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New York City’s top Jewish officials urge Mamdani to recognize Israel’s centrality to Jewish identity
New York City’s most senior Jewish elected officials are urging Mayor Zohran Mamdani to do more to address the concerns of Jewish New Yorkers directly, including acknowledging the community’s deep emotional connection to Israel and reconsidering his pledge not to visit the country.
Mamdani, who rose to power aligned with pro-Palestinian activism and is the city’s first Muslim mayor, has declined to recognize Israel specifically as a Jewish state and vowed not to continue the tradition upheld by previous mayors to travel to Israel. New York City has the largest concentration of Jews outside Israel.
“We understand that in the city of New York, for a great number of Jewish people, Israel is a core issue to our identity and even our feeling of personal safety,” said Mark Levine, the city’s comptroller and its highest-ranking Jewish elected official, during a panel on “the future of being Jewish in New York” hosted by the 92NY on Wednesday. Also on stage were City Council Speaker Julie Menin and Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal.
Holyman-Sigal, who as a state legislator visited Israel weeks after the Oct 7, 2023 Hamas attack, said that it would be “an enormous step forward” if Mamdani followed the tradition of every mayor preceding him, going back to 1951, to demonstrate solidarity with their Jewish constituents. “Maybe now is not the right time exactly, but to get that on his radar screen is going to be meaningful to a large segment of New Yorkers,” he said. “If Nixon can go to China, I think the mayor might consider that in the future.”
Mamdani, a supporter of the boycott Israel movement who co-founded the Students for Justice in Palestine chapter at Maine’s Bowdoin College, was met with suspicion from the start as he rose in the polls during the mayoral race last year. His statements on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict unsettled many of the city’s more than 1 million Jews, who were divided in the competitive race, including his refusal to explicitly condemn the “globalize the intifada” slogan used at some pro-Palestinian protests and his refusal to recognize Israel specifically as a “Jewish state.” Mamdani also faced backlash from his hard-line anti-Israel base for saying the country has a right to exist.
Three months into his mayoralty, Mamdani is still struggling to find a governing posture that reassures the largest Jewish community in America, as he insists he will not retreat from his criticism of Israel.
He has faced backlash from Zionist Jewish organizations, particularly after revoking executive orders on his first day in office tied to antisemitism and campus protests and his recent refusal to back legislation aimed at curbing disruptive protests outside synagogues and schools. He also promised to divest from city investments in Israel and pledged to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he comes to New York in compliance with an International Criminal Court warrant. Legal experts doubt Mamdani would have the authority to do that.
Nonetheless, Mamdani has increased his Jewish outreach efforts since taking office. Mamdani has also appointed Phylisa Wisdom, a progressive Jewish leader, to run the Mayor’s Office to Combat Antisemitism. Wisdom has laid out an ambitious early agenda focused on building trust across the city’s diverse Jewish communities.
In March, Mamdani convened a roundtable with Orthodox and Hasidic leaders at City Hall, his most visible outreach yet. But the meeting also underscored the administration’s uneven engagement. Mainstream organizations — including groups like the Anti-Defamation League and the Jewish Federations of New York — were not invited. Mamdani attended Passover Seders hosted by his progressive allies.
At the 92NY event, Menin, who is seen by some as a counterweight to Mamdani on Jewish issues, said that signing the legislative package to combat antisemitism, at a time when anti-Jewish incidents continue to make up a majority of reported hate crimes in the city, would be a key test. The bill directs the NYPD to craft a plan within 45 days for managing protests around houses of worship. It passed by a 44-5 vote, a veto-proof margin. Mamdani has declined to say whether he will sign measures or oppose them.
“I really hope that there is not a veto of that legislation, because I think that will lead to more division when we need less divisiveness,” Menin said.
Hoylman-Sigal said Mamdani’s approach would signal whether he is committed to protecting the Jewish community. He added that he “would be disappointed to say the least” if the mayor chooses to veto the legislation.
City Hall did not respond to multiple requests to interview the mayor about his outreach to the Jewish community during his media tour marking his first 100 days in office.
The future of Israel Bonds
Levine, the city’s chief fiscal officer, who is responsible for auditing agencies and nonprofits, has remained consistent in his promise to resume the purchases of Israel Bonds, debt securities issued by the Israeli government with a roughly 5% return. New York held the bonds between 1974 and 2023, when then-comptroller Brad Lander, who is also Jewish, ended the city’s investment of $39,947,160 in them.
Mamdani had urged Lander to end it permanently, although the mayor can neither prevent the investment nor overrule it.
Levine defended his position on Wednesday. “This is about the fiduciary responsibility that I have and that we have in safeguarding these assets and deploying them in a globally diverse way,” he said. “Israel bonds have never missed a payment in 70 years, ever, not once. They pay excellent interest.”
The comptroller also called out critics who have been protesting outside his office. “We have had no protesting about our investments in Saudi Arabia, our investments in Pakistan or China, only this one little, tiny sliver,” Levine said. He added, “I have many criticisms of the policies of the current government of Israel, have many criticisms of the policies of the current government of the United States, but we own treasury bills because it’s a financial instrument that meets an important need for us.”
The post New York City’s top Jewish officials urge Mamdani to recognize Israel’s centrality to Jewish identity appeared first on The Forward.
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Rachel Goldberg-Polin Talks in ’60 Minutes’ Interview, New Memoir About Grief After Son Murdered by Hamas
Rachel Goldberg, mother of killed US-Israeli hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin whose body was recovered with five other hostages in Gaza, speaks during his funeral in Jerusalem on September 2, 2024. Photo: GIL COHEN-MAGEN/Pool via REUTERS
In a new memoir and “60 Minutes” interview this week, American-Israeli Rachel Goldberg-Polin, a mother of three, opened up about grief and the process of moving forward in life after her only son, Hersh, was murdered while in Hamas captivity in the Gaza Strip.
“To know that your child is being tortured, tormented, starved, abused. He’s maimed. And that’s an excruciating form of suffering,” she told “60 Minutes” correspondent Anderson Cooper in a segment that aired on Monday, which was also Israel’s Memorial Day (Yom HaZikaron). “And then what’s so fascinating to me is that when they came to tell us that Hersh had been executed, then I realized that those 330 days had been the good part, because he was alive. And now I’m in this place and this is the rest of my life. How do I walk through this place without a piece of me here?”
“I’m trying to re-understand what it means to be in this world,” she added. “There are millions of us right now who have buried children. There’s nothing unique about me. But it creates light for me to try to give words to the pain.”
Hersh was one of 251 people kidnapped by Hamas-led terrorists on Oct. 7, 2023. The 23-year-old was attending the Nova music festival in southern Israel, near the Gaza border, with a friend when he was abducted. Terrorists murdered 1,200 people during the onslaught, including 378 festivalgoers, and wounded thousands more. Hersh hid inside a bomb shelter with others and had his left arm blown off by a grenade before he was taken hostage.
Goldberg-Polin and her husband campaigned tirelessly and met with world leaders around the globe to try to secure the release of the hostages, but on the 328th day of his captivity, Hersh was executed by Hamas terrorists. Israeli soldiers found his body in a tunnel in Rafah on Aug. 31, 2024. Hersh, who was shot six times at close range, and five other hostages had been executed.
Goldberg-Polin further details her grief and talks about the kind of person Hersh was, even as a child, in her memoir “When We See You Again,” released on Tuesday. The book is a “searing portrait of a mother’s grief and strength in the wake of unthinkable tragedy,” according to a description of the memoir published by Penguin Random House.
“There are days when I break completely,” Goldberg-Polin writes in her book. “I have cried for an entire day straight. I didn’t think it was physically possible, but the weeping never let up. That is a very long time to cry. I kept hoping I would run out of tears. And then there are days when there is a whisper of sun. Not out there in the sky. In me. In us.”
She also describes grief, saying: “People want hope, resilience, recovery, strength, survival, healing. They want thriving and rising from the ashes, like the phoenix from the days of yore. But the pain is chronic, ever present, constant, gnawing, circular, not linear.”
Goldberg-Polin told Cooper on “60 Minutes” that she now thinks “grief is actually just this precious badge of love that you wear because someone has died and your love is continuing to grow.”
Former Hamas hostage Or Levy was released in February 2025 along with two others and talked to “60 Minutes” about spending three days with Hersh in a tunnel. He told Cooper that during their time together, Hersh kept repeating the mantra, “He who has a why can bear any how.” The line is from “Man’s Search for Meaning,” a 1946 concentration camp memoir by Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl, who adapted a similar saying by Fredrich Nietzsche.
“It became our mantra … The only reason why I survived was him,” Levy told Cooper on “60 Minutes.” Soon after his release, Levy got the mantra tattooed on his arm.
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Iran Seizes Ships in Strait of Hormuz After Trump Extends Ceasefire
Ships and boats in the Strait of Hormuz, Musandam, Oman, April 22, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Stringer
Iran seized two ships in the Strait of Hormuz on Wednesday, tightening its grip on the strategic waterway after US President Donald Trump called off attacks with no sign of peace talks restarting.
Trump maintained the US Navy blockade of Iran‘s trade by sea, and Iran‘s parliament speaker and top negotiator Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf said a full ceasefire only made sense if it was lifted. Reopening the strait was impossible with such a “flagrant breach of the ceasefire,” Qalibaf said in a post on X.
“You did not achieve your goals through military aggression, and you will not achieve them by bullying either. The only way is recognizing the Iranian people’s rights,” he said in his first response to Trump’s ceasefire extension.
Iran‘s semi-official Tasnim news agency earlier said the Revolutionary Guards had seized two vessels for maritime violations and escorted them to Iranian shores. It was the first time Iran has seized ships since the war began at the end of February.
The Revolutionary Guards also warned that any disruption to order and safety in the strait would be considered a “red line,” Tasnim said.
NO NEW DEADLINE FOR CEASEFIRE
Trump said on social media late on Tuesday that the US had agreed to a request by Pakistani mediators “to hold our Attack on the Country of Iran until such time as their leaders and representatives can come up with a unified proposal … and discussions are concluded, one way or the other.”
A source briefed on the matter confirmed on Wednesday that Trump had not set a timeline for the extension of the ceasefire.
In a show of defiance, Iran showcased some of its ballistic weapons at a parade in Tehran on Tuesday evening, with images on state TV showing large crowds waving Iranian flags and a banner in the background with a fist choking off the strait.
Captions read: “Indefinitely under Iran‘s Control” and “Trump could not do a damn thing,” referring to the waterway, the closure of which has caused a global energy crisis.
PAKISTAN STILL WORKING TO FOSTER TALKS DESPITE ‘SETBACK’
Pakistan, which has acted as a mediator, was still trying to bring the sides together for negotiations after both failed to show up for talks on Tuesday before the two-week-old ceasefire had been due to expire.
“We were all prepared for the talks, the stage was set,” a Pakistani official briefed on the preparations told Reuters. “If you ask me honestly, it was a setback we were not expecting, because the Iranians never refused, they were up to come and join, and they still are.”
Throughout the war, Iran has effectively shut the strait to ships other than its own by attacking vessels that attempt to transit without its permission. Around a fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas normally passes through the waterway.
The Revolutionary Guards accused the seized ships, the Panama-flagged MSC Francesca and Liberia-flagged Epaminondas, of operating without required permits and tampering with their navigation systems.
The Greek-operated Epaminondas reported being fired upon about 20 nautical miles northwest of Oman. It said it had sustained damage to its bridge after being hit by gunfire and that no one was hurt in the incident.
Greece and the company have not confirmed the seizure of the vessel. MSC, the world’s biggest container shipping group, did not respond to a Reuters request for immediate comment.
A third, Liberia-flagged container ship was fired upon in the same area but was not damaged and had resumed sailing, according to maritime security sources.
DIFFERENCES REMAIN ON KEY ISSUES
With his announcement on Tuesday, Trump again pulled back at the last moment from warnings to bomb Iran‘s power plants and bridges, a threat condemned by the United Nations and others as potentially constituting war crimes. Iran had said it would strike its Arab neighbors if its civilian infrastructure was hit.
Oil prices reversed course to head higher after the shipping incidents on Wednesday, with Brent crude futures up almost 4% at $102.2 a barrel.
A first session of peace talks 11 days ago produced no agreement.
Washington wants Iran to give up highly enriched uranium and forgo further enrichment to prevent it getting a weapon. Iran, which says its nuclear program is peaceful, wants an end to the war, the lifting of sanctions, reparations for damage and recognition of its control over the strait.
An Israeli strike killed two people in southern Lebanon on Wednesday, Lebanon’s state news agency reported, and Hezbollah said it launched an attack drone at Israeli forces in the south, further straining a ceasefire between the Iran-backed terrorist group and Israel.
The Lebanon ceasefire had been a precondition for Iran agreeing to talks.
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Attacks in South Lebanon Strain Ceasefire on Eve of Washington Talks
Smoke rises after an Israeli strike, amid escalating hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah, as the US-Israeli conflict with Iran continues, in southern Lebanon, March 24, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Stringer
An Israeli strike killed two people in southern Lebanon on Wednesday, Lebanon‘s state news agency reported, and Hezbollah said it launched an attack drone at Israeli forces in the south, further straining a ceasefire between the Iran-backed terrorist group and Israel.
On the eve of talks in Washington between Lebanese and Israeli ambassadors, Lebanese President Joseph Aoun said Beirut would seek an extension of the 10-day, US-mediated ceasefire, which is set to expire on Sunday.
Hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel reignited on March 2, when the Lebanese Islamist group opened fire in support of Iran.
The US-brokered ceasefire in Lebanon emerged separately from Washington’s efforts to resolve its conflict with Tehran, though Iran had called for Lebanon to be included in any broader truce. The United States has denied any link between the tracks.
Lebanon‘s state-run National News Agency said the Israeli strike hit a car in al-Tiri, a village in south Lebanon, killing two people inside. The Israeli military didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Hezbollah said it attacked an Israeli artillery position in southern Lebanon with a drone, in response to what it said was an Israeli violation of the ceasefire. The Israeli military said it had intercepted “a hostile aircraft” launched by Hezbollah toward Israeli soldiers in south Lebanon.
More than 2,400 people have been killed in Lebanon since Israel launched an offensive in response to Hezbollah’s March 2 attack, according to Lebanese authorities. Israel says the vast majority of those killed have been Hezbollah terrorists, who often embed themselves in civilian areas.
Israeli forces have seized a belt of territory at the border where troops remain, saying they aim to create a buffer zone to shield northern Israel from attacks by Hezbollah, which fired hundreds of rockets at Israel during the conflict.
BEIRUT TO SEEK END TO ISRAELI DEMOLITIONS
Aoun said Beirut’s envoy to Thursday’s talks, Lebanese Ambassador to Washington Nada Moawad, would seek a ceasefire extension and a halt to demolitions being carried out by Israel in villages in the south, according to a statement.
A Lebanese official said Beirut wants a ceasefire extension as a prerequisite for talks to expand beyond the ambassadorial level to the next phase, in which Lebanon would push for an Israeli withdrawal, the return of Lebanese detained in Israel, and a delineation of the land border.
Hezbollah, which says the Lebanon ceasefire was the fruit of Iranian pressure, has condemned Beirut for seeking talks with Israel, reflecting wider splits with the government that has sought Hezbollah’s peaceful disarmament for a year.
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar, in a speech, said Israel had taken a “historic decision to negotiate directly with Lebanon after more than 40 years” whilst also calling it a “failed state.”
“I call on the Government of Lebanon: Let’s work together against the terror state that Hezbollah built in your territory. This cooperation is needed by you even more than by us,” he said.
The Israeli military said it had killed two terrorists who had crossed its “Forward Defense Line” in south Lebanon on Tuesday and approached Israeli soldiers, saying they had violated the ceasefire.
DRUZE LEADER URGES CLEAR AGENDA, INCLUDING WITHDRAWAL
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio is set to attend Thursday’s meeting. Israel will be represented by its ambassador to Washington, Yechiel Leiter.
Aoun has cited goals including halting Israeli attacks on Lebanon and securing the withdrawal of Israeli troops. In a speech on Friday, he said a ceasefire should be transformed into “permanent agreements that preserve the rights of our people, the unity of our land, and the sovereignty of our nation.”
Announcing the ceasefire on April 16, US President Donald Trump said he had instructed Rubio, Vice President JD Vance, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine to work with the two countries to achieve lasting peace.
Lebanon and Israel have remained in an official state of war since the establishment of Israel in 1948.
Lebanon‘s most senior Shi’ite state official, Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, is against face-to-face negotiations with Israel, saying Beirut could have negotiated indirectly.
Lebanon‘s leading Druze politician, Walid Jumblatt, said on Tuesday that the most Lebanon could offer is an update to a 1949 armistice agreement with Israel.
In comments to reporters after a meeting with Berri, Jumblatt said there should be a clear agenda for talks that includes a withdrawal of Israeli troops still in southern Lebanon.