Will Jewish leaders atone for their sins next year?
Falsifiable fearmongering and the Zohran Mamdani election.
Maybe because they’re clergy so bad behavior takes on an fancier form, or because their worst conduct has played out in the shadow of the High Holidays, or because a Satmar sect in Williamsburg went so far as to say that “portraying him as if he is against Jews – It is false, and such a campaign is dangerous and against the Torah way” but I’ve got my mind on sinning. There are many ways to describe the hysterics of many Jewish institutional leaders at the impending mayoralty of Zohran Mamdani, but the behavior of rabbis that have rushed to attack his candidacy has a particularly sinful quality.
Which sins? To pick a few options from the Ashamnu prayer recited on Yom Kippur, one could make the case for slander, adding falsehood upon falsehood, or perhaps deception. Despite the fact that on Yom Kippur we also explicitly acknowledge sins we have committed intentionally and unintentionally, I am willing to grant that a good many of these rabbis may truly believe the exact words they are saying. According to their open letter: that Mamdani is a threat to “the safety and dignity of Jews,” that he spreads “dangerous rhetoric” which threatens “the rights of Jews to live securely.” According to their words from the pulpit: Rabbi Angela Buchdal professes that “I fear living in a city, and a nation, where anti-zionist rhetoric is normalized and contagious,“ that “ Zohran Mamdani has contributed to a mainstreaming of some of the most abhorrent antisemitism.” For those who might still suggest these leaders are speaking euphemistically, Park Avenue Synagogue’s Elliot Cosgrove began an October sermon this way: “To be clear, unequivocal, and on the record: I believe Zohran Mamdani poses a danger to the security of New York Jewish community.”
What will become undeniable very soon, however, is that whether honest, cynical, deluded, gullible, or obtuse in their statements, the reality will prove that they have certainly committed a different sin. They will have misled their congregants. Tomorrow, Zohran Mamdani will win the election, in January he will become mayor, and during his mayoralty congregants should hold these leaders accountable for their – to be extremely generous – inaccurate predictions.
I’m confident about this fact not just because I am able to process the extensive evidence of Mamdani’s past connection with Jewish community and future plans for caring for Jews and all New Yorkers, but because this fearmongering relies on a theory of the violent antisemite that is independently nonsensical. To believe that electing Zohran would literally be a “danger to the security of New York Jewish community” – not, remember, metaphorically dangerous to the Zionist project! – would require also believing a few other things about human nature. One option would be that there is some horde of people who currently want to attack Jews but don’t because they are aware that the current mayor likes Israel. Another would be that these violent bigots – the ones who irrationally blame Jews for all kinds of things — will be kept at bay if the guy on the legal team for Benjamin Netanyahu becomes mayor. Or, perhaps, that vigilantes who want to exact revenge on New York Jews for Israel’s crimes would feel like they have no other choice…now that a mayor, supposedly, agrees with them? None of this aligns with any informed belief about how or why people commit violent crimes generally or the nature of antisemitic hate crimes in New York City specifically (notably against visibly Jewish Orthodox people), but I am forced to divine arguments to respond to here because, of course, there is no clarification in these letters or speeches about how we will suddenly be less safe.
But, nonetheless, their words do matter.
On Sunday, while greeting voters near the Brooklyn Museum, I was approached by another Zohran volunteer who was visibly shaken by an encounter she’d just had down the street. A woman approached her and asked her why she was wearing a hate symbol (a Zohran button) and cried speaking to her about what she believed this candidate meant. The week before, a close friend and her canvassing partner were screamed out of a building by a couple – one of whom works in a senior administrative position at a major New York congregation — who became apoplectic, yelling and repeatedly banging their door shut. My parents, living across the country, upon telling peers that I support Zohran, regularly encounter reactions that would suggest I had joined the Hitler Youth.
I do believe that many Jews in America are honestly frightened – it’s just that they’ve become that way, in part, through dishonest or misguided leadership. I cannot promise that our poisoned information networks will improve in the next mayoral administration – that people will have a perception that meets reality – but I can promise that rates of antisemitic violence in New York City over the next four years will not increase because of Zohran’s election. I cannot promise, but I would suspect that his plan to increase hate crime prevention funding by 800%, his proposal to expand mental health first response, and his agenda to build a diverse, thriving, and secure city for all New Yorkers would all help reduce incidents of antisemitic violence and all violence. Perhaps most likely, however, rates of antisemitic violence will ebb and flow based on the national and international forces that historically dictate these broader trends.
This new reality should be held up against the unequivocal threats of disaster that Jewish leaders have made in recent months. It will be clear to any observer that these events did not come to pass. As for the rabbis themselves, they will have 262 days from the mayoral inauguration until Kol Nidrei next year. Will they take the pulpit and atone for, unequivocally, leading others astray?
