The protest outside Park East Synagogue in New York was not a complicated sociological moment. It was a group of demonstrators shouting slurs, taunts, and explicitly hostile language at Jews entering a house of worship.
That should be the starting point for any analysis. And yet, some commentary—notably a recent Forward essay—treated the episode as an expression of Jewish diversity or internal contradiction. The piece even suggested that if we want leaders who “represent all of us,” we should accept their “ambivalence,” because Jewish communities are strongest when their internal tensions are openly acknowledged.
This framing sounds sophisticated, but it collapses under the weight of its abstractions. Jewish pluralism is real and often a source of genuine vitality. But none of it is relevant to whether it is acceptable to create an environment of intimidation outside a synagogue. Jews disagree about Israel, theology, immigration policy, and nearly everything else. That diversity does not transform threatening chants into legitimate discourse, and it does not change the basic civic expectation that Americans should be able to enter their houses of worship without harassment or fear. A functioning liberal society requires predictable norms; this is one of them. These are the guardrails that allow communities with deep differences to live together with trust.
Anchoring the event in internal Jewish complexity is not nuance; it is an evasion. It shifts attention from conduct to context, as though pluralism could reframe behavior that, in any other setting, would be recognized as inappropriate. If a group had surrounded a Black church, a Sikh gurdwara, or a mosque and shouted degrading epithets at worshippers trying to enter, no responsible observer would call the incident a window into the community’s “rich contradictions.” They would identify it correctly: a breach of norms and a moment requiring institutional clarity and reassurance. The fact that this basic observation becomes contested when Jewish institutions are involved says something unsettling about the current climate.
The call for “ambivalence” from public officials is even more misguided. Leaders face hard tradeoffs constantly. Free speech, public safety, protest rights, and community trust do not always align neatly. But this is not one of those ambiguous cases. The core question is simple: should people be able to walk into a synagogue without being shouted at because they are Jews? That is not a partisan puzzle. It is a baseline norm of a pluralistic society. When leaders cannot affirm that plainly, the issue is not that the situation is complex—it is that moral clarity has been replaced with political calculation.
This hesitation is occurring in a moment when American Jews already feel unusually vulnerable. According to the ADL, antisemitic incidents reached historic highs in 2024 and have remained elevated in 2025. FBI hate-crime statistics continue to show that Jews—two percent of the population—are targeted in nearly 70 percent of reported religion-based hate crimes. On college campuses, FIRE and the AMCHA Initiative have documented sharp rises in incidents where Jewish students report feeling singled out or pressured because of their identity or perceived political views. These trends do not mean every confrontation is motivated by antisemitism. But they underscore why clarity, rather than ambivalence, is required when harassment does occur, particularly in sacred spaces. Communities cannot rely on norms that leaders are unwilling to defend.
Pluralism depends on boundaries. It requires institutions that can distinguish between protest and menace, disagreement and demeaning behavior, dissent and targeting. The Forward’s argument erases those distinctions. It implies that because Jews are a complex community with internal rifts, external hostility deserves a softer reading. But no amount of internal disagreement licenses the degrading treatment of Jews entering a synagogue, and no amount of rhetorical sophistication turns intimidation into cultural reflection.
The Park East incident does not call for grandstanding. It calls for accuracy and for a reaffirmation of the norms that allow diverse communities to live together: every American has the right to enter a house of worship without being subjected to hostility because of who they are. Leaders who cannot say this plainly are not preserving pluralism, they are undermining it.
Internal Jewish debates will continue. They should. A community that wrestles openly with its values is a healthy one. But those debates cannot be used to reinterpret moments of targeting. The safety and dignity of a religious community are not “contradictions” to be managed. They are commitments to be upheld.
And when a line is crossed—like at Park East Synagogue—leaders owe the public something better than hesitation. They owe clarity. Ambivalence may have its place in politics, but safeguarding the ability of Americans to enter their houses of worship without fear is not one of those places. It is a basic civic obligation, and it should never be negotiable.
This article first appeared on American Enterprise Institute’s website.
Samuel J. Abrams is a Nonresident Senior Fellow at AEI. He lives in New York City, blocks from Park East Synagogue.