The New York Board of Rabbis was not invited to a roundtable discussion that Zohran Mamdani, mayor of New York City, held with rabbis on Monday, a spokesman for the board told JNS.
The board represents more than 750 rabbis across religious denominations in the New York area.
The mayor’s office told reporters on Monday afternoon that the closed press meeting was slated for 3:45 p.m.
“I don’t know who he went through,” a board representative told JNS, of the mayor, who has drawn widespread criticism from New York rabbis and Jewish organizations for his criticism of Israel and response to Jew-hatred in the city.
“He didn’t go through us,” the New York Board of Rabbis told JNS. “We had nothing to do with it.”
Rabbi Chaim Steinmetz, of Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun, a Modern Orthodox synagogue on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, told JNS that he was not invited to the meeting.
“My initial reaction is it’s classic Mamdani,” he told JNS.
The mayor’s priority is how his administration is perceived in the media, according to Steinmetz.
“He has no interest in the serious work of rebuilding his relationship with the Jewish community,” he told JNS. “He wants to feign interest in the Jewish community, but is only ready to meet with Jews who he picks and chooses as ideologically comfortable.”
“Turns out, even they are fed up with him,” he said.
Rabbi Etan Tokayer, president of the Rabbinic Council of America, told JNS that he too had not received an invitation.
“Absent any context, I cannot say whether I would attend had I been invited,” he said.
Tokayer told JNS that he wrote a letter several months ago to the mayor’s Jewish liaison after it was reported that Mamdani’s wife, Rama Duwaji, had made “venomous antisemitic comments,” in the past.
“It was a strong but thoughtfully balanced note,” he told JNS. “I received no reply.”
