Mamdanis violence-spurring rhetoric helped make Jews darkest day even darker

The ninth day of the Hebrew month of Av, “Tisha B’Av,” is the darkest day on the Jewish calendar.Jews observe it by sitting on the floor, fasting and rehearsing the calamities that have shaped Jewish history: the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, the Crusades, the Spanish Expulsion and the Holocaust.The holiday is the annual reminder that too many chapters of the Jewish story have been written in tears.But this year, our darkest day became even darker.Tisha B’Av commemorates the tragedies of the past, but last week, the past became the present: After spending the morning at The Jewish Center, the synagogue I lead on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, Moshe Grunhaus, wearing a yarmulke, started to walk home.He barely made it 200 feet when he was stabbed in the chest by a man who shouted, “Allahu Akbar,” the words with which Islamist terrorists have all too often announced their murderous intent.The alleged assailant was quickly apprehended by the police.

In addition to charging the defendant with assault and attempted murder, the Manhattan district attorney charged him with a hate crime.Thank God, Moshe survived the attack and is expected to make a full recovery.But that’s scant consolation for a community that increasingly feels vilified, isolated and unsafe in the city it has called home for many generations.For the first time in memory, Jewish life in America is beginning to feel like Jewish life in Europe: armed guards, bulletproof glass, security checkpoints and the constant fear that yesterday’s rhetoric will become today’s assault.What happened last week on West 86th Street didn’t happen in a vacuum.When public officials repeatedly cast the Jewish community as a stand-in for the actions of the Israeli government, visibly Jewish New Yorkers increasingly find themselves in the crosshairs.Mayor Zohran Mamdani is patently wrong to pretend he can criticize Israel, and oppose its very existence as a Jewish state, without slurring and demeaning...