If you are a rabbi of a synagogue in New York City, if you are a leader of a Jewish organization in the five boroughs, if you are a Jewish New Yorker and proud to call yourself a Zionist, you should be, (and I will use a euphemistic phrase), quaking in your boots, after what took place this past week in your city.
If you thought mayor-elect, Zohran Mamdani, would temper his anti-Israelism now that he won the election, if you thought Jewish life in New York wouldn’t change much under his rule, you thought wrong.
On Thursday of this past week, Zohran Mamdani dropped the mic and dropped a bomb on Jewish New Yorkers, and revealed what they will be up against during his mayoralty.
It is damn scary.
On the doorstep of the historic Park East Synagogue on Manhattan’s upper east side, a mob of so-called pro-Palestinian supporters spewed threatening anti-Israel and anti-Semitic venom at attendees of a meeting of a group that promotes and facilitates immigration to Israel. And Zohran Mamdani, the mayor-elect of the City of New York, through his spokesman said, while he “discouraged the language” used at the protest, language like “globalize the intifada,” “we don’t want no Zionists here,” and “f-ing Jewish pricks,” vile Jew and Israel-hating language, the synagogue shouldn’t have been “used to promote activities in violation of international law.”
By “violation of international law” he means Jews wanting to return to their ancestral homeland.
Mamdani in effect said, I’ll let you Jews worship in your synagogues and temples, but you have to renounce your support of Israel.
Yes, it is shocking and it is scary, but we shouldn’t be at all surprised.
All through the campaign, Mamdani refused to disown the call to globalize the Intifada. He supports the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. He threatens to arrest the democratically elected prime minister of the State of Israel if he sets foot on a New York sidewalk. He refuses to say Hamas should be disarmed. He says Israel perpetrated a genocide in Gaza. He says he doesn’t accept Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people.
As Zohran Mamdani damns all New Yorkers that support Israel, he’s giving the green light for the Jew haters to hate even more.
He openly gives succor and sanction to the people Jewish New Yorkers have already been protecting themselves against at their synagogues, their schools and wherever they gather.
The outgoing mayor, Eric Adams said it succinctly. On a trip to Israel this past week he answered a question about the safety of Jewish New Yorkers on the eve of Mamdani’s mayoralty.
Adams said, “If I were a Jewish New Yorker, I’d be concerned about my children. There is something to be worried about.” Adams also said, while urging Jewish schools and synagogues to step up their security, “If you pretend everything is fine, you’re setting yourself up for failure.”
Synagogues in NYC already have guards, some of them armed, posted outside, frisking congregants as they enter to worship, checking their bags, asking them security questions.
Some synagogues have trained their own members in security, with some packing heat in the event of an attack. Expensive video surveillance systems have been installed.
Congregants are warned not to gather outside on the sidewalk after services, to leave the synagogue and to keep on walking.
Jewish schools hold classes behind bullet proof glass. Teachers are taught how to use their classroom furniture to barricade their doors if a gunman gets past the guards.
JCC’s and YMHA’s have off-duty and retired cops screening anyone who enters through metal detectors and body searches.
Jewish summer camps have heavily armed guards at their entrances.
Name me one other religious or ethnic group in New York that has had to do all this just to carry on with their normal, peaceful, day-to-day lives.
And that was pre-Mamdani.
Israel’s Minster of Diaspora Affairs Amichai Chikli, said this past week, even before the Park East hate-fest, that New York “has become more dangerous [for Jews] after Mamdani was elected.”
If you thought that was just a bunch of bluster from a guy whose job it is to spur more immigration to Israel, think again. This past week, Zohran Mamdani, the mayor-elect of the City of New York, showed us what Jewish life in NYC will be in the next four years.
Heed the words of activist Rabbi Avi Weiss who said:
“Mamdani is a dangerous antisemite, creating an atmosphere in which Jews are fair game…I urge you – Jews and all who care about the Jewish community – step up and raise a strong peaceful voice of moral conscience, speaking truth to power.”
This is no time for timidity or intimidation. If this past Thursday did nothing, it crystallized the radical turn Jewish life in New York has taken after Mamdani’s election as mayor.
Jewish New Yorkers now must hold more and more pro-Israel events at their synagogues and temples. They must attend more and more public pro-Israel rallies. The clear and unequivocal support for Israel must be used as a litmus test for every politician seeking office.
For the next four years at least, they must relentlessly shove Mamdani’s antisemitism right up his Jew-hating ass.