New York City Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch called on Monday for all of society to condemn and respond to antisemitism before it turns violent, not only leaving it to law enforcement to address once it does.
“We should not have to wait until a Jewish New Yorker is attacked before we find the courage to confront the hatred directed at them,” Tisch said, speaking at the World Jewish Congress’ annual Herzl Awards dinner, where she was presented with the prize, named for the founder of modern political Zionism, alongside Axel Springer CEO Matthias Dopfner. The award recognizes public figures whose work helps the Jewish People.
Tisch’s speech at the city’s Museum of Modern Art came as recent reports have noted that 58% of hate crimes in New York last month targeted Jews, who represent some 10% of the city’s population. The dinner also marked WJC’s 90th anniversary and — as Tisch noted in her remarks — 88 years since the Kristallnacht attacks on Jewish-owned businesses in Germany.
“Being Jewish in New York should never require an act of courage,” she said. “And yet, in recent times, too many Jewish New Yorkers have been forced to think differently about their own safety.”
She also referenced two recent incidents in the city: a Jewish man stabbed outside an Upper West Side synagogue, and a man who burst into Shabbat services at Central Synagogue, assaulting a congregant and a member of the synagogue’s security team.
Tisch said the response to antisemitism cannot fall to police alone. When it is expressed openly, it “demands an equally open condemnation,” and that responsibility “belongs to all of us,” she said, in an apparent nod to Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who has often been accused of stoking antisemitism and failing to take Jewish concerns seriously.
Meeting hate “with indifference or excuse,” she warned, risks allowing antisemitism to become something people “simply learn to live with.”
While she called for a broader effort to counter antisemitism, she pledged to use the NYPD to help. “So long as I have the great honor of serving as your police commissioner, I will bring every resource of this department to bear against those who threaten Jewish New Yorkers, and do everything in my power to preserve their freedom to live openly and proudly in this city,” said Tisch.
At the event, WJC President Ronald Lauder reiterated his belief in Jewish education, urging attendees to invest in the field to stem the tide of antisemitism, and to extend that focus beyond Jewish day schools.
“I firmly believe the best way, perhaps the only way, to fight this age-old hatred is through education, not just Jewish education, but every school throughout this country and the world, public schools, religious schools, independent schools,” Lauder told the crowd.
“We ignored this, and now we have lost a generation. Too many of our youngsters have been indoctrinated, brainwashed, to believe that Israel, the tiny holy democracy of the Middle East, is the source of every problem on Earth,” he said.
Lauder’s remarks, which come as his foundation halts funding for many educational initiatives around the world, expanded the goal he has repeatedly pressed throughout his final term as president, as he announced earlier this year that he will not seek reelection when his term ends in 2029.
In recent months, Lauder, has focused on encouraging a new generation of Jewish leaders to step up, particularly in funding Jewish education. In May, at the WJC’s 90th-anniversary gathering in Geneva, he argued that efforts to educate antisemites were futile, urging U.S. Jewish organizations to invest in Jewish children instead. Lauder made a similar case a month later in an interview with eJewishPhilanthropy.
On Monday night, he emphasized the importance of education more broadly, and called for audience members to take up the mantle as he ends funding for many Jewish initiatives.
“If I have to do this alone, I will. But please, you and your friends, join me: Let’s bring honesty and sanity back to our world,” he said.
