Two days before Yom Kippur, I stood on the corner of East 86th Street and East End Avenue and watched more than 500 Jewish students do something most adults twice their age would hesitate to do. They davened Shacharis out loud, on a Manhattan sidewalk, in the open air. They sang. They danced. And then, one by one, they stepped forward and said plainly who they are.
The morning was called Kolot – Hebrew for “voices.” It was not a protest and not a rally. It was a joyful, unapologetic act of Jewish life, held a few blocks from Gracie Mansion, and it answered a hard season not with fear but with song. Behind the speakers hung a single banner – “Student Voices Speak Out” – ringed with the logos of the schools and organizations that made it happen: Ramaz, SAR, Kehilath Jeshurun, Romemu, the Israeli-American Council, and IMPACT, the nonprofit I helped build. Orthodox and non-Orthodox, in one place, saying the same thing.
It has been a hard couple of years to be a visibly Jewish New Yorker. This summer, Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s rhetoric on Israel and Zionism left much of the community shaken, and the language of “genocide” and “global intifada” has migrated from the fringes into ordinary political speech. But what happened at that corner was not a flinch. Our children met a hard moment by standing taller, singing louder, and wearing their Judaism in the open. That is resilience – and our students have it in abundance. So did the giants who came to stand with them.
Rabbi Binyamin “Bini” Krauss, head of school at SAR Academy, opened by pointing straight at the students. “You got up early, you got on a bus, and you just davened out loud in the street on a Friday morning. This is your morning.” Then he named the thing plainly: “We love New York. We love Israel. We don’t see a contradiction between the two, and we’re not going to apologize for either one. We’ll be peaceful this morning, and we’ll be loud. Those go together.”
The idea, he told me, was born over the summer, after a stretch of frightening incidents – a stabbing, a synagogue attack – and mayoral statements that landed hard. There was a reason to hold it in public two days before Yom Kippur. “One of the things we do on Yom Kippur is say parts of our prayer out loud,” he explained. “T’filah is about vulnerability, but it’s also about agency. We’re feeling vulnerable, and hopefully we’re going to find our agency this morning.” Joy and resilience, he said, were the whole point: “Joy means you feel you have a mission in life. And resilience means you can feel that joy even through the hard times.”
Rabbi Chaim Steinmetz of Kehilath Jeshurun reached for the Book of Yonah, read on Yom Kippur afternoon, and its turning point: Ivri anochi – “I am a Jew.” “Today we stand here in the streets of New York City, reciting ancient Jewish prayers,” he said, “and we could not declare more proudly: I am a Jew. We are proud New Yorkers, proud Jews, and proud Zionists.” He put the stakes bluntly: “Our children are being barraged with a propaganda campaign against Israel and Zionism. We need to teach them to be proud Jews now, so they are ready for university and beyond.”
The most electric moment belonged to Rabbi Avi Weiss, who led a prayer for soldiers, holding the dog tags of two grandchildren serving in the IDF. He reminded the students that 40 years ago, it was Rabbi Haskel Lookstein who led young people to the Soviet Mission to demand the right of Jews to their faith – and that they stood in that same lineage now. “Don’t be afraid,” he told them. “And when there is anti-Semitism, don’t run. Stand strong. The more you stand strong, the more we are protected.”
Then he turned, respectfully but without flinching, to the mayor, citing Natan Sharansky to draw the line our community has struggled to articulate: “I’m not talking about disagreeing with policies. But to say we have no right to a Jewish land – that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism.” And on the word “genocide,” he was unsparing: “Mr. Mayor, do you know who you’re talking about? You’re talking about my grandchildren. You’re talking about hundreds of Ramaz graduates, of SAR graduates, who are serving in the IDF.” His voice broke: “How dare you.”
Among us, not at the microphone but standing with the students, was the man Rabbi Weiss had invoked: Rabbi Haskel Lookstein, now in his 90s, who has spent a lifetime teaching this community how to stand up. I caught a few moments with him in the crowd, and he reached back eight decades to explain why the timing mattered. “In 1943, two days before Erev Yom Kippur, the Bergson Group organized 500 rabbis to come to Washington and ask President Roosevelt to do something about saving Jews,” he told me. “They came from as far away as Cincinnati when there were no planes. If they came two days before Yom Kippur, we can come three days before and say what has to be said.” His message was the one he has carried his whole life: “We’re 4,000 years old, and we’ve been doing good in the world for 4,000 years. And we’re not going to stop.”
That is what standing tall sounds like. But what moved me most is that the students did not need the adults to carry them.
Annie Croog, an SAR eighth grader, made the case for her generation: “Even though young people can’t vote yet, we still have a voice and we should use it when something matters to us.” Stella Zavodnick of SAR High School set the moment inside the long arc of Jewish history – a people “exiled and returned, scattered and rebuilt,” who every time were “still lighting candles, still telling stories, still choosing to live Jewish lives.” Jack Kaufthal of Ramaz answered darkness with a line from a Chabad family in Sydney: “We do not turn off menorahs. We don’t go down in darkness. We shine light.” Rabbi David Ingber of Romemu, a progressive rabbi and former Ramaz student, gave them the permission our moment too often denies: “Do not let anyone make your Jewishness smaller in order to make you acceptable. And do not let anyone make your heart smaller, either.”
At IMPACT, we have a phrase for all of this: Fear is loud, but joy is louder. No one understood that better than actor and comedian Michael Rapaport, who since October 7 has turned his platform into one of the loudest engines of Jewish pride in the country. Speaking out, he told me, “feels like breathing.” His whole strategy is joy. “Jewish joy is important, more than ever,” he said. “Us laughing, praying, living, and in every way possible continuing to shine our light.” He came for the kids. “It’s important they know they’re supported. Because what it means to be Jewish is changing – not just to Jews, but to the world. So, we have to stay together.”
What I watched on that sidewalk was that philosophy made real – joy as strategy, and a model our community needs: Put students at the front, and give them something to carry forward.
That charge came, at the event, from my IMPACT co-founder and president, Daniel Rosen, who addressed the students directly. “IMPACT was proud to help organize this event, where students and the community came together to speak out with a message of joy, resilience, and a commitment to service,” he said. “It was inspiring to see so many young faces coming together. Our children know that they need to Learn, Lead, Do – it’s up to you! This is what organizing looks like, and this is just the beginning.” He pressed the point past the sidewalk, toward the rest of their lives: “Wherever these young people go in life, they must speak up and speak out. As they move on to university, into the workforce, and eventually into building families of their own, they must carry with them a commitment to civic responsibility.” In practice, he said, that means voting and helping register others in their communities to vote, and “organizing, showing up at rallies, writing opinion pieces, and speaking out in their professions when it matters.”
Rabbi Joshua Lookstein, who closed the morning, borrowed an image from his grandfather. He had lately been walking through the city like a question mark, he said, and was done with that: “I commit to once again walking around this city as an exclamation point.”
The morning made a point of its patriotism. Rabbi Jonathan Kroll, principal of SAR High School, offered the centuries-old Prayer for the Government as respect, not grievance – standing “as a proud American, a proud New Yorker, a proud Jew, and a proud Zionist” with “great awe and admiration” for the country’s elected officials, the NYPD, and the armed forces. The students sang Acheinu, then HaTikvah, then “The Star-Spangled Banner,” and got back on their buses.
And that is the note I want to end on. Yes, anti-Semitism is rising in New York – no one on that corner pretended otherwise. But that is not the story of the morning. The story is that in the face of it, our children did not shrink from the moment; they filled it. Two days before the holiest day of our year, they answered it the only way our people ever have – by praying, singing, and dancing in the open, and standing tall.
The proof came days later, closer to home. On Yom Kippur, at the Young Israel of White Plains, I ran into SAR students who had been there. They told me it was one of the most important and meaningful things they had ever done. That is how you know a morning like this was not a one-time event. It planted something.
That is what organizing looks like. And this is just the beginning.
Aaron Herman is the co-founder and CEO of IMPACT, a movement that organizes, empowers, and mobilizes the Jewish community and its allies to combat hate while amplifying Jewish joy and resilience. Join the movement and follow @joinimpactnow on social media. Aaron is also a startup advisor, video journalist, and growth strategist specializing in Jewish storytelling and advocacy. His reporting has appeared in national and Jewish media outlets. He holds a BA from Binghamton University and an MPA from NYU’s Wagner School of Public Service. Aaron can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..