Blakeman signs anti-Semitism bill

We have to find out the root cause of [anti-Semitism] … We need to be proactive, not reactive.”

County Legislator Arnold Drucker

Why an anti-Semitism task force?

The task force is directed to host one or more public hearings to engage governmental and community leaders, law enforcement personnel, clergy, academics, members of the public and key stakeholders to gather facts about the origins and extent of antisemitism in Nassau County.

Upon completion of these hearings and a public comment period of at least 60 days, the task force will submit a report containing recommendations for legislative action.

In addition to its fact-finding mission, the task force is charged with educating youth by hosting a Virtual Youth Roundtable against Anti-Semitism. Focused upon how the law and public policy can help to diminish bias and insensitivity, the event will be known as “Cardozo Day” in honor of esteemed New York jurist and former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Benjamin N. Cardozo.

For its definition of anti-Semitism, the task force relies on the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance Working Definition of Anti-Semitism, which was recognized by former County Exectuve Laura Curran by executive order on June 23, 2021.

Currently the task force includes three Minority Caucus members: Minority Leader Kevan Abrahams (D-Freeport), Arnold Drucker, (D-Plainview), and Joshua Lafazan (D-Woodbury). It also includes Denise Ford (D-Long Beach), Mazi Pilip (R-Great Neck), and Howard Kopel (R-Lawrence).

Resolution 218-21 is the bill originally passed on Aug. 2. It included the county executive or a designee as an advisory member. Resolution 6-22, the amended version, was passed Jan. 24 and signed on Jan. 27 to update the task force’s due dates and add the county executive as a voting member.

The new deadline for recommendations for legislative action is Yom Hashoah on April 28, 2022.

Yom Hazikaron laShoah ve-laG’vurah, or Yom HaShoah, is the day when the Holocaust is commemorated yearly in Israel.

Two events of particular relevance to Nassau County’s Jewish population occurred at the Theodore Roosevelt Legislative and Executive Building in Mineola on Jan. 27: County Executive Bruce Blakeman, who is Jewish, signed an amended bill creating the Nassau County Special Legislative Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, and he led a commemoration of International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

In the stately Ceremonial Room, Blakeman signed the amended version of the bill that was approved by the County Legislature on Aug. 1 last year. The bill (see sidebar)was spearheaded by Legislator Arnold Drucker, a Democrat from Plainview.

The task force did not convene in 2021, but now has a full roster of appointees and will pursue its original plan of action.

Just before signing the bill, Blakeman said he thought it was “a great start,” but he wanted to broaden the task force to make it more inclusive.

“In the Jewish community,” he said, “we have on a religious basis, Orthodox Jews, Conservative Jews, Reform Jews, Reconstruction Jews, and then we have different ethnic Jews, Ashkenazis, Sephardic, Persian, Ethiopian, French, so I think we need to broaden the task force, and more is better.”

Eric Spinner, a 78-year-old veteran from New Hyde Park and member of Post 652 of the Jewish War Veterans in Merrick, attended the signing. “I think Bruce is on the right track,” he said. “Anti-Semitism has been a big problem. It’s increasing now with the pandemic, but it’s been a problem for many, many years.”

Drucker said in a post-signing interview that, although Nassau County has not seen the degree of anti-Semitism present in other locations, “There have been swastikas painted on synagogues and sidewalks, there have been destruction and vandalism at institutions of worship.” He spearheaded the task force because, he said, “We have to nip it in the bud. We have to find out the root cause of it. … We need to be proactive, not reactive.”

Legislator Delia DeRiggi-Whitton, a Democrat from Glen Cove, who attended in support of the bill, held in her hand a report from the Nassau County Police Department’s Detective Division on bias incidents and hate crimes for 2021. Reported anti-Semitism incidents totaled 24 – higher than any other category.

[subhead] Holocaust Remembrance Day

On the steps of the legislative building, as the sun sank low, Blakeman thanked the county legislators present for the International Holocoast Remembrance Day Ceremony: Drucker, DeRiggi-Whitton, Denise Ford (D-Long Beach), Mazi Pilip (R-Great Neck), John Ferretti (R-Levittown), Steve Rhoads (R-Bellmore),Carrié Solages (D-Valley Stream), and Debra Mulé (D-Freeport).

All had come to hear speakers and to light the dome of the legislative building with yellow, honoring the Jews in Nazi-occupied lands who were forced to wear yellow Star of David badges and yellow armbands from the mid-1930s until World War II ended.

Among the speakers was Mazi Pilip, the newest legislator, who immigrated to Israel with her parents in 1991, during a period of dangerous instability in their home country of Ethiopia.

“My husband’s gramndma survived the Holocaust,” Pilip said. “Unfortunately, her family was murdered…. We light this dome as a symbol of not only remembering, but to commit that we will never stay silent, we will never look thataway, we will never ignore … never again.”

Rabbi Mordechai Kamenetzky, dean of Yeshiva of South Shore, had just returned from visiting Vilna and the Seventh Fort in Lithuania, two locations where thousands of Jews were murdered by the Nazi regime, including his uncle and his father’s cousins – and not only by Nazis, but by ordinary Lithuanians who turned on their Jewish neighbors with pitchforks and stones.

“What makes a normal citizen turn into the same beast as the Nazis and the aggressors that we all know about?” Kamenetzky said. “It’s when there’s an aura of fear, misinformation and hate that fills the air, when little things begin to grow and it does not stop and we are not educating – when we’re allowing incidents to happen and covering them over, by calling antisemitic attacks just political incidents.”

Andrea Bolender, chair of the board of the Holocaust Memorial and Tolerance Center of Nassau County, whose father survived a Nazi extermination camp, listed a cluster of Jewish support organizations that supported ceremonial lightings throughout the state.

“From Niagara Falls to Nassau County,” Bolender said. “New York has turned yellow.”

As darkness fell, everyone present held small electric candles and watched golden-yellow light wash over the dome.

“We light a candle and the dome of the Theodore Roosevelt Executive and Legislative Building,” said Mulé in a post-lighting statement, “to remember the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust and the millions more who were victims of Nazi hatred … renewing our commitment to educating future generations about the horrors of the Holocaust so that such atrocities can never happen again.”