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Why rabbis across America are taking sides in New York’s mayoral race
Rabbi Danny Schiff had a rule: no national letters.
The community scholar of the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh avoided open statements about far-off politics. But this month, he broke that rule — for a mayor’s race nearly 400 miles away.
“I never, ever, ever sign on to national rabbinic letters,” Schiff said. “And I made a lifetime exception for this particular instance.”
That exception was Zohran Mamdani — a New York state assemblyman, outspoken critic of Israel and, according to polls, the frontrunner to become the city’s first Muslim mayor. Schiff joined more than a thousand rabbis who signed an open letter opposing Mamdani, arguing that he “gives oxygen to anti-Zionist voices” and represents “a threatening reality for the American Jewish future.”
Schiff, who splits his time between Pittsburgh and Israel, said Mamdani’s campaign risks normalizing a “playbook” that other politicians might follow.
But not all rabbis saw danger in Mamdani’s rise. From Oregon to California to Illinois, other clergy have spoken out in support of him — or at least in defense of his right to run without being cast as a threat. The unusual spectacle of rabbis across the country weighing in on a New York City election has revealed deep fault lines over Israel, antisemitism, and what Jewish leadership looks like in 2025.
The question animating the debate is less who should be mayor of New York than what it means, right now, to speak as a rabbi in public life.
A new letter of solidarity
A new open letter published Tuesday, titled Jews for a Shared Future, gathered more than 150 signatures from rabbis, cantors, rabbinical students and Jewish leaders who reject efforts to frame Mamdani’s candidacy as a threat.
“As antisemitism and Islamophobia both rise in America, we understand that our fates are bound together,” the letter reads. “Jewish safety cannot be built on Muslim vulnerability, nor can we combat hate against our community while turning away from hate against our neighbors. Our traditions teach us that justice is indivisible — we are only truly safe when we ensure the safety and dignity of all. This is not merely strategic; it is sacred.”
The letter’s point person, Rabbi Shoshana Leis, co-rabbi with her husband of Pleasantville Community Synagogue in Westchester County, New York, said she wrote it after seeing how the national conversation about Mamdani had hardened into mutual accusation.
“I felt there needed to be a response,” she said. “I didn’t want to endorse any candidate, but I wanted to give an alternative perspective — the way we’re going to live safely is to engage across differences and choose our shared future.”
Leis called New York “our pluralistic, treasured city,” and said Jewish safety “is fully interdependent on the safety of everyone in New York City.” Her letter, she added, was meant to be “a letter against divisiveness.”
‘Mamdani has become the lightning rod’
Mamdani’s positions on Israel have roiled New York’s Jewish community — the largest in the United States — as he has faced scrutiny for refusing to outright condemn the slogan “globalize the intifada,” calling the Gaza war a “genocide,” and pledging to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he visits the city.
In Manhattan, two of the city’s most prominent rabbis took sharply different approaches to the campaign. Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove of Park Avenue Synagogue openly urged congregants to back Andrew Cuomo, calling Mamdani a threat to Jewish security. Rabbi Angela Buchdahl of Central Synagogue reaffirmed her congregation’s stance against political endorsements.
Adding to the moment, a July ruling by the Internal Revenue Service said that clergy can now endorse political candidates without automatically jeopardizing their congregations’ tax-exempt status, a change that has effectively loosened decades-old restraints on rabbinic speech from the pulpit.
The divergent choices of Buchdahl and Cosgrove captured a new era in which rabbis, once shielded from electoral politics, now face pressure to take public stands in the age of livestreamed sermons and viral petitions.
From Los Angeles, Rabbi David Wolpe, emeritus of Sinai Temple, said the anxiety is less about New York policy than precedent. “It’s New York — and whatever happens in New York is, by definition, national news,” he said. “People worry that a mayor of a major city with Mamdani’s views creates both a permission structure and an incentive for others to follow.”
For Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg, who writes the newsletter Life Is a Sacred Text from Chicago, the controversy reflects deeper communal and generational shifts. “Mamdani has become the lightning rod for Jewish communal tensions,” she said. “All of our intra-communal tsuris — everything that had begun to boil over since Oct. 7 — needs a new place to manifest, and this is where it’s going.”
She said the uproar is less about New York than about Jewish anxiety. “People’s fears about ‘antisemitism on the left’ find prominent articulation here, while a whole world of antisemitism on the right is being left unaddressed,” she said.
“There has been a sea change in how an entire generation engages with Israel,” she continued. “Mamdani’s popularity with younger Jews is reflective of that. It’s easier to blame him than to grapple with how the conversation around Israel has changed nationally and globally.”
Ruttenberg added that if she lived in New York, she would endorse him. “He has said repeatedly that he’s going to increase hate crime funding by 800% in New York, a city that he is meant to serve. His priority is not foreign policy.
“He’s become symbolic of all of these fears that people have about so many other things that are not his to hold,” she said.
‘We don’t need rabbis fighting rabbis’
From Eugene, Oregon, Rabbi Ruhi Sophia Motzkin Rubenstein of Temple Beth Israel — a Reconstructionist congregation of about 400 households — signed the Shared Future letter.
“It’s absolutely absurd that I’m weighing in on a New York City election,” she said. “But I do have a stake in how Jews and rabbis are publicly portrayed on a national scale.”
“I do think there is a manufactured panic that is very dangerous,” she added. “This is not the greatest threat to the Jewish people. This is a dangerous red herring.”
Not every rabbi fits neatly into one camp. Rabbi Suzanne Singer, emerita of Temple Beth El in Riverside, California, signed both letters — the one opposing Mamdani and the one urging solidarity.
“I hesitated before signing the first letter because I didn’t particularly want to attack one person,” she said. “I don’t think Mamdani is an antisemite. He’s an anti-Zionist, and there are plenty of Jews who are anti-Zionist. That doesn’t make him an outlier.”
Singer said she worries about rhetoric that casts Israelis as “settler colonialists,” and believes Israel and the Palestinians both have the right to self-determination. But she was also drawn to the second letter’s message. “We have to find a way to work together and live together,” she said. “Antisemitism is enough — we don’t need rabbis fighting rabbis.”
She expects some overlap between signatories of both letters. “The first letter, I wish it hadn’t targeted Mamdani so directly,” she said. “Everything has gotten to be black and white — there’s no nuance, no complicated narrative anymore.”
The moral crossroads
For Schiff, the Pittsburgh rabbi who broke his lifetime rule, the issue is existential. “Clearly Mamdani has made it his business to let everybody know what his views are on Israel — in the largest Jewish city in America,” he said. “Other politicians around the country might take note.”
“The end of the kinetic war has not brought an end to the war of delegitimization against Israel,” Schiff added. “If you can’t beat Israel militarily, then the anti-Zionism campaign becomes the favored route for aggression.”
Ruttenberg sees something different in that lightning. “If we think that magically defeating Mamdani will somehow return us to the way things used to be,” she said, “that is not what is going to be the outcome.”
She also questioned the moral calculus behind the opposition’s preferred candidate. “If we want to talk about Torah values,” she said, “Cuomo is a serial sexual abuser who spent $20 million of taxpayer money paying for his defense. In what way do my colleagues think this is any representation of either pragmatic or ethical values?”
Her conclusion was blunt, and hopeful. “When we make choices out of fear, it tends to end badly,” she said. “And when we choose based on building relationships and solidarity — understanding that our liberation is bound up with everyone else’s — that’s how we win, as Jews and as people.”
Jacob Kornbluh contributed to this article.
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UK threatens sanctions after Israel opens bids for E1 settler homes
(JTA) — JERUSALEM – The United Kingdom threatened to sanction Israelis involved in West Bank settlement expansion after the Jewish state’s Lands Authority opened bids for 1,234 homes in the largely underdeveloped E1 section of the West Bank settlement of Ma’aleh Adumim.
Construction in E1 “would cut across the heart of Palestine and risks separating the West Bank from East Jerusalem, which would endanger the viability of a two-state solution,” the British Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband said in a special statement he posted on X on Thursday.
Targeted sanctions, Miliband wrote, would be part of a series of measures his government would take. His office also summoned Israel’s charge d’Affaires Thursday to demand a closure of the bidding process, which first opened on Tuesday, and a withdrawal of the construction project altogether.
“Britain will not stand back and accept the destruction of the two-state solution,” he wrote. Miliband has held his position for a month and is part of the new leadership Labour Prime Minister Andy Burnham appointed when he took office in July.
Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar attacked Miliband on X, stating that Britain’s “decision to damage the relationship between our countries is deeply unfortunate.”
He said that the U.K. government’s “systematic policy of blaming only Israel while ignoring Palestinian extremism has already contributed to a massive wave of antisemitic hatred and attacks against the British Jewish community.”
The Jewish people have the same right to “live throughout the Land of Israel” just as the British people have a right to live anywhere in the U.K., Sa’ar wrote.
Plans to expand the built-up area of Ma’aleh Adumim settlement by constructing some 3,400 housing units on a largely underdeveloped hilltop within the city’s boundaries have been in place since 1994 when Yitzhak Rabin was prime minister.
Israel mostly froze those plans under pressure from the international community, including the U.S., with many countries warning that building homes in E1 would harm their diplomatic ties with Israel.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu began to advance the project in earnest in 2012 to protest the United Nations General Assembly decision to grant the Palestinians the status of a non-member state and has since pushed the project forward in spurts, particularly during election seasons.
The publication of the bidding process for the homes was first announced on Tuesday and is set to close on Oct. 19, one week shy of the Israeli elections on Oct. 27. Opening the bids is a move that plays well with Netanyahu’s right-wing voter base, which opposes Palestinian statehood and believes that settlements like Ma’aleh Adumim and the E1 area should be annexed into sovereign Israel.
But the move reverberated globally, with the U.K. signing onto a joint condemnation by France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Belgium, Sweden, Australia, New Zealand and Canada, in which they warned that settlement building in E1 distanced peace and undermined the country’s international standing.
They also reminded businesses who might bid for E1 construction that they could face legal or reputational consequences, given that such companies could be in breach of international law.
Palestinian Authority Vice President Hussein Al-Sheikh said he welcomed the condemnation, explaining on X that such a position “reflects the importance of the international role in confronting settlement activity and safeguarding the two-state solution.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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Argentina removes federal judge over antisemitic remarks in historic first
(JTA) — An Argentine federal judge was removed from office Tuesday for a series of antisemitic posts on his social media accounts that constituted misconduct incompatible with his role, an impeachment panel ruled.
Alfredo Eugenio López, who headed Federal Court No. 4 in the coastal city of Mar del Plata, was removed by Argentina’s Jury of Impeachment, a special panel composed of judges, lawmakers and lawyers.
It is the first time in Argentina’s history that a judge has been removed over antisemitic remarks.
In López’s social media posts, the judge referred to the Jewish people as “a brood of vipers,” Israel as a “fictitious state” and Argentinian Jews as “foreigners.” He has also used such terms as “Zionist” and “gay” as insults.
According to the panel, the judge committed acts of “discrimination and the denial of equal rights against the Argentine Jewish community. For the purposes of these proceedings, it is particularly significant that, by acting in this manner, he shattered public confidence in his continued fitness to administer justice impartially.”The case reached the panel through Argentina’s Council of the Magistracy, based in Buenos Aires, the constitutional body responsible for the selection and discipline of federal judges.
The first complaint against López was filed in February 2025 by the Delegación de Asociaciones Israelitas Argentinas, which is the umbrella organization representing Argentina’s Jewish community. One month later, the Argentine Forum Against Antisemitism also filed a complaint. In July 2025, attorney Yamil Santoro from Apolo Foundation added another one.
In his defense, López argued that his messages were “ subjective and decontextualized interpretations of exchanges on social media, which in no way affect the administration of justice or his impartiality” as a judge. He added that his remarks were unrelated to any pending case and that he had never been recused or removed from any judicial case.
Neither Lopez nor his attorney were immediately available for further comment.
“He was removed because he simply would not stop engaging in hate speech,” jury member Alberto Maques said during a live interview Tuesday on the A24 news channel. “It is absolutely disgraceful for a federal judge to engage in this kind of conduct.”
Maques said there were 15 social media posts that he acknowledged, but more than 50 posts in which he said “outrageous things that are not worth repeating because they truly constituted hate speech.”
“This is not merely an issue of hate speech against the Jewish community. This is someone who lacks common sense,” he added, interviewed by A24 news channel.
Prosecutors in the impeachment proceedings argued that the messages were not isolated political comments but reflected a pattern of hostility toward Jews, Zionism, and the State of Israel.
“No position of authority can shield hatred. This is not a matter of punishing an opinion. It is about sanctioning repeated conduct involving antisemitism, hostility and dehumanization, conduct incompatible with the impartiality, dignity and public trust required of the judiciary,” DAIA said Tuesday in a statement.
“This case sets a precedent: for the first time in more than a century, DAIA initiated proceedings of this nature against a judge. No office is above democracy.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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California progressive Wahab defeats AIPAC-backed Hernandez in close race
(JTA) — California progressive Aisha Wahab defeated AIPAC-backed moderate Melissa Hernandez in a congressional runoff this week, capping off a contest that had become unexpectedly tight after the pro-Israel lobby entered the fray.
The Associated Press called the race between the Democrats — who were vying to replace a disgraced former Rep. Eric Swalwell — a full two days after polls closed, when Wahab secured 53.1% of votes to Hernandez’s 46.9%, with 95% of ballots tallied. The gap between them grew by four percentage points from Tuesday evening, when Wahab had held a narrow 51% lead to Hernandez’s 49%.
“We stayed focused on the people, and I will fight for this district that raised me,” Wahab said in a Thursday statement, noting her journey “from foster care to Congress” in her East Bay community.
Although Wahab ended up victorious, the narrow initial margin on Tuesday shocked California’s 14th District, given that she had secured a double-digit lead in preliminary races two months ago.
But in the past few weeks, an unforeseen variable appeared to influence the trajectories of the two campaigns: a massive spending push from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee aimed at turning the tides for Hernandez.
Since the beginning of August alone, AIPAC’s super PAC, the United Democracy Project, and other affiliated groups spent more than $2.5 million on both boosting Hernandez and denigrating Wahab with negative ads and mailers, according to Federal Election Commission filings.
“This was not a landslide for Wahab by any means,” local Democratic strategist Noah Finneburgh, who is not affiliated with either candidate, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
“They narrowed the gap for sure,” Finneburgh added, referring to AIPAC. “They spent millions of dollars attacking Wahab very aggressively.”
These attacks, he explained, did not involve Israel and instead focused on divisive issues for the Bay Area, such as public safety and protecting kids.
“Negative advertising with a persuasive message can be very effective,” Finneburgh said.
In her Thursday night statement, Wahab declared that her “district cannot be bought,” describing the race as “one of the ugliest, most expensive elections we’ve ever seen.”
Prior to this influx of cash and related ads, neither AIPAC nor Israel had played a significant role in this short-lived race — which began in April following Swalwell’s resignation over allegations of sexual assault.
When the district held a special primary to seek Swalwell’s replacement on June 16, Wahab and Hernandez finished as the top-two candidates and moved on to this week’s special general runoff election.
California primaries are “nonpartisan” or “top-two” races, in which the two highest ranking candidates move on to the general election, irrespective of their parties. The top-two in this case were both Democrats, like Swalwell, in a district that the Cook Political Report deems solidly blue.
Even though Wahab will now finish the remainder of Swalwell’s term, she will have to compete with Hernandez again in the November general election for a full term that begins on January 3, 2027.
In a June 16 special primary that preceded this week’s runoff, there was still a massive gap between the two candidates, with Wahab accruing 42.8% of the votes, compared to Hernandez’s 16.8%. A separate primary for the November race, which occurred two weeks earlier, placed Wahab at 38.3% and Hernandez at 17.2%.
Wahab, who will be the first Afghan American in Congress, has focused on affordability, civil rights, education and climate change. Her campaign calls for an end to wars and “prolonged occupations” but only specifically calls out U.S. military activity in “Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia, and elsewhere.”
Though Wahab has been critical of Israel and its operations in Gaza, she has not been as vocal about the issue as many other progressive colleagues nationwide. She responded “yes” when asked if Israel was committing genocide in a primary debate, but she didn’t include Israel or Gaza in her campaign priorities.
During a recent appearance on far-right influencer Hasan Piker’s livestream, Wahab acknowledged that “it’s not a zero-sum game in the Middle East,” adding that “we can care for all people.” She also referenced a resolution she introduced last year in the California legislature, pushing for a ceasefire in Gaza but also condemning Hamas and demanding the release of the hostages.
“We talk about both Palestinians and the Israeli victims there,” Wahab told Piker. “We talk about holding the perpetrators accountable from both sides.”
Asked if she was in favor of “ending all U.S. aid to Israel,” she responded “yes,” while stressing that “humanitarian aid is important to me, too.”
Wahab has earned the backing of multiple labor unions, the California Democratic Party and Our Revolution, the group formed by Sen. Bernie Sanders to advance the progressive movement. The liberal pro-Israel group J Street also recently invested $108,000 in her campaign, according to the FEC. American Priorities, a pro-Palestinian PAC, also spent at least $200,000 on supporting her.
Hernandez has received endorsements from several police and fire unions, as well as Democratic Jewish Reps. Lois Frankel of Florida and Brad Schneider of Illinois.
Come November, Hernandez will gain one additional asset. Due to statewide redistricting, the 14th District will gain about 26,000 new voters from Dublin, where Hernandez previously served as mayor, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
But Finneburgh said he believes that Hernandez has only a minimal chance of winning that race, especially because Wahab will be heading into that election as an incumbent.
He also suggested that if “she plays her card right,” Wahab could even take some endorsements away from Hernandez.
“There’s going to be people who are going to probably move over from the Hernandez camp and back her,” Finneburgh added. “It’s going to be hard to unseat her.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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