Jewish New York’s reckoning with Zohran Mamdani: ‘He’s become a vehicle for our tensions’
Securing Jewish votes was never going to be a straightforward ride for Zohran Mamdani, the New York City mayoral hopeful who is on track to become the most prominent Palestine supporter to assume elected office in the US – in the most Jewish city outside Israel, no less.The notion that he could sparks outright panic in some quarters.“To be clear, unequivocal, and on the record: I believe Zohran Mamdani poses a danger to the New York Jewish community,” Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove of the Conservative Upper East Side Park Avenue Synagogue said in a sermon last weekend, a line endorsed by more than 1,000 American rabbis and echoed in the op-ed pages of some of the US’s biggest papers.Cosgrove called on his listeners to band together to persuade other Jews to prioritize their Jewish selves and “love of Israel” in the election. His proposed targets? “The undecided, the proudly Jewish yet unabashedly progressive, the affordability-anxious, Netanyahu-weary, Brooklyn-dwelling, and social media-influenced – who need to be engaged.”What Cosgrove overlooked, however, is that many of them already are engaged. In fact, Mamdani is engaging them.View image in fullscreenMamdani’s outreach comes at a moment of flux. Over the summer, as the campaign was heating up, famine was spreading through the Gaza Strip and photos of children starving to death dominated the news. Hundreds of rabbis signed letters urging Israel to let more aid into the besieged territory. Clergy who call themselves Zionists were arrested protesting outside the Israeli consulate in New York; others spoke in increasingly forceful terms from the pulpit in their weekly sermons. In a rare collaboration, Jewish groups that usually avoid tarring themselves by association with one another overlooked longstanding divisions on Israel when they staged a Midtown Manhattan protest calling for an end to the war.As the tenor of the Jewish American conversation on Israel was shifting, a July poll came out showing that 43% of Jewish New York planned to support Mamdani – signaling a level of enthusiasm so high as to portend a transformation in its commitment to pro-Israel politics. Among Jewish voters under 44, support rose to 67%.Mamdani, the 34-year-old Democratic socialist, has been advocating for Palestinian rights since his university days, including through boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaigns against Israel. Israel is not the primary predictor of American Jewish politics; many Jewish voters are drawn to Mamdani, or repelled by him, by the affordability agenda at the center of his vision. But most American Jews continue to report an attachment to Israel, which today is still deeply embedded in religious practice and communal life.Mamdani has proved deft at deploying his youthful charisma and an earnest desire to build bridges to tough crowds – like New York City’s capitalist class, which is rankled by his commitment to a rent freeze and tax increases, and the New York police department, which he once called to defund (a position he says he no longer holds).View image in fullscreenHe is trying with hesitant Jewish voters, too. Fortified by a Jewish left that includes the many young Jews active in the movement for Palestinian rights, Mamdani has stepped up his outreach to more mainstream Jewish spaces through a series of meetings, often under strict conditions of privacy imposed by community leaders nervous about blowback. He has listened to anguished accounts of social isolation, antisemitism and attachment to Israel; committed to a large increase in anti-hate crime programming; and tried to explain where his politics come from.It has not always been smooth – rabbis who have invited him to their synagogues have faced criticism; others have made clear he is not welcome. But it has also offered opportunity for respectful and nuanced discussion on a topic that flares nerves. One Brooklyn resident who heard Mamdani speak at his synagogue was disappointed that Mamdani did not more forcefully repudiate pro-Palestinian rhetoric he finds hateful. He also reported being impressed by Mamdani’s intelligence and plans to improve the city. “I need to decide which self I will raise to the ballot when voting,” he said.Phylisa Wisdom directs the New York Jewish Agenda. Her group advocates for the values of “liberal Zionist” Jews who believe in Israel as a Jewish and democratic state and who she says represents the majority of Jewish New Yorkers. It is a group that, she says, is going through an identity crisis, prompted by the horrors in Gaza and the recognition that the two-state solution, a value of totemic importance to them, has largely receded into the realm of fiction.“There are a lot of people who couldn’t ever imagine voting for an anti-Zionist mayor and who also could never have imagined their own feelings about Israel and the Israeli government that they are having right now,” she said. “They agree [with Mamdani], for example, that Benjamin Netanyahu should be behind bars.”Of the roughly 1 million Jews living in and around New York City, nearly one-fifth are either ultra-Orthodox, who are concentrated in Brooklyn and tend to vote Republican, or Modern Orthodox, who are more integrated into secular life and tend to divide their votes between the two major parties. Other Jewish voters – Conservative, Reform, nondenominational and secular – tend to overwhelmingly support Democrats.Mamdani may not be able to depend on those traditional voting patterns. The July poll was a high-water mark for Jewish support; an October Fox News poll found that a plurality of Jews – 42% – may vote for Andrew Cuomo, the former New York governor running as an independent after being trounced by Mamdani in June’s Democratic party primary. (The Fox poll found 38% of Jewish New Yorkers plan to vote for Mamdani.)Cuomo has made a forceful play for Jewish voters. He has declared his “hyperaggressive support” for Israel, regularly proclaimed that “anti-Zionism is antisemitism” and called Mamdani a “terrorist sympathizer”, going so far as to suggest he would celebrate another 9/11. (Cuomo later claimed he didn’t intend to suggest as much.) He also joined Netanyahu’s legal team in the international criminal court, a decision he recently tried to qualify around the time that a New York Times poll found voters prefer Mamdani’s approach to Israel and Palestine.Cuomo’s messaging is eagerly fanned by Donald Trump and his acolytes who have unleashed all manner of Islamophobia. Elise Stefanik, the Republican member of Congress, regularly attacks Mamdani, recently calling him “a full-blown jihadist who has called for the genocide of Jews” after he gave an indirect answer in a Fox News interview to a question on whether Hamas should disarm. Laura Gillen, a Democratic member of Congress from Long Island, said Mamdani was “pro-Hamas” and “unfit to hold any office in the United States”. (Mamdani has neither called for the genocide of Jews nor defended Hamas, and responded to the wave of hateful rhetoric in an emotional speech on Friday.)View image in fullscreenMore progressive congregations and Jewish activist groups have rejected both the attacks against Mamdani and the vision of Judaism put forward by more conservative voices, such as Cosgrove, who view support for the Israeli state as a central tenet of the religion.“I’ve been surprised by rabbis who are fighters for justice and willing to be arrested while protesting ICE – more of them than expected are fearful of a Mamdani mayoralty. I fear that might have to do with him being Muslim,” said Ellen Lippmann, the founder of Kolot Chayeinu, a Brooklyn congregation that has hosted Mamdani.Mamdani, whose campaign did not respond to questions for this story, does not need a majority of the Jewish vote, estimated to comprise about 15% of the city’s electorate, to win on 4 November. But Jewish support will be symbolically significant given the level of vitriol from high places. Moreover, Mamdani’s ability to make inroads with the broad middle of Jewish voters distressed by the carnage in Gaza inflicted by the Israeli state will signal whether a real political realignment – certainly in Jewish politics, but with implications for the Democratic party broadly – is truly under way.Interviews with nearly two dozen people who have had some involvement in Mamdani’s Jewish outreach – including undecided voters, rabbis who have hosted him in their synagogues (along with others who would never), and community leaders who have brokered outreach – reveal that his candidacy is forcing Jewish voters to grapple meaningfully with positions on Israel and Palestine that once disqualified candidates from major office but are now moving squarely into the mainstream.Last month, a who’s who of the Jewish left gathered on a Brooklyn rooftop for the Mazals, an annual fundraising event benefiting Jews for Racial and Economic Justice (JFREJ). Colorful blazers framed “Jews for Zohran” T-shirts; keffiyehs dotted the multigenerational crowd. A number of honorees – among them M Gessen and the New York State Tenant Bloc – spoke, interspersed with music from the Moroccan Jewish singer Laura Elkeslassy and a klezmer-infused house band. The crowd erupted at every mention of an arms embargo on Israel, a free Palestine, and Zohran Mamdani.New York City’s Jewish left – organized by groups including JFREJ, Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), and IfNotNow – spent years on the margins warning that the Jewish establishment’s support for an increasingly oppressive state was paving the road for catastrophe and perverting the religion. Now, there was a sense that the Jewish left had finally arrived.JFREJ, which counts 6,000 members, mostly organizes on local issues; Madmani’s agenda aligns naturally with the group’s focus on such issues as housing and immigrant rights, as does the way he links justice for vulnerable New Yorkers to justice for Palestinians. Audrey Sasson, JFREJ’s executive director, does not contain her excitement over his success. Primary night, she said, “was hands down one of the biggest wins I’ve experienced as an organizer in my life, in terms of its potential material impact, potential transformative impact, and the way in which it brought together a massive coalition of organizations and individuals across the city”.View image in fullscreenAlong with JVP and others canvassing under the Jews for Zohran banner, JFREJ volunteers have phoned or knocked on the doors of tens of thousands of Jewish New Yorkers’ homes to campaign for Mamdani, focusing on terrain where they see potential, like Manhattan’s Upper West Side or Riverdale in the Bronx. Alicia Singham Goodwin, JFREJ’s political director, said the shift in his direction has been dramatic over time: “We’re routinely seeing 50% or higher Zohran support whether we’re at the doors or on the phones.”At the Mazals, Mamdani was honored with Brad Lander, the New York City comptroller and his former rival in the mayoral race – and spoke in soaring terms of his partnership with the activists present:
I look at this room and I see so many faces that have not only been a part of this campaign from the start. We hold a common belief in the shared dignity of every person on this planet, without exception, and a refusal to draw a line in the sand, as it so often is done when it comes to Palestinian lives.
Lander, a longtime JFREJ member, is a self-described liberal Zionist and sort of spiritual lay-leader for liberal Jewish New Yorkers anguished over their relationship to Israel. He recently described the war on Gaza as a genocide for the first time.He is also a wingman for Mamdani’s efforts to earn their support. He, too, ran in the primary, in a rank-choiced system that incentivized collaboration between candidates. Toward the end of the race, the two cross-endorsed each another before embarking on a kind of buddy road trip across the city, putting forward sunny vignettes of Jewish-Muslim partnership that were celebrated by voters as a burst of light in an otherwise dark political landscape.Over a coffee in Brooklyn last month, multiple constituents interrupted our interview to express tearful gratitude for the role he played in Mamdani’s primary victory.“It speaks to a hunger for something different in our politics,” said Lander, an affable and warm conversationalist – “an archetypal Jewish dad”, as comedian Ilana Glazer described him when she called him on stage at the Mazals.View image in fullscreenHis support for Mamdani has created a permission structure for some.“I think I’ve played a useful role for families where the kids ranked Zohran first and me second in the primary, and the parents ranked me first and Zohran fifth, or maybe weren’t initially comfortable ranking him at all,” he said. “Our cross-endorsement created an opportunity for kids and parents to talk to each other, without it feeling so desperately zero sum.”Lander’s current mission is manifold. He has called on his fellow Jews to reckon with war crimes committed in their names. He wants to get Mamdani elected with as much Jewish support as possible. And as “Zionist” increasingly becomes a slur on the broader pro-Palestinian left, he wants to see a movement that is more welcoming to people just starting to question previous commitments to Israel.“In the same way that I tried for many years to get liberal Zionists to be open to anti-Zionists in their institutions and midst, I want to get anti-Zionists to not treat everyone who does believe in two states like a racist.”Many of the attacks on Mamdani exacerbate the definitional war that marks this issue in political discourse – a rhetorical swamp where words are so contested that they lose all meaning. In writing, I try to avoid use of the word “Zionist” outside quotes because it’s hard to know what people mean when they say it. The prevailing view on the left is that being a Zionist implies support for ethnic cleansing or unequal rights; others insist it speaks broadly to the belief in flourishing Jewish life in the Holy Land. “Antisemitism” opens another can of toxic worms; a decades-long, organized effort to conflate hatred of Jews with opposition to the Jewish state is now fueling the Trump administration’s dismantling of American universities. On the pro-Palestinian side, “globalize the intifada” and “from the river to the sea” are just two protest slogans that engender responses that speak as much to the anxieties and projections of the people who hear them as they do to the intentions of those who shout them (which also are not always clear).Perhaps recognizing such vocabulary poses a barrier to meaningful coalition building, Mamdani has attempted to bring more careful nuance to his positions.He has said he will discourage use of the intifada protest slogan, explaining he has come to understand why some Jews hear it as a call to violence. He repeatedly invokes international law to back up his positions – in characterizing Israel’s war as a genocide; in justifying his intention to seek Netanyahu’s arrest should he travel to New York, in compliance with an ICC arrest warrant; and in condemning Hamas’s attack on 7 October 2023.View image in fullscreenWhen asked – and he is asked with great frequency – whether he supports Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, he responds by summoning a framework that seems designed to be hard for liberals to argue with. “I would not recognize any state’s right to exist with a system of hierarchy on the basis of race or religion,” he said in the first mayoral debate when, on cue, Cuomo trotted out the “right to exist” line. “And part of that is because I’m an American who believes in the importance of equal rights being enshrined in every single country.” He has also said he does not support the right of Saudi Arabia or Pakistan to exist as countries that prioritize Muslim citizens. (The “right to exist” construction does not really come up in contexts outside Israel; Edward Said called it “a formula hitherto unknown in international or customary law”.)It is an ideologically consistent view that is out of the bounds of old politics in New York City, whose mayors have long been expected to pay official visits to Israel. (Mamdani’s refusal to commit to visiting the country was previously its own line of attack. He has noted that even if he wanted to visit, he likely would not be allowed in given an Israeli law banning entry to boycott supporters.)“He’s very clearly not a Zionist” in a country where elected officials are expected to be, Sasson said. That his politics are no longer viewed as radical “is a real shift. That is a reckoning that is complicated for people.”Lander echoed the idea as we discussed a concern, expressed by a number of people interviewed for this story, that Mamdani will refuse to hire Zionists for his administration. “There hasn’t been a bar on Zionists in the New York City government, nor should there be,” Lander said. “There has been a bar on anti-Zionists, and there’s not going to be. That’s hard for people.”In fact, at a recent synagogue Q&A, Mamdani explicitly said Zionists would not be banned from his administration. This, along with his characterization of the Hamas attack of 7 October as a war crime rather than an act of legitimate resistance, has caused anger among some voices on the pro-Palestinian left, including some who have gone as far as to denounce Mamdani as a Zionist.In August, Lander accompanied Mamdani to a private event in the Brooklyn home of documentary film-maker Sandi DuBowski, where more than 80 Jewish New Yorkers came to hear the candidate’s answers to questions submitted in advance. Only truly undecided voters attended, many of them Modern Orthodox Jews well to the left of their staunchly pro-Israel – and increasingly Republican – communities. “It felt like an incredibly rare moment for people who really came with a lot of hesitation and a lot of reservations,” Dubowski said.Several attenders, who spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of damaging personal and professional relationships, found Mamdani intelligent and personable. They said they do not believe him to be antisemitic, and are horrified by the rampant Islamophobia directed at him.“I want to apologize to you for what my community’s been putting you through,” one woman reportedly said at the start of the event. “It’s not acceptable.”They also described an acute sense of isolation and a sense of abandonment by a progressive movement they once felt a part of but now feel has spit them out over their commitments to Israel.For much of their demographic, emotional identification with Israel is fundamental to what it means to be Jewish – a complex symbiosis between the state and American Jewry that rapidly accelerated after 1967, snuffing out what were once prominent Jewish voices of dissent from Zionism. Today, US synagogues that feature Israeli flags on their pulpit and incorporate prayers for the state and its soldiers into their liturgy are the norm.“Every part of my life is embroidered with that place,” one woman who was at the event told me. She wanted Mamdani to validate that relationship and was disappointed.View image in fullscreen“I want him to understand that that brand makes me feel not welcome, because it calls me a Nazi,” she added, referring to elements of the pro-Palestinian movement she believes support violence against Israelis and their supporters. She said she still does not know how she will vote.“I hate Netanyahu, I hate this war, and I’m appalled every single day at what is being done in Gaza and in the West Bank,” another attender said. “And yet, when someone tells me that Israel shouldn’t exist, or that it’s a settler colonial state from the beginning, or that people should go back to Europe, or that I shouldn’t wear a Star of David because it’s a symbol of a fascist state – that makes me absolutely bonkers.”The attenders I spoke to expressed concern about the practical implications of Mamdani’s support for BDS in a city with extensive institutional and economic ties with Israel. Since the mayor has some authority over the City University of New York, they fear Mamdani may appoint trustees who will end students’ option to study abroad in Israel or cut other academic exchanges. “The same way that you can’t really do junior year abroad in Iran or North Korea – we could add Israel to that list of nations,” a third attender fretted.Mamdani did not allay those concerns, they said, saying he has not given thought to whom he will appoint to the CUNY board.“I think that a lot of people in the camp that he’s in think that American Jews are simply privileged white people who like to whine about something that happened 75 years ago,” the second attender said. “That’s not what is happening. People are triggered and terrified.”When I asked her what they are terrified of, she responded: “People are terrified that the 50-year golden age for Jews in America is over, that it is becoming OK, both on the left and on the right, to dislike Jews, that it no longer has any stigma attached to it, that Israel behaving the way it’s behaved has given people an excuse to say, ‘look, Jews are terrible.’ without feeling like they’re bigoted.”Despite those misgivings, she plans to vote for Mamdani: “You gotta vote for the Democrat in the general,” she said. Her husband will write in Lander.Efforts to bring Mamdani into Jewish spaces have seen some bumps. At least one Conservative synagogue pushed back forcefully against speculation he would visit on Yom Kippur. When he attended services in Tribeca led by Lab/Shul, a broadly progressive community with wide-ranging views on Israel, he got a huge ovation – eclipsing the welcome for Lander and congressman Jerry Nadler, both of whom flanked him in the front row – but one that was followed by a more tortured, private response from a less vocal minority.“Some people said: ‘It destroyed my day,’” said Rabbi Amichai Lau Lavie, the leader of Lab/Shul. “The word against him on the street and from people I know is that ‘he won’t see us.’ I can see how on some levels that’s misguided, and I can also see where it comes from.”Elsewhere, Mamdani has been increasingly welcomed with open arms – in spaces more politically aligned, like the progressive, nondenominational Brooklyn synagogue he attended on Rosh Hashannah, and an Israelis for Peace vigil on the 7 October anniversary, but also in more outside-the-box campaign stops, like a Sukkot sit-down with Hassidic Satmars. He also recently published a full-page ad in Yiddish-language newspapers read by many ultra-Orthodox voters, outlining his plans to combat antisemitism and make childcare free – both issues of concern to these voters.A 12 October event at Brooklyn’s Congregation Beth Elohim, in the leafy neighborhood of Park Slope, seemed a particular win for civility. The Reform synagogue is one of Brooklyn’s largest, and among the more mainstream stops on Mamdani’s Jewish outreach tour. Senior Rabbi Rachel Timoner had invited Mamdani to sit for a private Q&A with congregants and almost 400 showed up. Several dozen angry protesters, some in Maga hats, gathered outside. (Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa met with congregants last week; Cuomo will do the same on Tuesday.)View image in fullscreenThe congregation – like most others – has been roiled with division since 7 October. It counts among its members Senate minority leader and pro-Israel stalwart Chuck Schumer, who has enraged progressives by not endorsing the nominee of his own party for mayor. The congregation displays Israeli flags but includes anti-Zionist members – people who are “really upset” by Mamdani’s stance on Israel and others who have canvassed for him, according to Timoner, who by many accounts works overtime to keep irate congregants praying under the same roof.Multiple attenders said the event was calm and substantive. Mamdani heard from congregants upset about the intifada slogan and listened to accounts from members about antisemitism in their kids’ schools. Half the time was spent on local issues having nothing to do with Israel.Two people who were in attendance said they felt Mamdani dodged questions about antisemitism in the pro-Palestinian movement, pivoting to generalities about universal rights and safety. They also said he spoke with inspiring passion about improving New York City.“It was deeply respectful on all sides,” Timoner said of the discussion. “I think that people felt heard and that people also listened.”In his sermon, Cosgrove, the Upper East Side rabbi, envisioned a revival of the “Great Schlep” – that 2008 effort led by the comedian Sarah Silverman to send young Jews to Florida to get their “bubbies and zaydes” to vote for Barack Obama – but in generational reverse. Now, said Cosgrove, it is incumbent on older Jews to sound the alarm about Mamdani to their children and grandchildren.To some, his exhortation exhibits a misread of Mamdani’s message and his appeal. “In your sermon you suggest that Jews need to prioritize the safety of other Jews over non-Jews, to prioritize the safety of Israeli Jews over Palestinians,” Mik Moore, one of the creators of the original Great Schlep who now runs a similar effort called Mensches for Mamdani, said in a statement addressed to Cosgrove.“Maybe this is why you are struggling to understand how Mamdani, as a Muslim anti-Zionist, could ever care as much about Jewish New Yorkers as Muslim New Yorkers. You have projected your value system on to him, and don’t trust him to act on behalf of those outside his own group.”Ultimately, the anguish over Mamdani’s candidacy – the anguish that Cosgrove is attempting to redirect to fear – is not really about him. It is a reflection of an American Jewish population in crisis, scarred by the intracommunal psychodramas that have raged since 7 October and contending with what it means to associate with a state that has fallen so far down the world’s moral ladder.“It plays out like the Jewish education of Zohran Mamdani,” said one person involved in efforts to broker his outreach events, describing the displays of grievance often directed his way. By many accounts, Mamdani has listened patiently.“He’s become a vehicle for our tensions and conflicts,” said Lander. “It’s fair to ask him, as the person is going to be our mayor, to reflect that he’s going to represent everyone, even people who he strongly disagrees with, on some important issues. It’s not fair to ask him to heal our collective wounds and traumas.”View image in fullscreenA mainstream Jewish shift on Israel is not likely to make a material difference to Palestinians anytime soon. Netanyahu has spent the last decade throwing his lot in with Republicans and Christian Zionists, forsaking the liberal Jews who once provided Israel’s backbone of support. A tenuous ceasefire is formally in effect in Gaza, but largely on Israeli terms that do not impose real requirements on it to stop killing Palestinians – as long as it does so at a lower intensity – let alone ensure Palestinian freedom.But shifts in US public opinion might, over time, put an end to the so-called “Palestine exception”: the idea that support for liberal and progressive causes can exclude the cause of equality for Palestinians. If the US continues to hold fair elections and continues to exert leverage over Israel, that will make a difference – eventually.“There’s definitely a sea change in the Jewish community, and it’s being mapped along the sea change in the wider electorate,” Sasson of JFREJ said.“We’re building a multiracial, multifaith coalition across the city to address the most pressing issues around economic and racial justice that affect all of us, Jews included. But the thing is, you can’t fight for those things and ignore what’s happening in Gaza.” More
