Rabbi Danny Schiff had a rule: no national letters.

The community scholar of the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh avoided open statements about far-off politics. But this month, he broke that rule — for a mayor’s race nearly 400 miles away.

“I never, ever, ever sign on to national rabbinic letters,” Schiff said. “And I made a lifetime exception for this particular instance.”

That exception was Zohran Mamdani — a New York state assemblyman, outspoken critic of Israel and, according to polls, the frontrunner to become the city’s first Muslim mayor. Schiff joined more than a thousand rabbis who signed an open letter opposing Mamdani, arguing that he “gives oxygen to anti-Zionist voices” and represents “a threatening reality for the American Jewish future.”

Schiff, who splits his time between Pittsburgh and Israel, said Mamdani’s campaign risks normalizing a “playbook” that other politicians might follow.

But not all rabbis saw danger in Mamdani’s rise. From Oregon to California to Illinois, other clergy have spoken out in support of him — or at least in defense of his right to run without being cast as a threat. The unusual spectacle of rabbis across the country weighing in on a New York City election has revealed deep fault lines over Israel, antisemitism, and what Jewish leadership looks like in 2025.

The question animating the debate is less who should be mayor of New York than what it means, right now, to speak as a rabbi in public life.

A new letter of solidarity

A new open letter published Tuesday, titled Jews for a Shared Future, gathered more than 150 signatures from rabbis, cantors, rabbinical students and Jewish leaders who reject efforts to frame Mamdani’s candidacy as a threat.

“As antisemitism and Islamophobia both rise in America, we understand that our fates are bound together,” the letter reads. “Jewish safety cannot be built on Muslim vulnerability, nor can we combat hate against our community while turning away from hate against our neighbors. Our traditions teach us that justice is indivisible — we are only truly safe when we ensure the safety and dignity of all. This is not merely strategic; it is sacred.”

The letter’s point person, Rabbi Shoshana Leis, co-rabbi with her husband of Pleasantville Community Synagogue in Westchester County, New York, said she wrote it after seeing how the national conversation about Mamdani had hardened into mutual accusation.

“I felt there needed to be a response,” she said. “I didn’t want to endorse any candidate, but I wanted to give an alternative perspective — the way we’re going to live safely is to engage across differences and choose our shared future.”

Leis called New York “our pluralistic, treasured city,” and said Jewish safety “is fully interdependent on the safety of everyone in New York City.” Her letter, she added, was meant to be “a letter against divisiveness.”

‘Mamdani has become the lightning rod’

Mamdani’s positions on Israel have roiled New York’s Jewish community — the largest in the United States — as he has faced scrutiny for refusing to outright condemn the slogan “globalize the intifada,” calling the Gaza war a “genocide,” and pledging to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he visits the city.

In Manhattan, two of the city’s most prominent rabbis took sharply different approaches to the campaign. Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove of Park Avenue Synagogue openly urged congregants to back Andrew Cuomo, calling Mamdani a threat to Jewish security. Rabbi Angela Buchdahl of Central Synagogue reaffirmed her congregation’s stance against political endorsements.

Adding to the moment, a July ruling by the Internal Revenue Service said that clergy can now endorse political candidates without automatically jeopardizing their congregations’ tax-exempt status, a change that has effectively loosened decades-old restraints on rabbinic speech from the pulpit.

The divergent choices of Buchdahl and Cosgrove captured a new era in which rabbis, once shielded from electoral politics, now face pressure to take public stands in the age of livestreamed sermons and viral petitions.

From Los Angeles, Rabbi David Wolpe, emeritus of Sinai Temple, said the anxiety is less about New York policy than precedent. “It’s New York — and whatever happens in New York is, by definition, national news,” he said. “People worry that a mayor of a major city with Mamdani’s views creates both a permission structure and an incentive for others to follow.”

For Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg, who writes the newsletter Life Is a Sacred Text from Chicago, the controversy reflects deeper communal and generational shifts. “Mamdani has become the lightning rod for Jewish communal tensions,” she said. “All of our intra-communal tsuris — everything that had begun to boil over since Oct. 7 — needs a new place to manifest, and this is where it’s going.”

She said the uproar is less about New York than about Jewish anxiety. “People’s fears about ‘antisemitism on the left’ find prominent articulation here, while a whole world of antisemitism on the right is being left unaddressed,” she said.

“There has been a sea change in how an entire generation engages with Israel,” she continued. “Mamdani’s popularity with younger Jews is reflective of that. It’s easier to blame him than to grapple with how the conversation around Israel has changed nationally and globally.”

Ruttenberg added that if she lived in New York, she would endorse him. “He has said repeatedly that he’s going to increase hate crime funding by 800% in New York, a city that he is meant to serve. His priority is not foreign policy.

“He’s become symbolic of all of these fears that people have about so many other things that are not his to hold,” she said.

‘We don’t need rabbis fighting rabbis’

From Eugene, Oregon, Rabbi Ruhi Sophia Motzkin Rubenstein of Temple Beth Israel — a Reconstructionist congregation of about 400 households — signed the Shared Future letter.

“It’s absolutely absurd that I’m weighing in on a New York City election,” she said. “But I do have a stake in how Jews and rabbis are publicly portrayed on a national scale.”

“I do think there is a manufactured panic that is very dangerous,” she added. “This is not the greatest threat to the Jewish people. This is a dangerous red herring.”

Not every rabbi fits neatly into one camp. Rabbi Suzanne Singer, emerita of Temple Beth El in Riverside, California, signed both letters — the one opposing Mamdani and the one urging solidarity.

“I hesitated before signing the first letter because I didn’t particularly want to attack one person,” she said. “I don’t think Mamdani is an antisemite. He’s an anti-Zionist, and there are plenty of Jews who are anti-Zionist. That doesn’t make him an outlier.”

Singer said she worries about rhetoric that casts Israelis as “settler colonialists,” and believes Israel and the Palestinians both have the right to self-determination. But she was also drawn to the second letter’s message. “We have to find a way to work together and live together,” she said. “Antisemitism is enough — we don’t need rabbis fighting rabbis.”

She expects some overlap between signatories of both letters. “The first letter, I wish it hadn’t targeted Mamdani so directly,” she said. “Everything has gotten to be black and white — there’s no nuance, no complicated narrative anymore.”

The moral crossroads

For Schiff, the Pittsburgh rabbi who broke his lifetime rule, the issue is existential. “Clearly Mamdani has made it his business to let everybody know what his views are on Israel — in the largest Jewish city in America,” he said. “Other politicians around the country might take note.”

“The end of the kinetic war has not brought an end to the war of delegitimization against Israel,” Schiff added. “If you can’t beat Israel militarily, then the anti-Zionism campaign becomes the favored route for aggression.”

Ruttenberg sees something different in that lightning. “If we think that magically defeating Mamdani will somehow return us to the way things used to be,” she said, “that is not what is going to be the outcome.”

She also questioned the moral calculus behind the opposition’s preferred candidate. “If we want to talk about Torah values,” she said, “Cuomo is a serial sexual abuser who spent $20 million of taxpayer money paying for his defense. In what way do my colleagues think this is any representation of either pragmatic or ethical values?”

Her conclusion was blunt, and hopeful. “When we make choices out of fear, it tends to end badly,” she said. “And when we choose based on building relationships and solidarity — understanding that our liberation is bound up with everyone else’s — that’s how we win, as Jews and as people.”

Jacob Kornbluh contributed to this article.

The post Why rabbis across America are taking sides in New York’s mayoral race appeared first on The Forward.

When Polish-born musician Maria Ka released her latest album Di Mashin (The Machine), she wasn’t merely reviving Yiddish song — she was remaking it in her own cosmic image.

Performing out of Gdańsk, she fuses everyday Yiddish speech with the vastness of outer space, using synths, distortion and humor to connect the language’s earthly pulse with celestial wonder.

Her approach is unorthodox by design. Rather than treating Yiddish as sacred, she sees it as a living, working language — one that can carry “punk rock” energy as easily as poetic introspection. For Ka, the language’s vitality lies in its adaptability. “Authenticity,” she says, “means Yiddish being modern, vivid and evolving.”

Beyond Klezmer

Ka’s music steers clear of nostalgia. She speaks with playful candor about her dislike of traditional klezmer, preferring what she calls the “mechanical rhythms” of shipyards, engines and machinery — sounds that mirror both the industrial history of her city and the emotional machinery of human connection.

Her songs blend the personal and the metaphysical — daily struggle intertwined with a hum of cosmic motion. “We run through our days,” she said, “while the universe simply expands.”

Ka credits much of her inspiration to pioneering women in music and theater — from Polish rock icon Kora to American legend Grace Slick and the British singer Siouxsie Sioux. Their daring artistry, she says, shaped her own stage persona: bold, visual and unapologetically original.

A Yiddish Voice in Dresden

In October, Ka opened Dresden’s Jüdische Woche (Jewish Week) festival — an experience she describes with disbelief and gratitude. The performance, which happened to fall on her birthday, felt to her like an impossible full circle. “If you told people during WWII that a Yiddish artist would perform new songs in Dresden,” she said with a laugh, “they’d have called you crazy.”

For her, bringing Yiddish music into postwar German spaces is not only symbolic but redemptive, a way to turn historical trauma into creative dialogue. “It’s meaningful,” she says, “because it opens understanding.”

Emotion, Light, and Connection

Ka writes instinctively — beginning with emotion and often discovering melody alongside it. Inspiration can come from anywhere: a word, an article, even a scientific term. One track, “Alef-Tsentauri Disko,” was sparked by an article she read about the star Alpha Centauri, which she transformed into a Yiddish pun, creating a link between the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, alef, with the word alpha.

Her forthcoming piece, Di Kosmishe Motorn (The Cosmic Motors), continues that theme. It’s a psychedelic reflection on intimacy between the human soul and the stars. Despite her space-age vision, Ka’s goal is earthly and humane. She hopes listeners feel “light, positivity and balance” through her songs. In a fractured world, she believes music remains one of the few forces that unite. “There are more things that connect us than divide us,” she says. “Music proves it.”

The post Maria Ka’s cosmic Yiddish music — from punk grit to starlight appeared first on The Forward.

People react near the scene, after an attack in which a car was driven at pedestrians and stabbings were reported at a synagogue in north Manchester, Britain, on Yom Kippur, Oct. 2, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Phil Noble

Following the deadly Yom Kippur terrorist attack in Manchester earlier this month, Jewish leaders in Britain are calling on the government to crack down on rising antisemitism, demanding a comprehensive national strategy to protect the community amid an increasingly hostile environment.

On Tuesday, the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the Jewish Leadership Council, and the Union of Jewish Students issued a joint statement proposing a set of guidelines and policy recommendations for the government to tackle anti-Jewish hatred.

Together with other communal organizations, including the Community Security Trust, the document sets out policy priorities in four key areas: policing and security, extremism, civil society, and schools and universities.

Board of Deputies, @JLC_uk and @UJS_UK have today published priorities for a comprehensive strategy to tackle antisemitism.

Full paper is on our website: https://t.co/rekrvqGk6k pic.twitter.com/PjI0O6JpRN

— Board of Deputies of British Jews (@BoardofDeputies) October 28, 2025

Amid a persistent surge in antisemitic incidents, Jewish leaders said this document should serve as a foundation for continued efforts, while calling on the government, experts, and community partners to deepen discussion and collaboration to root out antisemitism in British society.

“Following the awful Yom Kippur attack at Heaton Park Synagogue we have seen a series of welcome announcements from the government,” Phil Rosenberg, president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, said in a statement.

“However, these measures on their own will not be sufficient to meet the long-term society-wide challenge of confronting antisemitic hatred. We need to see a Comprehensive Government Strategy on Antisemitism,” he continued.

On Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement and holiest day of the year in Judaism, a man identified by police as Jihad al-Shamie, 35, drove a car onto the grounds of the Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation synagogue in Manchester, northern England, and went on a stabbing spree, leaving two Jewish men dead and at least three others critically injured.

The attack occurred as the congregation gathered to observe Yom Kippur and ended seven minutes later, when police shot the assailant dead.

Shortly after the attack, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced an emergency £10 million boost to Jewish communities to strengthen security at synagogues and schools, marking a record high in funding to safeguard religious institutions.

The Jewish community in Britain has faced a troubling surge in antisemitic incidents and anti-Israel sentiment since the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

Last month, the British nongovernmental organization Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) released research conducted by YouGov which showed that those characterized as embracing “entrenched” antisemitic attitudes in the UK had grown to 21 percent, the highest figure on record, showing a jump from 16 percent in 2024 and 11 percent in 2021.

The survey came after the Community Security Trust (CST), a nonprofit charity that advises Britain’s Jewish community on security matters, published a report in August showing there were 1,521 antisemitic incidents in the UK from January to June of this year. It marked the second-highest total of incidents ever recorded by CST in the first six months of any year, following the first half of 2024 in which 2,019 antisemitic incidents were recorded.

In total last year, CST recorded 3,528 antisemitic incidents for 2024, the country’s second worst year for antisemitism and an 18 percent drop from 2023’s record of 4,296.

Jewish leaders have consistently called on authorities to take swift action against the rising wave of targeted attacks and anti-Jewish hate crimes they continue to face.

According to government statistics, religious hate crime has reached record levels, with Jewish people targeted more than any other group.

Among the proposed measures and policy guidelines, the joint document unveiled this week calls for sustained visible policing at synagogues and schools, tougher enforcement against violent rhetoric at protests, greater powers for authorities to shut down extremist organizations, and stricter rules to tackle harassment and incitement on university campuses.

Louis Danker, president of the Union of Jewish Students, called for stronger and more coordinated government action to tackle antisemitism and extremism on campuses.

“Extreme student groups have never been so emboldened to glorify terrorism and incite hate,” he said in a statement. “The government must act with urgency to break the culture of impunity, clarify universities’ obligations, and root out antisemitism from our campuses.”

Keith Black, chair of the Jewish Leadership Council, stressed that protecting Jewish life must go beyond physical security measures.

“We need sustained action to combat the root causes of antisemitism and extremism,” Black said in a statement.

“The murder of Melvin Cravitz and Adrian Daulby on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year, was a devastating blow to our community’s sense of safety and belonging in this country,” he continued.