Two prominent New York City Modern Orthodox Jewish day schools plan to send students to pray the Friday morning service outside the mayor’s residence.
“The choice of venue is obviously intentional,” Rabbi Binyamin Krauss, principal of SAR Academy, told JNS. “It’s a positive statement that we’re here. We’re Jewish. We want to be safe and express our Zionism.”
The Ramaz School, located on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, also intends to send students to the service, according to Krauss, and worshipers will also come from Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun, a Modern Orthodox synagogue associated with Ramaz.
Krauss hopes that additional schools will join them on Friday morning, when he expects there to be about 240 students from SAR and Ramaz.
Mamdani was asked about the planned prayer session at an unrelated press conference on Wednesday.
“Mayor, the students at Ramaz and some other Jewish schools are planning a prayer vigil outside Gracie Mansion on Friday morning to talk about their support for Israel and for Bibi Netanyahu,” a reporter said. “I wonder if you have any plans to go out and talk to them and explain your concerns and your views and hear what they have to say?”
“I welcome them. They can have a vigil, or I’ve heard some describe it even as a ‘protest,’” the mayor said. “Whatever it is intended to be, they have the room and space to do so outside of Gracie Mansion. I think that at the time that they are there, I will probably be somewhere else across the city.”
Rabbi Joshua Lookstein, associate head of school, rabbinic and communal leadership at Ramaz, told JNS that he expects to bring about 140 students from the 8th and 11th grades. Since the police permit that the schools obtained is for 500 people, he said that the entire upper school, which is about 450 students, is not coming.
“The message is that we, the Jewish community, feel vulnerable, and don’t feel as safe as we should,” Lookstein said. “The mayor is the one to change that so that we his citizens feel safe. We think he will get that message whether he is there or not.”
“It is more important that we’re there than that he’s there,” he told JNS. “Because it’s about learning how to show up and be present.”
SAR is sending 8th grade students and some 9th and 10th graders, Krauss told JNS.
The idea came up this summer, “when there was a lot going on around New York City” Krauss said, of antisemitic incidents.
“We want our kids to feel proud and safe to express their identity,” he told JNS.
The climate since Mamdani took office on Jan. 1 has been difficult for New York City’s Jews, Krauss told JNS.
Mamdani is overtly anti-Israel and has said publicly that he does not believe that Israel should exist as a Jewish state. Anti-Jewish hate crimes surged 182% in Mamdani’s first month in office compared to January 2025, and leaders of major Jewish organizations have said that the mayor’s rhetoric is endangering Jews. Jews, who make up some 10% of New Yorkers, have been the targets of 53.9% of all hate crimes in the city that the New York City Police Department has confirmed so far this year, the department has said.
“I am obviously concerned about the mayor’s choice to weigh in on certain things,” like a potential arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he arrives in New York City for the United Nations General Assembly, Krauss said.
Mamdani campaigned on arresting the Israeli premier but has since said that he lacks the authority to order such an arrest. He called on federal authorities to do so. The General Assembly is schedule for Sept. 18 to 28 at U.N. headquarters in midtown Manhattan. Netanyahu is slated to speak there on Sept. 24.
“You can be a great mayor of New York and stay away from things that are frankly outside your purview,” Krauss told JNS. “People have felt less loved and maybe less safe since January.”
“We want him to recognize us and to recognize that and to commit to being the mayor for all the people of New York City,” he said.
Rabbi David Ingber, founder and senior rabbi of Romemu, an independent egalitarian congregation on the Upper West Side, told JNS that he plans to participate.
“I am very critical of Mamdani speaking out of both sides out of his mouth about Jews,” Ingber said. “I am very deeply troubled that the mayor says he’ll protect Jews and then allows himself to single out the State of Israel for opprobrium. He is endangering the same Jews that he says he’ll protect.”
The mayor is “a part of fomenting and needs to know that we’re on to them and it’s not OK,” he told JNS. “That our children should be proud Jews and Zionists.”
