NYC GOP mayoral nominee claims Orthodox Jews 'will control us' in 2018 video

In a video posted to Facebook in 2018, Curtis Sliwa, the GOP nominee for mayor of New York City, is shown railing against Orthodox Jews for trying “to take over your community.”

Appearing at a meeting of an Orange County, New York, advocacy group, Preserving Blooming Grove, Sliwa slammed New York’s Orthodox community for “siphoning off social services,” diverting money from public schools to yeshivas, and voting as a bloc.

“We’re not talking about poor, impoverished, disabled people who need help, we’re talking about able-bodied men who study Torah and Talmud all day and we subsidize them,” Sliwa said in the clip, posted on the Facebook page of United Hudson Valley, which often livestreams community meetings. “And then all they do is make babies like there’s no tomorrow and who’s subsidizing that? We are. So are we the schmucks and putzes? Yes.”

“They’re doing it openly and brazenly and our politicians are rolling over for them,” he continued. “Why? Because of the gold. Because they contribute. The big machers will write the checks and the checks don’t bounce.”

Vying to run the nation’s largest city, Sliwa coasted to victory against his Republican primary opponent Fernando Mateo on Tuesday, though he faces an uphill battle against whoever is declared his Democratic opponent. Currently, Eric Adams leads the race among Democrats, though it may take weeks to formally declare a winner due to New York’s new ranked-choice voting system. 

The 67-year-old Brooklyn native is a talk radio host and founder of the Guardian Angels, a nonprofit group that mobilizes private citizens into “safety patrols,” wearing their trademark red berets across the city.

Sliwa claims during the meeting that he would go into Orthodox communities in New York and “liberate” Jews from their “chains and shackles.” 

“If somebody comes in and tries to take over your community lock, stock, and barrel and break all the rules and expect the tax dollars to go to their community, and they’re taking away from you, and their kids aren’t even being serviced in the public schools, but they want all the money in the public schools to go to the yeshivas, then you got to righteously stand up and say no, it ends right here,” Sliwa said.

Sliwa also repeatedly took aim at Orthodox Jews for voting as a bloc.

“They’re being told by the rebbe or rabbi, this is who you vote for,” Sliwa said. “You don’t vote for them, there’s a hell of a price to pay. Forget the SNAPs, forget the Section A, forget the Medicaid, and you will be ostracized.”

He added: “If we don’t control the voting apparatus, they will control us.”

The GOP nominee claimed cover from antisemitism because he has two Jewish sons.

“The moment you bring this to somebody’s attention, you’re called an antisemite,” Sliwa said. “You’re not antisemites, you’re trying to preserve your community.”

Sliwa’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment from The American Independent Foundation.

Young Advocates for Fair Education, a Jewish nonprofit group focused on improving secular education in Orthodox Jewish Hasidic and Haredi schools, slammed Sliwa for his comments.

“Singling out Hasidic Jews and blaming them for all the city’s problems is antisemitic, and we reject this hateful rhetoric,” the group said in a statement.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.