LAS VEGAS — There were a number of villains at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual summit here this weekend.

Tucker Carlson, who recently hosted avowed antisemite and white nationalist Nick Fuentes on his show, was lambasted by speakers as not being part of their MAGA movement. The phrase “Imagine if Kamala Harris were president,” said with relief, was uttered more than a few times.

But the name that drew the loudest boos the entire weekend was one that, a year ago, would have been completely unknown to the room.

“Take a look now at Zohran Mamdani, who represents the absolute worst of the worst,” said Norm Coleman, the RJC chairman and former senator.

“The extreme of the party is now the mainstream of the Democratic Party,” he added, a sentiment that was echoed widely, including by the Jewish congressmen Mike Lawler and David Kustoff.

Coleman invoked Mamdani to emphasize the importance of maintaining a Republican majority in Congress, using Mamdani as an example of how the Democratic party will “enact the most progressive, radical, leftist agenda this country has ever seen” if they can take control.

Mamdani, the Democratic nominee and favorite to be elected this week as mayor of New York City, is opposed to Israel’s government and existence as a Jewish state and subscribes to democratic socialist politics that are anathema to the RJC’s values.

Several of the speakers lambasted Mamdani’s 2023 comments, resurfaced this week, accusing the Israeli army of being the cause of problems within the New York Police Department.

The summit came at a moment of growing concern about antisemitism in conservative circles. But by casting Mamdani as the new face and direction of the Democratic Party, RJC speakers were able to acknowledge the existence of antisemitism on the right, while still pointing to the Democrats as having a far bigger, less controlled problem.

“The antisemitism problem exists in both parties,” Ari Fleisher, an RJC board member, told reporters. But, he continued, “Republicans have a cold. Democrats have a fever.”

“The Democrats have a growing socialism problem,” Fleisher continued. “And mark my words, the future is playing out before your very eyes at this meeting: What statement got the biggest reaction from the crowd? It was any reference to Mamdani. He’s not even elected yet.”

Fleisher said he expects Mamdani’s ascension to be “the new animating force that’s going to drive a lot of Republicans” into action.

“They’re adding to their fever, and his election will singularly tip that fever into a red-hot area that’s going to be hard for the Democrats to recover from,” Fleisher said.

The comments comes amid speculation that Republican leaders are in some ways eager for Mamdani’s election in New York, where the current mayor’s tolerance of the Trump administration has fended off some of the targeting that the president has directed toward other large cities this year. A democratic socialist at the helm of the city, long an avatar for conservative anxieties about crime and diversity, gives the Republicans a punching bag for attacks on the Democratic Party and, party strategists hope, boosts Republican odds in upcoming downballot races.

Fleisher was far from the only speaker to call out Mamdani.

Pennsylvania Sen. Dave McCormick said antisemitism is “running wild on the progressive left,” and that “the leaders of the Democratic Party are not confronting it, with their new star, Mamdani.”

Florida Rep. Randy Fine, one of four Jewish Republicans in Congress, called for Mamdani to be deported.

“The only thing I want to see Mamdani running for is his gate at JFK on the deportation flight to Uganda,” Fine said to cheers.

“Lord help us and pray for the people of New York City,” said conservative CNN commentator, Scott Jennings.

Emily Austin, a social media influencer who’s behind the group Hot Girls for Cuomo, said “extremists both abroad and here at home are committed to dismantling” a set of “Western values” that includes ”freedom, individual rights, democracy, capitalism.”

“And nowhere is this clearer than in my home, New York City,” she said.

“He is being elevated as a serious voice, potentially the next mayor of the biggest city in the world,” Austin said. (That title actually belongs to Tokyo; New York is 49th in population.) “Just think about the absurdity of that.”

Rank-and-file Republican Party donors in attendance who’d already been worried about a Mamdani mayoral administration felt their fears confirmed by speakers’ warnings and condemnations.

“I have two sons that work on Wall Street and I’m extremely concerned about their safety,” said Valerie Greenfeld, who moved to Israel from Washington, D.C., in 2021 but remains active with the RJC, in an interview.

“They assure me that they’re fine and all of this, but given everything that I’ve heard today, I know that I’m right,” Greenfeld said. “They’re not fine.”

She added, “Coming to the RJC today has helped me realize what I’ve known for quite some time.”

Speakers’ criticisms of Mamdani ranged from his socialist views (“Maybe he should go down to Cuba and see what it’s like to see a bread line,” said Sen. Rick Scott) to harping on the Queens assemblymember’s Muslim faith. Sid Rosenberg, the Jewish shock jock who quipped about Mamdani cheering for a second 9/11 — which Mamdani’s challenger, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, played along with on the air — doubled down on that comment.

Rosenberg then explicitly shared his thoughts about Mamdani’s ascendance as a Muslim politician, suggesting that he was emblematic of a wave that he finds threatening.

“I believe there’s, what, 200 elected officials [in the country] that are Muslim, maybe 800 by the end of the year,” Rosenberg said.

“I don’t beat around the bush and I don’t care what you think about me — I don’t want Muslims running this country,” Rosenberg said, drawing applause.

“Now I’m not saying every Muslim’s a bad person,” Rosenberg said. “But when you preface something with something like that, the odds are — a lot of them are, right?”

He added, “When they take over New York City, which they’re about to do in four or five days, the rest of the country gets a heck of a lot easier.”

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The post Zohran Mamdani, Muslim Democratic NYC candidate, looms large at Republican Jewish confab appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

(JTA) — Rabbi Angela Buchdahl, one of New York City’s most prominent rabbis, addressed the growing turmoil within New York’s Jewish community over the upcoming mayoral election — delivering a sermon at Manhattan’s Central Synagogue Friday night that included her most pointed comments yet about frontrunner Zohran Mamdani, while reaffirming her refusal to endorse or oppose any political candidate.

“I fear living in a city, and a nation, where anti-Zionist rhetoric is normalized and contagious,” Buchdahl said during services at her synagogue, one of the country’s largest Reform congregations. “Mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani has contributed to a mainstreaming of some of the most abhorrent antisemitism.”

She cited Mamdani’s 2023 remark, surfaced this week, saying the New York Police Department had learned aggressive policing tactics from the Israeli army and his past reluctance to label Hamas a terrorist group.

Yet even as she condemned the rhetoric, Buchdahl rejected calls from some in the Jewish community to endorse in the mayoral race — a demand that has placed her, and other prominent New York rabbis, under intense pressure in recent weeks.

The city’s Jewish institutions, already reeling from a war in Gaza that led to intense anti-Israel protests, have been alarmed by the rise of Mamdani, a progressive state assemblyman from Queens and anti-Zionist critic of Israel. Jewish leaders across the denominational spectrum have debated whether rabbis should publicly oppose his candidacy, citing fears about normalization of anti-Zionism in politics and worries that if elected Mamdani will not protect Jewish interests.

Last month, over 1,100 Jewish clergy signed a letter denouncing Mamdani and the “normalization of anti-Zionism,” quoting another prominent Manhattan rabbi, Elliot Cosgrove of Park Avenue Synagogue, who in a recent sermon endorsed Mamdani’s independent opponent, former N.Y. Gov. Andrew Cuomo. In a sign that Jews are not of one mind on Mamdani’s candidacy, more that 200 rabbis, at least 40 located in or near New York City, signed a second letter charging the first letter was divisive.

Buchdahl, who has a national profile as the country’s first Asian-American woman rabbi and as a sought-out spokesperson on Jewish affairs, had previously written to her members to explain why she would not endorse any candidate or sign public political letters, despite her “steadfast support of Israel and Zionism.”

After Buchdahl declined to sign the rabbinic letter, she drew withering attacks on social media from those who said she was failing to advance Jewish interests — some from her own congregants.

In her latest remarks, Buchdahl said she felt so compelled to address the tension directly that she returned during a sabbatical taken to promote her new book.

“I knew I needed to be here with my Jewish family,” she said. “Some of you agreed with my position. Some of you, very emphatically, did not.”

She continued, “I was flooded with emails of support, and I want to thank all of you who shared those words with me. But I want to offer even more thanks to those of you who privately and respectfully shared your disagreement with me. I have been listening, and I want to respond in person tonight because that is what you do when you care about your family.”

Buchdahl framed her sermon around Lech Lecha, the Torah portion in which Abraham and Sarah leave the familiarity of home for “a place they do not know.” The story, she suggested, mirrors the community’s uncertainty about its place in a shifting political and moral landscape.

She spoke both to those who see the election as “an existential moment for our Jewish community” and to younger Jews who fear that “our community has become too focused on fear and what can be done to us.”

She acknowledged that Mamdani has met recently with Jewish civic and business leaders and softened some of his language. “I would not quickly trust a campaigning politician changing his lifelong positions,” she said. “But I hear those who believe we must engage even with those we deeply disagree with, or risk isolating ourselves from the broader good of this city.”

Drawing on an idea from Israeli writer Yossi Klein Halevi, Buchdahl described the community’s divide as one between “Purim Jews” — who prioritize vigilance and self-protection — and “Passover Jews,” who emphasize empathy and justice for the vulnerable. “Both memories are sacred, and both are necessary,” she said. “Compassion without caution is reckless naïveté; vigilance without empathy is paranoia or despair.”

While acknowledging that she is “terrified by how anti-Zionist rhetoric and antisemitic tropes have led to some deadly violence against Jews,” Buchdahl also turned her concern inward to talk about the internal Jewish tensions. “It endangers all of us: the way we are trying to impose a litmus test on other Jews, essentially saying you’re either with us or you’re against us,” she said. “Pitting Jew against Jew. Rabbi against rabbi.”

She warned that such divisions could do more damage than any outside threat. “Both Temples were destroyed because of sinat chinam — senseless hate,” she said. “We can argue robustly and should. But disputation does not require defamation.”

Buchdahl also defended her decision not to make political endorsements, invoking both the federal Johnson Amendment — the decades-old ban on political campaigning by religious institutions that the IRS recently announced it would stop enforcing — and Central Synagogue’s own policy of non-endorsement. “Once a rabbi can tell you how to vote, imagine donations being given, or withheld, in exchange for a rabbi’s thumb on the scale,” she said.

Instead, she pledged to continue speaking on “moral issues that unfold in the political realm,” regardless of partisanship. “I thanked President Biden for standing with Israel after Oct. 7, and I thanked President Trump for helping bring home the hostages after others failed,” she said.

Buchdahl concluded with a message of hope, describing meetings with Jewish students at Yale, Brandeis and Harvard who, she said, “don’t want to be defined by fear.”

“They want a Jewish community where disagreement doesn’t mean disconnection,” she said. “We will find our way forward if we walk it together.”

Buchdahl’s sermon was applauded and received a standing ovation from the congregation.

The post Angela Buchdahl, prominent NYC rabbi, ratchets up criticism of Zohran Mamdani — and cautions against Jewish infighting appeared first on The Forward.

(JTA) — Earlier this month, Josh Katz noticed a dip in sales at his kosher restaurant, Ben Yehuda Pizza in Silver Spring, Maryland.

He knew the culprit, and it wasn’t antisemitism or an anti-Israel boycott. The federal government’s shutdown had left hundreds of thousands of federal employees across the country furloughed, and his regular customers were tightening their belts.

“People are being a little bit more vocal about their financial insecurities at the moment,” said Katz. “They’re just not sure when they’re going to be getting a paycheck.”

In Silver Spring alone, the headquarters of the Food and Drug Administration draws over 10,000 federal employees. In the greater Washington, D.C. area, roughly 280,000 workers are employed by the federal government. With all of those workers going multiple weeks without paychecks, Katz said he’d heard from members of his community who were feeling the financial strain.

So last week, he posted an offer on Facebook: “Order now, and pay us down the road when the paychecks come in.” Soon, the first requests started rolling in.

“We’re not giving anything away for free here, but I realized by just allowing people to defer payments, that could really help with their sense of normalcy,” Katz said.

The post did not take a stance on the shutdown, which has hinged on a stalemate between Democratic and Republican senators over competing spending bills and does not appear to be near resolution. “We try to avoid politics at Ben Yehuda,” it said. “We support the Pizza Party, but that’s about as far as we go.”

Ben Yehuda Pizza is located in Kemp Mill, a neighborhood of Silver Spring with a sizable Orthodox Jewish population and multiple synagogues and Jewish community centers. Katz said that while the deal was open to all federal workers, most of his regular customers are Jewish.

He said the timing of the shutdown, which began on Oct. 1 and coincided with the beginning of Yom Kippur, had further compounded the strain on local Jewish families he serves.

“When it started during the holidays, all of a sudden we have massive food bills, because we have to pay for all these festive meals,” said Katz. “When you’re not sure when the next check is going to come, you tighten the belt, or maybe you’re not as festive as you’d ideally like.”

Jewish leaders and groups across the country have mobilized to support unpaid federal government workers affected by the shutdown, some of whom are working essential roles without being paid.

In San Diego, the local branch of the Jewish Family Service began distributing bags of groceries to affected federal workers just days into the shutdown. It has has since provided over 5,700 meals to about 1,000 families.

And multiple free loan societies have created special programs for federal workers, echoing an initiative offered by the Hebrew Free Loan Association of Greater Washington during the 2018 shutdown that lasted 35 days, setting a record that could soon be eclipsed. The Hebrew Free Loan Society of New York, for example, is providing interest-free loans of up to $7,500 for federal employees affected by the current shutdown.

On Friday, Katz said two families had already signed up for Ben Yehuda’s payment deferment deal. But far more community members, he said, had reached out asking how they could contribute a meal to a federal employee.

“That’s really what inspires me, is seeing people who are willing to do that,” he said. “That’s really been the most beautiful thing that comes out of this.”

The post Maryland kosher pizzeria to furloughed federal workers: You can pay us back later appeared first on The Forward.