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ADL launches ‘Mamdani monitor’ as Jewish groups retool for post-election advocacy
(JTA) — As New York City woke up to a new mayor-elect on Wednesday, Jewish groups that spurned Zohran Mamdani faced a decision — how to react to a leader whose staunch criticism of Israel flew in the face of their core beliefs.
Their first responses ranged from despondent to optimistic, with aims from seeking unity to staging a battlefield.
Jonathan Greenblatt, the Anti-Defamation League chief who railed against Mamdani throughout the race, convened a briefing on Wednesday to discuss grappling with the new administration. He announced a “Mamdani Monitor,” a public tracker of Mamdani’s policies and personnel appointments that the ADL viewed as threatening Jewish security.
“We’re deeply concerned about what the next four years could augur for Jewish New Yorkers — the antisemitic language that he has promoted, the antisemitic policies that he’s championed, the antisemitic extremists who he’s known to affiliate with,” Greenblatt said.
Greenblatt cited Mamdani’s support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel and past rhetoric about the Israeli army as evidence that “this mayor will not have our backs.” Under Greenblatt’s leadership, the ADL has narrowed its civil rights mission to focus on combating antisemitism and anti-Zionism.
Mamdani crested to victory as the city’s first Muslim mayor without a majority of Jewish voters, who have split over his staunch criticism of Israel. Early exit polls from CNN indicate that he won just over 50% of voters but only 33% of Jewish voters, while his pro-Israel opponent Andrew Cuomo won nearly twice as many, at 63%.
Greenblatt said the ADL was closely watching Mamdani with a list of demands. Those included no appointments of people with records of antisemitism, NYPD protection for synagogues and Jewish day schools, and “factual, unbiased education about the Middle East” in schools. He also said it was “very important” to maintain NYPD partnerships with Israeli counterintelligence and counterterrorism efforts.
Hindy Poupko, the chief strategy officer at UJA-Federation of New York, also said her organization was preparing to combat potential Mamdani policies that aligned with BDS. She said that UJA hoped to lobby for broadening a state-level anti-BDS order, passed by Cuomo as governor, so that it would apply to New York City.
“We need to expand that Cuomo executive order to cover City Hall, because it would be devastating on many fronts — not to mention economically devastating for New Yorkers — if the Mamdani administration engaged in any kind of BDS activity,” said Poupko.
Asked if they would meet with Mamdani, both Greenblatt and Poupko gave qualified answers.
“I will not meet him on my own,” said Greenblatt. “I think we have a responsibility to our fellowship as Jews. I’m not going to do that meeting without UJA. I’m not going to do that meeting without some spiritual leadership as well.”
Poupko said, “The ball’s in his court.” If Mamdani took actions to “put Jewish New Yorkers at ease,” then she said UJA leaders would meet him.
Mamdani was asked about Greenblatt’s proposed “Mamdani Monitor” in a press conference on Wednesday.
“I think that anyone is free to catalog the actions of our administration,” he answered. “I have some doubts in Jonathan’s ability to do so honestly, given that he previously said I had not visited any synagogues, only to have to correct himself.”
Greenblatt incorrectly stated that Mamdani had not visited “a single synagogue” during a CNBC interview in August. He later said he meant that Mamdani had not visited any synagogues since the June primary.
The ADL and UJA were not alone in mourning Mamdani’s victory. The New York Board of Rabbis and other leading Jewish institutions in the city said in a joint statement, “We cannot ignore that the Mayor-elect holds core beliefs fundamentally at odds with our community’s deepest convictions and most cherished values.” They added that they would continue to work with every level of government.
Rabbi Marc Schneier, who heads The Hampton Synagogue on Long Island and backed Cuomo, said he planned to establish the first Jewish day school in the Hamptons as a haven for “thousands of Jewish families” fleeing “the antisemitic climate of Mamdani’s New York City.”
Meanwhile, the Republican Jewish Coalition called Mamdani’s victory “a deeply distressing result for New Yorkers, particularly Jewish New Yorkers,” and accused his entire party of condoning antisemitism. “There is only ONE party in this country fighting antisemitism and supporting Israel, and it is the Republican Party,” said the coalition.
Other past critics of Mamdani seemed ready to put the election behind them. The pro-Israel billionaire Bill Ackman, whose prolific and protracted attacks on Mamdani during the campaign often predicted an apocalyptic city under his leadership, appeared to offer an olive branch just hours after predicting Cuomo would prevail.
“Congrats on the win,” Ackman said to Mamdani on X. “Now you have a big responsibility. If I can help NYC, just let me know what I can do.”
Some voices emphasized mending the divisions that roiled Jewish communities throughout the race. The Union for Reform Judaism, which urged its rabbis not to endorse candidates despite intense pressure from congregants, pressed Jews to “help lower the temperature, listen generously, and take steps to promote healing” in the aftermath of the election.
“Reasonable people across the political spectrum — and across the Jewish community — must aspire to respectfully disagree, and we will do our part to bring people together without erasing real differences,” the group said. They added that they welcomed cooperation with Mamdani and would hold him accountable to “his commitments to protect Jewish communities and all New Yorkers.”
Noting that City Hall does not have a foreign policy, the organization said it would “not hesitate to push back if anti-Israel policies or rhetoric make Jewish New Yorkers who are deeply attached to Israel more anxious and less safe.”
Other Jewish leaders are looking toward a future under Mamdani not with dismay or caution, but with jubilation. Activists from left-wing groups like Jewish Voice for Peace and Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, which have bolstered Mamdani’s rise to power, celebrated the victory at his watch party on Tuesday night. Several people there told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency they would finally have an ally in City Hall who aligned with their views on issues from income inequality to Palestinian rights.
Rabbi Lauren Grabelle Herrmann, who leads the SAJ synagogue on the Upper West Side, urged congregants with wide-ranging reactions to the election to keep in mind their shared hopes for the well-being of all Jews and New Yorkers.
She quoted the prophet Jeremiah, writing, “Seek the welfare of the city to which I have exiled you and pray to God on its behalf; for in its prosperity you shall prosper.”
The post ADL launches ‘Mamdani monitor’ as Jewish groups retool for post-election advocacy appeared first on The Forward.
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Canadian progressive party picks Jewish anti-Zionist politician as its leader
(JTA) — Canada’s main progressive party aims to make a comeback under its new leader Avi Lewis, a Jewish anti-Zionist.
Lewis, a filmmaker and former journalist, was elected to lead the New Democrats on Sunday. He campaigned on principles that have energized the global left, including affordability, the environment and unapologetic anti-Zionism. He repeated his position on Israel in his acceptance speech in Winnipeg.
“When Israel commits a genocide in Gaza, we call it by its name, and we do everything in our power to bring it to an end,” Lewis said in his speech.
Lewis hopes to rebuild a party that suffered its worst losses in history during the 2025 federal election. Center-left voters who were alarmed by President Donald Trump’s threats to Canada flocked to the Liberal Party and elected Mark Carney as prime minister.
Lewis comes from a line of progressive royalty. His grandfather, David Lewis, was one of the founding members of the New Democrats and its leader in the 1970s. His father, Stephen Lewis, led the party in Ontario. He is also the great-grandson of Moishe Lewis, who was an outspoken member of the socialist Jewish Labour Bund in Eastern Europe and immigrated to Canada in 1921.
Lewis is married to Naomi Klein, a prominent author and critic of Israel. Klein was among several writers who declined to participate in PEN America’s annual World Voices festival in 2024, saying the group failed to “stand firmly” with Palestinian writers. She also addressed protesters during a rally outside U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s residence in Brooklyn during Passover that year, called “Seder in the Streets to Stop Arming Israel,” and urged Jews against worshipping the “false idol” of Zionism.
Lewis was formerly a reporter for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and Al Jazeera. In a debate with other candidates in January, he described himself as an “anti-Zionist Jewish person” seeking to “unlearn and unpack the Zionist myths that most Canadian Jews were brought up with.”
The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, an advocacy arm of the Jewish Federations of Canada, said it acknowledged Lewis’ victory “with a deep sense of sadness.”
“Avi Lewis is himself Jewish, and we respect his family’s history in this party,” the group said a statement. “But Jewish identity is not a shield against accountability. When a leader declares that Zionism is inseparable from ethnic cleansing, he is not engaging in legitimate policy critique. He is telling Jewish Canadians that a core part of their identity is illegitimate.”
On the eve of the New Democratic Party’s leadership convention, CIJA joined dozens of rabbis from across the country in an open letter criticizing the party.
“Too often, the NDP’s response to antisemitism in Canada has been inconsistent, hesitant, or clouded by rhetoric that fails to recognize how hatred manifests in today’s environment,” said the letter.
Perhaps anticipating Lewis’ victory, they added, “Even more troubling is the repeated elevation of fringe or non-representative Jewish voices to deflect, dilute, or dismiss the legitimate concerns of the vast majority of the Canadian Jewish community.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Canadian progressive party picks Jewish anti-Zionist politician as its leader appeared first on The Forward.
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Netanyahu orders Church of the Holy Sepulchre open after Palm Sunday closure flares tensions
(JTA) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered that the top Catholic clergy in Israel be allowed into the Church of the Holy Sepulchre ahead of Easter, in an attempt to calm tensions that flared after police blocked their access.
Police cited wartime restrictions when prohibiting Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa and three other Catholic representatives from visiting the church, located in the Old City of Jerusalem, on Palm Sunday, a holy day for Christians.
Many holy sites in the city, including the Western Wall for Jews and al-Aqsa Mosque for Muslims, have been closed or tightly restricted since the start of the Iran war last month because they lack bomb shelters for the number of people who typically gather there. Shrapnel from Iranian missiles have landed in the Old City multiple times, including near the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
But the prohibitions on Pizzaballa’s access come at a time when some Christians are expressing concern that Israel is discriminating against them. A statement from the Latin Patriarchate on Sunday accusing Israel of having made a “hasty and fundamentally flawed decision, tainted by improper considerations,” seemed to fuel those sentiments.
“For the first time in centuries, the Heads of the Church were prevented from celebrating the Palm Sunday Mass at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre,” the Latin Patriarchate said. “This incident is a grave precedent and disregards the sensibilities of billions of people around the world who, during this week, look to Jerusalem.”
Christians believe that the church is the site of Jesus’ burial and resurrection, making prayers at the site on Palm Sunday, which kicks off the week leading up to Easter, particularly significant. Pizzaballa was seeking to pray privately at the site, not lead a major service as is typical.
Criticism over the closure resounded across the globe, including among allies of the Israeli government. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni condemned the closure as “an insult” and U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee called it “difficult to understand or justify” given that wartime rules prohibit only gatherings of 50 or more.
Soon, Israeli authorities were negotiating a special arrangement that would allow Pizzaballa and a handful of other Christian leaders access to the holy sites without opening them widely. Israeli President Isaac Herzog said he called Pizzaballa personally to express his commitment to religious freedom.
“I reiterate the unwavering commitment of the State of Israel to the freedom of worship for people of all faiths and the importance of upholding the status quo at the holy sites in Jerusalem,” Herzog said in a statement.
For his part, Pizzaballa downplayed the incident when speaking to a Catholic news channel. “There were no clashes, and we don’t want to force matters, but rather figure out what to do while respecting the right to prayer,” he said. “There were misunderstandings, we didn’t understand each other, and that’s what happened. It’s never happened before; it’s a shame this happened. This morning’s events are important, but we must consider the broader context. There are people who are much worse off than us who cannot celebrate for very different reasons. Once again, we are celebrating a subdued Easter.”
The police said the closure was justified because in addition to the lack of bomb shelters in the Old City, the area’s narrow and winding streets make it hard for emergency vehicles to reach anyone who might be injured in an attack.
Netanyahu said that while he understood the safety considerations involved in turning Pizzaballa back on Sunday, he had called for changes going forward.
“I have instructed the relevant authorities that Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin Patriarch, be granted full and immediate access to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem,” he said in a statement.
The dustup came as Pope Leo, in his Palm Sunday address in the Vatican, condemned the Iran war and lamented that Christians in the Middle East “are suffering the consequences of a brutal conflict and, in many cases, are unable to observe fully the liturgies of these holy days.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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While sculpting Jesus, this Jewish artist wrestled with his demons
You may not know the name Jimmy Grashow, but it’s likely you’ve seen his work. His psychedelic drawings have been featured in The New York Times, Ms. and Playboy. He illustrated album covers for The Yardbirds and Jethro Tull. His cardboard sculptures of people, animals and buildings have been shown all over the country, including at MoMA, the Library of Congress, and the San Jose Museum of Art. Within the first 30 seconds of Jimmy & the Demons, a documentary about the artist directed by Cindy Meehl, I recognized his cardboard sculptures of a dancing couple; a version lives in the Cameron Art Museum in Wilmington in my home state of North Carolina.
The documentary follows Grashow as he works on his latest commission: an eight-foot tall wooden sculpture of Jesus hoisting a cathedral on his back, while demons, each one completely different from the other, reach out of the flames around his feet. The cathedral’s intricate exterior is matched by an equally elaborate interior: A mural of Eden decorates the cathedral wall and a figure resembling the piece’s commissioner Michael Marocco, a Catholic art collector who has several Grashow pieces in his private sculpture garden, kneels in prayer. If you look closely at the mural, you can see God’s name written in Hebrew on a painted banner. The cathedral’s stained glass windows are illuminated by an electric bulb.
Grashow’s work is painstakingly detailed and took years to complete, as the slightest error in measurement or cut could have ruined the whole thing. While the documentary doesn’t last for years the way the project did, it follows a similarly leisurely pace, spending lots of moments in silence with Grashow in his home workshop in Redding, Connecticut. It’s a close look at the mostly solitary work of an artist, although viewers also get a few moments to meet Grashow’s family, including his daughter who is a rabbi.
Meehl has profiled unconventional figures in her past documentaries, such as Buck, about horse whisperer Dan “Buck” Brannaman, and The Dog Doc, about holistic veterinarian Marty Goldstein. Grashow, who passed away in September 2025, three months after the film premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, is no exception.
Despite his artistic talent, Grashow said that as a kid he “felt inadequate in every way.” Dyslexic and bad at math, Grashow struggled in his Brooklyn high school. At home, he felt overshadowed by his athletic brother and brilliant older sister. But he found a place to succeed at the Pratt Institute, where he studied woodworking, and received a Fulbright to study in Florence. There he fell in love with the cathedrals that would appear in many of his projects over the years.
Grashow did not view his sculpture of Christ as conflicting with his Jewish faith, noting the relationship between the word “Israel,” which means one who wrestles with God, and the meaning he saw in the piece.
“The world is full of peril and devils,” Grashow said. “And there you are trying to carry your faith and keep your faith alive. It’s a simple idea of trying to move forward in life with chaos and the possibility of chaos everywhere.”
“I’m wrestling all the time,” Grashow said. “It’s a brutal world.”
Grashow told the filmmakers that, when the idea for Marocco’s sculpture came to him, he “knew it was like a hineini moment,” using the term which means “here I am” and is also the name of a prayer traditionally chanted during the High Holidays, implying that one is showing up as their full self, with all of their flaws.
“It was God saying ‘Here’s this’ and it was up to me to say ‘Here I am. I’ll do it,’” Grashow said.
It was not a simple task. In addition to the years spent building the project, there was an emotional toll. Early in the film, Grashow says that the project feels like “the grand finale.” He asks that the filmmakers not share that information with his wife, Guzzy, although she later tells them herself that she feels Grashow’s time is running out.
Later in the film, the Museum Contemporary Art in Westport, Connecticut offers Grashow a retrospective exhibit of his work, with the new piece at the center. Grashow’s musings about death imbue the project with a sense of urgency and the proposed exhibit title is fittingly Man, Mortality: A Retrospective. However, when the museum refuses to fully fund the show, Grashow and Guzzy are left scrambling for a way to showcase his life’s work.
As Grashow wrestles with his own corporality, his art is both an escape from and an expression of his worries.
“When I’m doing demons, I know that it’s a little boy playing,” he said. “And an old man being terribly afraid.”
Jimmy & the Demons opens in New York at the Quad Cinema on April 3, 2026.
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