Transcript: Mayor Adams Hosts Jewish Heritage Reception

July 8, 2025

Mayor Eric Adams: Thank you. Thank you to the first deputy mayor and his awesome team that is really being coordinated by Randy and my amazing chief of staff Camille Joseph Varlack as they navigate the challenges in the city and make sure that we create a city where all can raise healthy children and families. 

Many years ago, about eight years ago, I was at an event, one of the Jewish heritage events, and I told the story of the lesson I learned in elementary school. It was a crude example, but it really personified what I saw on the horizon. It was in the science lab where the teacher showed us that if you place a frog in hot water, it would immediately jump out. But if you place it in cool water and turn the temperature up one degree at a time, it will remain in there until it boils itself to death. That is what I feel has happened over the last few years. 

We have turned the antisemitism degree up one degree at a time, and many of us have stood there and watched their hatred boil our cities and our country and even in the international community. The first thing we must acknowledge is that the heat of antisemitism has gotten too hot in our country, and it cannot continue to rise in degrees in our city where we have the largest Jewish population outside of Israel. 

So I'm here to turn off the flame, to get the frog out of the pot, and make sure that we don't allow hate to live in our city in any form and in any way. And why is it personal for me as an African American? Go back to the name Julius Rosenwald. He was one of the founders of Howard University, Dillard College. He opened 4,000 schools in the Deep South when African Americans were not allowed to sit in integrated schools. At one time, 40 percent of the students from the Deep South were in his schools. 

I do it because of the young men who went to Mississippi and died because they were fighting for civil rights. I do it because during the heated summers of the Mississippi riots, 51 percent of the students that went there to fight for African Americans were Jewish students. I do it because when Dr. King needed allies to march next to him, he found those allies in the Jewish community. 

I do it because when you look at your benevolence, when you look at how you show your level of altruism, of giving back to causes, giving back to needy institutions, you build in your culture the term mitzvah, of giving back every day in a real way. 

You have the right to be in the city and anywhere in this country. And history has shown that through time, you often have to find yourself leaving, fleeing. From the days of Moses, to fleeing Spain, when Christopher Columbus was leaving, to the days of living in the Jewish quarters in Rome, to the days of the Holocaust, you found yourself constantly leaving. 

And I've heard this year, particularly after the primary, many of my Jewish brothers and sisters saying they're leaving. And I'm saying to you, we will run no more. We will stay and fight for the city that we love. We will not be the generation of fleeing and of leaving. We will be the generation to push back against hate. That's what we must be. 

We must be motivated. We must be energized. And everyone is talking about how young people have been energized in one section of the city. But I'm going to tell you something. I have been moving around this city and I'm seeing a level of energy in the young people of this community that I've never seen before. They know their role. 

And it's about creating a city where Sikhs can walk the street without someone attacking him because he has on a turban. It's about a city where members of the AAPI community can be able to exist without being demonized or harmfully treated. It's about a city where women can wear a hijab and ride on a subway system without being assaulted and beaten. 

It's about being able to wear your Star of David or your yarmulke and not be fearful in your synagogue or your houses of worship. It's about a city where you can define yourself and know that you are allowed to be here no matter who you are and no matter how you acknowledge and worship. This is a city that we must live in and must create. 

And it's about a city. It's about a city where the person that sits in the back of a limousine is treated with the same respect as the person that drives the limousine. That's the city that we live. And it's about a city where you don't tax communities based on your ethnicity. You use taxes to provide service to the city and they're equitably distributed. That's the city that we want. 

And so we celebrate you here under this tent in the hot weather to tell you that you have contributed to our city. And this city belongs to you as with all groups in this city. And united together we'll continue to make this a city where we can raise healthy children and families. This is a celebration of the one million Jews contribution to the city. And tonight we're going to honor some of your great heroes and sheroes that have provided a safe haven of love and commitment in this great city called New York. 

So I say to you don't live in fear. Don't live in anxiety. This city belongs to you as it belongs to every group in this city. I am proud to be the mayor of the greatest city on the globe. And we are great because we have the largest population of the globe's population. Largest Spanish-speaking, largest South and Central America in America, largest of all groups. And specifically the largest Jewish population is right here in New York. Thank you for your contributions. Let's honor our honorees.

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