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How Mamdani built bridges to Jewish New Yorkers, from Williamsburg to Park Slope
In his quest to become the first Muslim mayor of the city that is home to the largest Jewish community in the United States, Zohran Mamdani has created a rare coalition of progressive Jews, liberal Zionists, and segments of the Hasidic community.
Mamdani, a democratic socialist and critic of Israel, has been boosted by local Jewish elected officials and embraced by prominent rabbis, even as the frontrunner continues to struggle to earn the trust of many Jewish New Yorkers in the race for New York City mayor.
In a quiet victory, two Satmar Hasidic factions, considered the largest blocs of voters in the Haredi community, on Wednesday declared that they would not endorse any candidate for mayor, while also condemning the “fear campaign” and attacks on Mamdani.
The non-endorsement amounted to an implicit acknowledgment of Mamdani’s ascendancy going into Tuesday’s election. The approximately 80,000 voters in Brooklyn’s Haredi communities, where rabbinic dictates about ballot choices lead to a reliable bloc of support, are particularly sought after by candidates. In previous mayoral elections, the Satmar faction in Brooklyn, led by Rabbi Aaron Teitelbaum from Kiryas Joel and known as the Ahronim, endorsed the eventual winner, even while other Hasidic blocs supported rival candidates.
Cuomo still enjoys broad support among Jewish voters, who make up an estimated 10% of the general election electorate. A recent Quinnipiac poll of 170 Jewish voters showed Cuomo with 60% of their support and Mamdani with 16%, while a separate Marist poll of 792 likely voters — including an 11% sample of Jewish voters — found Cuomo with 55% and Mamdani at 32% among Jewish respondents.
How Mamdani got here
The campaign for mayor has laid bare deep fault lines over Israel, antisemitism and Jewish leadership.
Mamdani’s positions on Israel and his ties to the Democratic Socialists of America have roiled Jews — in New York and across the country — amid rising antisemitism. The Democratic nominee faced scrutiny for: refusing to outright condemn the slogan “globalize the intifada;” reiterating support for Palestinians in his statement on the Gaza ceasefire; vowing to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he visits New York; and saying he doesn’t recognize Israel as a Jewish state. He is the first major-party nominee to pledge public support for the movement to boycott Israel.
Those positions sparked voter registration drives across Brooklyn’s Orthodox community, early voting mobilization efforts, and an unprecedented wave of prominent rabbis, once hesitant to engage in politics, publicly urging support for Cuomo.
But Mamdani wasn’t deterred by the opposition. He attended High Holiday services at Kolot Chaiyeinu and the Lab/Shul, he addressed members of Congregation Beth Elohim for a community conversation earlier this month, and visited Hasidic leaders in South Williamsburg during Sukkot. On the second anniversary of Oct. 7, he appeared at an Israelis for Peace vigil alongside hostage families. Mamdani also published an open letter in Yiddish, outlining his plans to combat antisemitism and advance his affordability agenda, and gave an interview to a popular Yiddish magazine, Der Moment.
Mamdani told the Forward that he “deeply appreciated” the opportunity to meet with a broad spectrum of Jewish New Yorkers across these five boroughs in recent months. “It’s been meaningful to hear their hopes, their dreams, and their concerns for and about this city.”
In his public remarks on the campaign trail, Mamdani said that in those conversations, he assured them he would increase police protection outside houses of worship and Jewish institutions and invest in hate crime prevention programs. He also vowed to retain police commissioner Jessica Tisch, who is Jewish, which was also viewed as a gesture to reassure Jewish New Yorkers worried about rising antisemitism.
Mamdani said he would use a city curriculum in public schools that teaches about Jewish Americans and seems to contradict his own position on Israel. He also assured liberal Zionists that support for Israel would not be a litmus test for serving in his administration.
In an open letter to their followers published on Wednesday, the Satmar leadership highlighted Mamdani’s gestures that specifically addressed their concerns. They noted that the Democratic nominee has said he would work to protect Hasidic yeshivas that face scrutiny for failing to meet state education standards and promised that Hasidic families would benefit from his proposals to expand affordable housing and establish universal childcare.
Jamie Beran, chief executive of Bend the Arc: Jewish Action, a progressive Jewish social justice activist network which issued its first-ever mayoral endorsement for Mamdani, praised his outreach efforts.
“I really do think that he has done a lot to address the concerns of the Jewish community and to build relationships with the Jewish community,” Beran said in an interview. “I really believe him that he’s not just doing that to court votes, but because he genuinely wants to represent all of those constituents when he’s mayor.”
Phylisa Wisdom, executive director of the liberal New York Jewish Agenda, participated in the Beth Elohim community conversation with Mamdani, and said she believes the candidate has made significant progress in engaging Jewish voters since the primary.
“I feel confident that a broad spectrum of Jewish voices have been heard by his campaign,” Wisdom said. “I’m hearing from people who either didn’t support him in the primary or ranked him lower on their ballot that they now feel reassured.”
Unity if Mamdani wins
The prospect of Mamdani winning has already led organizations to issue a call for unity after the election.
The open letter, signed by more than 30 rabbis, progressive leaders and liberal groups, urges New Yorkers to heed the call of the prophet Jeremiah to “seek the peace of the city” we’re in, “to put our backs into making the structures of tomorrow a little bit better than the structures of today. And that means working in the best possible faith with whoever is in City Hall.”
Bend the Arc’s Beran said that the post-election period is an opportunity for bridge-building, both within the Jewish community and across ideological divides. “We need to build a coalition that doesn’t break along our fault lines,” she said. “We need to make space to reckon with them and to be comfortable with some degree of disagreement if we’re going to unite against the forces that are really threatening our safety and livelihoods.”
Mamdani’s administration and his actual record in office could shift perception, she said. “Once people see how he actually governs and how he actually leads, I’m hoping that will open the door for some reconciliation,” she said.
The post How Mamdani built bridges to Jewish New Yorkers, from Williamsburg to Park Slope appeared first on The Forward.
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German Antisemitism Commissioner Targeted With Death Threat Letter After Arson Attack on Home
Andreas Büttner (Die Linke), photographed during the state parliament session. The politician was nominated for the position of Brandenburg’s anti-Semitism commissioner. Photo: Soeren Stache/dpa via Reuters Connect
Andreas Büttner, the commissioner for antisemitism in the state of Brandenburg in northeastern Germany, has been targeted the second attack in under a week after receiving a death threat, sparking outrage and prompting local authorities to launch a full investigation.
According to the German newspaper Potsdamer Neueste Nachrichten (PNN), the Brandenburg state parliament received a letter on Monday threatening Büttner’s life, with the words “We will kill you” and an inverted red triangle, the symbol of support for the Islamist terrorist group Hamas.
State security police have examined the anonymous letter under strict safety measures, determining that a gray substance inside was harmless. Authorities are now probing the incident as part of an ongoing investigation into threats against the German official.
Ulrike Liedtke, president of the Brandenburg state parliament, condemned the latest attack on Büttner, describing the death threats and harassment as “completely unacceptable.”
“Threats and violence are not a form of political discourse, but crimes against humanity,” Liedtke said. “Andreas Büttner has our complete support and solidarity.”
A former police officer and member of the Left Party, Büttner took office as commissioner for antisemitism in 2024 and has faced repeated attacks since.
On Sunday night, Büttner’s private property in Templin — a town located approximately 43 miles north of Berlin — was targeted in an arson attack, and a red Hamas triangle was spray-painted on his house.
The home of Germany’s antisemitism commissioner, Andreas Büttner, was set on fire overnight in a targeted attack.
His family was inside the house at the time.
This is the second attack against Büttner in the past 16 months. His car was previously vandalized with swastikas. This… pic.twitter.com/cAbFnMIwQ7
— Combat Antisemitism Movement (@CombatASemitism) January 5, 2026
According to Büttner, his family was inside the house at the time of the attack, marking the latest assault against him in the past 16 months.
“The symbol sends a clear message. The red Hamas triangle is widely recognized as a sign of jihadist violence and antisemitic incitement,” Büttner said in a statement after the incident.
“Anyone who uses such a thing wants to intimidate and glorify terror. This is not a protest, it is a threat,” he continued.
Hamas uses inverted red triangles in its propaganda videos to indicate Israeli targets about to be attacked. The symbol, a common staple at pro-Hamas rallies, has come to represent the Palestinian terrorist group and glorify its use of violence.
In August 2024, swastikas and other symbols and threats were also spray-painted on Büttner’s personal car.
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Harvard President Blasts Scholar Activism, Calls for ‘Restoring Balance’ in Higher Ed
Harvard University President Alan Garber speaks during the 374th Commencement exercises at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US, May 29, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Brian Snyder
Harvard University president Alan Garber, fresh off a resounding endorsement in which the Harvard Corporation elected to keep him on the job “indefinitely,” criticized progressive faculty in a recent podcast interview for turning the university classroom into a pulpit for the airing of their personal views on contentious political issues.
Garber made the comments last week on the “Identity/Crisis Podcast,” a production of the Shalom Hartman Institute, a Jewish think tank which specializes in education research.
“I think that’s where we went wrong,” Garber said, speaking to Yehuda Kurtzer. “Because think about it, if a professor in a classroom says, ‘This is what I believe about this issue,’ how many students — some of you probably would be prepared to deal with this, but most people wouldn’t — how many students would actually be willing to go toe to toe against a professor who’s expressed a firm view about a controversial issue?”
Garber continued, saying he believes higher education, facing a popular backlash against what critics have described as political indoctrination, is now seeing a “movement to restore balance in teaching and to bring back the idea that you really need to be objective in the classroom.”
He added, “What we need to arm our students with is a set of facts and a set of analytic tools and cultivation of rigor in analyzing these issues.”
Coming during winter recess and the Jewish and Christian holidays, Garber’s interview fell under the radar after it was first aired but has been noticed this week, with some observers pointing to it as evidence that Harvard is leading an effort to restore trust in the university even as it resists conceding to the Trump administration everything it has demanded regarding DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion), viewpoint diversity, and expressive activity such as protests.
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, Garber has spent the past two years fighting factions from within and without the university that have demanded to steer its policies and culture — from organizers of an illegal anti-Israel encampment to US President Donald Trump, who earlier this year canceled $2.26 billion in public money for Harvard after it refused to grant his wishlist of reforms for which the conservative movement has clamored for decades.
Even as Harvard tells Trump “no,” it has enacted several policies as a direct response to criticisms that the institution is too permissive of antisemitism for having allowed anti-Zionist extremism to reach the point of antisemitic harassment and discrimination. In 2025, the school agreed to incorporate into its policies a definition of antisemitism supported by most of the Jewish community, established new rules governing campus protests, and announced new partnerships with Israeli academic institutions. Harvard even shuttered a DEI office and transferred its staff to what will become, according to a previous report by The Harvard Crimson, a “new Office of Culture and Community.” The paper added that Harvard has even “worked to strip all references to DEI from its website.”
Appointed in January 2024 as interim president, Garber — who previously served in roles as Harvard’s provost and chief academic officer — rose to the top position at America’s oldest and, arguably, most prestigious institution at a time when the job was least desirable. At the time, Harvard was being pilloried over some of its students cheering Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel and even forming gangs which mobbed Jewish students wending their way through campus; the university had suffered the embarrassment of its first Black president being outed as a serial plagiarist, a stunning disclosure which called into question its vetting procedures as well as its embrace of affirmative action; and anti-Israel activists on campus were disrupting classes and calling for others to “globalize the intifada.”
Garber has since won over the Harvard Corporation, which has refused to replace him during a moment that has been described as the most challenging in its history.
“Alan’s humble, resilient, and effective leadership has shown itself to be not just a vital source of calm in turbulent times, but also a generative force for sustaining Harvard’s commitment to academic excellence and to free inquiry and expression,” Harvard Corporation senior fellow Penny Pritzker said in a statement issued on behalf of the body, which is the equivalent of a board of trustees. “From restoring a sense of community during a period of intense scrutiny and division to launching vital new programs on viewpoint diversity and civil discourses and instituting new actions to fight antisemitism and anti-Arab bias, Alan has not only stabilized the university but brought us together in support of our shared mission.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Holocaust Survivors Sent Care Packages to Oct. 7 Hostages for Hanukkah
The Menorah for Hanukkah on the Square 2025 in Trafalgar Square, London, United Kingdom, Dec. 14, 2025. Photo: Matthew Chattle/Cover Images via Reuters Connect
Survivors of the Holocaust spread holiday cheer this Hanukkah by delivering care packages to a group of 20 hostages whom the terrorist group Hamas recently released from captivity to fulfill the requirements of a ceasefire which suspended hostilities with Israel.
The gifts, dropped off at the Israeli consulate office in New York City, was made possible by The Blue Card, the only US-based charity organization which provides financial assistance and other services to survivors of the Holocaust. Originally founded in 1934 to assist Jews who had fled Germany to escape Hitler’s persecution of the country’s Jews, it has operated ceaselessly for nearly a century.
Over the past two years, the world has seen a revival of antisemitism unlike any since the period in which The Blue Card was founded, sparked by the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre that claimed the lives over of 1,200 Israelis and stole years and even more lives from 251 more who were kidnapped and held hostage in Gaza.
Some of the hostages who survived captivity have been released in stages since Israel and Hamas agreed on a ceasefire in October, and on Monday, Blue Card executive director Masha Pearl said the organization felt it necessary to reach out to them due to their having experienced a plight that is painfully familiar to what its clients endured in Europe during the Holocaust. Pearl also discussed the Bondi Beach mass shooting, in which a father and son inspired by Islamism opened fire on Jews celebrating the start of Hanukkah, murdering 15 people and injuring 40 others.
“Holocaust survivors and former hostages share a uniquely painful bond shaped by survival and resilience,” Pearl said. “After witnessing a mass shooting at a Chanukah event in Sydney, it felt even more urgent for our survivors to deliver these care packages now, spreading light at a moment that feels dark for the entire Jewish world. The resilience of the Holocaust survivors we assist, the former hostages, and now the survivors of the attack in Australia remind us that even in the face of hatred and violence, the Jewish people remain united.”
In a press release Blue Card said the care packages “carried profound meaning,” being filled to the brim with goods of all sorts, from blankets and water bottles to chap stick and even handwritten notes from the Holocaust survivors who sent them.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.