The Private Task Force Protecting New York Jews

In February, four Jews were attacked within three days in New York City. On February 8, an assailant pulled an 11-year-old Jewish girl’s hair and dragged her to the ground. That same afternoon, an attacker tried stabbing a Jewish man and shoved another in Crown Heights. Two days later, yet another Jewish man in the same neighborhood was assaulted.

Those were just the latest among multiple incidents that have terrorized the city’s Jewish community. Since 2020, New York has seen a Jewish man beaten with a crutch in Midtown; arson threats made against “Jewish little children” in a religious school in Brooklyn; and a thwarted plot to distribute poisoned sweets to Jewish kids.

It’s clear that New York needs to do a better job protecting its Jewish residents. One group, the Community Service Initiative, has shown the way. The private task force has monitored anti-Semitic threats and foiled would-be attackers, providing a model for the city and other communities to follow.

The Community Security Initiative was founded in 2019 as a joint venture of the United Jewish Appeal-Federation of New York and the Jewish Community Relations Council. CSI works closely with law enforcement—the NYPD, local New York State police departments, and sometimes the FBI—to monitor and address anti-Semitic threats in the New York metro area. Its team of nine regional directors tracks Internet threats, provides active-shooter training for synagogues and schools, and has established a real-time communication system for Jewish institutions across the region.

Mitch Silber, CSI’s executive director and former director of intelligence analysis at the NYPD, heads the operation. His team includes former Shin Beit officers, NYPD intelligence experts, and CIA analysts, and is laser-focused on protecting the city’s Jewish community.

The group tracks and disrupts anti-Semitic activity. In 2024, CSI flagged 221 threats against Jewish New Yorkers’ lives. Earlier this year, the group reported a threat against Manhattan’s Central Synagogue, made by a Utah man who pledged to kill Jews just as they had “killed me in my past life.” CSI referred the threat to the NYPD Intelligence and Counterterrorism Bureau, and the subject was apprehended in the Lincoln Tunnel before he could drive into Manhattan.

Tracking these incidents has given Silber a unique perspective on the threats facing American Jews. He classifies most would-be attackers as “homegrown threats”—U.S. citizens radicalized through social media. He estimates that about 60 percent of violent threats against Jews come from far-right extremists, and roughly 40 percent from Islamist radicals. While the far-right threat remains largely online, he says, Islamist extremists pose a more immediate danger to Jews in New York. The line between the two groups, however, is blurrier than one might think: “As unlikely as it seems, we have seen white supremacists expressing pro-Hamas sentiments online,” he noted.

Anti-Semitic threats have grown in number and intensity—not just in New York, but across the country. The need for programs like CSI that proactively defend Jews has become more urgent. Silber’s group, with its law-enforcement-focused approach, offers a blueprint for communities to follow.

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