NEW YORK (AP) — New York City’s Jewish community — the largest in the United States — is filled with fear and tension a day before an election that could give the city its first Muslim mayor.
That candidate, Zohran Mamdani, won over many progressive Jewish voters with a promise to make the city more affordable and fair. Still, he has alarmed many other Jews – in New York and across the United States – with harsh criticism of Israel, saying, among other things, that its military operation in Gaza amounts to genocide.
The tensions within the politically diverse community were illustrated Friday in a sermon by Rabbi Angela Buchdahl, who leads the Central Synagogue in Manhattan, one of the country’s premier Reform synagogues.
She specifically criticized Mamdani’s words about Israel, but declined to endorse one of his opponents, Andrew Cuomo and Republican Curtis Sliwa, and argued that New York Jews should minimize vicious political infighting.
“It puts us all at risk: this is our way of trying to impose a litmus test on other Jews, essentially saying you are either with us or against us,” she said.
A local election in the national spotlight
Buchdahl was criticized for not signing a statement condemning Mamdani supported by more than 1,000 Jewish clergy across the country. She said she generally does not support candidates or sign joint statements, but interrupted her sabbatical schedule to return to her pulpit the weekend before the election.
In the sermon, Buchdahl said that Mamdani “contributed to the mainstreaming of some of the most vile anti-Semitism,” with words that she said not only “demonized Israelis but also reflected the age-old anti-Semitic phrase that Jews around the world are the root cause of our problem here.”
Mamdani made overtures to Jewish voters throughout the campaign, promising to boost funding to investigate anti-Semitic incidents in New York and repeatedly condemning violence in the Middle East. He has also denounced the “atrocities” committed by Hamas on October 7, 2023, calling the attacks a “horrible war crime.”
But Mamdani has not abandoned his longstanding support for Palestinian rights. He has also said he would order the city’s police department to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he visits New York on charges brought by the International Criminal Court.
Responding to accusations that his views amounted to anti-Semitism, Mamdani often quoted an Israeli whose brother was killed on October 7 as saying: “We must never give up the conviction that all life, Israeli and Palestinian, Jewish and Arab, is equally valuable.”
Buchdahl said in her sermon that she recognized the voices of younger Jews who say they shouldn’t vote fearfully based on a “single issue” when other issues are just as pressing. They cite Mamdani’s contact with Jewish leaders and his moderate rhetoric.
“I wouldn’t trust a campaign politician to change their lifelong positions so quickly, but I hear those who believe that we must also engage with those with whom we deeply disagree or risk isolating ourselves,” Buchdahl said.
Senior Rabbi: It’s not an straightforward decision
Like Buchdahl, the president of the Union for Reform Judaism, New York-based Rabbi Rick Jacobs said he was sticking with his long-held decision not to give political support.
“If you think the mayoral race is easy, I respectfully recommend that you ignore it,” Jacobs wrote in an open letter last week. “I implore our Jewish community and all New Yorkers to carefully consider the many pressing issues facing our city before casting your vote.”
“I can attest that Zohran Mamdani does not lack empathy for the Jewish community’s concerns about regular threats to our security. In public interviews and in a face-to-face meeting, I have heard him committed to protecting the Jewish community,” Jacobs wrote before expressing doubts about the Democratic candidate.
“Mamdani has always said that he believes Israel has a right to exist as a state for all its citizens, but not as a Jewish state,” Jacobs wrote. “His argument may sound neat in a seminar, but in the real world it raises serious concerns.”
Among the signatories of the anti-Mamdani statement was a prominent Conservative rabbi from New York, Elliot Cosgrove.
“Let me be clear: I believe that Zohran Mamdani poses a threat to the safety of New York’s Jewish community,” Cosgrove said at the start of a recent sermon at the Park Avenue Synagogue.
“Zionism, Israel, Jewish self-determination – these are not political preferences or partisan talking points,” Cosgrove added. “They are essential building blocks and inseparable strands of my Jewish identity.”
Even Hasidic leaders are divided
As evidence of the divisions within the Jewish ranks, there were competing endorsements of Mamdani and Cuomo by leaders of various factions within the Satmar Hasidic community.
On Sunday, Rabbi Moshe Indig, a leader of the community’s Ahronim branch, declared his support for Mamdani and posed shaking hands with the candidate at a meeting in Brooklyn. Within hours, three other branch leaders rejected Indig’s actions and supported Cuomo.
“Across the board, the progressive movement’s crusading agenda poses a threat to our ability to live as Torah Jews and raise our children with the same values,” the pro-Cuomo leaders said.
To the left of the political center, New York-based author and commentator Peter Beinhart expressed dismay in a recent video at the vitriol directed at Mamdani by many Jewish leaders.
Beinhart said he worries “that the organized American Jewish community has been willing to sacrifice almost everything to maintain unconditional support for the State of Israel, that every other value, every other principle, has been subordinated to it.”
“What are you willing to sacrifice to prevent a New York mayor from saying that Israeli Jews and Palestinians should live equally under the same law? What are you willing to do to destroy such a candidate? The answer is: lie to almost anyone, do almost anything.”
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Smith reported from Pittsburgh. AP journalist Jake Offenhartz contributed from New York.
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