Mayor Mamdani may be headed in a dangerous direction -- and Jews could pay the price
Antisemitism in New York is almost as old as the city itself
Be careful, Mayor Mamdani.
You are still saying a lot of right things, including in regard to antisemitism.
But your first acts as Mayor of New York City are riding on the edge of promoting antisemitism in the city that encompasses the largest Jewish community in the United States — a city where antisemitism is on the rise.
Mamdani’s actions were part of a broad executive order repealing all executive orders by his predecessor, Mayor Eric Adams, following Mayor Adams’s indictment on September 26, 2024, on federal bribery charges.
That Mamdani wants to start over without being encumbered by the executive actions of a mayor who faced bribery charges is understandable.
The fact that his actions included the repeal of an extensive definition of antisemitism that has broad support among Jews and Jewish organizations worldwide is a major point of concern.
The definition was developed by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance and has been adopted by 46 countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, France, and Germany. In addition, the student governments of 30 universities in the U.S. have adopted the definition.
The definition reads as follows:
“Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”
As a further explanation of its definition, the Alliance also provided examples of antisemitism in public life, the media, schools, and the workplace. These include:
Calling for, aiding, or justifying the killing or harming of Jews in the name of radical ideology or an extremist view of religion.
Making mendacious, dehumanizing, demonizing, or stereotypical allegations about Jews . . .such as . . . the myth about a world Jewish conspiracy or Jews controlling the media, economy, government or other societal institutions.
Accusing Jews as a people of being responsible for real or imagined wrongdoing committed by a single Jewish person or group . . .
Denying the existence of the Holocaust. More specifically, denying the fact, scope, mechanisms (e.g., gas chambers), or the intentional genocide of the Jewish people at the hands of National Socialist Germany and its supporters and accomplices during World War II.
Denying the Jewish people the right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.
Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the State of Israel.
Another of the previous mayor’s executive orders, repealed by Mamdani, blocked city agencies from participating in a worldwide call for the divestment of financial holdings in Israel.
Known as the BDS movement – boycott, divestment, and sanctions – it deserves what it got under the original executive order, given that it has used calculated misstatements to gain support.
Addressing the repeal of both of these executive orders, several Jewish organizations in New York joined in a statement accusing Mamdani of eliminating “significant protections against antisemitism.”
Mamdani responded that the definition of antisemitism did not provide any real protections for Jews. “Protecting Jewish New Yorkers is going to be a focus of my administration.”
“What we will do,” he said, “is to actually deliver on our commitment to protect Jewish New Yorkers in a manner that is able to actually fulfill that.”
Nice words, but…
The problem is that at a time when antisemitic acts are increasing worldwide at a record pace, the City of New York has backed away from a clear statement that holds worldwide respect as a tool for specifying antisemitic actions that must not be tolerated.
Unfortunately, the repeal of the definition can be read as the opening of the door for antisemitism in New York. The burden of ensuring that does not happen now falls fully on Mamdani’s shoulders.
Significantly, New York, with one million Jews, has the largest Jewish population of any city in the world outside of Israel, while also being the birthplace of antisemitism in America.
Given its history, size, and stature, there may not be a more important place in America to build a brick wall against antisemitism.
New York Colony was founded in 1624, about four years after the arrival of the Pilgrims, by Dutch settlers who called it New Amsterdam. The first known Jewish settler, Jacob Barsimson, arrived in 1654.
A month later, following Barsimson’s lead, 23 more Jews retreated from their unhappy settlement in Recife, Brazil, and landed in the New York Colony.
Governor Peter Stuyvesant was not happy.
He tried to turn them away but yielded to pressure from the Dutch West Indies Company, which controlled the colony. He permitted them to stay – amid certain conditions that he created. Taxes were levied against them simply because they were Jews. They also were banned from participating in the retail trade and barred from building synagogues. The Jews, he said, were repugnant and deceitful.
And so, it began. Antisemitism in America.
More than a century later, under the leadership of men like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, the immigrant settlers and their descendants along the Eastern seaboard cut their ties to Europe and especially England with the creation of a new nation.
They also created a Constitution and a Bill of Rights in the late 1780s designed to make freedom of religion and from religious persecution the foundation stones of a new democracy.
Not everyone was listening.
Maryland and New Hampshire, for example, both among the original 13 colonies, enacted laws preventing Jews from holding public office.
In Maryland, the battle over whether and how to repeal the antisemitic state law that was in violation of the Bill of Rights, spanned the first 30 years of the state’s existence. A so-called “Jew Bill” allowing a back door that enabled Jews to serve in office finally was passed in 1826.
It would have been too much to ask for the existing restriction against Jews holding office to be abolished. Instead, a new law was enacted to get around the old one. The new law required Jews to affirm their belief in an afterlife before they could assume elected office:
“Every citizen of this state professing the Jewish religion . . . appointed to any office of public trust [shall] make and subscribe a declaration of his belief in a future state of rewards and punishments, in the stead of the declaration now required.”
The original antisemitic law remains a part of the Constitution of the State of Maryland to this day.
It took another half-century before New Hampshire came on board in 1851 with a law providing full equality for Jews to hold public office.
Antisemitism is an evil kind of persecution. It victimizes the Jews and makes the locales where it exists less desirable places to live for all.
In the end, the State of Maryland chose to allow Jews to hold public office rather than risk the economic blow that seemed lurking on the horizon — an en masse departure for other, more receptive states.
Mayor Mamdani needs to demonstrate quickly and continually throughout his term of office that he can introduce meaningful protections and corrections that will make his city comfortable for Jews as well as uncomfortable for antisemites.
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I don't disagree, Laura, but I also see a troubling slippery slope that he needs to understand and deal with.
I think it was important to repeal the orders signed by Eric Adams. My Jewish friends in New York largely supported Mamdani (as a second choice after Brad Lander) so I am not going to jump to conclusions about how he is supposedly bad for Jews. The right wing is stirring up a lot of this hysteria and frankly they are much more accepting of antisemitism than Mamdani has ever been.