New York Mayor Bill de Blasio Kisses Ring of Skver Rebbe David Twersky

Image by getty images

By Josh Nathan-Kazis February 24, 2015

New York City mayor Bill de Blasio appeared to literally kiss the hand of a controversial Hasidic leader last night at the rabbi’s son’s wedding in upstate New York, the Jewish blog JPUpdates reported.

In videos and photos posted on the blog, de Blasio can be seen shaking the hand of Rabbi David Twersky, the rebbe of the Skver Hasidic sect. In a one-second video, the mayor can be glimpsed bending to kiss the rebbe’s hand.

The mayor’s press office did not respond to a question about the visit. The mayor’s trip to New Square was not mentioned on his public schedule, which is circulated to the press daily.

Twersky rules the Rockland County village of New Square with an iron hand. A Forward expose by Frimet Goldberger published in December found that Twersky, who is seen as nearly godlike by his followers, failed to act on allegations of sexual abuse in his community. A New Square resident who bucked an edict to pray only in Twersky’s synagogue was the victim of an arson attack perpetrated by a young man who lived in Twersky’s house.

It’s unclear why de Blasio would have attended the wedding. The Skver sect is a powerful voting bloc in state and national politics, but it has relatively few followers in New York City. Still, Twersky has drawn a steady stream of high-profile politicians to his enclave.

De Blasio himself has a long history in New Square. In 2000, when the mayor was working as Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager in her race for U.S. Senate, Clinton visited New Square on a campaign stop. When she received nearly all of the village’s 1,400 votes in the Senate election, questions were raised about whether Bill Clinton’s 11th-hour grant of clemency to four Skver members had been part of a quid pro quo deal.

Josh Nathan-Kazis is a staff writer for the Forward. He covers charities and politics, and writes investigations and longform.

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO