I’m a ‘New York Jew for Mamdani,’ but that makes a lousy t-shirt

Last night, I went out with about two dozen other Jews to brave the rain in Park Slope to canvass for a man you might have heard of by the name of Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee for NYC mayor. (As it happens, the rain stopped about 20 minutes after we began and turned into a rather pleasant fall evening, which doesn’t exactly help us beat the “controlling the weather” allegations.) This particular canvass was organized by a non-profit called Jews for Racial and Economic Justice (JFREJ), and was specifically designed for Jewish canvassers to talk to Jewish voters in the neighborhood — some of whom were very excited to vote for Mamdani, others of whom were uncertain, and others of whom were adamantly opposed to Mamdani. In some sense, this is no different from what happens on a more general canvassing round with the Mamdani campaign, or, indeed, with any campaign. You’ll find some supporters, some opponents, some undecided voters, and a lot of people who won’t answer the door. But Mamdani’s campaign is no ordinary campaign, and the highly politicized manner in which “Jewish issues” have been made to be one of the central issues of this mayoral election is rather unusual.

The firestorm of thinkpieces, letters, and angry tweets from both sides of the aisle is seemingly bottomless, and it would be hard to add something substantially different to the conversation four days before this election finally comes to an end. I don’t even want to dwell on the conversations I had last night — the elderly gentleman who told us he was too busy until he realized we were campaigning for Zohran and told us how excited he was to vote for him; the millennial who stopped us on the street to ask how she could get involved in volunteering for the campaign; the woman who told us she regretted letting us inside before literally slamming the door in our faces; the man who called us kapos and asked us why we weren’t ashamed of ourselves.

Instead, I want to talk about what I wore.

Each of the canvassers were given “New York Jews for Zohran” t-shirts to wear (and keep) as we went from door to door. This was not the first piece of Zohran merchandise that I acquired — I also have “Zohran for NYC” and “Hot Girls for Zohran” buttons, both of which I wear frequently on my tote bags — but I knew instantly after returning home that I would never wear this t-shirt again. I felt ill at ease the whole time. Not so much so that I wanted to refuse to wear it outright, but still, an aching discomfort.

Since then, I’ve been racking my brain to understand why. Would I feel this way about a “Jews for Obama” t-shirt, a display of identitarian support for a campaign that was not All About Jews? It’s hard to say. I was 6 when Obama won his first term in office, 10 when he won his second. Would I feel this way about a “Lesbians for Zohran” t-shirt? I think I would wear a “Lesbians for Zohran” t-shirt and not feel awkward about it.

It’s not that I’m ashamed of being a Jew or comparatively less proud so to speak of being a Jew than a lesbian. Not at all. And I am very proud to support Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral campaign for a wide range of reasons, some of which relate to antisemitism and Israel, and many of which do not. I think my discomfort stems from the way in which Jewish-ness in particular has been turned into a political weapon within the context of this campaign — in a way that queerness, for example, has not.

A “Jews for Zohran” t-shirt reads, at least to me, less as a message of support than of performative subversiveness. Because Mamdani has been — falsely, in my view — smeared as an antisemite, labeling oneself as a “Jew for Zohran” is a way of refuting that charge by saying, “he can’t be an antisemite because I’m a Jew and I support him!” This is not a sufficient explanation for why someone is not an antisemite. It’s just tokenism. Furthermore, the “Jews for Zohran” has the tacit implication that we think not as individuals but as a collective, the same problem displayed in the odious anti-Mamdani letter endorsed by the self-professed “Jewish majority,” though I would like to think we on the left do have a bit more humility in this regard.

While “New York Jews” cannot act as a collective, and thus should not be held to account as a collective for the fact that the discourse around Mamdani’s campaign has unearthed some of the most vile Islamophobia and hate disguised as concern for Jews, there are certainly individual New York Jews who can and should be held to account in an individual capacity, e.g. Bill Ackman, Tali Goldsheft, Lizzy Savetsky, Sid Rosenberg, Zach Sage Fox, Rabbis Elliot Cosgrove and Ammiel Hirsch. It also feels dishonest, albeit not as dangerously so, to say that “New York Jews” are for Zohran Mamdani.

Throughout this campaign, what I have been most moved by (besides Mamdani himself of course) is, without a doubt, the menschkeit of Brad Lander. His rhetoric and strategy has been an invaluable asset to the Mamdani campaign, but just as importantly he has not simply been a symbolic Jew for Zohran. He has explained why he believes Zohran is the right person to lead our city in this moment, as well as why he believes Zohran’s mayorship will benefit Jewish New Yorkers and all New Yorkers.

But nuance does not fit neatly on a t-shirt. Slogans do. And the truth is that I would be very comfortable wearing a more generic “Zohran for NYC” t-shirt with my Magen David necklace resting on top of it. It’s not quite accurate to say that I support Zohran Mamdani and I also just so happen to be Jewish. I do think that these things are very much interconnected for me.

It’s just that I don’t wish to flatten either my own support for Zohran or the complicated, messy sentiments of the Jewish community in the facile way that I think my “New York Jews for Zohran” t-shirt does. The fight to elect Zohran Mamdani is not yet over. If and when, come January 1, he is sitting in Gracie Mansion, our work must continue to both support his agenda and push back against the baseless, calumnious accusations that will no doubt continue to be leveled against Zohran.

If I may paraphrase Hannah Arendt, if a campaign of defamation is being waged as “for the Jews,” then one must defend the victim of this campaign not as a New Yorker, not as a world-citizen, not as an upholder of the rights of man, but as a Jew. But such a defense requires us to speak from the heart, not from the shirt. If I’m going to be a particularist in my choice of merchandise, I think I’ll stick with my “Hot Girls for Zohran” button next time.