The Zohran Question

On what's a Jew to do.

Yesterday, on a clear and crisp Nora Ephron New York City afternoon, I voted for the Democratic candidate for mayor. My six-year-old son was with me in the voting booth, and we filled in the bubble next to “Zohran Kwame Mamdani” together, my son’s hand on mine, as my mother used to do with me as we pulled levers for Democratic candidates in the high school gyms where I grew up a few miles away.

I was reminded of a similar day in 2008, the first time I voted, when I stood with my friend Ariel giddy in a post office in Providence with our absentee ballots, and I filled in the bubble next to “Barack Hussein Obama.”

Back in 2008, images were circulating of Obama in a turban and traditional dress greeting Sheikh Mahmed Hassan during his visit to Wajir in northeastern Kenya. Headlines about the Muslim Brotherhood dominated news cycles. The place of his birth, Hawaii, was disputed. At that time, his opposition (from within his own party and from the GOP) was fueling the claim that he was secretly a Muslim extremist, despite what he had said and dispelled and tried to prove. He was labeled a young, novice community organizer and one-term Senator. A handsome smiling face, a charismatic charlatan who gave a good speech and hid his radical socialist Muslim agenda in plain sight.

It all rings very familiar today.

I am a Jewish New Yorker. My children went to Jewish preschool. I am terrified by the rising tide of antisemitism and antisemitic hate crimes in my city. I am also a former fact-checker, and a lifelong (generations-long) Democrat. For many Jews in New York City, this mayoral election is fraught. Filling in a bubble next to a name feels like an act of compromise. For me, it was the ultimate act of hope and of alignment with the values I was raised to hold.

I think it’s also important to note: To vote for a candidate is not to wholesale embrace the person for everything they’ve said or done, but to reach out and shake the hand extended to you. “I want to make New York affordable and safe for all New Yorkers and reject Trump’s agenda,” says one. “I resigned in disgrace after sexually harassing 13 women, tanked the state during COVID, and have the full backing of MAGA,” says the other. And, lest anyone forget, “I was shot in the back of a cab by the Gambino crime family,” says the one in the hat.

And yet, the only thing many Jewish New Yorkers hear is that the Muslim candidate wants to globalize the intifada.

I realize I am never going to sway or convince or even get through to my fellow Jewish New Yorkers who see Zohran Mamdani as a terrorist sympathizer who is defined by the beliefs of his most radical supporters and tangential associates. I am never going to win over Jewish New Yorkers who post and share paparazzi pictures of Mamdani eating sushi with his wife, or photoshopped images of him with darkened skin and a lengthened beard, or a clipped soundbite from a press conference, or who will not speak about his candidacy without bringing up that intifada slogan, which he, in fact, did come out and disavow. I am also not going to get through to Jewish voters who equate criticism of Israel and the Israeli military with criticism of Jews in our city and in the diaspora.

I can only speak to my thinking on this choice, and my experience with Mamdani in my own community, and with my family, and through my own political consciousness. I can only think about the truth about each man on the ballot, not the paranoia and fear campaigns surrounding them. And ultimately, I can see a vote for what it is — an act of hope that this person will meaningfully change a corrupt and broken system and make the city better for my children. I think that person is Zohran Mamdani. And here is why.

To understand how someone could take such an impassioned stance against everything labeled antisemitic without being antisemitic himself, it’s essential to see how his political consciousness about Israel is entirely forged by his anti-apartheid upbringing. And how it is not about hating Jews. It’s about hating injustice.

Zohran Mamdani is the son of a Muslim father, an Africana studies professor and civil rights champion who was arrested in Selma as a SNCC member, and a Hindu mother, the filmmaker Mira Nair, whose work deftly wove plots about the caste system into international Bollywood hits like Monsoon Wedding. He attended St. George’s elementary school in South Africa in the post-apartheid early 90s, just as the country was unshackling from decades of horrific racist military rule. In college at Bowdoin, after graduating from Bronx Science by way of Bank Street like every good Columbia faculty kid, he helped found his college’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine. The group was known for staging mock checkpoints in colleges, to demonstrate the reality of Palestinian life under Israeli military control.

As I have written in this newsletter, I recoiled in horror at anyone who criticized Israel in the immediate aftermath of the horrific terrorist attacks on October 7, 2023. The murder and kidnapping and brutalizing of Jews was a visceral reminder to all Jews that there are those who seek to slaughter us, to wipe us off the map, and to deny us safety in a homeland. Mamdani’s words on the week of the seventh did not center Jewish pain as I did. He spoke, informed by the past and prescient about the future, about his fear over what would happen to the people of Gaza.

And here we are.

On November 3, 2025, two years 67,000 dead Palestinian men, women and children later, hostages returned and Gaza leveled to rubble, a mayoral candidate who refuses to pander to what APAIC talking points is a mayoral candidate who stands on the same moral ground as he always has. Out of every 10 people, one has been killed or injured in an Israeli strike. Nine are displaced. At least three have not eaten for days. Out of every 100 children, four have lost either one or both parents. The UN has declared the actions of the Israeli military genocidal. The term is horrifying for Jews, because, of course, 6 million of us were victims of genocide the year “It’s A Wonderful Life” came out in theaters. To have the term leveled at an army of Jews pushes any conscience to the mind’s limit. And yet, there is the report. And there are the bodies. And there is the word.

There are Jewish New Yorkers who dispute every reported fact in the above paragraph, because they believe them to be terrorist propaganda. There are rabbis of very powerful synagogues who have stood on the bimah in recent weeks and declared that by repeating what the United Nations has declared, Mamdani is guilty of spreading “genocide libel.” There are rabbis who have stood in front of the Torah in their places of worship and said Zohran Mamdani is a terrorist sympathizer. That his criticism of Israel is antisemitism, and he will make Jewish New Yorkers less safe. Criticism of Israel, they have said, is always antisemitism.

If that were true, my Israeli family and friends who protest arm in arm with Standing Together English are antisemites. My Israeli family who post that Netanyahu is a war criminal are antisemites. That the Jews who vote for a candidate who is critical of Israel are antisemites. That Zohran Mamdani is a “radical jihad” enabler, and dangerous to Jews everywhere.

I do not think Zohran Mamdani is an antisemite. And I think it’s vital for every New Yorker to make the distinction between a man who criticizes Israel and a man who wants to make life affordable in the most Jewish city in the US.

There are, of course, antisemites who embrace Zohran Mamdani. There are antisemites who embraced Barack Obama. There are antisemites who currently embrace (and wave the swastika in the Capitol for) Donald Trump. There are antisemites who embrace Cuomo (who, not for nothing, skipped out on meeting with rabbis at a synagogue at the last minute because he didn’t think he needed to pay lip service to a community he’d already got on lock). When we hold candidates responsible for the most radical beliefs of their supporters, we lose our ability to assess the character of the person who matters: The candidate.

So let’s talk about Mamdani the candidate.

Mamdani the candidate has made direct overtures to the Jewish community despite the terrifying picture an extremely well-funded campaign against him is trying to paint. He has heard Jewish concerns about antisemitism — we are the single most-targeted victims of hate crimes in the city — and he offered a plan to combat it. Only one candidate will increase funding for anti-hate crime programs by 800%. Eight hundred percent. It’s Zohran Mamdani.

When asked directly about antisemitism on Morning Joe, he didn’t mince words. “There’s no place for anti-Semitism in this city,” he said. “My job is to protect and cherish Jewish New Yorkers — and make sure this city belongs to all of us.”

This is as explicit as anyone could be without offering a marriage proposal.

In an interview with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, he elaborated: “I’ve appreciated meeting with Jewish New Yorkers all around this city, talking about what we can do to build bridges, and I look forward to continuing to engage in productive dialogue. I hope they know that, whether or not they support or agree with me, I will always be a mayor who protects them and their communities. I don’t begrudge folks who are skeptical of me, especially with tens of millions of dollars having been spent against me with the intent to do just that, but I hope to prove that I am someone to build a relationship with, not one to fear.”

This is not dismissing antisemitism as an issue, this is not waving away Jewish concerns, as some people who have not engaged with what he has said might argue. And this is certainly not emboldening voices of radical jihad. He’s advocating for Jewish New Yorkers, and he’s asking to be heard for where he is.

If we are not going to take a man at his word, how can we expect to be taken for ours? It’s because of his actual words and deeds beyond the same sound bites and memes that are re-circulated and manipulated beyond meaning and recited from the pulpits of the synagogues on the Upper East Side, attended and yes, funded, by the very people who are mounting the very expensive campaign against him.

But if one were to travel from Park Avenue to Park Slope, a different Mamdani emerges. One where he actually shows up, and engages, speaks for himself, and listens.

Last week Zohran Mamdani met with the rabbis at an event at Congregation Beth Elohim, which counts Senator Schumer as a member. There were protesters outside trying to stop him from engaging with the concerns of the Jewish community. Trying to stop him from engaging with the concerns of the Jewish community.

They chanted “Yassir Arafat” at him. They held signs that said “Jihad.” These were not the voices of Jews hoping to promote Jewish safety. They were voices of Jews trying to keep a Muslim man out. To define him by a terrorist caricature, instead of allowing for the possibility of common ground, is to create an impossible roadblock to a meaningful relationship. Allow Mamdani into a synagogue and it’s a slap in the face to the Jewish community. Keep him out of a synagogue and it’s a failure to reach out to the Jewish community. It’s a classic Catch Twenty-Jew.

But he walked by the hecklers, screaming and booing at him as he made his way up the stone steps and into the sanctuary. He sat with the rabbi and heard from all manner of congregants. And he listened. The same way he listens to his Jewish communications director Andrew Epstein. And his political director Julian Gerson. And his senior advisor Morris Katz. And his right-hand policy man, the city’s comptroller of thirty years, Brad Lander. When Mamdani is dismissed as the incarnation of the most radical anti-Israel activists, and when the Jews who support and work and volunteer and canvas and vote for him are dismissed as self-hating kapo woke indoctrinites incapable of recognizing a secret prep school Hamas freedom fighter, hope for reasonable discourse is lost.

A week after the Beth Elohim event, on Halloween, Mamdani returned to Park Slope. He handed out candy and kissed babies from one of my favorite places in the city, Community Bookstore. Then he headed to my friend’s brownstone stoop to hand out candy to trick-or-treaters. I stopped by with my husband and kids, and my niece and nephew. Mamdani took the stoop. Camera crews swarmed. Flashbulbs went off. A reporter started asking him about his education policy (he wants to hire 1,000 new teachers for New York City public schools, which, as a children’s book author who has seen class sizes balloon on school tours, seems like a good use of funds). Someone handed him a basket of candy. My kids and niece and nephew, all dressed as various dragons and dinosaurs, stood with their bags out. Mamdani turned away from the news camera. He crouched down.

“Hey,” he said, still in full campaign mode, aware of the cameras, doing a mock scary face to my delighted six-year-old, “You guys probably want some of this.”

“Oh, yes. That one,” my oldest said pointing to a Kit Kat. The Democratic candidate for mayor handed my son a Kit Kat.

“Me, too!” said my youngest.

My niece, a take-charge goddess who knows exactly what she wants, reached in and simply plucked one out.

“Ok. Those are all the Kit Kats. Maybe you could trade with your cousin?” Mamdani said to my youngest, fully invested. The CANDIDATE GRIN had settled into a look of genuine concern as to how to peacefully broker this untenable situation.

“Oh,” my youngest replied, grinning under his mask, “So maybe I could have two of a different one?”

Mamdani was bested. There was no way out. Here was a three-year-old dressed as a purple dragon, explaining to him that the only way through this was more candy.

He smiled directly at him and my son grinned back. “Okay,” said Mamdani. “Another one.” He palmed him two Reese’s, rifled through the basket, and made sure my nephew had the same.

The cousins all walked away completely pleased, rich in processed garbage chocolate, almost convinced that maybe, with a little give and take, and some frank conversations, this was ultimately the mayor for them.

*

At the polling place yesterday, crowded with young people some visibly giddy to be there, my son and I held the paper ballot to the machine, Zohran bubble filled in. I thought about the affordable housing policies, the rebuke to the rising tide of Trumpism, the vision for a fair and progressive city, the renewed vigor to the faltering and visionless Democratic party, and the man I had met on the stoop. Unrehearsed, joyful, kind and caring as a default right on the spot.

The ballot went in, the check mark came up on the screen, and my son was ecstatic. And so was I.