs; Deputy Commissioner of Intelligence and Counterterrorism Rebecca Weiner; NYPD Deputy Chief Richie Taylor and Uri Fraenkel, Director of Special Projects for City Hall.

During the meeting, the Mayor addressed questions from reporters regarding security, tuition for children with special educational needs, crime, and the recent rise in antisemitism among other issues.

The Mayor introduced Commissioner Tisch, praising her accomplishments for New York City until now, and noted that “she is leading the largest police department in the country during a time where I think there needs to be an assurance to the Jewish community to deal with the fear of antisemitism, increasing Islamophobia, antisemitism, other attacks on other groups. We want to make sure there’s no room for hate in our city.”

During the meeting, the Mayor was asked to reflect on the city’s handling of pro-Palestinian protests in the past year.

“When you do an analysis of our response, there’s a real balance to allow peaceful protests and violent protests,” the Mayor said. “And our legal team over at the New York City Police Department, the corp counsel, they make sure we don’t cross that line. And although there are many days we want to, when I hear people say, you know, death to America, when I hear people [are] wearing Hamas T-shirts, when I hear people spewing out hateful tongues, trust me, we wanna go in and just lock them up from doing that, but the law doesn’t allow us to do that.

“And sometimes people say, why can’t you stop that? Because we can’t, there’s a trade-off of living in America. And we have to make sure we stay within the boundaries of what we can do. But we push the envelope. When you start burning flares, when we tell you you can’t go down a certain block, you’re not gonna march in front of certain very important locations and communities, we take action if people violate that. And then we were sure to allow people to move through the city without the attacks. NYPD made arrests whenever someone broke the law in the e form of antisemitism, from swastikas to assaults to harassment.

“We were very clear we’re not going to accept that. We had over 3,000 protests in the city. And what we had to do coming after October 7th, we had to make sure that we sent a loud message that we were not going to go away and allow you to do what was done in other cities. I saw what happened in other cities. It didn’t happen here, we used manpower from the police, we used the drones to monitor and understand movement. We used maneuvers to make sure we didn’t allow any destruction of property, disruption.

“And so the NYPD, in spite of continuing to drop crime and deal with, you know, the influx of migrants and asylum seekers, they also deal with the thousands of protests that we’ve had. And we don’t see as many as we saw at one time. We still have a few flaring up, but for the most part, we was able to clamp down. And now you’re not seeing as many as you saw before.”

Deputy Mayor Fabien Levy pointed out that while residents may not see as many as before, there are still a number of protests which happen every day.

“The NYPD is doing such a good job of containing them and making sure that New Yorkers, especially Jewish New Yorkers, feel safe and that they’re not being harassed,” Levy said. “So I just want to say thank you very much to the NYPD for making sure we feel safe in this city, not just be safe.”

Another factor in helping New Yorkers feel safe is the containment of protests and limiting them to certain neighborhoods and away from houses of worship, avoiding greater conflict, they pointed out.

The Mayor also fielded a question about his frequent visits to the Ohel gravesite of the Lubavitcher Rebbe in Queens, NY, as well as his visit to the gravesite of the Ribnitzer Rebbe, what connection he feels to the holy sites and what inspiration he takes from the visits.

“Both those rabbis were special individuals,” the Mayor said. “In my faith it says ‘absent from the body is present in the spirit,’ and you know energy could never die, it could only be transformed – and so if that logic is correct, then their energy is still among us and quantum physics states that in order to acknowledge something, see something, you have to acknowledge the existence of it.

“So I acknowledge the existence of both of their energies and when I go through difficult times, I found that I visit their grave sites and the energy materializes, materializes things that I look for. And when I was running for office, and Andrew Yang was measuring for the drapes because he thought he was going to be the mayor. Devorah Halberstam told me that she had a dream that the Grand Rebbe wanted me to visit his site. And I did just that. And as you know, today I am Mayor Adams and not Yang.”

Deputy Mayor Levy pointed out that many times, the Mayor will visit the Ohel privately, without his staff knowing, just for a private visit and prayer. It was noted by Levy, Shapiro and Richie Taylor that the Mayor also makes a point to visit the gravesite of Ari Halberstam, son of Devorah Halberstam, who was murdered in a terror attack in 1994 and is buried near the Rebbe.

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Another question asked was in regards to the uptick in antisemitism, including in the Black community, and what can be done to dampen antisemitism?

“Number one, we have to do a better job in our educational system, to really appreciate our diversity,” the Mayor said. “Number two, we need to be creative as adults. Our Breaking Bread, Building Bond initiative, we need to bring, as Devorah Halberstam has done, at the Jewish Children’s Museum, we need to bring young people together so they can sit in a room. A lot of hate is ignorance. And by allowing young people to come in and cross-pollinate their ideas and their cultures, I think that’s how we stop the increase,” he said.

“We also have to take a strong stance. I believe there should be a zero plea bargain rule when someone’s arrested for hate. I think all of our DAs should be on the same page. That if you attack someone because of their race, religion, ethnicity, etc. There should be a zero plea bargain rule and people should be held accountable by the highest level of law,” the Mayor said.

When asked about planned bike lanes in various neighborhoods, which are being done despite opposition from residents, the Mayor said that by law the city must have a certain number of bike lanes, however those advocating against them should be meeting with those who are advocating for them.

“We do a real job of trying to get community feedback as much as possible,” the Mayor said. “But you should really lean into whomever is your local elected, I don’t know who your local council person is over there. But they should play a role in making sure that the voices are heard from their community. If they’re a good council person, they’ll do that. If they’re a council person that’s just pushing their own agenda, then they’re going to get ahead of their community.”

“We listen to the community, ” the Mayor noted. “A DOT commissioner plays a vital role in listening to what the community desires.”

The Mayor was also asked about fears that many Jewish residents have about a major event of unrest, such as the Crown Heights riots in 1991, happening again in the city, and what are his plans for a response to such an event to ensure that something like that never happens again.

“When you look at some of those protests of yesteryear, there was an apprehension and a slowness to respond for one reason or another. And I don’t think that this city fully understands the scope of having the mayor for the first time to understand public safety. And clearly, I have the nose to know when things are getting out of control,” Mayor Adams said.

“Matched with a good police commissioner, we can coordinate to make sure that my years of experience, you know, I was here during the Crown Heights situation. I was here during the blackouts. I was here when the city was really in a terrible, dark place in law enforcement. So I bring that expertise and I sit down and collaborate with all the commissioners beforehand and the same is happening with the current commissioner as we are forward thinking everything from tabletops that we do to thinking about and predicting what is happening.

“We speak with the deputy commissioner of Intelligence. If there’s something happening on a global scale, she’s constantly monitoring, letting us know, do we see something playing out here? So we are constantly staying ahead of the actions that are playing out across the globe, not only in the Jewish community, but we have a large Ukrainian and Russian-speaking community. We have to stay on top of the conflict that was happening in that region. It won’t play out here.

“Listen, you can be as prepared as you want and no one can prepare for two planes flying into a building and try to take down those buildings. But you need to be prepared in your response when they happen. And no one does it better than the New York City Police Department. People come here to train, they come here to learn, they come in to see how we execute. And if I had to put my bets on anything, I’m going to bet on the NYPD.”