Dear Mayor Mamdani,
Local politics is complicated, believe me I know more than most.
People run for local office without knowing the job. Without ever stepping foot in a public meeting. Without knowing how to read an agenda packet, let alone how to make a motion. Most run without understanding that campaigning and governing are two entirely different things. It baffles me.
The first act of a mayor matters.
It tells everyone who you are going to be once the lawn signs come down. It tells your colleagues how you intend to lead and your constituents what matters to you. One oft he most powerful things I have ever watched a mayor do on day one was apologize.
Imagine that. The first act as mayor for Michael Pagan was to publicly acknowledge that a vote he had cast on a Planning Board appointment had hurt a colleague and the community he served. That is leadership.
Yours? You inherited a city in the middle of an antisemitism crisis you had already helped fuel. You also inherited the largest Jewish population outside Israel. That should have imposed a special seriousness on the way you approached this issue from your first hour in office. So your first act was to walk into City Hall and rip the protections in place for your Jewish constituents out from under their feet! You played politics with your constituents lives and safety by revoking the IHRA definition of antisemitism. You revoked mayor Eric Adams’s order directing the NYPD and Law Department to figure out how to better protect people going to pray.
Why?
Seriously.
Why?
Antisemitic protestors were already screaming “we are Hamas.”
Jews were already being harassed walking into shul, school, showing their Magen David or wearing a kippah.
Your predecessor looked at that and said “this is dangerous, we need to do more.”
No, Eric Adams did not eradicate antisemitism. Antisemitism surged after October 7 while he was mayor too, but he looked at what was happening and said this is dangerous, we need to do more, and he did! He understood his job and he protected his constituents, every one of them!
So let’s stop pretending the IHRA decision was some meaningless administrative cleanup. You knew exactly why it mattered.
Antisemites figured out a long time ago that they can say “Zionist” instead of “Jew” and suddenly everyone gets very confused about whether they are allowed to call it antisemitism. Your first act as mayor made that easier. Your first act as mayor gave progressive Nazis exactly what they wanted, permission to target Jews while escaping the one label society only knows how to condemn when the Nazi happens to be on the right. You told every Jew in New York and worldwide watching what was happening outside our shuls that your ideological purity mattered more than the warning signs sitting right in front of you and now look where we are!
I do not care what you intended when you signed your first executive orders. Intent is for campaign speeches.
Consequences are what you govern.
We’ve see what happens when people put ideological purity over safety of the people they serve, whether they voted for them or not. We have seen where that train ends, Mr. Mamdani!
We watched you defend “globalize the intifada.”
Do you understand what Jews hear when someone says “globalize the intifada”? We remember the intifada.
We remember buses exploding.
Restaurants.
Cafes.
Families.
Blood.
Bodies.
Fear.
It is very easy to find a different definition for a word when your children are not the intended target.
Friday night, Larry Montes walked into Central Synagogue, one of New York City’s most prominent shuls during Shabbat services, disrupted services, struck a 63-year-old Jewish woman in the face, spat on a 65-year-old security guard and head-butted him, and damaged shul property.
Jews worldwide already need police officers standing guard while we pray, and a woman was still attacked inside the shul while praying on your watch!
You say you are horrified.
What are you going to do with that horror?
Your job is not commentator-in-chief.
Mayor Mamdani, I am tired of horror after the fact.
I am tired of your thoughts and prayers!
You were not blindsided by what is happening to Jewish New Yorkers, you were warned! The outgoing mayor literally left you an executive order telling you that Jews and houses of worship needed more protection.
This very week, Jewish leaders sat across from you at City Hall and told you directly that the way you continued to talk about Israel endangered the Jewish community at large. They were not asking you to become a Zionist. They were asking the mayor of New York City to be a leader.
You are the mayor, act it!
You made Israel, Zionism and the Jewish state a recurring target of your politics in a city where Jews were already being attacked at grotesquely disproportionate rates, and every time Jews told you there was a connection we got another lecture about the difference between anti-Zionism and antisemitism.
!די
We know the definition. There is no difference! When you say Zionist, you mean Jew!
The person screaming “Zionist” at a Jew does not stop and ask whether the Jew has ever voted in an Israeli election.
The person showing up at a synagogue is not checking everyone’s position on Netanyahu. The man wearing a kippah on the Upper West Side is not suddenly protected because someone insists their hatred is technically about Israel.
A shul full of Jews does not become a legitimate political target because you call the people inside “Zionists.”
This distinction you keep defending so carefully on paper is collapsing on Jewish bodies. We am tired of watching Jews have to become victims before everyone suddenly discovers it’s too late.
Words matter, Mayor Mamdani!
Why does a Jew have to bleed before the vocabulary gets easy?
You do not get to spend years pouring gasoline into an already combustible argument about Jews, Zionism and Israel and then stand over the flames expressing shock that the room is hot. Jews have been standing in front of you telling you exactly what the atmosphere feels like, but you keep arguing with the weather report while we are standing in the rain.
You said your administration would do everything in its power to keep Jewish New Yorkers safe. It’s too late. The intifada is globalized!
Listen to the Jews, and not only the Jews who make your politics comfortable. Listen to the Jews who are angry with you.
Listen to the Jews who hear “intifada” and remember what intifada actually looked like. Listen to the Jews who hear crowds screaming about Zionists and know exactly who is being addressed.
Listen to Jewish parents wondering how much security their children need to go to school. Listen to the Jew who sees a police officer outside synagogue and feels both grateful and sick that he has to be there.
Listen before someone else is hurt.
We were afraid
We told you.
So no, Mayor Mamdani, “horrified” is not enough.
Your words carry the authority of City Hall.
What you normalize matters.
What you condemn matters.
What you refuse to condemn matters.
What you repeal matters.
What you excuse as political debate matters.
At some point, you have to govern the city that actually exists instead of the semantic distinction you wish existed.
There is a reason hatred aimed at a country thousands of miles away keeps landing on Jews in New York.
I say this to you not as someone unfamiliar with public office.
I know what it means when residents come before government and tell us they are afraid. Our responsibility is not to tell them their fear and experiences are wrong! Our responsibility is to hear the warning while there is still something we can do about it.
Restore the protections your predecessor left for Jewish New Yorkers today, or resign!
Stop treating “globalize the intifada” like a linguistic misunderstanding.
Stop using the mayoralty of New York as a platform for an obsessive prosecution of the Jewish people and their homeland.
Tell your political allies that a protest does not become progressive because Jews are the ones being intimidated.
Tell them that t replacing the word “Jew” with “Zionist” does not give them moral immunity. Most importantly, Listen!
Friday night should have been Shabbat. A woman should have been able to enter Central Synagogue without becoming another hate-crime statistic. A security guard should not have been spat on and head-butted while protecting Jews at prayer. A police officer should not have to stand between a Jewish congregation and violence for Jews to worship in Manhattan. That is where New York is and you are its mayor.
I will put this on the table.
I publicly offer a public open meeting with Mayor Mamdani and his team to offer any help that will keep Jewish New Yorkers safe, and by extension mine. Name the time and place and let’s get to work. The ball is in your court Mr. Mayor. Motion to adjourn.
The writer is a councilwoman in Teaneck, New Jersey.
