It is difficult to believe that Rabbi Zalman Leib Teitelbaum, one of two grand rebbes of the Satmar Chassidic movement, had purely religious intentions when he said that criticizing New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani violates Torah commandments, Dov Hikind, a former New York state Assembly member, told JNS.
“I wish I could believe that it was l’shma, that it was sincere, that it was all about Torah and it was all about God,” the Orthodox founder of Americans Against Antisemitism, said. “But I don’t believe that for one second.”
“I was flabbergasted, shocked and had to take a second look at the statement from Satmar, because I really couldn’t believe it,” Hikind told JNS. “They’ve done a lot of radical crazy stuff, but this goes beyond the pale.”
Teitelbaum’s statements, which he made in Yiddish on Sunday during an annual address marking the 47th anniversary of the death of Satmar founder Rabbi Joel Teitelbaum, “endangers” Jewish New Yorkers, according to Hikind.
“We know that the police department has itself talked about the incitement that’s going on,” he told JNS. “We know that the Justice Department is looking into it. Everyone has been calling on the mayor to tone down his rhetoric, and what the Satmar Rebbe said this week undermines the Jewish people and endangers the Jewish people in New York.”
Teitelbaum told his followers that criticizing the mayor is a violation of religious rules under which Jews must operate in exile, according to a Williamsburg News English translation of the Yiddish remarks.
“Recently, we have witnessed a terrible provocation against the nations by heimishe Yidden,” by Jews, “through the incitement against the mayor of New York City,” the rabbi said.
“We must remember that we are in exile,” he reportedly said in the Yiddish statement. “The prophet Jeremiah instructed the Jewish people: ‘Seek the peace of the city to which I have exiled you, and pray to God on its behalf.’”
“An observant Jew must follow the Torah’s path and accept the decree of exile,” he added.
The Chassidic rabbi also said that efforts to “brand” Mamdani as an antisemite are misguided.
Mamdani has said that Israel should not exist as a Jewish state, and he campaigned on having the Israeli prime minister arrested in New York. His spokeswoman said that synagogues violate international law when they host pro-Israel events.
“To denounce the mayor and brand him an antisemite constitutes a true provocation against the nations,” Teitelbaum reportedly said. “As though the provocation against the nations taking place in Eretz Yisroel,” in Israel, “were not enough, they are now bringing it here to the United States as well.”
Rather than an expression of theology, there could be political motivations surrounding Satmar’s statement, according to Hikind.
“I can’t tell you how many programs they have, but I guarantee you eventually we’re going to find out that they are benefiting from this rhetoric,” he told JNS.
“Instead of protecting the Jewish community, they are protecting Mamdani,” he said. “Mamdani is thrilled with these comments coming out of Satmar and patting them on the back. There are ‘good Jews and bad Jews,’ and now Satmar are the ‘good’ Jews.”
Satmar is “in bed with the radical Jews, the 35% who voted for Mamdani” and who “undermine the Jewish people,” Hikind told JNS. “They’re in bed with those people. They’re on the same page.”
David Myers, distinguished professor and chair in Jewish history at the University of California, Los Angeles, told JNS that Satmar has two main theological and political differences from other Orthodox groups in New York.
The Chassidic group espouses anti-Zionism “based on the view that hastening the messiah through human action,” and it believes in “‘the law of the kingdom is the law,’” according to Myers, former president and CEO of the Center for Jewish History.
Myers used the rabbinic phrase, in Aramaic, dinah d’malchutah dinah, to refer to the notion that Jews must abide by the law of the land. It “mandates a posture of submission to the authority of gentile sovereigns as a condition of existence in exile,” he said.
“We must add one other key feature of Satmar political behavior: a transactional pragmatism that has always enabled Satmar leaders to engage with and accommodate to secular political leaders in exchange for tangible benefits,” Myers told JNS.
The anniversary of Rabbi Joel Teitelbaum’s death “is one of the significant dates on the Satmar annual calendar,” alongside the anniversary of the liberation of the rabbi, sometimes called Yoelish, from the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, according to Myers.
“It is certainly an opportunity to reaffirm Rabbi Yoelish’s central principles, but the swirling debates around Mayor Mamdani’s views also prompted Rabbi Zalman Leib to weigh in with his own, decidedly Satmar perspective,” the scholar said.
“Both as a matter of submission to the sovereign and as a reflection of pragmatic accommodation, it is important to honor the city’s leading official,” he said.
“The fact that they share an anti-Zionist sensibility is interesting but not, ultimately, dispositive, in my view,” Myers told JNS.
“Rabbi Zalman Leib’s remarks are a reminder that Orthodoxy is hardly a monolithic phenomenon and that there are very sharp differences between competing groups,” he said. “It should serve as a further admonition against those who would ascribe to Jews a single political view or sensibility.”
JNS asked a 51-year-old Orthodox Jew, who is not a Satmar Chassid, on the street in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Flatbush what he thought of the statement. The man, who identified himself only as David R., told JNS that he agrees with Teitelbaum’s remarks, which he first heard in a recording on a WhatsApp chat.
“I don’t think that if you fight fire with fire it’s good for the Jewish people,” he told JNS. “I don’t think you are going to gain anything from focusing on criticizing Mamdani all day.”
The “more you fight, the more he’s going to do wrong,” he predicted, of the mayor. “The more you be quiet and just let it be, it will be better for the Jewish people.”
Teitelbaum was also right to acknowledge the status of Jews as “second-class citizens” in exile, he told JNS.
“We should just be happy to be here and keep our mouth shut and be involved in our communities,” the man told JNS. “We know that Mamdani hates Jews. You know that, I know that, he knows that. But in all these newspapers all they do is trash, trash, trash.”
“They’re not getting anything out of it,” he told JNS. “What benefit did they get by writing all of this?”
Hikind told JNS that firmly disagrees.
The elder Teitelbaum would “never have done this,” particularly at a time when antisemitism in New York City is rising, he said.
“I know we’re in exile. I know. I get it,” he told JNS. “But that doesn’t mean that Jews should not defend themselves or that Jews should not protect their communities.”
“The Jewish community is under attack,” Hikind said. “There is such fear. People talk about whether there’s a future in New York and a future in America because of what’s going on, and what does the Satmar Rebbe do on this very important anniversary of the old Satmar Rebbe, Rabbi Teitelbaum—who never would have done this, never—they attack those who stand up and speak out.”
“That’s what they’re doing?” Hikind told JNS. “In the name of God? Shame, shame, shame.”
