What are the Jews thinking in New York?
Trying to keep up with the news of the Jewish community in New York City and its mayor, Zohran Mamdani, can be, and usually is, a depressing chore.
Mostly recently, Satmar gifted him a mezuzah, which earned some criticism. Some more criticism was directed against Rabbi Yaacov Behrman, who hosted the mayor in Behrman’s sukkah on Sept. 29, with Behrman explaining that it was just in his personal capacity. He also visited Eichler’s Judaica store in the Borough Park neighborhood of Brooklyn, ahead of the Jewish High Holidays.
After Mamdani revealed his antisemitism strategy—that is, his plan for combating it—it turns out that he did so without the plan defining the term. That caused even the moderate Jewish establishment groups to get upset.
UJA-Federation, the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, the American Jewish Committee’s New York chapter and the New York Board of Rabbis issued a statement. It pointed out that anti-Zionism or anti-Israel hostility is not addressed. Moreover, what is mostly addressed is the long-standing white-supremacist and Christian nationalist antisemitism. The dislike of Jews from the left and progressive camp is hardly treated.
Of course, it is obvious that whether the document basically regurgitated the 2025 Mayor Eric Adams plan or whether Mamdani’s task force used it as a template with its own preferences, the mayor heavily depends on the New York New Jew coterie.
Their recent activities have been most outlandish. A few examples should suffice.
On Yom Kippur, Mahmoud Khalil was a guest at a Vidui performance in Brooklyn, someone that even The Forward informed its readers is very anti-Zionist, among other things. Ruth Messinger hosted Mamdani for a Yom Kippur break-fast at her home with guests while the New York Public Library hosted Benjamin Moser, who has now published a book praising anti-Zionists over the past century who declared there that ‘nothing has made Jews look worse in history’ than Zionism.
What has taken over the minds of leading figures in Jewish New York that they are falling in line with an uncharacteristic collapse of the centuries-old Jewish ability to sense a coming danger in the social and political changes of the environment they live in?
Of course, this phenomenon isn’t limited to the New York Jewish community. Michigan, Philadelphia and California are additional locations where the Jewish establishment has allowed for the growth of radical, barely-there-Judaism proponents of the progressive left to infiltrate Jewish politics.
Looking up north, across the border in Canada, Charles Asher Small perceives the success of what is being nurtured in New York. He identifies the creation of “permission structures for the normalization of anti-Western sentiment, extremism, terrorism and antisemitism.” That, I think, is what is occurring under Mamdani’s tutelage and which too many Jews are refusing to see.
Another lesson is in Great Britain. There we now witness the Green Party, led by a Jew, embroiled in debating and voting on a convention motion in a throwback to 1975 and the United Nations’ “Zionism-is-racism” decision. The new version tabled at its annual conference in Brighton (Motion E02/A105) seeks to officially establish the party as anti-Zionist by formally defining Zionism as a form of racism.
As the Jewish News framed it, “Jewish Greens could face investigation for attending synagogue,” and even a less-than-stalwart pro-Israel columnist realized the motion is telling Jews how to think.
There are alternatives: One is to assume a position of counteraction and take advice from other quarters.
The Alliance for Islamic Remigration has issued a statement pointing out how U.S. Democrats are teaming up with Islam in a “growing left-wing political coalition of neo-Marxist progressives and Muslims” to achieve political victories over the right. They identify Mamdani, Michigan Senate candidate Dr. Abdul El-Sayed and congressional candidate Darializa Avila Chevalier as examples of left-wing Muslims who have risen to positions of power, joining a reported 250 Muslims holding elected office across the country.
If the Jewish establishment does not accept that a worst-case scenario can be very probable, then what is their use? If they refuse to consider that “past artificial and misleading demarcations between a ‘good’ form of Islam and a ‘bad’ corruption” have not proven helpful, why are good Jews funding their think tanks?
As I wrote back in late June here, what is a work-in-progress is the purposeful “influencing the balance of political power” of the Jewish community. Once that process becomes a normative fixed policy and directed from a powerful position such as a mayor, a representative in Congress or a powerful podcast figure, the influence of that policy then extends to other malleable populations such as minorities, economically disadvantaged and run-of-the-mill antisemites who will take advantage of the atmosphere being shaped.
When a Jewish figure close to Mamdani speaks a nonsensical party line, such as T’ruah recently posting the words of Rabbi Jill Jacobs, “Palestinian freedom is essential to Israel’s future, not a threat to it,” its thrust is amplified. And powerfully so, for a “free Palestine” represents the most inimical danger facing Israel, save for an Iranian atom bomb.
That phenomenon, however, is Mamdani’s main weapon, and why his maneuverings, so far, have been successful.
