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They rallied rabbis against Mamdani’s anti-Zionism. What does The Jewish Majority do next?
Plenty of Jews were concerned about the specter of Zohran Mamdani becoming mayor of New York. But few did as much to mobilize other Jews around the issue as Jonathan Schulman.
Via his newly formed organization, The Jewish Majority, Schulman circulated a letter to rabbis and cantors around the country opposing “rising anti-Zionism and its political normalization throughout our nation.” The letter, which called out Mamdani by name, was signed by more than 1,100 Jewish congregational leaders — one of the most widely endorsed missives of its kind — and galvanized many clergy who had been reluctant to use their pulpits to wade into a political arena.
They didn’t get what they wanted. Yet the day after a decisive victory by Mamdani, Schulman wasn’t as despondent as one might imagine. Instead, he sees his group’s work as a success.
“This wasn’t about Mamdani,” he told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on Wednesday, rejecting the suggestion that his campaign amounted to an effort to get Jews to vote against the mayor-elect.
Instead, Schulman said, The Jewish Majority proved that it could combat a “subversion of the accurate representation of the Jewish narrative.”
He sees his work as simple: providing an organized Jewish voice, on Israel and other issues, to counteract what he sees as the growing influence of left-wing Jewish groups like Jewish Voice for Peace and Jews for Racial and Economic Justice. As members of those groups have aligned closely with Mamdani and stand to grow their influence under his administration, the Jewish Majority aims to serve as a counter-narrative.
New York City mayoral candidate Zohran K. Mamdani and NYC comptroller Brad Lander speak during the Jews For Racial And Economic Justice’s Mazals Gala on Sept. 10, 2025 in New York City. (John Lamparski/Getty Images)
“They exist to present fringe views to the public as normative,” he said. “If we decide to let them be the only ones to hold the microphone, that would be a mistake we can’t afford to make.” That includes on the issue of “political anti-Zionism,” which Schulman insists was the goal of the rabbinic letter — rather than an explicit anti-endorsement of Mamdani as a candidate.
There are an estimated 3,000 to 4,000 rabbis in the United States, meaning that potentially a third of them signed on to a single statement. Others indicated that they agreed with the sentiments but chose not to sign for other reasons.
“We’ve seen countless examples over the past couple of years of Jews coming out in support of anti-Zionist candidates,” Schulman said. “And now that narrative has shifted. Now you look at that narrative and it’s hard to say, ‘Well, look, these rabbis are supporting this candidate.’ Well, in fact, what you’re seeing is overwhelmingly one of the largest displays of rabbinic unity that we’ve seen in our country, saying we don’t accept the normalization of political anti-Zionism.”
He is skeptical of early exit polling purporting to show as many as one-third of Jewish voters in New York breaking for Mamdani, and suspects the actual number is closer to the “80-20” split that research suggests also reflects the Jewish consensus around Zionism.
Promoting an institutional Jewish consensus will continue post-Mamdani. Schulman insisted The Jewish Majority would not be making policy, only amplifying the views of major Jewish groups such as the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Congress, Jewish federations and the New York Board of Rabbis. He also said he would not seek to join the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Groups or other coalitions.
“We’re here to reflect,” he said. “It’s not my job to weigh in.” One item on his agenda, he said, is instituting “training programs” to teach Jewish leaders how to “present normative communal perspectives.”
Schulman has felt his own priorities within the Jewish community shift. Before striking off on his own, he spent 18 years at the pro-Israel lobbying giant AIPAC. One of his duties was to “work with congregations throughout the United States to increase the level of pro-Israel political activism in American synagogues.”
He left AIPAC in August 2024, as the group’s brand was becoming increasingly toxic amid the war in Gaza. Today even some moderate Democrats, like Massachusetts Senate candidate Seth Moulton, have sworn off accepting AIPAC donations. When radio host Charlamagne tha God wanted to insult Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries as someone with no real principles, he called the Brooklyn congressman “AIPAC Shakur.”
Schulman declined to comment on whether he had split from AIPAC ideologically. “I have a lot of respect for my former colleagues, and it’s a great organization,” he said. Nor does he see his work with The Jewish Majority as a throughline from his work there. Despite the overlapping focus on Jewish clergy, he insisted, this is “not ‘AIPAC by a different name.’”
Instead, he said, he left AIPAC because he had identified this new problem — the growing influence of left-wing Jewish groups after Oct. 7 — and wanted to counteract it, in a way he deemed non-political in nature. Even with all the Jewish organizations that were opposing anti-Zionism on the national stage, he said, “there is nobody whose job is to make sure that the Jewish community is accurately represented, that Jewish communal values are accurately represented.”
Those same Jewish groups, whose priorities he hopes to give a megaphone to, are scrambling in the wake of Mamdani’s big win. The ADL has launched a “Mamdani monitor” to keep tabs on the new mayor’s administration. JFREJ, meanwhile, sees no reason to come to the Jewish center: A victory Zoom call scheduled for Thursday to “celebrate our massive win” is set to feature pro-Palestinian activist Linda Sarsour and Jamaal Bowman, the former “Squad” congressman who is rumored to be on Mamdani’s schools chancellor shortlist.
Schulman is optimistic about building an organized Jewish counter-narrative to that perspective — so long as the ceasefire in Gaza holds.
“The American Jewish community has been undergoing a profound change, and because we’ve been in the middle of this war, which has been a propaganda war here in America that we’ve seen proliferating, we haven’t had the capacity to really think about, ‘What is the future going to look like?’” he said.
“People are starting to finally say, OK, the fighting has stopped, and we need to think about how the Jewish community is going to be able to represent itself for the long haul.”
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The post They rallied rabbis against Mamdani’s anti-Zionism. What does The Jewish Majority do next? appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Andorra’s tiny Jewish community reels after local carnival features mock execution of Israeli effigy
(JTA) — An annual festival in Andorra drew condemnation from the country’s small Jewish community after an effigy bearing the Israeli flag was staged in a mock trial and then hung and shot.
The incident was part of the traditional Catalan festival Carnestoltes, which occurs yearly before Lent, the 40-day period that precedes Easter. At Monday’s festival in Andorra, where a mock king is typically tried and burned, organizers instead used an effigy wearing blue with the Israeli flag painted on its face.
During the festivities, the Israeli effigy was symbolically tried, hung, shot and burned, according to social media posts and a report in the Israeli outlet YNet.
ABERRANTE muestra de antisemitismo en Andorra durante el carnaval. pic.twitter.com/GeIdF635wd
— Dani Lerer (@danilerer) February 16, 2026
The incident drew outcry from the microstate’s tiny Jewish community, which only just got its first full-time rabbi, a Chabad emissary, in the last two years.
“This is a ritual they perform every year as part of carnival, where they mock many things,” Jewish Andorra resident Esther Pujol told YNet. “This time they dressed the effigy in the colors of the Israeli flag, with a Star of David on its face. They put it on trial, sentenced it to death and carried out the sentence by shooting and burning it. It is completely unacceptable.”
Pujol told the outlet that it was the first time she had seen the festival include anti-Israel or antisemitic elements, and that she had contacted Andorran lawmakers to express her outrage. The mayor of Encamp, the city where the incident took place, and local politicians took part in the ceremony, according to YNet.
The European Jewish Congress also decried the display in a post on X, writing that the mock-execution was a “deeply disturbing act that risks normalizing antisemitism and incitement.”
“This incident requires unequivocal condemnation, full clarification of responsibilities and concrete measures to ensure that antisemitism is never tolerated in public celebrations or institutions in Andorra or anywhere in Europe,” the post continued.
Other Lent festivities have also been the site of antisemitism in recent years, with Belgian celebrations in 2019 featuring antisemitic caricatures and a Spanish parade in 2020 featuring a Holocaust-themed display.
The incident marks a rare instance of open turmoil for Jews in Andorra, which is nestled between France and Spain in the Pyrenees mountains. While France and Spain have seen widespread pro-Palestinian protests and antisemitic incidents in recent years, Andorra has largely avoided similar tensions.
In September, Andorra formally announced its recognition of Palestinian statehood alongside a host of other European nations during the United Nations General Assembly in New York City.
But local Jews have also sought to remain under the radar, considering that Andorra officially prohibits non-Catholic houses of worship. The Jewish community calls their gathering place a community center rather than a synagogue. In 2023, Andorra’s parliament elected a Jewish lawmaker for the first time.
The post Andorra’s tiny Jewish community reels after local carnival features mock execution of Israeli effigy appeared first on The Forward.
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British woman who removed an Israeli hostage poster from a memorial site is convicted of theft
(JTA) — A British woman who is married to a Jewish anti-Zionist activist has been convicted of theft in connection with a 2024 incident in which she removed an Israeli hostage poster and threw it in the trash.
Fiona Monro, 58, of Brighton, England, was found guilty of theft, but not convicted of criminal damage for charges stemming from a February 2024 incident in which she took a large laminated poster of Israeli hostage Tzachi Idan and disposed of it.
A relative of Idan who lives in a neighboring town, Howe, returned the poster to the memorial site after Monro threw it away. A week later, Monro also wrote the phrase “Pray for the 30,000 murdered Palestinians” on the memorial but was acquitted of charges related to the vandalism, according to Brighton and Hove News.
The incident came at a time when Israeli hostage posters were being vandalized frequently by activists across the globe who said they were protesting the war in Gaza. The war began when Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing about 1,200 people and taking about 250 hostages. Idan was killed in Hamas captivity and his remains were returned to Israel a year ago during a negotiated ceasefire.
“This crime was one out of 50 times the memorial was vandalised and it took two years to get justice. But it is possible to get a win,” Heidi Bachram, one of the memorial’s organizers, told the Jewish News following Monro’s convict. “We cannot let hateful people get away with attacking us.”
Monro told police that the memorial located in Brighton’s Palmeira Square “did not represent the Jewish community,” citing her marriage to the prominent activist Tony Greenstein. Greenstein was expelled from Great Britain’s Labour Party in 2018 over his social media comments about Israel, which his party deemed antisemitic.
“The board was clearly there to justify the genocide that was happening,” Monro said in the police interview. “A large laminated board with a photograph of a hostage was highly inflammatory to many people in that community clearly found it very upsetting to have that constantly thrust in our face daily.”
After Monro’s lawyer, Hamish McCallum, requested that the jury consider whether it was proportionate to convict her on the basis she was exercising her right to express her political views, Judge Stephen Mooney rejected the proposal.
“This is not therefore a case of the state seeking to prosecute the defendant disproportionately for expressing her own views or otherwise interfering with her rights,” said Mooney. “It is a case of the state prosecuting the defendant for putting her views above those of others and causing them wholly unnecessary distress by so doing.”
Mooney gave Monro an 18-month conditional discharge and ordered her to pay $1,637 in prosecution costs.
The post British woman who removed an Israeli hostage poster from a memorial site is convicted of theft appeared first on The Forward.
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Community Leaders Slam Campaign in Canada Targeting Accreditation of Jewish Summer Camps
Illustrative: People take part in “Shut it down for Palestine!” protest outside of Tyson’s Corner as shoppers participate in Black Friday in Vienna, Virginia, US, Nov. 24, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Leah Millis
Jewish community leaders across Canada are pushing back against a campaign by anti-Zionist activists that seeks to pressure accrediting bodies to reconsider recognition of several Jewish children’s summer camps.
The controversy centers around at least 17 overnight camps in provinces including Ontario, Quebec, Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, and Nova Scotia, according to a statement circulated by the activist group. A coalition of leftist and pro-Palestinian groups has identified the camps and is urging provincial associations to review and potentially revoke their accreditation.
Members of the anti-Israel coalition — which includes the Palestinian Canadian Congress, Just Peace Advocates, the Ontario Palestinian Rights Association, PAJU Montreal, and the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign — claim that some of the camps promote or normalize support for Israel.
Organizers say institutions connected to Israel, which they falsely accuse of committing genocide against Palestinians, should face scrutiny.
“We have identified at least 17 overnight summer camps throughout Canada that support the State of Israel in some way,” the campaign says. “These camps are not problematic because they encourage connection to Jewish identity. Rather, they pose a problem because they encourage support for a genocidal, settler-colonial state.”
Among the claims cited are that camps celebrate Israeli national holidays, incorporate Israel-focused educational content, or employ staff members who have previously served in the Israel Defense Forces, including in non-combat capacities.
The messaging reflects themes commonly associated with the BDS movement, which seeks to isolate Israel from the international community as a step toward its eventual elimination. The campaign against Jewish camps has been endorsed by the official Canadian BDS Coalition.
The campaign appears to represent a new front in a broader pattern of activism that has targeted universities, cultural organizations, and other institutions over perceived ties to Israel.
Camp leaders and Jewish organizations say the effort singles out Jewish institutions and risks politicizing spaces designed for children, while presenting a threat to effectively dismantle Jewish life.
The UJA Federation of Greater Toronto described the campaign as harassment and intimidation directed at Jewish families. Community leaders have emphasized that summer camps are focused on youth development, cultural enrichment, and recreation, not political advocacy
“This direct targeting of Jewish campers and staff is a deliberate act of intimidation,” UJA wrote in a statement.
The Ontario Camps Association, which accredits camps in that province, also condemned the initiative. The association said accreditation decisions are based on health, safety, and program standards, not political views, and characterized the coalition’s allegations as discriminatory.
The dispute has unfolded amid a surge in antisemitic incidents over the past two years, following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, amid the ensuing war in Gaza.
According to the Jewish advocacy group B’nai Brith Canada, which tracks antisemitism across the country, antisemitic incidents in 2024 rose 7.4 percent from 2023, with 6,219 adding up to the highest total recorded since it began tracking such data in 1982. Seventeen incidents occurred on average every day, while online antisemitism exploded a harrowing 161 percent since 2022. As standalone provinces, Quebec and Alberta saw the largest percentage increases, by 215 percent and 160 percent, respectively.