‘I hate my choices’: How Zohran Mamdani’s run for mayor has split Jews in New York

The rise of Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee for New York City mayor, has sparked a deeper debate among liberal Jews in New York and elsewhere. (Mike Segar/Reuters via CNN Newsource)

NEW YORK — As a Jew and a New Yorker, Norman Needleman said he finds the city’s mayoral election “painful.”

Waiting in line Friday to vote on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, the 77-year-old Needleman thought Zohran Mamdani, the 34-year-old democratic socialist, would be good for the city’s social needs. But his positions on Israel were just too much for Needleman to accept.

“If I try and bend that far, I’ll break,” he said, quoting the musical “Fiddler on the Roof.”

His comments reflect what has been a fraught debate, among Jews in New York and elsewhere, ahead of the city’s mayoral election Tuesday. Jewish voters have long reliably supported Democrats, and Mamdani won the Democratic primary, but concerns about rising antisemitism and Mamdani’s sharp criticisms of Israel have opened up a generational split and raised deeper questions what it means to be an American Jew in 2025.

This election has shown clearly that “Jews and Jewish voters are not a monolith,” said Phylisa Wisdom, the director of the New York Jewish Agenda, an advocacy group promoting liberal Jewish New Yorkers.

“Folks have been really trying to reckon with how much does it matter that they have a mayor that has their same feelings about Israel,” she said. “There are some who feel like it’s not the most important thing to me when I’m voting for mayor, how they feel about Israel, and there are some who think it’s existential, and they couldn’t vote for someone who disagrees with them on Israel or doesn’t support Israel as a Jewish state.”

The issue stems from Mamdani’s history of pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel activism, from his college days when he started a Students for Justice in Palestine chapter, to his support for the Boycott, Divest, and Sanctions movement against Israel, to his pledge to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

In more recent months, Mamdani has tempered some of his most controversial positions and tried to reassure Jewish voters worried about antisemitic attacks like the ones in Washington, DC, and Boulder, Colorado. Democratic Jewish politicians like City Comptroller Brad Lander and Rep. Jerry Nadler have endorsed him, though US Sen. Chuck Schumer remains a notable holdout.

Not everyone has been convinced.

“Shabbat Shalom. To be clear, unequivocal, and on the record: I believe Zohran Mamdani poses a danger to the security of the New York Jewish community,” Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove of Park Avenue Synagogue told his congregation on October 18.

More than 1,100 rabbis and Jewish leaders across the US soon signed an open letter agreeing with Cosgrove’s message and calling on Americans to “stand up for candidates who reject antisemitic and anti-Zionist rhetoric.”

Mamdani’s rise comes amid a growing split in the American Jewish electorate, particularly along age lines, about Israel in the wake of the war in Gaza the last two years. While 56% of Jewish Americans say they are emotionally attached to Israel, that number falls to 36% among those aged 18 to 34, according to polling from The Washington Post.

“It’s a tense time in the Jewish family group chats,” Ezra Klein wrote in The New York Times this summer.

While Mamdani is ahead among likely voters in most public polls, recent polls from Fox News and Marist both had 55% of Jewish likely voters in the city backing former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who is running an independent campaign after losing to Mamdani in the June Democratic primary. Mamdani had 32% with Jewish voters in each poll.

For voters like Cosgrove, Mamdani’s position on Israel is a dealbreaker. Others, like those in the progressive activist group Jewish Voices for Peace, see it as a positive. Still many other Jews see Mamdani’s views on Israel as less important than his other proposed policies: freezing increases on the city’s rent-stabilized apartments, focusing on affordability and standing up to President Donald Trump.

Not to mention Cuomo and Republican Curtis Sliwa have their own drawbacks.

“I hate my choices,” said Cydney Schwartz, a 33-year-old liberal Democrat who has lived in Israel.

What Mamdani has said about Israel and Jews

Mamdani’s pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel advocacy have been a key throughline of his political beliefs.

Mamdani has declined to say he believes Israel has the right to exist as a Jewish state, saying the country should provide equal rights to all residents. He previously refused to condemn the phrase “globalize the intifada,” referencing an Arabic term used by Palestinians to describe their uprising against Israel. He has recently said he would discourage the use of the phrase.

A day after the October 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on Israel, which sparked the devastating war in Gaza, Mamdani issued a statement that did not condemn Hamas or the attacks. He has repeatedly criticized Israel’s actions as a “genocide” and said he would arrest Netanyahu if he visits New York, citing a warrant from the International Criminal Court, of which the US is not a member.

Earlier this week, a September 2023 video of him connecting New York Police Department oppression to the Israel Defense Forces spread widely online.

“We have to make clear that when the boot of the NYPD is on your neck, it’s been laced by the IDF,” he said then at a Democratic Socialists of America convention.

Asked about that line last week, he told CNN’s Anderson Cooper, “It was a reference to training exercises that have taken place between the NYPD and the IDF.”

“So do you still believe that the NYPD is basically working hand in glove with the IDF?” Cooper asked.

“No. What I’ve made very clear is those are training exercises that are of concern to me,” Mamdani replied. “And what my focus is, is on working with the NYPD to actually deliver public safety for New Yorkers across the five boroughs.”

Still, after his victory in the Democratic primary, he pledged to “understand the perspectives of those with whom I disagree and to wrestle deeply with those disagreements.”

During Rosh Hashanah, Mamdani attended services at Kolot Chayeinu, one of Brooklyn’s most progressive synagogues. For Yom Kippur, considered the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, Mamdani attended services at Lab Shul, a non-denominational Jewish congregation, accompanied by Jewish political allies in Nadler and Lander.

He has met with Hasidic leaders, including two prominent rabbis from Williamsburg’s Satmar community, an ultra-Orthodox sect with its own set of demands for city government.

He has promised he would keep in place police protection for the city’s annual parade honoring Israel. And he has said he would not have an Israel-related litmus test for working in his administration.

“I’m going to have people in my administration who are Zionists,” he said, according to The Free Press.

How Jewish New Yorkers feel

“Two Jews, three opinions,” goes the old joke, a play on the religion’s tradition of debate, and that was evident in conversations with liberal Jews voting for mayor Friday.

“They’re figuring it out,” Wisdom said. “There’s a lot of out-loud figuring it out.”

Schwartz, the 33-year-old liberal who has lived in Israel, said she feels a powerful connection to the country. Still, she said, she didn’t agree with Israel’s politics or Netanyahu, similarly to how she disagrees with Trump’s politics in the US.

She considered not voting, but ultimately picked a candidate, who she declined to share. “I want to focus on the city I live in,” she said.

David, a 29-year-old wearing a yarmulke who declined to give his last name, said the vote felt like an “existential” decision.

He said he didn’t particularly care about how the mayor feels about Israel, but Mamdani’s focus on Israeli-Palestinian politics made it hard to believe he’s not antisemitic, and he worried whether that could bleed into other policies.

He said he planned to vote for Cuomo “reluctantly.” “He’s bad on everything,” David said of his preferred choice. “He’s a bad person.”

Eric Weltman, a 58-year-old wearing a suit and tie, proudly said he voted for Mamdani.

“He’s smart, competent, principled and progressive,” he said, adding he had no qualms about Mamdani’s positions on Israel.

“He’s going to be mayor of New York, not ambassador to Israel,” he said.

As for Needleman, the 77-year-old who quoted “Fiddler,” he said he couldn’t support Mamdani and felt Cuomo was too dishonest. So he decided to vote for Sliwa even though he disagreed with the Republican’s politics, saying Sliwa seemed like a “decent guy.”

By Eric Levenson