Hochul Signs Buffer Zone Bill At Met Council Breakfast

Governor Kathy Hochul on Sunday signed legislation establishing buffer zones around religious institutions and Jewish community spaces, prohibiting harassment of individuals entering or exiting such sites — making New York the latest state to enact such protections in the wake of a national surge in antisemitic incidents.

The signing took place at the Met Council’s annual legislative breakfast in New York City, where Hochul addressed a room packed with influential Jewish community figures and elected officials before affixing her signature to the measure. The crowd erupted in applause throughout her remarks, and the governor received a standing ovation.

Hochul was flanked by prominent officials as she signed the bill, including City Council Speaker Julie Menin and Attorney General Letitia James, whose presence underscored the broad support the measure has drawn across state and city government.

“You have no right to harass someone walking into a synagogue with their family to carry on a tradition that has been there for centuries and centuries, and have to put up with people screaming vile epithets,” Hochul said before the signing.

“That is wildly un-American, and it’s definitely not how we do it in New York — and that will be not just condemned but prohibited.”

The governor said the legislation would make it a criminal offense to harass individuals heading into a “religious organization, institution, place of worship, school, or community gathering place.”

Hochul drew on personal testimony in her remarks, citing what she described as repeated images from the aftermath of October 7 that she said she will “never get out of my head, ever, ever, ever,” and expressing frustration at what she characterized as an ongoing pattern of antisemitic incidents across the state.

“I’ve had enough of having to put out social media posts condemning the latest symbol of hate being etched on a wall at a synagogue or a yeshiva,” she said. “I’ve had enough with people being harassed on the streets and in our subways. I’ve had enough with people not being able to go to their place of worship freely as a place of gathering and comfort.”

Hochul also acknowledged community leaders and officials in attendance, including Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch, Attorney General Letitia James, and state legislators she credited with championing the bill.

Assemblyman Kalman Yeger (D-Brooklyn), one of the State legislation’s advocates, credited Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie with shepherding the bill to the finish line – and said that without Heastie, the measure would not have reached the governor’s desk in the form it did.

Yeger told Belaaz that the bill draft was narrower than sponsors had sought. Efforts to include community centers were blocked; the governor did not support that expansion, and the Senate resisted as well.

“It is only as strong as it is because Speaker Carl Heastie made it that way,” Yeger said. “The governor didn’t support our efforts to expand it to what it was, which was to include JCCs and other buildings of Jewish community interest, and the Senate opposed it at the beginning. But when we tried to squeeze those things in, the Senate didn’t actually let us get those pieces in. Carl Heastie wouldn’t leave the table until those things happened. That’s a push over the edge. 100 percent.”

The event, held each spring to celebrate the organization’s work fighting poverty among New York’s most vulnerable, has long served as a gathering place for Jewish community leaders and their allies in government.

But as elected official after elected official took the podium — many of them not Jewish — and spent the bulk of their remarks not on hunger relief or housing, but on antisemitism, the weight of the moment was unmistakable. The warmth in the room was real, the camaraderie genuine.

And yet the fact that so many officials felt compelled to address hatred at length at a poverty-fighting breakfast said something about just how much the community has had to carry.

The governor said she has grown weary of responding to incidents rather than preventing them. “I’ve had enough of having to put out social media posts condemning the latest symbol of hate being etched on a wall at a synagogue or a yeshiva,” she said. “I’ve had enough with people not being able to go to their place of worship freely as a place of gathering and comfort. This is how we say enough is enough.”

The state legislation runs in parallel with a City Council buffer zone bill championed by Speaker Menin — the first Jewish speaker in the council’s history — who described the measure as among the first acts of her speakership.

Menin told the crowd she had made combating antisemitism a defining priority from the moment she took the gavel, passing a five-point plan that included the buffer zone bill. “It should not be controversial that congregants have the right to freely enter and exit their house of worship without intimidation, harassment, or injury,” she said.

“It should not be controversial for students to enter and exit their school without intimidation, harassment, or injury.” Menin also highlighted a $`1.25 million allocation to the Museum of Jewish Heritage to expand a program bringing every eighth-grade public school student to the museum’s permanent Holocaust exhibition — a response, she said, to studies showing that 34 percent of young New Yorkers believe the Holocaust was a myth or was exaggerated.

“As a daughter of a Holocaust survivor, this is shameful. It’s unconscionable. It’s unacceptable,” said Menin, whose mother is from Hungary. “And I can assure you we are reversing that.”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, the highest-ranking Jewish elected official in the country, spoke on a deeply personal note, recounting how his family was massacred in Ukraine in 1941 when the Nazis invaded. “When the Nazis told my great grandmother, ‘You’re coming with us,’ she refused, and they machine-gunned every last one of them down — babies, the elderly, and everyone in between,” he said. Schumer connected that history to the present moment. “Far too many have forgotten. We see that as the consequence — rising antisemitism,” he said. “I worry about the future my grandchildren are going to inherit.”

NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch, who received a standing ovation of her own upon entering, struck a tone of personal resolve. “I was raised to believe deeply in Am Yisrael Chai, and that is how I am raising my kids,” said Tisch, who is Jewish. “I know how meaningful it is for so many of you to have a Jewish police commissioner. It is a responsibility I feel deeply in my mind, in my bones, and in my heart. I worry so that you shouldn’t have to.” She announced what she described as the most robust security plan the NYPD has ever assembled for any parade, with thousands of officers deployed for the Israel Day Parade later that morning.

NY Attorney General Letitia James was characteristically direct. “At a time when we are witnessing a rise in antisemitism, it is not just the responsibility of the Jewish community to respond — it requires all of us,” she said. “Any individual who engages in hate against the Jewish community or any other community will have to deal with Tish James — and she’s from Brooklyn.” The line drew laughter and applause. “Antisemitism will not be tolerated in the state of New York as long as I am the Attorney General,” she added.

Congressman Dan Goldman announced he would introduce the Jewish American Security Act in the House the following week — a bipartisan bill he said would increase and streamline nonprofit security grants, expand eligible expenses to include security personnel, and require social media companies to report to Congress on how their platforms are amplifying or suppressing hate speech.

“We have to stop the Jew tax,” Goldman said, referring to the outsized security burden Jewish institutions absorb. “The rise of antisemitism is scary. Swastikas are now routinely painted on Jewish homes and institutions. It cannot be normalized.”

Congresswoman Grace Meng of Queens highlighted her effort, together with Congressman Adriano Espaillat, to create a new federal grant specifically for security personnel at yeshivas and day schools.

Congressman Mike Lawler, who chairs the House Middle East and North Africa Subcommittee and represents the congressional district with the largest Jewish population in the country, said the fight must cross party lines without exception. “It is imperative to call out antisemitism on the right and on the left,” Lawler said. “Anti-Zionism is antisemitism. It is rooted in Jew hatred, and I, for one, will not stand for it.”

Lawler noted that Met Council serves not only Jewish families but African American, Latino, Asian American, and Muslim families in need, and pledged his office’s continued partnership.

Comptroller Mark Levine praised Met Council CEO David Greenfield, who MC’d the event. “He could be running a Fortune 500 company; he has instead given his life over to addressing poverty in New York” — and pushed back against narratives used to disparage the community.