For Jewish activists in Brooklyn, Yom Kippur becomes a day to mourn Palestinians

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NEW YORK (RNS) — Hundreds of Jewish New Yorkers marked Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, on Monday (Sept. 21) with a mourning ritual memorializing Palestinians killed in the Israel-Hamas war. A few days before Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s highly anticipated visit for the U.N. General Assembly, the gathering also served to denounce how the Israeli government has handled the war.

Brad Lander, a New York Democratic nominee for Congress, who is Jewish, addressed the crowd gathered at Brooklyn’s Grand Army Plaza by denouncing Netanyahu’s visit and what he described as a “genocide” happening in Gaza.

He said he belonged to a group of Jews “who say no to ethnic cleansing, who say no to human-made famine, who say no to the use of U.S. tax dollars to bomb entire families, who say no to war criminals in our city this holy week or any week.”

In the city that’s home to the largest Jewish population in the U.S., Netanyahu’s visit has prompted divides — especially after Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a staunch Israel critic, in July reignited the debate over Netanyahu’s visit to the U.S.…