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The real Jewish history behind Netflix’s ‘Transatlantic’ and the WWII rescue mission that inspired it
(JTA) — While the United States swung its door shut to most refugees during World War II, a young American in France saved thousands, including some of the 20th century’s defining artists and thinkers — such as Marc Chagall and Hannah Arendt — from the Nazis.
The rescue mission of Varian Fry, which went largely unrecognized during his life, is the subject of Netflix’s new drama “Transatlantic,” launching Friday from “Unorthodox” creator Anna Winger.
Starring Cory Michael Smith as Fry, the seven-episode “Transatlantic” aims to recreate his operation in Marseille after the Nazis defeated France and before the United States entered the war. Winger has injected several imagined romances, war efforts and characters into the fictionalized series, including one posed as Fry’s lover, named Thomas Lovegrove (played by Israeli Amit Rahav). Although Fry’s son has said that he was a “closeted homosexual,” no such person is known to have existed.
Winger believes these inventions will invite Netflix viewers to learn more about the true story.
“The people who lived through these stories are dying out,” she told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “My job is to bring this to a wide audience, to people who don’t know anything about it.”
The story behind the series
The real Varian Fry, a 32-year-old journalist and suit-clad Harvard graduate, showed up in Marseille with $3,000 taped to his leg and a list of 200 names in August 1940.
After France surrendered to Germany, Fry was among 200 Americans — including journalists, artists, museum curators, university presidents and Jewish refugees — to create the Emergency Rescue Committee at the Hotel Commodore in New York. This group was concerned with Article 19 in France’s armistice with Germany, which required French authorities to surrender any individuals demanded by the Germans.
The private relief organization drew up frenzied lists of anti-Nazi intellectuals who were trapped in France. With the help of first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, the ERC obtained some emergency visas and sent Fry to lead the rescue efforts in Marseille, a port city in the southern, unoccupied part of France.
What he found there was impossible to manage alone. His mission began in his room at the Hotel Splendide, where long lines of refugees waited in the morning before he woke up and at night after he went to bed. They sometimes walked straight into his bedroom without knocking, Fry wrote in a letter to his wife shortly after he arrived.
Gathering a small devoted staff, including Frenchmen, refugees and American expatriates, Fry moved his office to Rue Grignan and later Boulevard Garibaldi. Outside of Marseille he rented the Villa Air-Bel — colorfully recreated in “Transatlantic” — to house eminent writers and eccentric Surrealist artists waiting for visas.
The group developed legal and illegal branches, with the cover organization offering humanitarian relief while a behind-the-scenes operation flouted the law to help refugees escape. Using Marseille’s lively black market, the staff found hiding places, forged documents and bribed officials. Bil Spira, a Jewish Austrian-born cartoonist, forged passports for the ERC. (He was caught and deported to Auschwitz, but survived.) Resistance fighters Hans and Lisa Fittko devised an escape route to Spain, guiding refugees across the Pyrenees mountains on foot.
By the time he was forced out in October 1941, Fry’s shoestring operation had enabled 2,000 Jewish and other anti-Nazi refugees to flee Europe, including such towering artists as Chagall, Max Ernst and Marcel Duchamp, and intellects such as Arendt, Heinrich Mann and André Breton. It has been estimated that 20,000 refugees made contact with the rescue center in Marseille.
Fry’s illegal efforts made him plenty of enemies from his own country, who accused him of interfering with American neutrality in the war. He angered the state department, officials at the American consulate in Marseille and ERC members in New York. In August 1941, he was arrested by Vichy police and sent back to New York.
Fry died in 1967 at the age of 59. Only a few months earlier, he had received the Croix de Chevalier de la Legion d’Honneur, France’s highest decoration of merit — and the only official recognition in his lifetime. In 1994, he became the first American honored by Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial and history authority, as Righteous Among the Nations.
The Emergency Rescue Committee merged with another relief organization and became the International Rescue Committee in 1942. It is still in operation today and currently led by a Jewish CEO, former British politician David Miliband.
What’s in the show, and why some are against it
Some of Fry’s colleagues are fictionalized in “Transatlantic,” including the Jewish Berliner Albert Hirschman (Lucas Englander), who would become an economist in the United States; the Chicago heiress Mary Jayne Gold (Gillian Jacobs); and the Jewish Austro-Hungarian activist Lisa Fittko (Deleila Piasko). American diplomat Hiram Bigham, who gave Fry crucial help and even hid writer Lion Feuchtwanger in his home, is also a character in the show.
Throughout the seven episodes, rescue missions swirl around a series of fictional love affairs. In addition to Fry’s relationship, a triangle unfolds between Hirschman, Gold and the fictional American Consul Graham Patterson. (There is no evidence that Gold romanced either with her comrade or with any American consul in Marseille.) Lisa Fittko has an affair with the fictional character Paul Kandjo, who organizes armed resistance to Vichy.
Gillian Jacobs as heiress Mary Jayne Gold. (Anika Molnar/Netflix)
Several wartime plot points are also invented, including a prison break at Camp de Mille and Gold’s collaboration with British intelligence.
The degree of fictionalization has angered some people close to the real history. Pierre Sauvage, president of the Varian Fry Institute, called the show’s trailer “shocking.” Born in 1944, Sauvage survived the end of the Holocaust in the French village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, although his Jewish parents were turned down by Fry’s overwhelmed committee. He became close friends with some of Fry’s fellow rescuers in their later years, including the late Gold, Hirschman and Fittko.
“Are there any red lines?” he said. “Can one fictionalize at will, with no concern for the reality of the story, for the false impression that people will get — and for the way it affects the private lives of the families of people portrayed?”
Sheila Isenberg, who documented Fry’s operation in her book “A Hero of Our Own,” has described the series as a “travesty.” Thomas Fischer Weiss, a child survivor who attempted Fry’s escape route through the Pyrenees at 5 years old, also said the historical events needed no embellishment.
“I think you should tell it straight,” he told the JTA.
The legacy of the ‘troublemakers’
Sauvage believes that if Fry and his associates were alive today, they would like to be remembered for their convictions.
“These were people who were sort of in your face,” he said. “People who knew clearly what they felt and expressed it. They would often describe themselves as troublemakers. Mary Jayne [Gold] said about Varian that he was an ‘ornery cuss’ — it took orneriness to stick to your guns.”
That orneriness was critical at a time when many Americans were apathetic to the plight of European Jews — a 1938 poll in Fortune magazine found that fewer than 5% believed the United States should raise its immigration quotas for refugees. By the summer of 1941, it was too late to open the doors. The German policy of expelling Jews had changed into extermination.
According to Sauvage, America’s refusal to accept more refugees had something to do with that shift.
“The Nazis could legitimately come to the conclusion that the world wouldn’t do anything about the murders and wouldn’t really care all that much,” he said. “What the Varian Fry mission symbolizes is people who cared.”
Varian Fry with Miriam Davenport in the first offices of the Centre Américain de Secours in Marseille in 1940. Davenport, a friend of Mary Jayne Gold, also worked in the rescue effort but is omitted from “Transatlantic.” (Varian Fry Institute)
After their year in Marseille, the rescuers settled into more ordinary lives. Hirschman became an economist with appointments at Yale, Columbia and Harvard. Lisa Fittko ended up in Chicago, where she worked hard in import-export, translation and clerical jobs to earn money, eventually joining protests against the Vietnam War. Gold divided her time between New York City and a villa on the French Riviera.
They all remembered the rescue mission as their finest hour. Speaking with Sauvage, Gold called that year “the only one in her life that really mattered.”
A refugee story for troubled times
Fry’s rescue mission inspired Julie Orringer to write “The Flight Portfolio,” a 2019 novel that became the basis for “Transatlantic.” Orringer was captivated by the image of a young man arriving in Marseille, idealistic and unprepared for the depth of anguish he would find.
“The task was way too big,” she told the JTA. “He realized quite early on that he was going to ask for help, that he was going to have to turn to others who had deeper experience. And in collecting this group of incredible individuals around him, he assembled a kind of collective mind that really could make a difference under the very difficult circumstances that he faced.”
She believed that Fry left an example for the inexperienced. “If you‘re the kind of person who wants to take action on behalf of refugees, but doesn’t know how to do it, ask for help,” she said.
Winger, a Jewish Massachusetts native who has lived in Berlin for two decades, conceived of making a series about Fry in 2015. Germany saw an influx of more than a million migrants that year, most of them fleeing Syria’s horrific civil war. She optioned Orringer’s book in 2020.
“I thought a lot about the fact that people like us — artists, Jews, both — had to leave Berlin as refugees, but now there were so many people coming to Berlin as refugees,” said Winger.
Then, just as she started filming “Transatlantic” on location in Marseille, a new war broke out in Europe.
“The war in Ukraine started three days into the production and there was a whole other wave of refugees coming to Berlin,” she said. “Suddenly we were making it in another refugee crisis.”
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine hit close to the show, whose cast and crew hail from across the continent. Winger’s cinematographer is married to a Ukrainian woman. In Berlin, she saw thousands of refugees crowding into the central train station, some without shoes, food or plans for shelter.
“I think it gave us all a strong sense of purpose,” said Winger.
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Trump says he plans to talk to Hezbollah amid Iran peace efforts
(JTA) — President Donald Trump said Monday that he planned to speak with U.S.-designated terrorist organization Hezbollah, during his remarks on an agreement the U.S. and Iran signed virtually the night before to end months of hostilities.
Israeli politicians are railing against the deal and insisting that the country will maintain its freedom of operation against Lebanon-based Hezbollah, which is funded by Iran and attacked Israel days after the U.S. and Israel launched the recent war in Iran at the end of February.
“The deal’s all signed,” Trump said in reference to the Memorandum of Understanding between the U.S. and Iran announced on Sunday night. He made the comments in Evian, France, beside French President Emmanuel Macron in advance of a meeting with the G7. The Straits of Hormuz are partially opened and will be fully open by Friday, Trump added.
The “main thing is that Iran is not expected to have a nuclear weapon and they have fully agreed to that with strong policing powers,” Trump said.
Earlier in the day, U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance told ABC’s “Good Morning America” that the deal included significant sanctions relief in exchange for Iran’s agreement that it would give up its nuclear weapons program, asserting that Tehran would not have enough money to build atomic bombs.
He also noted that the memorandum had been “digitally” signed Sunday in advance of a formal signing ceremony in Geneva on Friday. In France, Trump said that Vance would represent the United States at that ceremony.
The details of the memorandum have not yet been made public, but it’s already clear from public statements including those made by Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on X that Sunday’s deal is also expected to end the war between Israel and the Iranian proxy Hezbollah.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baqaei told reporters that Lebanon was an essential part of the deal, according to the state-affiliated Tasnim news agency.
Though Trump has strongly pressured Israel to comply with the agreement to end hostilities, Israel has objected to the inclusion of Lebanon in the deal between the United States and Iran.
Trump told reporters in France that “we do need to straighten out the Lebanon thing,” adding that he intended to speak with Hezbollah as part of that effort.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz, speaking before Trump’s remarks, insisted that his country would continue to defend its northern border from Hezbollah attacks and would retain a presence in Lebanon.
“If Iran attacks Israel due to events in Lebanon — we will strike it with full force and make the power gap between us abundantly clear,” Katz said.
Israel was not a party to Sunday’s agreement, which it fears will strengthen Iran and Hezbollah and provide funds for Tehran to rebuild its nuclear and ballistic missile program. Several European leaders, however, welcomed the move. “This is a hugely significant moment. We have long called for de-escalation,” British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said, stressing that “it is vital that all parties seize this opportunity … To secure stability in the region.”
Macron told Trump that the deal was an “important step” toward peace.
Katz, for his part, noted that Israel has conveyed its position to the U.S. administration that it will keep troops in Lebanon, where low-level fighting continued on Monday.
“Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu clarified this to U.S. President Trump and other senior American officials, and I also made this clear yesterday to U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth,” Katz said.
Israel’s policy is to keep the IDF indefinitely in the security zones it’s established in Lebanon, Syria and Gaza in order to protect communities along the Israeli border, Katz added.
Sunday’s memorandum is expected to extend the shaky ceasefire of April 8 between Iran and the U.S. for 60 days, during which time the countries will negotiate a broader agreement addressing Iran’s nuclear program.
Trump told The New York Times on Sunday that he would renew military strikes on Iran if a nuclear agreement is not finalized.
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American Jewish leaders across the political spectrum express alarm at Trump’s Iran deal
(JTA) — In 2018, as President Barack Obama struck a deal with Iran to constrain its nuclear production, American Jewish groups were divided: Those on the right excoriated the deal, saying it left Iran a major threat to Israel, while those on the left were more supportive.
This time around, as President Donald Trump has announced a new deal with Iran after months of war that the United States fought jointly with Israel, American Jewish groups are more unified: They aren’t happy.
On the right and the left, Jewish groups are expressing concerns about the deal that Trump and Iran announced on Sunday night, even as its terms have not yet officially come into focus.
Trump has emphasized that the deal reopens the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran closed after the war began on Feb. 28. U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance also told ABC’s “Good Morning America” that the deal would include significant sanctions relief in exchange for Iran’s agreement that it would give up its nuclear weapons program.
But it’s not clear what concessions Iran has made on the nuclear front, while there are no indications other issues key to Israeli security, including Tehran’s ballistic missile program and proxy network, have been addressed. Though Israel and the U.S. undertook the war jointly in February, Israel was not a party to the negotiations and has come under repeated criticism from Trump for jeopardizing talks with Iran.
“At worst, it’s an admission of defeat by the United States,” said Halie Soifer, CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, in a statement on Monday about the deal. The group was founded in 2017 as a successor to the National Jewish Democratic Council, which supported the Obama-era deal, called the JCPOA.
Soifer added, “Donald Trump was so desperate to get a deal with Iran that he was unabashedly willing to push Israel aside, demonstrating — yet again — that Trump has no loyalty or commitment to anyone other than himself.”
The right-wing Zionist Organization of America, meanwhile, expressed gratitude to Trump for taking on Iran but reacted to the deal as it had to the JCPOA, with great concern.
“We call on the administration to disclose the terms as soon as possible,” President Morton Klein said in a statement. “However, the little that we know is deeply problematic.”
Klein’s statement outlined a host of qualms based on reporting about the deal’s possible conditions, including about signs that Trump had agreed to a deal that omitted terms that Trump previously said repeatedly were essential for a U.S. agreement.
“It makes no sense for the U.S. to immediately give up its pressure on the Iranian regime — the blockade that was strangulating Iran economically — without obtaining immediate removal of Iran’s nuclear stockpile, decommissioning of Iran’s nuclear facilities, and destruction of Iran’s deadly missile stockpile,” Klein said.
The progressive group J Street opposed the war from the start and said it welcomed its conclusion. “
At the same time,” it said in a statement, “it is important to acknowledge a basic reality: This costly and illegal war achieved none of the sweeping objectives that were repeatedly invoked to justify it. … The tragedy is that diplomacy had already produced a workable framework. The JCPOA was effectively constraining Iran’s nuclear program until President Trump chose to abandon it.”
AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby that was one of the strongest opponents of the JCPOA, has not issued a statement about the new deal. But it retweeted a comment from Florida Republican Sen. Rick Scott listing a set of objectives that it’s not clear the agreement achieves.
“Any deal we make with Iran needs to permanently end their nuclear program, end their missile program, and stop their decades-long terror funding,” Scott said.
Scott’s fellow Republican senator, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, was among those on both sides of the aisle expressing qualms. “I am somewhat concerned that Iran’s view of the agreement seems different than what the American negotiating team is claiming,” Graham tweeted on Sunday, saying that he thought it was “imperative” that Vance present the terms of the deal to Congress for approval.
Vance said on Monday that the deal had been “digitally” signed already despite “technical things” that still needed to be worked out ahead of a ceremony planned for Switzerland on Friday. Speaking to U.S. media, he said he believed the terms were being mischaracterized and that the deal would result in an Iran without nuclear ambitions.
“If the Iranians are willing to give a long-term commitment, along with proper verification, to giving up that nuclear weapon, we’re willing to welcome them into the world economy to lift some sanctions and to turn over a new leaf in that relationship,” Vance said on “Good Morning America.”
Some Jewish groups have been more circumspect in their initial responses.
The Republican Jewish Coalition has not issued a statement on the deal, though it has retweeted Trump’s social media posts promoting it. The coalition did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday.
The Democratic Majority for Israel, meanwhile, urged Trump in a statement from its president, Brian Romick, to “bring in serious and experienced negotiators and technical experts to get this deal over the finish line, rather than relying on friends, family, and donors.” Romick also criticized Trump for cutting Israel out of negotiations — but he left some room for optimism.
“We continue to stand with the Israeli people who have been at war for more than two years, the people of Iran who have endured too many decades under a brutal regime and bravely demanded an end to oppression, as well as the Lebanese people who have lived under Hezbollah’s Iran-backed occupation for decades,” Romick said. “We will await the final text of this deal and hopefully bring this war to an end.”
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Can a liberal Zionist win with the pro-Palestinian movement? Brad Lander is trying.
A voter canvass rally for Brad Lander in Brooklyn’s Carroll Park on Sunday looked, in many ways, like the kind of gathering that helped propel New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani to power.
There were chants of “Free Palestine.” There was a speech by a prominent Columbia University protest leader. Speakers denounced the war in Gaza as a genocide and called for an end to U.S. military aid to Israel. And there was a repeated emphasis on building a political movement rooted in solidarity between Jewish and Muslim New Yorkers.
The difference was the candidate at the center of it all.
Lander, the former city comptroller who is challenging incumbent Rep. Dan Goldman in the June 23 Democratic primary for New York’s 10th Congressional District, is a self-described liberal Zionist who continues to support Israel’s existence as a Jewish and democratic state and does not identify with the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against Israel. During his time as comptroller, the city’s pension funds acquired holdings in Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest defense contractor, and touted it during an appearance on an Orthodox radio program.
Yet he has emerged as the highest-profile Jewish elected official in New York on the strength of progressive support. While he was already well known as a Brooklyn City Council member and then mayoral candidate, and gained further attention after getting arrested at a Manhattan ICE court last year, it is his positions on Israel that have come to define his campaign. Lander is embracing much of the language and policy agenda of the pro-Palestinian movement, including describing Israel’s conduct in Gaza as genocide and pledging to oppose additional U.S. military aid while the Israeli-Palestinian conflict continues.
Recent polling has shown Goldman trailing Lander.
Between Zionists and anti-Zionists
Over a plate of crispy potato latkes topped with an over-easy egg at Mile End Delicatessen in Boerum Hill on Friday morning, Lander reflected on the contradiction at the center of his congressional campaign: courting a district with a large and politically engaged Jewish electorate while relying on enthusiastic support from activists who oppose Zionism and believe Israel should not exist as a Jewish state.
“I am very comfortable being in coalition with people who have a different point of view on Israel and Palestine, who, I know, value everyone’s humanity,” Lander said.
That principle, he said, applies equally to what he called “illiberal Zionists” who prioritize Jewish lives over Palestinian lives and to anti-Zionists who reject Israeli suffering or, at the extreme, engage in antisemitic actions. Lander pointed to his decision not to attend last month’s Celebrate Israel Parade, citing the participation of Israeli right-wing politicians. Among those who showed up unannounced were Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who has denied the existence of a Palestinian people. Lander also noted that he stopped paying dues to the Democratic Socialists of America after Oct. 7, 2023, because the group’s New York City chapter participated in a Times Square rally the following day that drew widespread condemnation for celebrating the Hamas attacks on Israel.
Lander said that approach often requires difficult conversations with his allies and some uncomfortable moments on the campaign trail.
He recalled being approached recently on the subway by a young activist who recognized him when Lander was on his way to hear Rachel Goldberg-Polin, the mother of slain Israeli-American hostage, speak at Congregation Beth Elohim. “I don’t shake hands with Zionists,” the person said.
Some of the toughest exchanges have been with fellow Jews, he said.
At the Greek Jewish Festival on the Lower East Side earlier this month, one critic approached him demanding to know his “favorite intifada.” Another began shouting insults. Eventually, Lander said, the first critic turned on the second and urged him to stop yelling so they could have a real argument. “We had a Jewish argument,” Lander said. “Neither of us convinced each other, but we had a respectful conversation across lines of difference.”
Lander said he increasingly sees his role as creating space for conversations many people avoid. “I feel like one of my jobs right now is to try to open up difficult conversations,” he said. “I try to be clear about what I think, and then be in dialogue with people about it.”
A debate over Israel
Brad Lander, the former New York City comptroller, on Aug. 7, 2025. Photo by Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Lander is challenging Goldman with the backing of Mamdani, whose upset mayoral victory reshaped New York politics, in a campaign that has gone after Goldman as allegedly out of step with Democratic voters who seek change in Israel.
The divide was on full display during a recent televised debate, where the candidates spent the first 15 minutes of a one-hour forum sparring over the Celebrate Israel Parade, the Park Slope Food Coop’s vote to boycott Israeli products, U.S. military aid to Israel and investments in Israel bonds.
Lander is one of three candidates for Congress that Mamdani has endorsed in an early test of his political clout. The other two endorsees, who appear in campaign promotions alongside Lander and Mamdani, are democratic socialists who have drawn scrutiny for inflammatory comments about Israel. Mamdani has notably stayed out of the race to succeed retiring Rep. Jerry Nadler in Manhattan’s neighboring 12th Congressional District, which includes much of the Upper East and Upper West sides. In that race, the leading candidates refused to use the term “genocide” to describe Israel’s actions in Gaza and voiced support for funding Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system.
Goldman has assembled support from prominent Democratic and labor leaders and elected officials, including Gov. Kathy Hochul and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and many of the city’s Jewish elected officials.
The incumbent, touting an endorsement from the pro-peace group J Street, has argued that his record combines progressive values with strong support for Israel and drew a sharp contrast with Lander by presenting himself as the candidate of unwavering conviction. In remarks to Jewish leaders at the Met Council annual breakfast last month, Goldman declared, “I stand before you as a proud Jew and a proud Zionist — and those of us who feel that way can never waver.” He added, “What we need is more than anything is moral clarity. We need to stand for what we believe in, and I will do that right through the tape.”
Carrying the torch
The outcome of the closely watched Manhattan contest — featuring Assemblymembers Alex Bores and Micah Lasher, Nadler’s endorsed successor, along with Jack Schlossberg, the grandson of President John F. Kennedy who was raised Catholic by his mother — could also shape Lander’s place in Congress if he wins. Should Lasher lose, Lander or Goldman could become New York City’s only Jewish member of Congress.
In the interview, Lander said it’s “fair” to suggest he sees himself as carrying on Nadler’s legacy. He praised Nadler, who served 17 terms in Congress and represented large parts of the district before a 2022 redistricting, as a model of a Jewish lawmaker who combined a strong commitment to Israel with a defense of civil liberties and a willingness to challenge political orthodoxy, pointing to Nadler’s support for the Iran nuclear deal despite opposition from many American Jews.
He also invoked a less familiar predecessor. While reading Molly Crabapple’s recent book on the Jewish Labor Bund, Lander said he discovered the story of Meyer London, the socialist congressman who represented the Lower East Side in the early 20th century (and who was championed by the Forward). “One way to think about my campaign,” Lander said, “is that I’m running to be the second Bundist member of Congress from this district.”
Lander said that Nadler and London’s careers reflected a broader tradition of Jewish political engagement in New York that still resonates today. “One of the things I love about New York,” Lander said, “is that every candidate for office has to have a bagel order.” (Lander’s is an everything bagel with scallion cream cheese, tomato, lox and a light toast.) Nadler made headlines after he was televised carrying a bag of Zabar’s food with him to the second impeachment of President Donald Trump in 2021.
The Mamdani-Lander alliance
The message at the heart of Lander’s campaign was on display throughout Sunday’s rally in Brooklyn, a Jewish-Muslim interfaith canvass that featured the diverse coalition backing his candidacy. It echoed a theme that has become central to Lander’s political identity, stretching back to his years as a housing activist and organizer affiliated with Jews for Racial and Economic Justice and continuing through his alliance with Mamdani during last year’s mayoral race.
In a brief appearance, Mamdani revived the Knicks-inspired poem that has become a staple of social media posts during the NBA finals last week. “My mayor Muslim, my Brad Jewish… and I’m not going to go further,” Mamdani said to cheers. Lander offered to complete the rhyme: “My mayor Muslim, next congress member Jewish. Our city’s alive. Knicks in five. It’s up to us to build a world where everyone can thrive.”
Councilmember Shahana Hanif, Lander’s successor in the City Council, welcomed supporters to what she jokingly called “the beautiful country of Mamdanistan.” She said that solidarity requires difficult conversations and disagreements, adding that she had witnessed Lander’s commitment to both Muslim and Jewish communities.
Among the most notable speakers was Mohsen Mahdawi, the Palestinian activist who led the Columbia University Gaza War encampment and has been targeted in the Trump administration’s deportation efforts.
Mahdawi praised Lander for what he described as a moral break with much of the Jewish political establishment. “He was one of the first Jewish leaders to call and acknowledge what’s happening in Gaza is a genocide,” Mahdawi said. Mahdawi later led a “Free Palestine” chant that Lander joined.
Lander, in his remarks, told the crowd, “As a proud Jewish New Yorker, I will join you in that fight to end occupation and apartheid and genocide.”
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