Rep. Stefanik honored with World Jewish Congress’ Theodor Herzl Award

Rep. Elise Stefanik accepted the World Jewish Congress’s top honor Monday night, vowing to continue fighting antisemitism and defending what she called “Western values ​​that have shaped America,” just days after announcing her bid to become New York governor.

Speaking before 400 guests at the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan, Stefanik accepted the Theodor Herzl Award from businessman and former U.S. Ambassador to Austria under President Ronald Reagan, Ronald Lauder. The award, established in 2012, is considered the World Jewish Congress’s highest honor and is given to individuals who embody Herzl’s vision of a safe and self-reliant Jewish people.

“I want to thank my friend, Ambassador Ronald Lauder, for his steadfast leadership and extraordinary dedication to the cause of Jewish unity and security,” Stefanik said. he said. “Under his leadership, the World Jewish Congress carried forward Theodor Herzl’s vision of not only a Jewish homeland but also a Jewish people that was strong, self-reliant and respected among the nations.”

He continued: “It is deeply shameful to receive the Theodor Herzl Award from the World Jewish Congress, an organization that has stood for generations as the diplomatic voice and moral conscience of the Jewish people worldwide.” “You have defended Jewish communities in every corner of the world, combated all forms of antisemitism, and strengthened the unbreakable ties between Israel and the global community of free nations.”

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Stefanik described her fight against antisemitism in Congress and on college campuses and recalled her viral hearing with the presidents of Harvard, MIT and the University of Pennsylvania in 2023.

“Does calling for genocide against Jews violate your university’s code of conduct?” He recalled asking what he said was a moral question, not a political one. “I was waiting for them to say ‘yes’. But one after another they said ‘it depends on the context’. And the world heard. Let me be clear. This does NOT depend on the context.”

He said the change “begins a global reckoning and provides accountability that we are only just beginning to get into in higher education.”

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In a speech after receiving the World Jewish Congress’s highest honor on November 10, 2025, Representative Elise Stefanik vowed to continue fighting antisemitism and defending Western values. (Tierney L. Cross/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Returning to New York, Stefanik said the state “is not just a city and state in crisis, but it is also the epicenter of the battle for the Western values ​​that have shaped America.”

“Eighty years after Kristallnacht, we must not remain silent. I will continue to call out anti-Semitism, bigotry, Jew hatred, anti-Americanism,” he said. “This moral struggle is particularly important in New York, the beloved home of more Jews than anywhere else outside Israel, where antisemitic incidents reached an all-time high last year, the highest number in the country.”

“My friends, the story of Theodor Herzl is not ancient history,” he said. “That is the spirit that I see in this room tonight, the spirit that built Israel, the spirit that has always revitalized the Jewish people, and the spirit that will save New York.”

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Miriam Adelson supports Rep. Elise Stefanik, who is running for governor of New York, at the Louis D. Brandeis Awards Dinner held by the American Zionist Organization for Justice in New York on November 9, 2025. (Dominic Gwinn/Middle East Images/Getty Images via AFP and Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

The award comes a day after billionaire philanthropist Miriam Adelson voiced her support for Rep. Elise Stefanik’s New York gubernatorial candidacy during the Zionist Justice Organization of America’s Louis D. Brandeis Awards Dinner.

Republican House Speaker Stefanik was awarded the Zionist Organization of America’s Mortimer Zuckerman Maccabee Warrior Award for her efforts to combat anti-Semitism.

Introducing herself at the gala, Adelson praised Stefanik for confronting university leaders over anti-Semitism and cited her late husband Sheldon Adelson’s insistence on moral conviction.

Adelson called Stefanik “a great leader” and suggested she defended “the Jewish people, Israel and the Free World.”

Stefanik launched her long-awaited Republican campaign for New York governor on Friday, entering the 2026 race by challenging Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul.

Fox News Digital has reached out to Hochul’s office for comment.

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Stefanik, who once criticized President Donald Trump during his first presidential run, has since become one of his staunchest defenders in Congress.

Fox News Digital’s Paul Steinhauser contributed to this report.