Nearly 1,400 Jewish New Yorkers delivered an open letter to Mayor Zohran Mamdani this week demanding “immediate and concrete action to protect the city’s Jewish community.” They want him to take a clearer public stand against antisemitism and against what they call anti-Zionist rhetoric that has made the city hostile to Jewish residents.
The letter was organized by The Jewish Majority and signed by 1,395 people, including 76 spiritual leaders from every denominational background. It asks Mamdani to back protective legislation for Jewish institutions, to denounce rhetoric the signatories say demonizes Zionists, and to “unequivocally condemn, not merely discourage, calls to globalize the intifada.” The signers include rabbis and cantors of every denominational affiliation who live and work in New York City and in suburbs elsewhere in the state.
The letter frames support for Jewish self-determination as a mainstream community position, not a political one. “Being a Zionist does not mean supporting every policy of the State of Israel or any particular Israeli politician,” it states. “It simply means affirming the right of the Jewish people to national dignity and self-determination, a belief held by the overwhelming majority of the Jewish community.”
Jonathan Schulman, executive director of The Jewish Majority, told Jewish News Syndicate (JNS), as published in The Jewish Star that “most Jews link the normalization of anti-Zionism to the rise in antisemitism, and the most prominent proponent of that is Mayor Mamdani.” He said the Jewish advisers around Mamdani, both in his administration and on his transition committees, skew toward anti-Zionist or non-Zionist positions and do not reflect majority Jewish opinion. “The Mamdani administration is lifting up fringe voices as if they’re representative of the community,” Schulman said.
Schulman pointed to the appointment of Miriam Grossman, a Reconstructionist spiritual leader and longtime member of the rabbinical council of Jewish Voice for Peace, an anti-Zionist organization, as City Hall’s faith liaison. “When he appoints a faith liaison from Jewish Voice for Peace, which works to undermine Israel, it is really tokenism,” Schulman said.
The JNS article also reports that Mamdani has previously pledged to seek the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he visits New York City, has rescinded several executive orders from his predecessor’s administration that provided protections for Jewish institutions and Israel-related matters, and that his spokeswoman has said synagogues hosting pro-Israel events violate international law.
Anne Etra, an Upper East Side resident and nonprofit leader who signed the letter, said it is “a good start and important to say.” “New York Jews need to toughen up. Nobody can tell them that they don’t deserve to be safe,” Etra said. “It’s their city as much as anyone else’s, and the mayor is not a mayor for all citizens.”
Schulman said his group includes clergy who live outside the five boroughs, noting that rabbis based in upper Westchester may have congregants who commute into the city, dine there, or attend New York City universities. He said he knows rabbis whose congregants have stopped dining at kosher and Israeli restaurants in the city “because they worry that a mob might attack them for eating there.”
The letter’s release coincided with a demonstration held Monday near Gracie Mansion, the official mayoral residence on the Upper East Side. Jews represent close to 10 percent of New York City’s population by some estimates, and NYPD data cited in the JNS reporting shows that Jews were the targets of nearly 60 percent of hate crimes recorded in the city in April.
Featured image: Bushwick Daily
