Last Thursday, I got up a little early and traveled with a bit less than a minyan of fellow New Jersey Jewish businesspeople and lawyers and participated in the annual New Jersey Jewish Business Alliance (NJJBA) mission to Trenton. While our paper and its pages have featured many NJJBA events and missions over the years and I have personally been to many, I had never gone to our state capital for such a mission, and I felt the time had come for me to make a proper visit.

The mission was led by NJJBA executive director David (Dovid) Rosenberg who I have gotten to know quite well over the past 11-12 years as he has grown his original organization, the Hudson County Jewish Business Alliance, into what is today the NJJBA and who is known statewide and beyond as one of the leading representatives of our community. From my perch as publisher, I have proudly watched him grow his organization, build close friendships and strong relationships across both sides of the political aisle as well as with many of the largest players and businesses serving the Jewish community today. Over the years, David has become quite skilled at the sensitive business of handling key political relationships both within and without our community and I have had a first hand view of some of his efforts and achievements.

After meeting in the State House Annex and leaving our coats in an unused committee room, we trekked over to the recently restored and quite magnificent State House to meet with the governor’s Deputy Chief of Staff Emy Quispe and Edan Blank, a legislative aide to the governor who is also the Jewish community liaison. Emy told our group that her first day on the job was unfortunately Oct. 7, 2023, and her first months on the job were filled with meeting the challenges and issues raised post-Oct. 7 within the state.

Our meeting with Emy and Edan was not rushed, in part because the Assembly and Senate were both not in session that day, and we were each able to talk freely about what we did, what our agenda was, and if we had any specific or more personal requests or topics of interest. Our main topics for the day were the pending antisemitism bill and a variety of business tax topics, but I was also able to discuss issues related specifically to The Jewish Link and the not-insignificant costs involved with our home delivered papers, which went up a lot in 2024 due mainly to specific legislation signed by Gov. Murphy. While I didn’t succeed in singlehandedly rolling back the higher costs and the unwanted legislation, I learned a lot about its history and more specifically, what steps I will need to take to get somewhere, if I want to pursue it. It won’t be easy but at least I have a sense of the path I would need to take.

After the meeting with the governor’s staff, we went back to our committee room and joined a standing sushi lunch with a host of NJ Assembly members and state senators from all over the state. It was fun getting to know where our state’s political leadership came from, their backgrounds and colleges, and the towns and counties they come from and represent proudly in Trenton. We each spoke about our respective communities and joked together about some of the differences and similarities between the Jewish community and their respective ethnic or religious communities. Although the conversations did not get too deep or too intensely political or policy-oriented, the good feelings and vibes directed to us as Jewish community representatives were pretty genuine, I felt. It was clear that we have some friends in the State House and although they wouldn’t necessarily be with our community on absolutely every issue, the strong sense that came across from my admittedly limited interactions was that we could work together on a range of issues for the state, our towns and our community. I hope I am right.

A major topic of discussion for us that day were the pending antisemitism bills in both the Assembly and State Senate, which would have New Jersey establish the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) definition of antisemitism as state law. Without getting into the details of the bill or its impact, supporting this bill seems like a no-brainer. Every mainstream Jewish organization has come out in support of this and it has many sponsors, but it has run into some serious headwinds and may not pass.

In talking one-on-one to these legislators, we learned why. We were told quite directly that while they personally support the legislation, they are facing direct opposition to it from key leaders and blocs in their home districts representing active Muslim and pro-Palestinian groups and this could lead to serious election challenges in their next election. Listening to these comments was a humbling and sobering experience for me and our group to hear. Although we pushed back and tried to convince them of the need to support this bill regardless of the opposition they may get, I am not sure if we changed any minds. (As an update and aside, our cause was undermined further this past weekend by Jewish gubernatorial candidate Steven Fulop declaring openly that he does not support the bill and would actually veto the antisemitism bill if it passed.)

With this in mind, we headed into our final meeting of the day with NJ General Assembly State Speaker Craig Coughlin in his chambers. We revisited many of the same topics from earlier in the day and it was heartening to hear from the Speaker his full-throated voice of support for the IHRA antisemitism bill. He committed to us that he would certainly be looking to get it passed. I hope he will make good on that statement. I will certainly be following this.

At the beginning of the meeting, I had the chance to show him the latest edition of our paper and he was impressed to see a healthy-looking weekly paper and spent a good few minutes paging through it, commenting upon the ads and headlines, and asking me a few questions about our dynamic readership. I explained to him what made our observant Jewish readership so unique and why our paper has been thriving even in 2025, and I also told him about the power of Shabbat both for keeping the Jewish people strong and for keeping print media strong as well. I think he liked what I said.

We ended the meeting and the scheduled mission program with a quick tour of the imposing and grand Assembly chamber and with a group picture on the balcony/viewing area with the Speaker (see pic above). And I drove back from Trenton thinking about all of the engaging conversations I had with the many legislators and legislative staff with whom we interacted. All in all, I hope I represented our people well and made a positive impact upon whomever I spoke with. You just never know where these kinds of things will lead.