Click here to read the article in the New York Times

By Liam Stack 

Ben Sadoff knocked on roughly 1,000 doors as a canvasser for Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral primary campaign in New York City, and the voters he met brought up the same issues again and again: the cost of rent, the cost of child care and the sense that things in the city were going in the wrong direction.

One thing they did not frequently mention was Israel, he said. And when voters — including Jewish ones — did bring it up, their comments often focused on their anguish over Israel’s war in Gaza, where starvation is spreading and about 60,000 people have been killed, according to Gazan officials.

“I think this campaign has really shown us something we have known for a while,” said Mr. Sadoff, who is Jewish and works as a bike mechanic in Manhattan. “There are a million Jewish New Yorkers who have wide-ranging opinions on all kinds of issues.”

Mr. Mamdani’s commanding victory in the Democratic primary for mayor alarmed many Jews who are concerned by his outspoken criticism of Israel. But he won the votes of many other Jewish New Yorkers, some of whom said in interviews that they were unbothered by that criticism and inspired by his intense focus on affordability. Often these voters said that Mr. Mamdani’s views on Israel, and his vocal opposition to its treatment of Palestinians, echoed their own.

Mr. Mamdani has criticized Israel in ways that were once unthinkable for an elected official in New York, home to America’s largest Jewish population. He has decried Israel as an apartheid state. He has said it should ensure equal rights for followers of all religions instead of favoring Jews in its political and legal system. He has supported the movement that seeks to economically isolate it, known as Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions.

And he has endorsed the view of Israel’s leading human rights organizations and of genocide scholars — including some in Israel — that it is committing genocide in Gaza, an allegation that the Israeli government has denied.

Mr. Mamdani’s positions on Israel have alienated him from Zionist Jewish groups, many of which have accused him of being antisemitic, a charge that he denies. His views also became a line of attack for some of his primary rivals, including former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, who is running in the general election as an independent.

Steve Israel, a former Democratic member of Congress who represented parts of Long Island and Queens, said that Mr. Mamdani’s primary victory was “‘Twilight Zone’ stuff” for some Jewish New Yorkers.

“Mamdani’s positions on Israel up to now are way out of the mainstream of the Jewish community, and the irony here is that his progressive policies on economic issues would have at least a plurality of support by Jewish voters,” he said. “But the toxicity of his positions on Israel have just become impossible for those same voters to forgive.”

Yet none of Mr. Mamdani’s stances kept him from winning a decisive primary victory over Mr. Cuomo, his closest competitor.

It is difficult to determine how many Jewish voters supported Mr. Mamdani because even in New York, the Jewish population is too small to be measured with precision by most polls. Neighborhoods with large numbers of Orthodox Jewish residents voted overwhelmingly for Mr. Cuomo. He also won other heavily Jewish areas like Riverdale in the Bronx, though outside of Orthodox neighborhoods, the Jewish population is generally not concentrated enough to allow analysis using precinct-level vote data.

But Mr. Mamdani enjoyed a broad victory that suggests at least some backing from many different constituencies, and pre-election polls, which generally undercounted support for him, showed him earning double-digit support among Jewish voters.

Data from the ranked-choice voting process also shows that Mr. Mamdani was selected as an alternate choice by two-thirds of voters whose top choice was Brad Lander, the city comptroller and the highest-ranking Jewish official in city government, who made his identity a key part of his campaign and who cross-endorsed Mr. Mamdani during the primary.

Jeffrey Lerner, Mr. Mamdani’s communications director and one of his many Jewish advisers, said in a statement that it was “no surprise that thousands of Jewish New Yorkers proudly cast their ballots for Zohran in the June primary, despite relentless fearmongering from Republicans and the billionaire class.”

Mr. Mamdani’s spotlight on affordability was on display on a recent Saturday, when two dozen Jewish families gathered to learn about mass transit at a “Tot Shabbat” event in Prospect Park. The event was organized by Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, an activist group that supports the Mamdani campaign.

“I am proud to vote for him as a Jew,” said Emily Hoffman, 37, as children read books, sang songs and played near a big cardboard bus that evoked Mr. Mamdani’s campaign promise to make city buses fast and free.

“It’s unfair that it feels like Zohran is starting with a kind of assumption of antisemitism against him, both because of his racial and ethnic identity and because of his politics on Palestine,” she said. Mr. Mamdani would be the city’s first Muslim mayor.

Ms. Hoffman said she was deeply disturbed by the images she had seen of the humanitarian conditions in Gaza, which reminded her of pictures she saw as a child when she first learned about the Holocaust.

And she called Mr. Mamdani’s belief that Israel should provide equal rights to citizens of all religions “the common-sense position,” adding, “if you’re against that, you are not on the side of justice.”

In recent comments at the Hampton Synagogue in Westhampton Beach, N.Y., Mr. Cuomo attributed Mr. Mamdani’s victory to both a surge of support from younger voters and a shift in the way younger people think about Israel and antisemitism.

Mr. Cuomo, who has made unflinching support of Israel part of his political brand, joined Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s legal team after the International Criminal Court accused him of war crimes and issued an arrest warrant for him last year.

In his remarks, Mr. Cuomo asserted that more than half of Jewish primary voters had cast their ballots for Mr. Mamdani, though he did not back up that claim. He appealed to the synagogue’s well-heeled and mostly older congregants for their help.

“With those young people, the under-30 people, they are pro-Palestinian and they don’t consider it being anti-Israel,” Mr. Cuomo said, according to a recording posted online by The Forward, a Jewish news organization.

“Being anti-Israel to them means anti-Bibi’s policies, anti-Israel government policies,” he added, referring to Mr. Netanyahu by a common nickname. “And they are, and they were, highly motivated, and they came out to vote.”

Though Mr. Mamdani did drive up turnout among younger voters, his supporters come from a range of age groups, many of whom share his belief that you can criticize Israel while still supporting Jewish New Yorkers.

Lisa Cowan, 57, a philanthropy executive in Prospect Heights who is Jewish, ranked Mr. Mamdani second on her ballot, after Mr. Lander.

She praised Mr. Mamdani’s focus on affordability and the “positive spirit” he had brought to the campaign. His comments on Israel did not bother her, she said, because he struck her as “a nuanced thinker” and “someone who loved New York and loved New Yorkers.”

Mr. Mamdani has said that fighting antisemitism would be a priority for him as mayor, and has promised to increase funding to fight hate crimes in New York by 800 percent.

He has also shared his own experiences with anti-Muslim prejudice, including the deluge of threats he has received in recent months that led him to hire extra security.

Ms. Cowan said she thought Mr. Mamdani’s experience with Islamophobia helped him understand what it felt like for Jewish New Yorkers to face religious bigotry. For her, that was more important to keep in mind than what she saw as disputes over word choice and personal style.

“The politics of Israel and Gaza and Palestine are so complicated, and it’s so hard to know what the right thing is, and it’s so hard to say the right things,” she said. “Even Jews who are so mad at him will also be like, ‘Well, I can’t stand the Israeli government. Everything that is happening in Gaza is terrible.’”

Besides, “zero percent of his job is going to be about Israel,” she added. “Frankly, I don’t agree with anyone about Israel, so that can’t be the criteria for who we elect as mayor, because I don’t even agree with myself most days.”

The mayoral race in New York comes at a troubling time for American Jews, and the fear among some members of the community is deeply felt.

Israel’s war in Gaza, which has gone on for nearly two years, has left the enclave in ruins. As opposition has mounted, some extremists have cited the war while committing antisemitic violence, most recently in Washington, D.C., and Boulder, Colo. That context has made some Jewish voters deeply uneasy about the prospect of a mayor who is highly critical of Israel.

Rabbi Rachel Timoner of Congregation Beth Elohim, a Reform synagogue in Park Slope, a neighborhood Mr. Mamdani won in June, said she had seen both enthusiasm for and wariness of him in her community.

“I see a lot of Jews who are really excited by him,” she said, “and I see a lot of Jews who are really alarmed by the precarity and vulnerability of Jewish life in the United States right now.”

Other Jewish leaders have reacted with a far greater sense of alarm. After Mr. Mamdani’s victory, Rabbi Marc Schneier, the president and founder of the Hampton Synagogue, where Mr. Cuomo gave his remarks, compared him to an early 20th-century politician in Austria whose politics some saw as a model for the Nazi Party.

“Mamdani’s election is the greatest existential threat to a metropolitan Jewish population since the election of the notorious antisemite Karl Lueger in Vienna,” he said in an email. “Jewish leaders must come together as a united force to prevent a mass Jewish exodus from New York City.”

Responding to the opposition he has faced, Mr. Mamdani has made a concerted effort to reach out to Jewish community leaders across the city since his victory, including well-known rabbis and elected officials like Representative Jerrold Nadler, a Manhattan Democrat, who endorsed him immediately after his primary win.

He has also moderated his position on the slogan “Globalize the Intifada,” which he declined to condemn in June, though he said he had not personally used it. Pro-Palestinian activists view the phrase as a cry for freedom, but many Jews see it as an endorsement of antisemitic violence. Last month, Mr. Mamdani said he would “discourage” people from using it.

Mr. Mamdani “has been listening and understanding the concerns of Jews, and has been moving his perspective, which I think is a good sign,” Rabbi Timoner said.

Some Jewish leaders have responded more coolly to his efforts, and it is unclear how they will influence Jewish voters who opposed him in the primary.

But Mr. Mamdani’s Jewish supporters said they resented the implication that they should back a candidate for local office based on how strongly that candidate supported the Israeli government.

They said they had seen signs of that assumption everywhere, from news articles that asked how Mr. Mamdani could have won in a city with a large Jewish population, to efforts by Mr. Cuomo to appeal to Jewish voters by highlighting Mr. Mamdani’s criticisms of Israel.

“It begs the question of what their real priorities are,” said Ruby Edlin, 28, who canvassed for Mr. Mamdani in Park Slope during the primary. “Is this actually about protecting Jews, or is it about trying to adhere to some obsolete litmus test about support for Israel that actually doesn’t apply to New York anymore?”

Some Jewish Mamdani supporters said they viewed the assumption as rooted in antisemitic tropes of dual loyalty.

“This community gets flattened, as if it is a monolith that supports a foreign government, which is simply not the case,” said Beth Miller, the political director of Jewish Voice for Peace Action, which endorsed Mr. Mamdani early in the primary. “Zohran is one of the few candidates who sees the full diversity and complexity of the Jewish community.”

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