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I’m an Israeli who lives in New York. Here’s why I’m voting for Mamdani
On Kol Nidrei, the evening service that begins Yom Kippur, I found myself at synagogue with Zohran Mamdani.
Lab/Shul in Manhattan isn’t your typical synagogue; it’s a laboratory for belonging, where ancient liturgy meets radical inclusion. The service was led by my rabbi, Amichai Lau-Lavie — an Israeli who knows how to fill the room with both grief and hope.
Mamdani sat in the front row, with Rep. Jerry Nadler and Comptroller Brad Lander. As Lau-Lavie welcomed them to the space, Nadler and Lander were greeted with respectful applause. But when Mamdani’s name was spoken something electric ripped through the room. The applause didn’t just rise, it roared. It was long, sustained, defiant, joyful.
For me, that welcome of Mamdani — a Muslim and openly leftist candidate — on the holiest night of the Jewish year wasn’t symbolic. It was spiritual. It was the sound of a community saying: we are not afraid. And I wasn’t either. I felt safe. Seen. At home.
“My commitment is to make every New Yorker feel safe — Jews included — through policy grounded in equality, not fear,” Mamdani said earlier this year, as reported in The Guardian. That night, in the sanctuary, those words felt real.
A few days later came another night I’ll never forget — the Israelis for Peace vigil marking two years since the Hamas attack of Oct. 7, 2023.
Hundreds gathered — Israelis, Palestinians, Jews, Arabs, Americans — huddled together on folding chairs in Union Square in chilly weather, under an open sky. As part of a wide-ranging lineup, from the stage, I read a message from Liat Atzili, whose husband Aviv was killed that day; a short, piercing story by Etgar Keret; and a poem by Mahmoud Darwish that hung in the air like a spell.
And there was Mamdani again, sitting quietly in the front row next to Lander. He didn’t take the microphone. He didn’t try to center the event on himself. He was just listening. Bearing witness.
His presence wasn’t performative. It was pastoral. In a city that so often divides its grief by identity, he crossed the invisible line and simply showed up.
That’s when it hit me: This is what safety looks like. Not fences or slogans, not solidarity-as-branding — but the radical act of standing with people in pain, without needing to own or edit it.
A recent poll showed that 43% of Jewish New Yorkers plan to support Mamdani — and among those under 44, that number climbs to 675. That data tells me what I felt that night wasn’t isolated. It’s a generational shift: younger Jews — and Israelis like me — no longer see solidarity with Palestinians as a threat, but as a responsibility.
Because despite what the right-wing Israeli government and media want us to believe, we — Jews, Israelis, people who still believe in equality — are not in danger from Zohran Mamdani because he is critical of Israel. We’re endangered, instead by the machinery of fear that tries to convince us that justice is a threat, that empathy is betrayal, that solidarity is naïve.
So let’s ask honestly: What is so terrifying about Zohran Mamdani?
That he condemns Israel’s treatment of the Palestinian people?
That he grieved — publicly and unapologetically — over the catastrophe in Gaza?
That he refuses to conflate the safety of American Jews with unquestioned support for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu?
For me, as an Israeli-American who is committed enough to Israel to fight endlessly for it to be just and equal, that’s not frightening — it’s hopeful. Having mayors and public leaders who refuse to give Kahanists or corrupt war criminals a free pass is good for us. That’s our struggle too.
As Mamdani said in a recent mayoral debate: “I would not recognize any state’s right to exist with a system of hierarchy on the basis of race or religion.”
That statement isn’t anti-Israel — it’s pro-democracy. It comes from the same moral compass that drives him to oppose Islamophobia and antisemitism alike.
Mamdani isn’t anti-Israeli or anti-Jewish. He’s pro-justice. He’s a New Yorker who believes, as I do, that no one’s safety should come at the expense of someone else’s. His campaign has pledged a large increase in anti-hate crime programming — the opposite of neglecting our safety.
The truth is, Israel’s official alliances — with would-be authoritarians like President Donald Trump and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán — have left many of us politically homeless and deeply afraid. We know that corrupt, authoritarian leaders always come for the Jews eventually and that cozying up to them has never made us safe. And in New York, the other homeland for so many Jews — including many Israelis — we have a chance to rebuild belonging on different terms: ones grounded in equality, accountability and imagination.
Amid the thunderous sanctity of Kol Nidrei and the Oct. 7 vigil’s quiet solidarity, I’ve seen the same thing: people choosing to show up for each other, even in the hardest of times.
That seems to be the city Zohran Mamdani wants to build, and it’s a city I want to live in. I think a lot of Israelis — here and back home — want that and might indeed benefit from it too.
The post I’m an Israeli who lives in New York. Here’s why I’m voting for Mamdani appeared first on The Forward.
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Lindsey Graham urges Israel not to strike Iranian oil depots even as he says he helped make war happen
(JTA) — Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina has called on Israel to rein in its attacks on Iranian oil infrastructure, marking a rare note of caution from a Republican lawmaker who has said he helped push the United States to join Israel in waging war against Iran.
In a post on X on Sunday, Graham praised Israel for its role in the war before adding that “there will be a day soon that the Iranian people will be in charge of their own fate, not the murderous ayatollah’s regime.”
“In that regard, please be cautious about what targets you select,” continued Graham. “Our goal is to liberate the Iranian people in a fashion that does not cripple their chance to start a new and better life when this regime collapses. The oil economy of Iran will be essential to that endeavor.”
Graham’s post linked to an Axios article that reported that the United States was alarmed by Israeli strikes over the weekend that targeted 30 Iranian fuel depots. On Monday, U.S. gas prices rose to their highest levels since 2024.
The warning from Graham, an ally of President Donald Trump and staunch supporter of Israel, comes days after the Republican hawk told the Wall Street Journal that he had played a key role in urging Trump to strike Iran.
Prior to the joint U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran, Graham made several trips to Israel where he met with members of the Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, as well as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu whom he said he coached on how to lobby Trump to strike Iran.
“They’ll tell me things our own government won’t tell me,” Graham told the newspaper.
On Monday, Graham also directed his criticism at Saudi Arabia’s decision to stay on the sidelines of the campaign against Iran.
“It is my understanding the Kingdom refuses to use their capable military as a part of an effort to end the barbaric and terrorist Iranian regime who has terrorized the region and killed 7 Americans,” wrote Graham in a post on X Monday. “Question – why should America do a defense agreement with a country like the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia that is unwilling to join a fight of mutual interest?”
The post Lindsey Graham urges Israel not to strike Iranian oil depots even as he says he helped make war happen appeared first on The Forward.
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Belgian officials investigating synagogue explosion as possible act of terrorism
(JTA) — Belgian officials are investigating an explosion in front of a synagogue in Liège early Monday as a possible act of terrorism.
The explosion, which took place at 4 a.m., damaged the door of the historic neo-Romanesque synagogue and blew out the windows of multiple buildings across the street. No injuries were reported.
A range of Belgian politicians, including the prime minister and the mayor of Liège, characterized the explosion as act of antisemitism.
“Antisemitism is an attack on our values and our society, and we must fight it unequivocally,” Prime Minister Bart de Wever said in a statement. “We stand in solidarity with the Jewish community in Liege and across the country.”
The explosion comes amid a surge of concern about possible attacks by agents associated with the Iranian regime, against which the United States and Israel launched a war last week. Iran has a long record of supporting attacks on Jewish targets abroad, including two bombings in the 1990s in Argentina that killed more than 100 people at the Israeli embassy and a Jewish community center. Now, with Iran being pummeled at home, watchdogs are warning that it might lash out through its Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force, responsible for attacks abroad.
Azerbaijan said Friday that it had foiled multiple terror attacks planned by Iranian agents on Jewish sites. In London, four men were arrested last week for allegedly spying on the Jewish community for Iran, with the intent of planning attacks against the community. And a string of shootings at synagogues in Toronto has ignited concern in Canada, too.
Iranian agents have taken aim at non-Jewish targets, too. On Friday, a Pakistani man who prosecutors said had been directed by Iran’s IRGC was convicted of plotting to assassinate President Donald Trump.
The attack in Liège, in the primarily French-speaking Wallonia province, comes amid a range of recent developments that have unsettled Belgian Jews, who number approximately 30,000. They include antisemitic carnival caricatures in the city of Aalst; a ban on ritual slaughter preventing the local production of kosher meat; and an ongoing row between U.S. and Belgian officials over Jewish circumcision practices. The attack also follows a 2014 shooting in which a gunman associated with the Islamic State, a rival to Iran’s Islamic Republic, shot four people to death at the Jewish Museum in Brussels.
A spokesperson for the Liège police described the effects to the area as “only material damage” to the 1899 building. Rabbi Joshua Nejman told local media that he was hoping that security footage would reveal the perpetrator.
“I’m going to try to calm my heart, because it is beating faster and faster this morning,” said Nejman, who said he had been at the synagogue for 25 years.
“Liege is home to a very small but vibrant Jewish community where I personally grew up,” Eitan Bergman, vice president of the Coordinating Committee of Jewish Organisations in Belgium, told Reuters. “Today, the feelings among our community members are a mixture of sadness, worry and profound shock.”
Liege’s mayor, Willy Demeyer, praised the synagogue community to RBTF, Belgium’s French-language national broadcaster. He added, “We cannot allow foreign conflicts to be imported into our city.”
The post Belgian officials investigating synagogue explosion as possible act of terrorism appeared first on The Forward.
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The Top 100 People Positively Influencing Jewish Life, 2025
In honor of The Algemeiner‘s 12th annual gala, we are proud to present our “J100” list — 100 individuals who have positively influenced Jewish life over the past year.