Andrew Cuomo is entering the final stretch of the New York City mayoral race with high expectations. After a bitter defeat in the Democratic primary to Zohran Mamdani in June, the political scion and former governor is betting that a different and more motivated electorate will give him a second chance.

Cuomo, who is running in the general election as an independent, is buoyed by signs that the city’s older, more moderate voters, and Jewish voters, are turning out in greater numbers than the progressive, younger bloc that powered Mamdani’s primary victory.

Early voting data show a notable surge in turnout from heavily Jewish and Black neighborhoods during the first few days, a shift that could narrow the gap in a race that polls show is tightening.

For Cuomo, that’s a reason for optimism. “I’m working 24/7, and there’s much more information out there now about Mamdani,” he said in a recent interview. “And the more they know, the more frightened they are.”

Mamdani’s positions on Israel have roiled New York’s Jewish community — the largest outside of Israel — despite an increased effort to court them.

The growing awareness of Mamdani’s rhetoric and positions has sparked voter registration drives across Brooklyn’s Orthodox community, early voting mobilization efforts, and an unprecedented wave of prominent rabbis publicly urging support for Cuomo as the only viable candidate to defeat Mamdani. Some Orthodox voting blocs, who supported Cuomo in the primary and were influential in Eric Adams’ victory in 2021, have reissued their endorsements in recent days.

Dov Hikind, a former Democratic assemblyman who became a Republican and initially backed Curtis Sliwa before switching his support to Cuomo earlier this week, said the current level of engagement in the community rivals the intense voter turnout of 1993, when Rudy Giuliani defeated incumbent Mayor David Dinkins by a little more than 40,000 votes. Dinkins was accused of restraining the police and allowing rioters to harm the Jewish community during the 1991 riots in Crown Heights. Exit polls showed that Giuliani received 67% of the Jewish vote, including nearly 100% in Orthodox neighborhoods.

“I have never seen anything like it, never in my life,” Hikind said. “People are truly concerned about Mamdani getting elected.”

Still, the math is daunting. Mamdani continues to hold a double-digit lead over Cuomo, while Sliwa has vowed to remain in the race despite Republican pleas for him to step aside.

Jews make up an estimated 10% of the general election electorate, and their strong backing for Cuomo in the primary was too little to overcome the city’s shifting political landscape. More than a third of Jewish voters support Mamdani, according to recent polls, and several liberal Jewish election officials are backing him.

“I think our community can help to make a difference and to stop the normalization of casual antisemitism in New York’s political environment,” said Sara Forman, executive director of the New York Solidarity Network, a pro-Israel political organization. A post-primary survey sponsored by the group found that 58% of Jewish voters believe Mamdani’s leadership would make the city less safe for Jews.

To pull off an upset, Cuomo will need not only strong margins in Jewish and Black precincts but also undecided moderates to rally around him, accompanied by a diminished youth turnout. Voters over 55 accounted for more than half of those who cast ballots during the first two days of early voting, while youth turnout was notably lower.

What Jewish leaders are saying 

Mamdani’s victory in June marked a watershed moment in New York politics — the first time a self-described democratic socialist and outspoken critic of Israel became the Democratic Party’s nominee and the favorite to govern the city. Some Jewish leaders gave the 33-year-old candidate a chance to reach out and clarify his past statements.

Professor Ester Fuchs, director of the urban and social policy program at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, said Mamdani had an opportunity “to demonstrate that Muslims and Jews can work together constructively to make our city a better place for everyone.” Fuchs, who worked with the Dinkins and in the Michael Bloomberg administration, said after the primary that Mamdani would first need to build trust with the Jewish community. “He needs to demonstrate and he needs to make clear that he understands how we need to protect every community in the city,” she said.

While he did outline his plan to fight antisemitism and commit to protecting Jews in private meetings with rabbis and Jewish political leaders, the Democratic nominee didn’t do much to assuage those concerns.

He faced scrutiny for: refusing to outright condemn the slogan “globalize the intifada;” holding back from celebrating the ceasefire in Gaza — which he had called for since the start of the war — and the release of the last living hostages; repeating his pledge to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he visits the city; and saying he doesn’t recognize Israel as a Jewish state. He is the first major party nominee to pledge to publicly back the movement to boycott Israel as mayor. On Tuesday, Mamdani declined to say whether he stands by comments made in a newly surfaced 2023 video in which he said that the New York Police Department’s boots are “laced by the IDF.” A recent poll showed that 75% of Jewish voters hold an unfavorable view of Mamdani.

Forman said Mamdani had a chance to sway opinion about him after his victory by toning down the rhetoric and walking back some of his statements. She said that those people “who were resolved to just hang their heads after the primary have started to hold their heads up a little higher” in recent weeks and go public with their opposition, as a reaction to the idea that New York City could elect a mayor who is not very supportive of the Jewish community writ large.

That shift led to a split among rabbis, many breaking tradition to issue political endorsements. Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove of Park Avenue Synagogue openly urged congregants to back Cuomo, calling Mamdani a threat to Jewish security. Rabbi Chaim Steinmetz of Manhattan’s Kehilath Jeshurun wrote in an open letter that Mamdani “represents a genuine threat to our city and way of life.” And more than 1,100 rabbis from across the nation have signed a statement opposing Mamdani.

Meanwhile, Rabbi Angela Buchdahl of Central Synagogue reaffirmed her congregation’s stance against endorsements. Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism and head of the largest Jewish movement in the U.S., wrote that crossing the line into electioneering is the wrong approach. “Keeping partisan politics out of our politically diverse congregations feels more essential than ever in today’s polarized climate,” he said.

Cuomo backed out Tuesday, at the last minute, from speaking to 210 members of Congregation Beth Elohim in Brooklyn, in a town hall series for the mayoral candidates, which Mamdani addressed earlier this month.

Hikind, who caused an uproar by wearing blackface for Purim in 2013, didn’t mince words about what’s at stake for Jewish voters in this election. “Look, Mamdani wins, Hamas in Gaza will celebrate because it will be their victory,” Hikind said. ”He’s one of their boys. I am not saying he indulged in terror. But they will celebrate, no question. Our enemies all over the world will see this as a great victory.”

Mamdani accused his opponents of targeting him because he’s the first Muslim favored to become mayor of New York. His campaign did not provide details about its outreach to Jewish voters despite multiple requests. Several progressive Jewish groups — The Jewish Vote, affiliated with Jews For Racial & Economic Justice, Bend the Arc and Jewish Voice for Peace Action — are actively campaigning for Mamdani.

On Tuesday, Mamdani posted a video with famed Jewish actor Mandy Patinkin and his wife, actress Kathryn Grody, urging voters to elect “this extraordinary human being who’s going to lead our city.”

Phylisa Wisdom, the executive director of the liberal New York Jewish Agenda, said the Jewish community is very diverse in its attitude towards Mamdani. “I think there are some Jewish New Yorkers for whom total agreement on Israel is required in their mayor,” she said. “And there are many Jewish New Yorkers who acknowledge that they don’t agree with him on Israel, and that’s not a barrier to voting for someone in a municipal election in the way that it may be for Congress or for president.”

Whether or not Jews will be the tipping point, the surge in turnout could definitely help fuel Cuomo’s comeback, Forman said. “I’d like to be optimistic and say the turnout that we’re seeing right now will continue through the end of the election, and this is going to be a very close election,” she said.

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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.

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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.”

 

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