Rabbi Moshe Wiener, executive director of the Jewish Community Council of Greater Coney Island, was planning a community gathering in response to a July 4 mass shooting in Coney Island, in which eight members of the same non-Jewish family were wounded, when he heard from City Hall.
Zohran Mamdani, mayor of New York City and a frequent critic of Israel whom many Jewish leaders have decried as an antisemite, wanted to attend.
“He’s still the mayor of the city of New York, and we have to show respect,” Wiener told JNS. “He wants to do the right thing for the city of New York, and whether we agree or disagree with his policies, the best that we can do as a social service agency is try to impress upon and educate him to the greatest extent possible of what works, what’s needed, what unmet needs there are.”
One of the Jewish Community Council of Greater Coney Island’s programs that aims to curb violence is Operation H.O.O.D. (Helping Our Own Develop).
“I hope that he’ll agree and support initiatives that will make a positive change in the lives of the residents of the city,” Wiener said of the mayor.
“It was really extraordinary that he stayed there for the full hour-and-a-half,” said the rabbi, who is part of the Chabad movement but doesn’t hold an official or leadership role. “He was very, very compassionate. It was very impressive the way that he interacted with them.”
Mamdani even “stayed the extra time” at the end of the event to “talk to them and comfort them and encourage them,” Wiener said, of the shooting victims’ family members.
Wiener used the community gathering to urge the mayor and lawmakers to invest in violence prevention, trauma recovery and vocational training.
“Law enforcement is indispensable,” he said in his public remarks at the gathering. “Violence interruption is indispensable. Families are indispensable. Schools are indispensable. Faith communities are indispensable. Each has a unique responsibility that no one else can fulfill.”
Wiener asked the city to revive plans for a long-delayed vocational training center in Coney Island. Stable employment is one of the strongest long-term prevention tools, he said.
“City-owned property at Surf Avenue and West 28th Street was designated” for the site more than 25 years ago, he said at the gathering. “Then circumstances changed.”
The rabbi cited frozen land-use approvals and canceled funding and called for funding to be renewed. “That dream should not remain unfinished,” he said at the event.
He also called for permanent funding for H.O.O.D’s trauma recovery center, which relies on annual New York City Council appropriations.
“May the tragic shootings that have brought us together today become more than moments of grief,” he told attendees.
Wiener told JNS that he entered social services work 45 years ago, after seeking a rabbinic position in education.
What began with one contract in an office that “was a large closet in the local Jewish Y” has grown into a citywide organization with nearly 400 employees providing services across New York City’s five boroughs, he said.
