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New York City’s top Jewish officials urge Mamdani to recognize Israel’s centrality to Jewish identity
New York City’s most senior Jewish elected officials are urging Mayor Zohran Mamdani to do more to address the concerns of Jewish New Yorkers directly, including acknowledging the community’s deep emotional connection to Israel and reconsidering his pledge not to visit the country.
Mamdani, who rose to power aligned with pro-Palestinian activism and is the city’s first Muslim mayor, has declined to recognize Israel specifically as a Jewish state and vowed not to continue the tradition upheld by previous mayors to travel to Israel. New York City has the largest concentration of Jews outside Israel.
“We understand that in the city of New York, for a great number of Jewish people, Israel is a core issue to our identity and even our feeling of personal safety,” said Mark Levine, the city’s comptroller and its highest-ranking Jewish elected official, during a panel on “the future of being Jewish in New York” hosted by the 92NY on Wednesday. Also on stage were City Council Speaker Julie Menin and Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal.
Holyman-Sigal, who as a state legislator visited Israel weeks after the Oct 7, 2023 Hamas attack, said that it would be “an enormous step forward” if Mamdani followed the tradition of every mayor preceding him, going back to 1951, to demonstrate solidarity with their Jewish constituents. “Maybe now is not the right time exactly, but to get that on his radar screen is going to be meaningful to a large segment of New Yorkers,” he said. “If Nixon can go to China, I think the mayor might consider that in the future.”
Mamdani, a supporter of the boycott Israel movement who co-founded the Students for Justice in Palestine chapter at Maine’s Bowdoin College, was met with suspicion from the start as he rose in the polls during the mayoral race last year. His statements on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict unsettled many of the city’s more than 1 million Jews, who were divided in the competitive race, including his refusal to explicitly condemn the “globalize the intifada” slogan used at some pro-Palestinian protests and his refusal to recognize Israel specifically as a “Jewish state.” Mamdani also faced backlash from his hard-line anti-Israel base for saying the country has a right to exist.
Three months into his mayoralty, Mamdani is still struggling to find a governing posture that reassures the largest Jewish community in America, as he insists he will not retreat from his criticism of Israel.
He has faced backlash from Zionist Jewish organizations, particularly after revoking executive orders on his first day in office tied to antisemitism and campus protests and his recent refusal to back legislation aimed at curbing disruptive protests outside synagogues and schools. He also promised to divest from city investments in Israel and pledged to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he comes to New York in compliance with an International Criminal Court warrant. Legal experts doubt Mamdani would have the authority to do that.
Nonetheless, Mamdani has increased his Jewish outreach efforts since taking office. Mamdani has also appointed Phylisa Wisdom, a progressive Jewish leader, to run the Mayor’s Office to Combat Antisemitism. Wisdom has laid out an ambitious early agenda focused on building trust across the city’s diverse Jewish communities.
In March, Mamdani convened a roundtable with Orthodox and Hasidic leaders at City Hall, his most visible outreach yet. But the meeting also underscored the administration’s uneven engagement. Mainstream organizations — including groups like the Anti-Defamation League and the Jewish Federations of New York — were not invited. Mamdani attended Passover Seders hosted by his progressive allies.
At the 92NY event, Menin, who is seen by some as a counterweight to Mamdani on Jewish issues, said that signing the legislative package to combat antisemitism, at a time when anti-Jewish incidents continue to make up a majority of reported hate crimes in the city, would be a key test. The bill directs the NYPD to craft a plan within 45 days for managing protests around houses of worship. It passed by a 44-5 vote, a veto-proof margin. Mamdani has declined to say whether he will sign measures or oppose them.
“I really hope that there is not a veto of that legislation, because I think that will lead to more division when we need less divisiveness,” Menin said.
Hoylman-Sigal said Mamdani’s approach would signal whether he is committed to protecting the Jewish community. He added that he “would be disappointed to say the least” if the mayor chooses to veto the legislation.
City Hall did not respond to multiple requests to interview the mayor about his outreach to the Jewish community during his media tour marking his first 100 days in office.
The future of Israel Bonds
Levine, the city’s chief fiscal officer, who is responsible for auditing agencies and nonprofits, has remained consistent in his promise to resume the purchases of Israel Bonds, debt securities issued by the Israeli government with a roughly 5% return. New York held the bonds between 1974 and 2023, when then-comptroller Brad Lander, who is also Jewish, ended the city’s investment of $39,947,160 in them.
Mamdani had urged Lander to end it permanently, although the mayor can neither prevent the investment nor overrule it.
Levine defended his position on Wednesday. “This is about the fiduciary responsibility that I have and that we have in safeguarding these assets and deploying them in a globally diverse way,” he said. “Israel bonds have never missed a payment in 70 years, ever, not once. They pay excellent interest.”
The comptroller also called out critics who have been protesting outside his office. “We have had no protesting about our investments in Saudi Arabia, our investments in Pakistan or China, only this one little, tiny sliver,” Levine said. He added, “I have many criticisms of the policies of the current government of Israel, have many criticisms of the policies of the current government of the United States, but we own treasury bills because it’s a financial instrument that meets an important need for us.”
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Jewish Democrats back Michigan AG Dana Nessel’s decision to skip state party convention
(JTA) — Local and national Jewish Democrats say they are sympathetic after Michigan’s Jewish attorney general, Dana Nessel, said she would skip the state Democratic Party’s nominating convention over concerns about antisemitism and harassment.
“I don’t blame AG Nessel for not wanting to go and basically put herself in situations that feel untenable in this moment of time and don’t add any value politically, personally,” Jessica “Decky” Alexander, the Michigan Jewish Democratic caucus chair, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on Friday.
Alexander’s comment came a day after Nessel announced during a televised antisemitism roundtable that she would be skipping the convention next month, where party leaders will finalize the state’s Democratic candidate for Senate following a divisive primary that has focused in part on Israel and antisemitism.
“I don’t feel safe going. I feel like my presence isn’t going to be welcome. I don’t want to get chased around. I don’t want to get harassed. I don’t want to get yelled and screamed at. I don’t want to get booed off the stage, irrespective of what I’m saying,” Nessel said during the roundtable. “And I believe that if I go, that is what will happen because it’s been happening to me.”
She said she had filed a formal complaint within the party about a party official who had called her a neo-Nazi because of her beliefs. “Why is this person more accepted in our party than me?” she asked without naming the official. Her office responded to a request for comment by referring to the recorded livestream of the antisemitism roundtable.
Nessel’s declaration comes in the final days of the primary between Rep. Haley Stevens, a pro-Israel stalwart, and Abdul El-Sayed, a democratic socialist who is deeply critical of Israel. El-Sayed is surging in polls despite a reported $30 million spent against him by AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby, and its supporters, whom he has made a target of criticism from the campaign trail.
Nessel’s comments also follow turmoil at the Michigan Democratic Party’s endorsement convention in April, where Stevens was booed by attendees. A third primary candidate who later dropped out of the race, state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, said a convention attendee had targeted her Jewish husband with an antisemitic slur.
The incident has fueled alarm among Jewish Democrats, according to Halie Soifer, CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America.
“She’s not alone,” Soifer told JTA about Nessel on Friday. “We’ve heard from other Jewish Democrats who attended the Democratic Party convention earlier this year in Michigan, and there was a sense of discomfort amid what felt like a pro-Palestinian protest [that] may have even blurred the line for some into antisemitic sentiment — and it’s really concerning.”
Nessel has raised the alarm about antisemitism within the party for years, alleging in 2024 that Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib, a prominent pro-Palestinian voice, had been antisemitic when criticizing charges Nessel filed against pro-Palestinian protesters at the University of Michigan.
For her part, Alexander said she would be participating in the nominating convention and said she believed the chair of the state Democratic Party, Curtis Hertel, had been “very accessible and very open to making sure that we, including our Jewish elected officials, feel safe in that space.” But she said she understood why Nessel was staying away.
“It would never even occur to me, but I’m not an elected official,” Alexander said. “It’s a different stake for me than it is for Dana. I understand her completely.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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Maine rabbis call for peace, urge politicians to stop calling Gaza war a ‘genocide’
(JTA) — Every congregational rabbi in Maine has signed onto a statement calling for peace and urging the state’s political leaders to stop using the term “genocide” to describe Israel’s war in Gaza, following a Democratic primary in which several candidates used the label for the first time.
But the rabbis also indicated that they, too, were unsatisfied with conditions in the Middle East and called on Israeli and Palestinian leaders to work toward a peaceful future.
“We call upon Maine’s leaders, and particularly its political leaders, to reject the irresponsible usage of the term in describing the Israel-Hamas War,” said the statement released on Friday. “We also call upon Israeli and Palestinian leaders to end the cycle of violence and to create a better world for both Palestinian and Israeli children.”
The statement, titled “A Call for Peace and Responsible Rhetoric,” argues that using the term as a “political slogan does not advance peace in the Middle East.” The term “erases essential moral and legal distinctions, diminishes the meaning of genocide, and inflames hatred for the local Jewish community,” the rabbis say.
“Compassion for Palestinians does not require the adoption of hateful and misleading language,” they continue. “Advocating for peace does not require participation in a ‘Holocaust inversion’ against the Jewish community. And political leadership does not require demonizing one community in the service of another.”
The statement comes days after Troy Jackson, a former logger and state Senate president, secured the Maine Democratic U.S. Senate nomination Saturday at the party’s nominating convention to replace Graham Platner, a staunch Israel critic who dropped out of the race earlier this month. Platner faced a sexual assault allegation, which he denies. Jackson now faces Republican incumbent Sen. Susan Collins in November’s general election.
Platner’s romp to the primary victory featured routine use of “genocide” to describe Israel’s actions. And ahead of the convention to replace him, Jackson and several other Democratic hopefuls who later exited the race began using the term “genocide” to describe Israel’s war in Gaza for the first time, a shift that drew scrutiny from some Jewish leaders and voters in the state.
The use of the term has become a “currency for acquiring power and position in Maine’s Democratic party,” Rabbi Rachel Isaacs, the leader of Beth Israel Congregation in Waterville, who also signed the statement, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
“Too many Maine Democrats are cynically willing to trade in that currency at the expense of our safety and dignity,” she said in an emailed statement. “We decided we needed to say something collectively, both about the specious and dangerous nature of the claim, and about how much damage has been done to our families and congregants.”
The statement Friday was spearheaded by the Jewish Community Alliance of Southern Maine and signed by every congregational rabbi in the state, including Rabbi Bill Siemers of the Conservative Congregation Beth Israel in Bangor and Rabbi Erica Asch of the Reform Temple Beth El in Augusta. (Rabbis affiliated with the Chabad movement in Maine did not appear on the signatory list.)
Zach Schwartz, the director of the Jewish Community Relations Council at the Jewish Community Alliance of Southern Maine, said the federation hoped the “unity displayed here in Maine can inspire Jewish communities across the US to also unite against the extremist rhetoric harming our community and our children.”
Rabbi Josh Stanton, the associate vice president of interfaith and intergroup initiatives for Jewish Federations of North America, also hailed the joint statement.
“Maine’s Jewish clergy are setting an important example with their call to put aside inflammatory rhetoric and look to the common good,” Stanton said in an emailed statement. “At a time of rising polarization and declining civil discourse, the Jewish Community Alliance of Southern Maine’s efforts to unify the community around this important message are a mark of true leadership.”
Isaacs told JTA that she hoped Jackson would “support, understand, and advocate for all of Maine’s citizens, including the totality of Maine’s diverse Jewish community.”
“Work with us to figure out how to express outrage and legitimate critique of Israel’s government without succumbing to language that you might not know is an ancient antisemitic trope, or dismissing the security needs of Israel’s citizens,” Isaacs said of her message to Jackson. “Please have the courage to forge your own path, and not follow in the footsteps of Graham Platner, a man who should have never been normalized, endorsed, or empowered.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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Boy George cedes role of King Herod in ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ production after releasing pro-Israel song
(JTA) — Boy George has withdrawn from his run as King Herod in London’s West End revival of “Jesus Christ Superstar,” days before he was due to take the stage and 24 hours after releasing “We Will Dance Again,” dedicated to the victims of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on the Nova music festival in Israel.
The 80’s pop star was scheduled to appear at London’s Palladium starting Monday as part of the production’s rotating cast playing King Herod, the Judean king who is best known by Jews for his expansion of the Second Temple and to Christians for his efforts to stave off the arrival of a challenger — the story of which is reflected in the rock opera by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice.
Boy George will be replaced by actor Richard Armitage in the London production.
In announcing the cast change, Paul Kelmsley, the singer’s manager, did not directly mention the blowback the former Culture Club frontman was receiving for releasing a pro-Israel song but alluded to it.
“George has never been afraid to stand by his personal convictions, and I have always respected him for that,” he said. ”In this instance, I felt it was right to step aside, allowing the production to remain the focus, while ensuring everyone involved can move forward with mutual respect and goodwill.”
Boy George is defending his decision to release the song, saying he believes artists should be free to express their views even when they are unpopular. In “We Will Dance Again,” the singer rejects claims of genocide against Israel and proclaims, “If you’re ever confused, I stand with the Jews.”
Earlier Friday, Boy George lashed back at the vitriol he was getting online. “What is most shocking is the amount of gay folk attacking me, ” he posted on X. “If you support terrorism you can in the words of Divine ‘Take your toolkit and go f—_ a garage,’” he said, referring to a quote attributed to the taboo-breaking transgender artist.
“When I say ‘they want to kill every last one of us’ I am also talking about us queers, not just the Jewish community,” Boy George said. “When will you wake up?”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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