New Yorkers – Vote Against Mamdani
1) The Foes of Israel
New York City Mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani’s radical neo-Marxist ideology is a threat to the well being of the Jewish community, to the future of New York City, and to America at large, just as are Tucker Carlson’s neo-Fascist/White Nationalist ideas from the far right. In keeping with the horseshoe theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_theory of politics, which has been a major focus of mine since October 7th, both of these odious men share identically conspiratorial views about Israel, which they each attempt to hide behind a suit and an affected smile. And each man stands in stark opposition to the true liberalism of America, in the broad definition of that word.
Mamdani’s general politics are not, however, my main focus here, as I’m a rabbi and not a political scientist. When I use the term Marxist in this piece I’m actually not even referring to his economic policies per se, but to the neo-Marxist proclivity to divide the world into categories of Oppressor and Oppressed, based on group identity, with the Jewish State cast as the paradigmatic Western Oppressor.
This ideology, so popular now in academia, is systemically anti-Semitic. When we hear the term antisemitism, we tend to assume a burden of proof to demonstrate that the person being accused of it actually holds animus towards Jews as such. But antisemitism doesn’t need to entail internal feelings of animus. It’s about what you support on a systematic level. A white person in the south who voted for segregation was being racist in practice even if he held no ill will towards black people as such. In the same vein, I couldn’t care less if Mamdani harbors emotional hatred towards Jews or not. Half the world’s Jews live in Israel and the vast majority of the other half have close personal and emotional ties to it. Mamdani advocates for things overtly hostile and detrimental to them all. I call that antisemitism.
A traditional Hebrew term for an anti-Semite is Sonei Yisrael. Because the root of that first word, sinah, means hatred, it might be tempting to (mistakenly) translate the term as a “Hater of Israel”. But in Biblical contexts, Son’im doesn’t usually mean emotional haters, but pragmatic enemies. A Sonei Yisrael is an ENEMY of the Jews. Bamidbar 10:35 –
וַיְהִ֛י בִּנְסֹ֥עַ הָֽאָרֹ֖ן וַיֹּ֣אמֶר משֶׁ֑ה קוּמָ֣ה | יְהֹוָ֗ה וְיָפֻ֨צוּ֙ אֹֽיְבֶ֔יךָ וְיָנֻ֥סוּ מְשַׂנְאֶ֖יךָ מִפָּנֶֽיךָ
“And so it was, whenever the ark would set out, that Moses would say, ‘Arise, O Lord, and may Your enemies be scattered, and may Your foes flee from before You'”
Robert Alter translates the penultimate word, “mesanecha”, as “foes”. Rashi on that word quotes the Midrash in commenting: “those who pursue you”; i.e., those who act against our interests and wellbeing as a People. Their inner motivations are irrelevant.
2) “Globalize the Intifada” Decoded
Mamdani has famously refused to condemn the phrase “Globalize the Intifada”. The Second Intifada entailed murdering Israeli civilians on buses and in restaurants. To Globalize the Intifada means two things: firstly, to globalize it geographically and to target Jews everywhere, not just in Israel. This is the meaning that has Jews most frightened. But my sense is that that’s not even its main meaning. It’s mainly intended to mean: to globalize the target group itself from Israelis to all “Western oppressors”. This second meaning is actually even more anti-Semitic than the first, because it casts Israelis and all mainstream, Zionist Jews as the paradigmatic representative of all purported Western evil in the world.
The Far Left sees in the Intifada a model for a revolutionary uprising against Western hegemony in general, just like the terror committed by the IRA against civilians in the UK, or the insurgencies against American troops in the Middle East. The horrific attack of 9/11 was a good example of globalizing the Intifada, which is why the far left wing Ta Nehisi Coates has said that he felt no sympathy for the police and firefighters killed in the towers https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/07/the-toxic-world-view-of-ta-nehisi-coates-120512/.
He apparently views firefighters in the same category as police officers, part of the oppressor class who deserve to die through revolutionary violence. Not surprisingly, Coates also views Zionism and Israel through the same ignorant and anachronistic lens of white power as he views it manifesting in America https://www.ajc.org/news/who-is-ta-nehisi-coates-5-things-to-know-about-his-controversial-new-book-on-israel.
The anti-Semite always sees the Jew as the embodiment of evil. To the far right the Jew is the ultimate liberal globalist. To the far left the Jewish State is the ultimate Western Nationalist oppressor of third world people of color. That’s the ideology of Mamdani and his postmodern neo-Marxist fellow travelers in academia, as imbued in him from birth by his radical father https://nypost.com/2025/10/24/us-news/zohran-mamdanis-dad-claims-us-influenced-nazis-to-commit-some-of-their-worst-atrocities/, a professor of anthropology at Columbia University.
In 2021, Mamdani senior described rocket attacks by Hamas against Israeli civilians in positive terms as a form of resistance, and as constituting the “Third Intifada against settler colonialism” https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/antisemitism/article-860928. The term “Settler Colonialist” as applied to all Israeli men, women and children, has the same function that the term “Christ Killer” had in the Middle Ages. It casts the Israeli Jew as the consummate Other, who has no right to life or self defense. Mamdani junior espouses the same things, but in dog whistle form to be more palatable.
3) Jews and Mamdani
Some supporters of Mamdani have argued that because a mayor doesn’t control foreign policy, his views on Israel should not be relevant. Mamdani’s opponents have responded, correctly, that there are, in fact, many ways that being anti-Israel can affect Jews even on the city level, and they go on to list all those ways. I don’t think we should even dignify that discussion by getting involved in it. If a mayoral candidate were to show hostility to any other collective group, there would not be a burden of proof to show how such hostility would actually manifest in policy. Show me how this racist’s inner feelings would actually manifest in policy! Otherwise, you have no reason to oppose him! The utter chutzpah of such a claim is obvious. Mamdani’s hostility to Zionists (mainstream Jews) alone is sufficient to oppose him at all costs.
Some have cited unfortunate polls which show that close to forty percent of New York City’s Jews plan to vote for Mamdani as evidence that he can’t be considered anti-Jewish. But those numbers are not actually relevant. It’s an unfortunate fact of history that the majority of Jews in the South in the 19th century supported the Confederacy. Those Jews were simply flawed human beings like everyone else; they were a product of their time and place. As are the Jews who misguidedly support Mamdani.
I was a shul rabbi in New York City for eleven years before moving to Kansas City. In my former shul, the past New York City mayor Bill de Blasio once visited on Shabbat to speak about how being progressive and being Zionist are not contradictory, but should go hand in hand. De Blasio was considered on the hard left of New York City politics just ten years ago. It breaks my heart to see how drastically New York City politics have changed to be so much more radical in such a short amount of time. That should concern us all as Jews and as Americans.
Since the IRS has reportedly lifted the restriction on clergy endorsing candidates, I can state here that, in my humble and admittedly relatively insignificant opinion, Jews in New York City are required by halacha to vote for Andrew Cuomo. (The other candidate, Curtis Sliwa, has no chance to win, and a vote for him is essentially a vote for Mamdani). I don’t have any sophisticated halachic analysis for you on that front. Sometimes halacha is just the Jewish legal manifestation of common sense. In this case, the common-sense value that Jews are required to protect their lives and their interests. If you don’t agree with this whole presumption to begin with, there’s probably no point in litigating it. I am preaching here to the choir in the hopes of just adding myself as one more rabbinic voice attempting to galvanize some energy and momentum in our Jewish community towards opposing this dangerous man.
Zohran Mamdani’s candidacy represents a danger to the Jewish community, regardless of how noble his intentions, how sincere his smile, or how clean his suit. New Yorkers: please go out and vote against him! And if he does get elected, which sadly looks likely, let’s all continue to oppose him through all political means.
