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(JTA) — A second rabbinic letter about the New York City mayor’s race repudiating the first has drawn hundreds of signatures in the day since its launch.

Titled “Jews for a Shared Future,” the new letter rejects the argument that the frontrunner in the race is unacceptable because of his opposition to Israel and contends that Jews should see their safety in New York City and beyond as entwined with that of others.

“In response to Jewish concerns about the New York mayoral race, we recognize that candidate Zohran Mamdani’s support for Palestinian self-determination stems not from hate, but from his deep moral convictions,” the letter says. “Even though there are areas where we may disagree, we affirm that only genuine solidarity and relationship-building can create lasting security. That work has sustained us for generations wherever Jews have lived, and remains our only path forward.”

It also responds to attacks on Mamdani’s Muslim identity, saying, “Jewish safety cannot be built on Muslim vulnerability, nor can we combat hate against our community while turning away from hate against our neighbors.”

In the day since its launch, the letter has been signed by 740 Jews. Of them, 230 are rabbis, 40 located in or near New York City.

Some of the signatories have previously offered their public support for Mamdani, including Sharon Kleinbaum, who spoke at his rally in Queens on Sunday, but others have not. Although some do not work in traditional pulpits, many others do. Some are well known for their own anti-Zionist activism that puts their outlook on Israel in line with Mamdani’s, but others openly identify as Zionists.

In a sign of how complex the current political discourse is for politically liberal Jews, at least one retired rabbi signed both the “Shared Future” letter and the broadside it follows.

The first letter, denouncing Mamdani and the “normalization of anti-Zionism,” began circulating a week ago and has now topped 1,150 signatures, with hundreds of signatories in New York City. It has roiled Jewish communities across the country as congregants look for their rabbis on the list.

The new letter was written by Rabbi Shoshana Leis, a graduate of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College who helms Pleasantville Community Synagogue in New York City’s northern suburbs. In a post on Facebook, she said she had begun drafting the letter on Sunday after observing the “painful divisiveness” that the first letter was creating and that she had “struggled” to formulate a response that would not run the risk of “further reinforcing the divisions.”

A breakthrough came, she said, after consulting with other rabbis and drawing on the work of Israeli and Palestinian shared-society activist organizations.

“What happens in NYC often resonates throughout the country. While I do not endorse any candidates and do not have a vote in the NYC election, I do endorse a particular way for Jews to show up in America,” she wrote. “Our safety is interconnected with the safety of our neighbors, and the path to friendship is through the difficult but rewarding work of building relationships, one at a time, even across significant and vital differences.”

The dueling letters underscore a pitched divide around politics in the pulpit, exacerbated this year by the Trump administration’s decision to stop enforcing a rule that barred clergy from making political endorsements. Some rabbis have said that they have refrained from signing letters related to the New York City election, even when they may agree with the contents, because they see such direct political advocacy as inappropriate and divisive.

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Zohran Mamdani. Photo: Ron Adar / SOPA Images via Reuters Connect

Rabbi Angela Buchdahl’s recent message to members of Central Synagogue in New York City struck a nerve. She affirmed her commitment to Israel and condemned antisemitism in heartfelt, eloquent terms. Then, in the next breath, she insisted that Central would remain “neutral” in New York’s mayoral election.

It’s a familiar move from American Jewish institutions: speak of courage, then retreat behind the language of neutrality. But neutrality is not virtue when Jewish security, dignity, and self-determination are under attack. It is moral negligence.

I understand the impulse. A synagogue should not be campaign headquarters. Communities must be open to those who disagree politically. Yet there is a difference between partisan engagement and moral abdication. When a candidate tolerates anti-Zionist rhetoric, minimizes antisemitic harassment, or treats Jewish self-determination as debatable, refusing to speak clearly is not an act of pluralism — it is an evasion of responsibility.

This is not an abstract question.

Since October 7, Jewish institutions in New York have been defaced, Jewish students have been harassed, and Jewish events have been shouted down by mobs invoking “anti-Zionism” as cover for bigotry. The city that once symbolized Jewish belonging is again a place where Jews think twice before showing their identity.

Walk past almost any synagogue or day school in Manhattan and you’ll see the cost of silence: armed guards, security barriers, and parents who wonder whether their children are safe walking home in a kippah.

In moments like these, Jewish leaders cannot hide behind process. We don’t need moral neutrality. We need moral leadership.

The First Amendment’s separation of church and state was never designed to muzzle faith communities. It was designed to protect their freedom of conscience. For centuries, American Jews have exercised that freedom: organizing for civil rights, fighting for Soviet Jewry, and defending the rights of others to live without fear. Our civic engagement was never about partisan politics. It was about moral responsibility.

To suggest that synagogues must be silent in the face of threats to Jewish life or the Jewish State is a distortion of that heritage. A synagogue that cannot speak to the moral character of public life is not protecting pluralism; it is hollowing it out.

In my recent essay for the American Enterprise Institute, “Solidarity Requires Self-Respect,” I argued that genuine solidarity begins with a clear sense of self. You cannot build coalitions by erasing your identity or apologizing for it. A people that hides its convictions for the sake of belonging will ultimately lose both its dignity and its allies. True solidarity grows out of self-respect and self-respect requires clarity.

For Jews today, that means speaking plainly: Israel is not a “foreign issue.” It is part of who we are historically, spiritually, and existentially. A candidate who traffics in anti-Zionist rhetoric is not simply taking a policy position; they are questioning the moral legitimacy of Jewish belonging. To remain neutral in the face of that is to tell Jews that their identity is conditional.

Jewish tradition rejects that posture.

Jeremiah commands us to “seek the peace of the city,” and Hillel warns, “If I am not for myself, who will be for me?” Those are not polite suggestions. They are calls to moral and civic engagement.

Judaism commands not silence but tochacha — the duty to offer moral rebuke when wrongs threaten the community. To be for ourselves means to defend Jewish life without apology. To seek the peace of the city means to do so publicly as Jews, as citizens, and as moral agents.

I do not believe rabbis should generally tell their congregants how to vote. But I do believe they must tell them what is at stake — and in New York, the stakes are high, even existential. Political clarity is not optional; it is a moral duty. When one candidate flirts with ideologies that deny Jewish legitimacy, while another defends Jewish safety and inclusion, pretending the two positions are equally valid is not fairness. It is confusion.

Central Synagogue is one of the most visible Jewish institutions in America. Its history is a proud one: a congregation that has embodied confidence, civic engagement, and faith in both Judaism and America. That legacy deserves to be carried forward not through silence, but through conviction.

The rabbi is right to fear the politicization of religion. But there is a far greater danger in the depoliticization of morality — in the idea that religious institutions can opt out of public life at precisely the moment their voices are needed most.

We can cherish diversity without dissolving our identity. We can respect pluralism without surrendering our principles. Pluralism doesn’t survive through avoidance; it survives through citizens and communities willing to name truth and stand for it in public.

Our community needs leaders willing to say, without hesitation, that some truths are non-negotiable: that Israel’s legitimacy is not up for debate; that Jewish safety is not contingent on political fashion; and that being a Jew in public life means standing, visibly and unapologetically, for our people and our future.

The next mayor will shape whether Jewish life in New York remains vibrant or fearful. Neutrality will not safeguard that future. Conviction will.

If our institutions cannot summon the courage to say what is true, they risk becoming sanctuaries of comfort rather than centers of conscience. Jewish life has never thrived in silence. It thrives in clarity, confidence, and courage.

Samuel J. Abrams is a professor of politics at Sarah Lawrence College and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.