I grew up in what I now recognize as a golden age for Jews in New York City.
That may sound indulgent or nostalgic, but it is neither. It is an observation grounded in lived experience. I was raised with an awareness of danger. My childhood was shaped by the aftermath of the Crown Heights riots. But it was also shaped by a belief that the city had learned something from its darkest moments. There was an understanding, unspoken but real, that while hatred might exist, violence against Jews would not be tolerated as a civic norm.
That belief was not naïveté. It was reinforced by memory.
As a child, I remember walking past the bullet-riddled van on the Brooklyn Bridge where Jewish teenagers were shot in 1994. The twisted metal told a story no plaque ever could. That attack killed Ari Halberstam, whose name now marks that ramp permanently. His murder was supposed to be a line in the sand. A reminder of how far things could go and a warning that New York would not allow it to happen again.
Those memories never leave you.
Which is why this past week feels so destabilizing.
On the same day I was writing about two Jewish children being threatened and choked on a New York City subway after attending a menorah lighting, another Jew was stabbed in the chest in Crown Heights, reportedly following antisemitic remarks. These were not isolated incidents separated by geography or time. They occurred on the same day, in the same city, against the same community.
The victims were not activists. They were not engaged in political debate. They were not protesting Israel or responding to provocation. They were children returning from a Jewish holiday event, and a man walking through a historically Jewish neighborhood.
They were targeted for one reason. Because they were Jewish.
That conclusion may make some uncomfortable, but motive matters. The effort to obscure it has become part of the problem. When antisemitic violence is reframed as random crime or absorbed into vague discussions of tensions, accountability disappears.
This is not happening in a vacuum. According to the Anti-Defamation League, antisemitic incidents in New York State have reached historic highs, with New York City consistently reporting the largest number of incidents of any U.S. city. Assaults, harassment and vandalism are no longer edge cases. They are patterns. And patterns demand analysis.
When violence escalates against a specific group, leadership response matters. Yet when Jewish children are assaulted on public transit or Jews stabbed in their neighborhoods, the city’s response has been muted, cautious and often evasive. Statements are issued, but motives are blurred. Condemnation is offered without clarity.
Silence, however, is not neutral. Silence functions as permission.
Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani speaks often about justice, equity and public safety. But leadership is not measured by rhetoric. It is measured by which victims are named, which crimes are confronted directly and which hatreds are called out without qualification. When antisemitism is treated as politically inconvenient rather than morally urgent, it signals that Jewish safety is negotiable.
This is not an abstract concern. New York has one of the largest Jewish populations in the world. Historically, it has been a place where Jews believed they could live openly, visibly and proudly. That social contract is now fraying on subway platforms, on neighborhood streets and in front of our children.
The analytical failure here is not just moral but strategic. Cities that fail to confront targeted hatred early do not de-escalate. They normalize. History shows that antisemitism rarely announces itself as a singular crisis. It advances through accumulation, incident by incident, excuse by excuse, until violence feels unsurprising.
That is where New York is drifting now.
This is not about foreign policy. It is not about Israel. It is not about partisan alignment. It is about whether Jewish life is valued enough to be protected with clarity and resolve.
The golden age I grew up in did not end with one event. It is ending through neglect. Through the refusal to name antisemitism plainly, to confront it consistently and to act before tragedy becomes routine.
History does not forgive cities that ignore warning signs. And New York is deep into warning sign territory.
Warren H. Cohn is CEO and founder of RocketshipPR, a firm focused on nonprofit and mission-driven storytelling and a media advisor to the American Middle East press association.