Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Brooklyn Enclave Thwarts Atheist Billboard

An atheist organization’s Hebrew-language billboard calling God a “myth” was not unveiled near a Brooklyn Hasidic enclave as scheduled.

The billboard sponsored by the American Atheists organization was supposed to be unveiled Tuesday in New York’s South Williamsburg. But when workers from the advertising company came to erect the sign on top of an apartment building the landlord would not allow them into the building, the Brooklyn Paper reported.

Instead, the group will on Thursday erect the billboard at a site on the Brooklyn-Queens expressway near the original site, MSNBC reported.

On Wednesday the group is set to erect an Arabic-language billboard with the same message near the Islamic center in Paterson, New Jersey, a community with a large Muslim population.

David Silverman, president of American Atheist, blamed the hitch in the group’s plans on powerful neighborhood rabbis, according to the Brooklyn Paper.

“The Jews have stopped the billboard,” Silverman told the newspaper. “It’s really ugly bigotry. As a former Jew, it’s repugnant to see Jews act like this.”

Landlord Kenny Stier told the newspaper that “I don’t want to get involved in this.”

The billboard advertises an atheist rally in Washington DC on March 24.

A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism so that we can be prepared for whatever news 2025 brings.

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. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:

  • Credit the Forward
  • Retain our pixel
  • Preserve our canonical link in Google search
  • Add a noindex tag in Google search

See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.