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To turn out Jews against Mamdani, we need a ‘Great Schlep’ from Park Avenue to Park Slope
This piece is adapted from a sermon delivered on Oct. 18, 2025. It can be viewed here.
On Shabbat, I told my congregants something I believe strongly: that Zohran Mamdani poses a danger to the security of New York’s Jewish community.
Mamdani’s refusal to condemn inciteful slogans like “globalize the intifada,” his denial of Israel’s legitimacy as a Jewish state, his call to arrest Israel’s prime minister should he enter New York, and his thrice-repeated accusation of genocide in last week’s debate — for these and so many other statements, past, present, and unrepentant — he is a danger to the Jewish body politic of New York.
Zionism, Israel, Jewish self-determination — these are not political preferences or partisan talking points. They are constituent building blocks and inseparable strands of my Jewish identity. To accept me as a Jew but to ask me to check my concern for the people and State of Israel at the door is as nonsensical a proposition as it is offensive — no different than asking me to reject God, Torah, mitzvot, or any other pillar of my faith.
One need look no further than the events of the past week (or, for that matter, the past two years) to understand the shape and substance of the Jewish soul — how bound up we have all been with the plight of the hostages and our jubilation at their release. In our highs and in our lows, in our tortured angst and our fragile hopes, in our prayers and our protests, we feel our connection to Israel and its people. It is the invisible string that has tugged at our hearts since the very beginnings of our people.
Mamdani’s distinction between accepting Jews and denying a Jewish state is not merely rhetorical sleight of hand or political naivete, though it is, to be clear, both of those things. His doing so is to traffic in the most dangerous of tropes, an anti-Zionist rhetoric that, as we have seen time and again — in Washington, in Colorado, in ways both small and large, online and in person — has given rise to deadly antisemitic violence. This past summer, you may recall, at the Glastonbury Music Festival in England, the crowd erupted into chants of “Death to the IDF.” Where exactly would a Mamdani administration stand should that happen next summer in a concert on Governors Island, or in Central Park? I am not one to play the politics of fear. The entire thesis of my career is to play offense, not defense. But right now, I am throwing a flag on the field and calling out a threat to the Jewish people five minutes early rather than risk being five minutes too late.
For me, the breaking point came not with Mamdani’s earlier statements, his accusations of Israeli genocide, his refusal to name Hamas a terrorist organization, or, for that matter, the flimsiness of his experience, policies, and associations. For me, the damning moment came in a statement he made to a Brooklyn synagogue last week, when he sought to assure that community, as reported in the press, that his views on Israel would not amount to a litmus test for service in his administration. “I am not a Zionist,” he said. “I’m also not looking to create a city hall or a city in my image. I’m going to have people in my administration who are Zionists — whether liberal Zionists, or wherever they may be on that spectrum.”
And while one could commend Mamdani for focusing on professional qualifications rather than political inclinations, for me, the comment was a most unsettling tell. The comment was a most unsettling tell. When Mamdani says “Zionists are welcome” in his administration, he may think he’s offering reassurance, but in fact he reveals something darker — the assumption that Jewish self-determination is an ideology to be tolerated, rather than a birthright to be respected. The very need to say it betrays a bias so deeply held that it should make us shudder.
Some believe it unwise to raise alarms given the likelihood of Mamdani’s election. Better to hold our tongue in anticipation of the need to work with him. I hear the concern and understand the pragmatism. I choose principle instead.
A vote for Mamdani is a vote counter to Jewish interests. A vote for Curtis Sliwa, whatever his merits, is a vote for Mamdani. There is a path to victory — i.e., Andrew Cuomo — but it means every eligible voter must vote. In the last election, somewhere between 15-20% of eligible voters turned out; we must do better. Nobody can sit this election out.
And yet, as good as it feels to speak my mind — and important as it is to do so — the truth is, doing so neither moves the electoral needle sufficiently nor addresses my deeper concern in this mayoral race.
How so? First, in my synagogue, I am preaching mostly, if not entirely, to the converted. I had my congregants at hello. For me to name the dangers of an anti-Zionist mayoral candidate in this community is a declaration so self-evident that not only does it risk being cliché, but it could serve to feed the very intersectional politics that have fueled Mamdani’s campaign in the first place.
Hopefully my words will prompt my congregants and their network of likeminded voters to turn out in this election, and that is not nothing. But all of my congregants — and there are a lot of them — who have emailed me, called me, and texted me urging me to go scorched earth on Mamdani, to invite Andrew Cuomo to address our community, all fail to understand that it is not the Park Avenue Synagogue community that needs convincing but the Korean, African-American and Latino communities of New York. We must turn out the vote, but if it is a win that you want, Cuomo needs to speak at more churches and fewer synagogues, more barbershops and fewer boardrooms, up his online game, and meet New Yorkers where they are. If it is a win you want, I’d encourage Jewish New Yorkers to redirect their angst from their rabbis who already believe what they believe and instead direct it to the issues, places, and people where the needle needs to be moved and can be moved.
Because my real concern is the painful truth that Mamdani’s anti-Zionist rhetoric not only appeals to his base but seems to come with no downside. What business does an American mayoral candidate have weighing in on foreign policy unless it scores points at the ballot box? I don’t doubt that Mamdani’s anti-Zionism is heartfelt and sincere, but its instrumentalization as an election talking point should frighten you in that it says more about the sensibilities of our fellow New Yorkers than it does about Mamdani himself. And the fact that the latest polls suggest that the Jewish community of New York is almost evenly split between Mamdani and Cuomo further names the problem to be not just one of our fellow New Yorkers, but our fellow Jews.
Which means that if there is a play to be made here, given the limitations of time, resources, and people, our efforts should be directed to where we have influence and where the needle can be moved. Those in the middle — the undecided, the proudly Jewish yet unabashedly progressive, the affordability-anxious, Netanyahu-weary, Brooklyn-dwelling, and social-media-influenced — who need to be engaged. In other words, other Jews. Jews who may not be you, but may be your friends, may be your children, and may be your grandchildren.
It is these Jews, our friends and our family, who need to be persuaded to prioritize their Jewish selves. I am imagining an informal campaign, reminiscent of what the comedian Sarah Silverman organized in 2015, when she called on young Jews to go to Florida to persuade their Bubbies and Zaydes to vote for then-Sen. Barack Obama. It was called “The Great Schlep.” Now, 10 years later, in 2025, we need a Great Schlep in reverse. Not from the Upper West Side to Surfside, but from Park Avenue to Park Slope, to remind the ambivalent and undecided that Jewish identity is not a partisan position but a sacred inheritance always in need of defense — especially today.
Who are these Jews about whom I speak? First, in many cases, they have grown up with an Israeli prime minister with whom they not only do not identify, but who represents the very antithesis of every other liberal Jewish value they hold dear. They don’t want anything to do with Netanyahu or the vision of Israel that he and his government represent. For them, Mamdani’s rejection of Israel may be a difference, but it is one of degree, not in kind. Second, these Jews feel strongly that they are not voting for the “Mayor of Jerusalem” and therefore local issues preempt everything else — like finding a job and living well in the city in which they were born without having to spend 50% of their monthly paycheck on rent. Third, the Cuomo you see as a commonsense experienced candidate – who, like any politician, comes with both personal and professional baggage — they see as an exemplar of the same-old, same-old tired politics in desperate need of being rejected.
For a Jew who wants to live a frictionless Jewish existence and return to a pre-Oct.-7 world when being a Jew was a nonevent, it is more appealing to vote for the candidate believed able to do the greatest good for greatest number of New Yorkers, no matter how preposterous some of his proposals are, even if that candidate lacks the credentials to run my fantasy football league, never mind the most complicated city in America.
So, when you talk to your friend, colleague or family member, under no circumstances roll your eyes or wag your finger. One should not do so because such an approach is sure to backfire, but, more importantly, because to do so delegitimizes the altogether legitimate feelings that person holds.
And when you do share your views, if it were me, I would begin the conversation by talking about love. How love — be it of another person, of family, or of country — never exists in a vacuum. How it evolves, it changes, it challenges. How the meaning of love comes not in the black-and-white cases — of love without question, or when there is no love at all — but in the gray areas — when love is tested. It is then — in those moments when we measure and re-measure, when the conditions of our love are challenged — that we find out who we really are, and discover what love is all about.
I would share with that other person that love is a commodity that neither is endless nor can be distributed equally. To be a Jew, to be anything for that matter, means to prioritize one love over another. The math is not precise; love cannot actually be measured in bushels and pecks. Concerned as we are with the well-being of humanity, we simply cannot nor should be expected to care for every human the same way. To paraphrase the moral philosopher Bernard Williams: A man who sees two people drowning, his wife and a stranger, and pauses to consider which one maximizes the public good, is a man who has had “one thought too many.”
Self-preservation and self-interest are not only legitimate, but essential to sustaining an ethical life. It is why, when the rabbinic sage Hillel was asked by a would-be convert to distill all of Jewish teaching into a single sentence, he did not quote the Golden Rule, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Rather Hillel said, “What is hateful to you, do not do to another.” One cannot love another as yourself, argued Hillel and Jews throughout the ages. The best we can do is to love another because they are like us, created alike in God’s image. There are limits to love. There is a place for self-concern.
And for Jews, ahavat yisrael, love of Israel, does take precedence over other loves. Every human being is created with equal and infinite dignity, yet we prioritize the needs of our families, our people, and our nation. This week we began reading the book of Genesis, the most universal story of all — not the creation of the first Jew, but the first human being. Universal as the story is, the 11th-century commentator Rashi immediately reads it as a justification for the Jewish claim to the land. In the 11th century, Rashi’s comment served as a defense against the Crusader-era argument that Jews have no claim to Israel. In our day, Rashi’s comment can be read as a reminder to progressive Jews of the legitimacy of the Jewish claim to the land. You can love Israel without loving all Israelis. You can love Israel without loving its government. In this moment when the Jewish connection to Israel sits precariously at the intersection of identity politics and rising antisemitic violence, it is not only allowable to place the Jewish body politic at the forefront of our concern; it is required of us.
Some will argue that disqualifying Mamdani because of his anti-Zionist posture only feeds the antisemite’s charge of dual loyalty. I hear this objection and respect those who say it, and I fully reject the argument. I reject it first because it surrenders to a Jewish insecurity and fear about what the antisemites might think. I don’t care what the antisemite thinks, and neither should you. And second, I reject it because it betrays a category error with regard to the place Israel has in my Jewish being. Israel is not a detachable policy preference; it is integral to my Jewish identity. To delegitimize Israel, as Mamdani has repeatedly done, is an attack on my personhood as a Jew, as an American, and as an American Jew. This is not about dual loyalty; this is about my fundamental security and the security of my co-religionists.
And lest you think I don’t understand, be assured that I do. I understand that it is not easy. It is hard to prioritize love of Israel when the government of Israel does not reflect your sensibility — that feeling of your love being tested. I understand that it is hard to prioritize one’s Jewish self over the array of other identity labels we wear. I understand that it is hard to reach beyond the sparkle of the shiny new object in favor of the one that is scuffed, worn, and familiar.
I wish it were otherwise. I wish we had two candidates with equal interest, or better yet, equal disinterest in the Jewish community. I would love nothing more than our mayoral contest to be focused solely on affordability, food instability, education, policing, sanitation, taxes — the everyday issues that shape our great city’s life. A contest where all of you could argue to your heart’s delight about which policies best serve the future of our great city, and I could give sermons on, well, anything else. But this election cycle, that is simply not the case. We can only play the cards we are dealt. And in this hand, I choose to play the one that safeguards the Jewish people, protects our community, and ensures that our seat at the table remains secure. I choose steadiness over spectacle, tested loyalty over reckless gamble.
It’s a story as old as the Bible itself. We stand in the Garden — staring at that Big Apple — wondering what is in our long-term best interest. The options are before us. We are wrestling within and with each other and we know we have to make a choice.
Let us choose wisely: To engage, mobilize, turn conviction into action, self-concern into ballots and most of all — vote. Now is the time to make our voices heard.
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The post To turn out Jews against Mamdani, we need a ‘Great Schlep’ from Park Avenue to Park Slope appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Texas man charged with making antisemitic death threats to Jewish conservative pundits
(JTA) — A Texas man was arrested last week in Florida after he allegedly launched a volley of antisemitic death threats against several prominent conservative activists.
Nicholas Lyn Ray, 28, of Spring, Texas, allegedly made his threats between Oct. 8 and Oct. 10 on an X account named “@zionistarescum,” according to an arrest affidavit.
His alleged victims included far-right Jewish conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer and conservative Jewish political commentators Joshua Benjamin Hammer and Karol Markowicz. A fourth victim, Seth Dillon, is the Christian CEO of a conservative satire site The Babylon Bee, according to an arrest affidavit.
The @zionistsarescum account was created in September 2025 and the first posts visible on it after Ray’s arrest respond to the assassination of Charlie Kirk, the Turning Point USA founder whose killing spurred conspiracy theories about Israeli involvement. Several posts advanced that theory, while others amplify the white supremacist influencer Nick Fuentes, who had feuded with Kirk.
In a message allegedly directed at Dillon, according to the affidavit, Ray accused him of “conspiring with Israel about Charlie Kirk,” the Turning Point USA founder who was murdered in September, adding that “these receipts are going to be perfect for display when you get hung bitch.”
The affidavit also describes a threat that Ray allegedly directed toward Markowicz, who was born in the former Soviet Union. Ray allegedly wrote, “Russian genocide jew whose family escaped prosecution in American you deserve to be hung.”
In another threat directed towards Loomer, Ray allegedly wrote, “why you asking this question as if you aren’t gonna soon find out Mossad agent? you gonna get hung from the capitol baby.”
Ray also allegedly referred to Hammer as a “F—t Israeli spy” and threatened to “hang you at the capitol and take turns beating you with a pinata bat,” according to the affidavit.
While the threats appeared to have been deleted from Ray’s X account, his most recent post dated Oct. 15 read, “When Israel is purged it will be biblical.” On Oct. 9, he referred to Loomer as a “f—ing kyk” and wrote “Israel are the biggest lying Satanist pedophiles on the planet.”
An investigation into Ray was launched by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement on Oct. 12 after agents were alerted to his alleged posts.
Ray is currently facing four counts each of making a written or electronic threat to commit a mass shooting or act of terrorism, extortion or threatening another person and using a two-way communication device to facilitate a felony, according to the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s office.
According to another court document, Ray indicated to law enforcement that he had been “watching youtube when he became interested in anti-Israel content” prior to allegedly making the threats.
The post Texas man charged with making antisemitic death threats to Jewish conservative pundits appeared first on The Forward.
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I spoke out against Mamdani. Then he won. Here’s how we walk forward together
Zohran Mamdani will become the 111th mayor of New York City. While the electoral outcome is not what I hoped for, I wish Mayor-elect Mamdani and his administration every success in leading this city we love. As the prophet Jeremiah instructed the Jews of his time, “Seek the peace of the city . . . for in its peace you will find your peace.”
Our community will, as it would with any mayor, work with the Mamdani administration on matters of shared concern and common cause. We will also, as we would with any mayor, hold the Mamdani administration accountable for ensuring that New York City remains a place where Jewish life and support for Israel are protected and can thrive.
Elections are important for the leaders they produce, but also for what they show us about the values we cherish and the fault lines we contain. They reveal not only the state of our politics, but the state of our souls, forcing each of us to confront questions of who we are, what we value, and how we can live together despite our differences.
For me, personally, the fact that about a third of New York City’s Jewish voters checked the box for Mamdani is totally bewildering. I am not unaware of the bigger political trends, the shortcomings of the other candidates, or the systemic challenges our city faces; I understand why Mamdani won. But for me, his anti-Zionist rhetoric and his intent to shut down research and economic partnerships between Israel and New York — to name but a few of his promises that would negatively impact our community — not only disqualified him from receiving my vote, but were a meaningful enough concern that I chose to publicly urge Jews and their allies to vote against him as well.
And yet, it would seem that what was self-evident to me was not so self-evident to a sizeable percentage of my kinfolk. Jews who live in my city, who are members of our collective community, who don’t feel the same way as I do. Thoughtful, caring, introspective Jews. Jews wise enough to interrogate their own views. Jews who, most importantly, fall into that sacred subset of humanity called mishpachah, family.
Mayors come and go. But the Jewish people must persist, and this election has brought a fault line within our people into full relief.
The rabbis of old understood that members of the same family could participate in the same experience and emerge with two very different ideas of what had occurred. It happened to our founding first family in this past week’s Torah reading, where we read the story of the akedah, the binding of Isaac.
Abraham is called on by God to sacrifice his son Isaac on Mount Moriah. Not just once, but twice, the text says of their ascent of the mountain that the two “walked together.” The rabbis understand that repetition as deeply important, the choice of words signaling not just physical proximity, but shared understanding, purpose and faith.
By all accounts, whatever actually happened on top of that mountain was a moment both dramatic and traumatic for father and son alike. Yet as charged with emotion as the ascent and the scene atop the mountain were, it is the journey down that has elicited the most rabbinic commentary. The text describes Abraham returning to his servants, and then to Be’er Sheva.
No mention is made of Isaac. Where did he go? What happened to him? Abraham and Isaac may both have returned from the harrowing test on that mountain, but they went their separate ways and would never be the same. So betrayed was Isaac that he never spoke to his father again. The same akedah that defined Abraham as a hero of the Jewish faith was the experience that prompted Isaac to see him as unforgivable.
That divided outcome hits close to home as I reflect on the split within our New York Jewish community today. The story reminds us that trauma, while shared, can send members of the same family in opposite directions.
We need to recognize that while many of us felt compelled, after Oct. 7, to rise in defense of Israel and global Jewry, an unintended consequence has been that other Jews have chosen, like Isaac, a different route. We need a reset on what we mean when we talk about “Oct. 8” Jews. We must stop being surprised that the Isaacs of our community have found themselves more at home in the tents of others than in our own.
We need to learn to walk together again. If, as I have repeatedly claimed, ahavat yisrael — love of the Jewish people — is my North Star, then it is a principle I must uphold even and especially when it is uncomfortable to do so. It is a love that must extend to Jews whose views I neither share nor understand.
As I said a few weeks ago, when I chose to speak out against Mamdani, ahavat yisrael means not wagging fingers or rolling eyes when encountering opinions contrary to one’s own. It means refusing to demean, diminish, or shame another Jew’s viewpoint. It means spending time, as I have done on multiple occasions these past weeks, speaking with people who have shared why my remarks served to push them further from — not closer to — the Jewish fold.
It means calling out, with equal ferocity, the threats to the Jewish people as they appear on the Mamdani left and on the Nick Fuentes and Tucker Carlson right. And yes, it means a willingness to publicly apologize — not for sharing my convictions, on which I stand firm, but for the times I have failed to uphold the spirit of dialogue and freedom of conscience and expression that I have spent my adult life championing, and believe must be defended today more than ever.
It means modeling these values publicly and communally by engaging with peer rabbinic colleagues who see things differently than I do for respectful, substantive exchanges of views. It’s time to turn the temperature down, build bridges of dialogue, and strengthen the bonds of Jewish New York, even as we maintain our diversity of thought.
We must not let the tragedy of our first family become our own. In next week’s parsha, the Torah will offer a redemptive path forward, albeit one that comes too late for Abraham. Isaac, having established himself on his own, comes upon wells that his father dug, which stopped up after his father’s death. Isaac digs them anew, claiming them as his own, yet giving them the same names his father had given them.
That is an image worth meditating on, praying for, and not waiting for. A Jewish family coming together across difference, aspiring for unity without uniformity, and gaining the strength and humility to walk together again.
The post I spoke out against Mamdani. Then he won. Here’s how we walk forward together appeared first on The Forward.
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Sure, be mad I voted for Mamdani — I’m still just as Jewish (and Israeli) as you are
Politics was once about hiring someone to do a job, a public service for the greater good. Now it’s about picking a team — and God help you if you cheer for the wrong one.
I’ve been learning a lot from reactions to my recent op-ed describing why I voted for New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani. The lessons aren’t really about Mamdani, or New York, or even about me — they’re about what’s happened to politics and civic life itself.
There was a time when elections were about competence and vision. Voters weighed experience and judgment. Campaigns made the case for why their candidate was best suited to serve the public. Now, it feels like the World Cup. Candidates are teams, voters are supporters, and politics is no longer about governing — it’s about belonging, and the fan bases are vicious.
Almost none of the reactions to my endorsement of Mamdani have had anything to do with whether he’d be a good mayor. In the hundreds of comments and messages I’ve received, not a single one — literally zero — was about his qualifications, his experience, or his readiness to serve. Instead, the conversation has been entirely about which team I’ve joined.
Apparently, as an Israeli and as a Jew, I’m not supposed to be on Mamdani’s team. My support created a dissonance for those who see politics through binary, populist lenses. The response was to tell me I’d defected — to the “other” side. That I’m no longer really Israeli. Not Jewish. That I’ve betrayed my people.
That’s completely illogical and — let’s be honest — stupid. I’ve done 23andMe. I’m about as close to 100% Ashkenazi Jewish as anyone can get. My Israeli citizenship is affirmed by passports and birth certificates. None of this is up for debate.
One friendly acquaintance in Tel Aviv even commented publicly on my Facebook wall, sarcastically asking, “Since when are you Israeli, and in what way?” The question was cloaked in feigned ignorance but carried a real accusation. Rather than do the mental work of asking herself why it seems so preposterous that a proud Israeli-Jewish-American-Canadian leftist — someone who’s spent her life and career believing in and speaking up for justice and shared society across all her homelands — might support a Muslim leftist candidate for mayor, her knee-jerk reaction was to question my identity, my citizenship, my belonging.
I get it. It’s easier to kick me off the team than to deal with my point of view from within it. I also think that’s lazy, and a little bit silly.
But beneath the silliness is a deeper lesson about how hollow civic engagement has become.
Political discourse is now an identity-sorting exercise, a game of tribal belonging where substance is nearly irrelevant and loyalty is everything. There is no greater good anymore, just a tunnel-vision sense of what’s good for me and my team.
And here’s what’s striking: There should absolutely be room for meaningful debate about Mayor-elect Mamdani and his policies. I’ve had tough conversations with myself about his platform, and I landed where I landed, but I don’t think it’s the only legitimate place to end up. I don’t see myself — or my politics — as all-knowing or universally applicable.
We should argue, question, and disagree with each other about leadership and governance in this city. But in responding to my essay, not one person brought up substantive objections involving Mamdani’s legislative record, his housing policy or his approach to social services. No one asked questions about those things, either.
Instead, people threw out sound bites, like Mamdani’s remark that he’d support efforts to have Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrested on an International Criminal Court warrant if he sets foot in New York. (The United States isn’t a party to the ICC, making this campaign promise notably hard to realize.)
That line has been used again and again in my mentions as supposed “proof” that supporting Mamdani equals endorsing antisemitism.
But let’s pause on that for a moment. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis filled Kaplan Street for months before the Hamas attack of Oct. 7, 2023, protesting Netanyahu’s corruption and authoritarianism. Since early in the war that followed those attacks, they’ve been out again to demonstrate against his abandonment of the hostages. When Jews around the world staged protests in solidarity in major cities, they were hailed by many as pro-Israel.
The slogans and imagery — Israeli flags held high — were explicit: “Lock him up.” “He belongs in jail and in hell.” I remember one poster vividly: an Israeli flag turned on its side so the blue stripes formed prison bars, with a caricature of Netanyahu clutching them from behind. No one called those protesters antisemitic. They were simply patriots — of the liberal variety.
So when Mayor-elect Mamdani, someone who believes in applying international law consistently, says he wouldn’t make an exception for Netanyahu, why is that suddenly antisemitic? Is it because he’s Muslim? Because he’s not Israeli? Because he’s daring to say what Israelis themselves have shouted in the streets for years?
Even Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove of Central Synagogue in Manhattan, a prominent liberal who famously joined a protest against Netanyahu outside the United Nations in 2023, taking the podium to lambast his corruption, used his pulpit to denounce Mamdani. In doing so, he cited — among many other concerns — that same statement about Netanyahu as evidence that Jews would not be safe in Mamdani’s New York.
What changed? Has Netanyahu’s corruption faded? Has his abandonment of the hostages made him more defensible? Has his tacit support for Hamas — the mutual dependence that has fueled this endless, brutal war — suddenly made him more worthy of protection? Or has the war itself, the issue that brought him before the ICC, done so — despite the broad belief, held within Israel as well as without, that Netanyahu worked to extend that war for personal gain?
The reversal reveals not a change in Netanyahu’s behavior, but in our own political reflexes. When a Muslim criticizes him, it’s alarming. When Jews do, it’s democracy — and even Zionism.
Dozens more people pointed me to a campaign video Mamdani released in Arabic as “evidence” that I was supporting a Hamas sympathizer. Not because of anything he said. Because he spoke Arabic.
That’s not vigilance; that’s anti-Arab hate. Arabic is one of the most widely spoken languages in the world. That includes New York. It’s also one of the languages of Israel, and of Mizrahi Jews. The fact that a Muslim elected official in the U.S. speaking Arabic to his constituents can be twisted into “evidence” of treachery says more about our own moral panic than about him. We’ve reached a point where solidarity across difference — where a Jew supporting a Muslim candidate who believes in justice — breaks people’s mental circuitry.
And in this morass of politics-as-World-Cup, we are not just losing nuance — we’re losing each other. The machinery of division thrives on turning minorities and working-class communities against one another. Jews and Muslims, Black and brown New Yorkers, immigrants and long-timers — somehow, we’ve all ended up pitted against one other to keep the system intact.
It’s a cruel and dangerous game. It’s not sustainable. In supporting Mamdani, I expressed support for a New York City, and a world, where solidarity wins over suspicion, where Jews and Muslims are allies rather than adversaries, and where justice is not conditional on which “team” you’re on. Politics is not the World Cup. It’s the daily act of choosing whether to build walls, or build community.
And for everyone asking: No, I’m not looking forward to a mandatory hijab — since that will never be a policy in Mamdani’s New York. But I am looking forward to my hijabi sisters feeling free and safe here, just as I’m looking forward to feeling that way myself.
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