(JTA) — This piece first ran as part of The Countdown, JTA’s daily newsletter rounding up all the developments in the New York City mayor’s race. Sign up here to get it in your inbox. There are 15 days to the election.

🗣 Rabbis speak out

• Two leading New York rabbis are using their pulpits to condemn Zohran Mamdani as he holds onto a commanding lead in the last weeks of the race.
• Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove, who heads the Conservative Park Avenue Synagogue on the Upper East Side, decried the frontrunner in a speech to his congregation on Shabbat. “I believe Zohran Mamdani poses a danger to the security of the New York Jewish community,” he said, citing Mamdani’s views of Israel and Zionism.
• Cosgrove also urged his congregants to convince their Jewish friends and family to vote against Mamdani. He said Jewish New Yorkers should “prioritize their Jewish selves” by voting based on their connection to Israel, rather than local issues such as affordability.
• “As Jews, ahavat Israel — love of Israel — does take precedence over other loves,” said Cosgrove.
• Reform Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch, who leads the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue on the Upper West Side, addressed Mamdani in his own video that was shared with his congregation days earlier.
• Hirsch said Mamdani’s “ideological commitments” against Israel served to “delegitimize the Jewish community and encourage and exacerbate hostility towards Judaism and Jews.” He told Mamdani, “I urge you to reconsider your long-held views of Israel’s right to exist.”
• Hirsch also said, “Most Jews are deeply offended by your ongoing accusations of Israeli genocide.” Four in 10 American Jews said they believed Israel was committing genocide in Gaza, according to a Washington Post poll conducted in early September.
• A Fox News survey last week found that Jews were closely split between Mamdani and Andrew Cuomo, who is polling a distant second in the race.
• Other New York rabbis have been plagued by the question of whether to endorse in this election, since the IRS reversed a decades-long policy that barred endorsements from the pulpit. Hirsch previously told our reporter Grace Gilson that he was alarmed by Mamdani but would not make an endorsement, warning fellow clergy that “it diminishes us if we are perceived as being in a partisan camp.”

📣 Sliwa called on to quit

• Curtis Sliwa faced calls to quit the race during a meeting at Fifth Avenue Synagogue on Sunday, where our reporter Joseph Strauss saw attendees pleading with the Republican nominee who is polling third. The day before, on Shabbat, he visited The Jewish Center, an Orthodox synagogue on the Upper West Side. Later in the day, he headed to Congregation Beth Elohim in Brooklyn, where Mamdani spoke last week.
• The Fifth Avenue Synagogue crowd was not unanimously anti-Sliwa, but they convened with the purpose of stopping Mamdani’s rise. One person accused Sliwa of being a “spoiler.”
• “We all love you, we want you to win,” said synagogue president Jacob Gold, who stood by Sliwa at the podium. “But you’re at 15%, and Cuomo’s at what percent? And Mamdani’s at what percent?” Gold said that he wanted Sliwa to “merge with Cuomo.”
• Cuomo himself urged Sliwa to drop out after the first general election debate on Thursday, during which he fielded barbs from both Sliwa and Mamdani.
• “There is no Curtis as a candidate. There’s Curtis as a spoiler,” Cuomo said to conservative Jewish radio host Sid Rosenberg on Friday. “If Curtis is not in the race, I win. And that’s a choice for Republicans. Do you vote for Curtis so you can say ‘I voted Republican’ and wind up electing Mamdani? Or do you vote for me?”
• Sliwa responded to his detractors, including Jewish billionaire Bill Ackman, in an interview with Jewish YouTuber Nate Friedman. He called Ackman a “jerk” who did not understand politics or live in New York City. To Cuomo, he said, “Get your own votes.”

🎂 Mamdani turns 34

• Mamdani celebrated his birthday on Saturday, taking the chance to address voters who express concerns about his age.
• “You’re worried about a 33-year-old becoming mayor of New York City,” he said in a video. “And I want you to know, I hear you. That’s why this weekend I’ll be making a change. I’m turning 34, and I’m committing that for every single day from here on out, I will grow older.”
• Mamdani asked supporters to mark his birthday by signing up for a canvassing shift. “The best gift is to beat Andrew Cuomo a second time,” he said.

👀 Trump watch

• President Trump continues to muse about the race. But after saying that Mamdani “hates Jewish people” and reiterating his threats to cut federal funding from New York under a Mayor Mamdani last week, he suggested over the weekend that the election result wouldn’t make much difference to him.
• “Would I rather have a Democrat than a communist? Barely. They’re almost becoming the same thing,” Trump said on Fox News on Sunday morning. “I don’t know that I’m going to get involved.”

The post Prominent NYC rabbi urges congregants to vote against Zohran Mamdani in Shabbat sermon appeared first on The Forward.

(JTA) — California Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna, a leading critic of Israel in Congress, said he believes in the “right for Israel to exist” and that it is antisemitic to oppose the existence of a Jewish state.

Khanna made the comment during an interview Friday with J. The Jewish News of Northern California. Speaking with the J’s Gabe Stutman, Khanna said he supports Zionism and that modern antisemitism stems from “denying the idea of a Jewish state.”

“I believe that Zionism is self-determination of the Jewish people, and the right for Israel to exist. And I support that. What I don’t believe is if it means Greater Israel,” said Khanna, adding that he believes there needs to be a “two-state solution.”

Last month Khanna led an unsuccessful effort to push President Donald Trump to recognize Palestinian statehood at the United Nations General Assembly. He also said he agreed with a United Nations commission’s finding that Israel had committed genocide in Gaza, making him one of only a handful of members of Congress to endorse the charge that Israel rejects.

“I agree with the UN commission’s heartbreaking finding that there is a genocide in Gaza,’ wrote Khanna in a post on X. “What matters is what we do about it — stop military sales that are being used to kill civilians and recognize a Palestinian state.”

Later in the interview, Khanna went on to frame his support for Jewish self-determination within his broader understanding of antisemitism.

“The original antisemitism was denying the Jewish people based on religion,” said Khanna. “Then, under Nazism, it became denying the Jewish people based on race. And today, antisemitism is denying the idea of a Jewish state. And I reject all three of those antisemitism premises.”

During the interview, Khanna also defended his appearance in a documentary earlier that month that featured antisemitic influencer Ian Carroll. Following the YouTube documentary’s release, where Khanna spells out his reasoning for rejecting AIPAC funding, he posted a clip that featured Carroll following his own interview.

“I had, genuinely, no idea who he was,” Khanna told Stutman. “I had never met him, never spoken to him. The broader point I was making was about PAC money, lobbyist money, not taking it. And not taking money from AIPAC. And that was what I said in the video. But once I came to know who he was — I, of course, unequivocally denounce his comments that somehow Israel was to blame for 9/11. I mean, that’s ludicrous.”

Khanna has also faced criticism for his appearance at the ArabCon conference last month, where several panelists defended Hamas as “Palestinian resistance” and laughed at the idea of condemning the Oct. 7 attacks.

“My brand, my politics, political philosophy is I will go and have a conversation anywhere,” said Khanna in defense of his appearance, adding that he told the conference he “unequivocally denounce the viewpoint that there was any justification for Hamas.”

The post Ro Khanna, Democratic critic of Israel, says he supports Zionism and the ‘right for Israel to exist’ appeared first on The Forward.

(JTA) — Upwards of 10,000 haredi Orthodox Jewish men protested on Sunday night outside the Israeli consulate in New York City against the conscription of Orthodox Jews in the Israeli military.

The protest, which was organized by the Central Rabbinical Congress, a consortium of Orthodox Jewish groups, comes amid one of Israel’s tensest political debates: whether haredi men should be subjected to the draft.

Last year, the Israeli Supreme Court unanimously ruled that Israel must draft haredi Orthodox Jews into its army, ending the longstanding exemption for yeshiva students from military service that has existed since the country’s founding.

Since then, haredi men have staged frequent street protests in Israel, including outside the Knesset in Jerusalem, and the debate reached a new flashpoint last month when over 100 haredi Orthodox men were arrested for draft-dodging while attempting to leave the country for an annual pilgrimage for Rosh Hashanah.

Now, the protest movement has spilled over to New York, home to the largest haredi communities outside of Israel. At the rally Sunday night, rabbinic leaders from the anti-Zionist Satmar hasidic sect and Grand Rebbes spoke from cherry pickers above the protesters, who held signs reading “We would rather die as Jews than live as Zionist soldiers,” and “Stop terrorizing religious Jews,” according to footage of the event.

“Americans are unaware of Israel’s horrific treatment of Orthodox Jews. From night raids in Orthodox neighborhoods to checkpoints to arrests of Yeshiva students, Israel is persecuting the very religious people that it claims to protect,” said Rabbi Isaac Green, one of the New York protest’s organizers, in a statement. “Israel should not force Orthodox Jews to join an anti-religious army to fight wars against their religion.”

Rabbis Aaron and Zalman Teitelbaum, the two rival leaders of the Satmar sect, both urged their followers to join in the demonstration, marking one of the rare times they have organized over the past two years due to their policy of not protesting against Israel during times of war.

As more men arrived at the demonstration, the mass of protesters began spilling onto the street, leading to some clashes and shoving matches with police officers trying to control the crowd, according to amNewYork.

Currently, around 80,000 ultra-Orthodox men in Israel are believed to be eligible for service, and the IDF has called for 12,000 recruits to meet the needs posed by the war in Gaza.

The post Thousands of haredi Orthodox Jews protest Israeli military draft in New York City appeared first on The Forward.