Pesach Osina, an Orthodox Jew who won the Democratic primary for a state Assembly seat to represent parts of Queens on Tuesday, doesn’t think that the party whose nomination he secured, which has embraced some politicians with antisemitic and anti-Israel views, is the same party that he has known his whole life.
“That’s not the party that we have grown up with,” he told JNS, after securing the nomination for Assembly District 23, which includes parts of the Rockaways which have large Jewish populations.
“The Democratic Party as a whole—the party that we’ve known, that we’ve grown up with—is not an anti-Jewish party,” Osina said. “It’s a party that reflects our values.”
Osina received 3,329 votes (60.6%), compared to attorney Mike Scala’s 2,136 (38.9%), with about 81.59% of the vote counted. He is backed by incumbent Stacey Pheffer Amato, the Democratic Assembly member, who has held the seat since 2017 and announced in 2025 that she would not seek reelection.
He will face Tom Sullivan, a Republican, in November’s general election.
Osina, an active member of the Jewish Community Council of the Rockaway Peninsula, told JNS that if elected, he would be willing to decry members of his own party who he thinks have crossed the line on Israel or Jew-hatred.
“My job right now is to find a common denominator and work with my colleagues to ensure that resources are coming back to the community,” he said. “Of course, if a colleague disagrees with members of the community, then we would have to call out that person.”
For Orthodox Jews, “you have no one better to advocate for the needs of the community than someone who understands the community and can advocate for its needs,” he said, of himself.
“It’s better to have one of your own in the Assembly,” he said.
Osina, who grew up in the Bensonhurst neighborhood of Brooklyn and later in Chicago, knew from a young age that he wanted to be a public servant.
“There was a time when, in my father’s small business, six or eight inspectors came in and gave him what I believe was a biased inspection,” he said. “They called out the facility for not serving pork, and they called out his immigrant workers for not being proficient in reading and speaking English.”
His father fought the case and won, Osina told JNS.
That lesson inspired a career in government that has spanned more than two decades, including in the New York City comptroller’s office and the New York City Council speaker’s office.
“He fought back and ultimately took the case to the Supreme Court and won against the state,” he said. “I learned from that the importance of fighting back and bringing justice to the people.”
In 1997, the Chicago Tribune reported that Abe Osina, owner of the Sherwin Manor Nursing Center on the North Side of Chicago, accepted a $250,000 judgement in US District Court in Chicago against the state of Illinois.
Inspectors for the state’s public health department had “spewed a barrage of antisemitic remarks at the staff of the largely Jewish home, including criticizing the staff for not giving residents a choice of eating pork, and cited the facility for an array of violations,” according to Osina, the paper reported.
“Osina, whose family has owned the home for four decades, said his legal expenses from the suit he filed in federal court against the state employees will eat up all the judgment money,” the Tribune reported.
“But he said the judgment is a victory in principle,” the paper added. “His parents are Holocaust survivors, and he felt honor-bound to make the state pay for the inspection team’s blatant religious prejudice.”
The paper added that after a lower court dismissed it, the state appealed the case to the US Supreme Court, which declined to hear the appeal.
‘People don’t understand diversity’
Osina said the New York state Assembly’s 23rd district, which includes much of the Orthodox neighborhood of Far Rockaway, has long been treated as the “stepchild” of city and state government.
If elected, he said, he would prioritize bringing resources back to the district, including support for children and seniors.
“You have a district that was 90% destroyed by Hurricane Sandy, that received resources last from the city and has always been the stepchild of city and state government,” he said.
The district is one of the most diverse in Queens, with Jewish, black, Irish, Bengali, Hindu and Sikh communities, according to Osina.
“People don’t understand diversity,” he told JNS. “It’s my job to work together with everyone to make sure all their needs are being met.”
Since the start of his campaign on Jan. 13, Osina said that public safety and cost of living were among the top concerns he heard from voters across the district.
Orthodox constituents, he said, were especially concerned about yeshiva education and ensuring “that the state does not take away their ability to educate their children in the right form.”
JNS asked Osina if Democratic leaders have done enough to address Jew-hatred. He did not respond with a “yes” or “no.”
“There is always more work to be done,” he said. “We find that with any bill.”
“Even once bills are passed, down the line, they always need to be tweaked,” he told JNS. “Hate, in general, as the world progresses, is something where we always need to find ways to tweak how we work to counteract it and fight hate in all forms.”
Still combating Jew-hatred would be a priority for him in Albany.
“In one part of the district, I had a constituent walking along Mott Avenue who had antisemitic things hurled at her, calling her a Nazi and other things,” he told JNS.
The same day, a group of Muslims in the district had eggs thrown at them outside a mosque, he said.
One problem facing the city, according to Osina, is that hate crimes are “extremely underreported.”
“One of the reasons is because there are so many ways to report hate, whether it’s to the NYPD, the city Commission on Human Rights, the state Commission on Human Rights or the ADL,” he told JNS. “There are so many different ways to report hate, and each one has its own definitions.”
If elected, Osina told JNS that he wants to fund community-based liaisons who can help residents report hate incidents and bring complaints to the proper agencies.
“My job as a state legislator is to ensure that every one of my constituents feels safe and heard, no matter where the hate is coming from,” he said. “Whether it’s antisemitic hate coming to the community, whether it’s hate directed at someone’s hijab.”
“No matter the type of hate,” he said.
