Transcript: Mayor Adams Delivers Remarks at Central Synagogue

November 17, 2023

Mayor Eric Adams: I had an amazing interaction when I sat down with Sonia. Sonia looked over at me and she stated, thank you for making the school system understanding dyslexia. She says, I'm dyslexic and I want to thank you because she knows I'm her fellow dyslexic person, I'm the dyslexic mayor.

And let me tell you something, Sonia, everyone I meet that is successful reach and lean over to me and they say, Eric, I'm dyslexic. So, you have a great future in front of you. Thank you so much.

It was only weeks earlier that I was in Israel looking at many of our tech startups and asking them to come here. And people often ask me, why was I so clear on my support for Israel and the Jewish people of not only the city but across the globe?

And what I would like to share with you, what I believe is one of the biggest mistakes that the Jewish people are doing in New York City. You have such a rich tradition.

When I attend Passover and sit down and watch how you tell your children the tradition of the Jewish experience, and they walk away knowledgeable with a full understanding of the scope of the Jewish faith. Missing from that conversation is your contributions to humankind.

And the reason my passion is so strong is because I fully understand it. And it was taught to me by my mother. If you just look at the person, Julius Rosenwald, he started 2,000 schools for African Americans who were not able to be educated in the South.

At one time, 40 percent of the students of African American ancestry were educated through his schools. And then if you look at what he did with the HBCU, colleges that are so important to us, Howard University, he was one of the co-founders, [inaudible], he was one of the co-founders.

He started the NAACP's co-founder, SPLC, SNCC co-founder. But you don't have to only look at the philanthropic actions of someone like Julius. When young Chaney lost his life in Mississippi, you had Andrew and Michael who was there with them. 50 percent of the white students that went to fight for civil rights in the South, 50 percent of them were Jewish.

Not only marching with Dr. King, but standing up for humanitarian actions across the globe. And that lesson is not passed down. You have done it in this benevolent fashion. And the other day I was sending a restaurant and a group of young people came in after protesting and hurling anti-Semitic terms.

They looked at me and they stated that, mayor, you only care about the Jewish people in the city. And through that rant, I said, I want you to sit down for a moment and I want you to google the history of the Jewish people and the African American experience and experiences of those across the globe.

You find humanitarian action and you will find a Jewish person. And when those young people started to look, and one of them teared up because they were in Howard University as a pre-law student and they had to connect the dots. And the anger that they are feeling, it is rooted in the lack of knowledge and understanding.

So, what must we do? We must do four things. One, we have to take back our college campuses.

Our college campuses have moved from a position of academic intelligence and healthy conversations and using teaching moments. They've become a haven of hate. And hate has no place in New York City. And young people at a rich young age, when they are really learning, their experiences, are engulfed in this belief of a lack of full understanding. And unfortunately, many of the people who are professors are assisting in some of the hate that you're seeing inflicted and perpetrated across our entire city and country.

We have to be forward thinking and go on college campuses and reeducate people with the history of what the Jewish community has done globally. Number two, we must dismantle social media.

Social media is the Trojan horse. It has snuck into our homes and it sits in the living room, in the bedrooms of our children. And they use algorithms to find the pain of people and allow that pain to be displaced.

And the intentionality of their actions with the full understanding that in the darkest moment that our children are experiencing still cycling through Covid, the number of suicidal thoughts, the number of children who are experiencing depression, the number of children who are feeling a level of hopelessness, and social media praise on them.

Our greatest legal minds must come together and have a full frontal assault on social media and demand that they stop their actions of what they're inflicted on our children every day. We must go after them and be committed in doing so.

Number three, we call it Breaking Bread, Building Bonds, a thousand dinners across the city, 10 people at a minimum at each dinner, all coming from a different walk of life in a different background and doing something revolutionary, talking to each other, learning why someone wears a hijab, a yarmulke, a kufi, a turban, learning what Passover is Kwanzaa, learning what Diwali is about.

I'm blown away how diverse this city is and it is our secret weapon, our diversity and how little we know of each other. We live in these silos. Instead of leaning into the discomfort of learning something new and engaging with new people, we must be intentional about embracing the diversity of our culture and see the better part of us.

You know what's interesting about this country we call America? You are not called American Jewish. I'm not called American African. A person from China is not called an American Chinese.

America says, put your country first and be part of this amazing experience. I'm an African American. You are Jewish American, a Chinese, a Chinese American. It says you should hold on to your culture and be part of the underlying principle of what an American is about.

This is the only country on the globe with dream attached to its name. No German dream, no French dream, no Polish dream, but darn it, that's an American dream. And that dream is that foundation.

And we need to crosspollinate with all the excitement of knowing each other and learning from each other. Our children should know each other. Jordan should know your child, and then they will not draw swastikas without understanding what's the attachment to swastikas.

And I said to my Muslim brothers and sisters, Hamas is not Islam. Hamas must be destroyed. There is no bargaining for the terrible organization. And every hostage must be returned home, every hostage. But I'll never forget being in Africa, in Senegal, went to a place called Gorée Island. There's a place there called the Door of No Return. And in the dungeons, they would rape and hold the slaves before they went to America. They would live in their own ways. They would spend months without seeing sunshine having one meal a day.

And when you leave out of Gorée Island, right on top of the dungeons, there was a church. They would pray and they would worship on why slavery was God's doing.

And it took everything in me to not be angry at Christianity. And then I realized that man has always exploited religion for their own means. Hamas does not represent Islam. Hamas represents hate. Hamas is a terrorist organization that we must be committed to dismantling.

And I say to my Muslim brothers and sisters, separate yourselves and acknowledge the hatred from that. And you cannot do that by celebrating October 8th after we saw such a horrific act that took place in Israel. And we must lead that charge in ensuring that all people of faith stand up for what is right.

We may not share the same faith, but we share the same fate. We're in this together. And here's my commitment to you. For 22 years, I wore a bulletproof vest, stood on street corners and protected the children and families of this city in general, but specifically, the Jewish community.

You are not going to live in the city. We have to take off your yarmulke because you’re going on the subway station, you're not going to live in the city where your children will be afraid to go to Yeshiva or to go to school. You won't live in the city where you can't go to your synagogues. You won't live in prison with fear in the city. As long as I'm the mayor of the City of New York. It won't happen. It won't happen.

We'll never surrender. We will never surrender to hate. We will never surrender to antisemitism. We will never surrender to attacks or Sikh. We will never surrender to Islamophobia. We will never surrender to anti-Christian or anti LGBTQ or anti any other group.

We will never surrender. This is New York City, and if New York City never surrenders, the country would never surrender.

I believe in all my heart there's a dark energy that has engulfed our planet. There is this feeling of almost a dark nature and only we can take us out of it. And I need you so much to remain determined. We have gone through so much as a people and we are aligned with the pains that we have endured.

Mommy told me as a little boy, she said, baby, if you are fortunate to live long enough, you're going to be misfortunate to experience darkness and pain. Don't see darkness as a burial, see it as a plant, and let's turn pain into purpose.

This is a purposeful moment for all of us, and together we will push past the evil, the barbaric actions of Hamas and bring home the hostages and do everything impossible to ensure that never again is not a bumper sticker or a slogan, it's a way of life.

Our heart goes out to over 1,400 people we lost. We all feel the pain. And as I stated, then I'll say again, we're not all right, but we're going to do everything possible by coming together to be all right. God bless you. God bless New York. God bless America.

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