Dozens Arrested as 1,000+ Jews Demand Gaza Ceasefire at Rabbi-Led ​Yom Kippur Protest in NYC

Dozens of people were arrested in New York City on Thursday during a protest led by rabbis on Yom Kippur—the holiest day of the Jewish calendar—demanding a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and an end to US complicity in Israel's genocide.

More than 1,000 Jews plus allies turned out for the demonstration, which was led by the group Rabbis for Ceasefire. The protest started around 3:30 pm local time at Brooklyn Borough Hall, where rabbis led a Yizkor, a memorial prayer of mourning recited just four times per year, including on Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement and repentance.

Some protesters carried a banner reading, "Not Another Bomb," written in Hebrew and English.

"Our heart is broken for every single person who has been murdered, and we want to convey the fact that this has to end," Rabbi Elliot Kukla told CBS New York.

Protesters then marched to the Brooklyn Bridge, where some sat down, locked their arms together, and sang while blocking traffic to the span. New York Police Department (NYPD) officers subsequently arrested at least 56 people, according to the New York Post.

Many of the arrested protesters chanted, "Let Gaza Live!" as their hands were zip-tied and they were hauled off to an awaiting NYPD bus.

Asked why she was arrested, one keffiyeh-clad woman said, "Because I’m using this sacred holiday of Yom Kippur, as a Jewish person whose ancestors perished during the Holocaust, to protest against the genocide of the Palestinian people in my name."

"And I say, not in my name," she added.

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Speakers at the protest included New York City Comptroller Brad Lander—an ally of Democratic mayoral candidate and staunch Palestine defender Zohran Mamdani—who told the crowd that "we must today take collective responsibility for what the Israeli government has been doing, is doing today, on Yom Kippur," with "over 65,000 Palestinians killed, mostly women and children, whole families wiped out, food used as a weapon."

Earlier this week, President Donald Trump welcomed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House. The right-wing Israeli leader is a fugitive from the International Criminal Court in The Hague, which last year ordered his arrest for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes, including murder and forced starvation.

Like former President Joe Biden before him, Trump has approved billions of dollars in US armed aid to Israel, even while senior Trump administration officials acknowledge that children and others are starving to death in Gaza.

Lander took aim at US complicity in the genocide, decrying "the bombs funded by our taxpayer dollars in the name of the Jewish state," as well as the "desecration of Judaism."

The Jewish religion emphasizes the ancient tenets of tzedek, mishpat, and din—righteousness, justice, and law—as well as pikuach nefesh, or saving life, which overrides nearly every other religious law including kosher dietary restrictions and keeping the Sabbath.

Just 2.4% of the US population, Jews have had an outsize presence at pro-Palestine demonstrations since October 2023, with groups like Jewish Voice for Peace, IfNotNow, and Rabbis for Ceasefire often leading large protests against Israel's war and US complicity under both Trump and Biden.

Jews have opposed Zionism—the mainly European settler-colonial movement to reestablish a Jewish homeland in Palestine—since the earliest days of the experiment. Even some early Zionists foresaw the genesis of events like the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, with Ahad Ha'am, father of cultural Zionism, writing after an 1891 trip to Palestine that "if the time comes when [Jews are] encroaching upon the native population, they will not easily yield their place."