Anecdotal accounts of Jews and Zionists leaving or planning to vacate New York City due to Zohran Mamdani’s anti-Israel policies and rhetoric as mayor and his softness, Jewish groups have said, on rising antisemitism have trickled out. In his first month in office, New York City recorded a 182% surge in Jew-hatred, compared to January 2025.
Rabbis and Jewish leaders in neighboring and nearby states told JNS that the threat that Mamdani’s policies and statements pose to Jews doesn’t end at official city limits.
“It’s increased the volume of just the noise and distractions and certainly has induced a lot more anxiety and fear,” Rabbi Daniel Cohen, senior rabbi at Congregation Agudath Sholom in Stamford, Conn., told JNS.
“Everybody feels that, even here,” said the rabbi, whose Modern Orthodox congregation is located about 40 miles northeast of Mamdani’s office in City Hall.
“People do go into the city, and there’s definitely a greater concern about publicly displaying Jewish things,” Cohen told JNS.
Cohen has led Agudath Sholom, which bills itself as New England’s largest Modern Orthodox synagogue, since 2005. He told JNS that Connecticut has its own challenges for Jews, but he is mainly concerned about Mamdani.
“For him to do what he’s doing—it’s literally ground zero, in my opinion, of fomenting hatred, bigotry, antisemitism and division in America,” he told JNS.
“It’s not what America is,” he said. “He’s spouting evil, and he really has no place in being the mayor of New York City.”
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.
Jeremy Burton, CEO of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston, told JNS that the city’s Jewish community hasn’t been impacted by what happens in City Hall in Manhattan.
“The Jewish community in Boston is very appreciative to have a mayor, governor and many other civic leaders who are clear in conveying that we belong and are valued as part of the civic fabric of this city,” Burton told JNS.
JNS reported that Jews, 4% of Massachusetts residents, were targeted in 83.3% of the commonwealth’s religion-bias hate crimes last year.
Mamdani’s rhetoric, including calling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a “war criminal” recently and saying that he would try to arrest him in the Big Apple, has been very troubling, according to Michael Wildes, mayor of Englewood, N.J., located just across the Hudson River from Manhattan.
“New York and the surrounding area, including my own city of Englewood, N.J., has long been home to one of the largest Jewish populations outside of Israel,” Wildes told JNS.
“Established as a bedroom community to Wall Street—it has been a beacon of tolerance, opportunity and security for Jewish families for generations,” he said. “Public officials have a responsibility to ensure that all communities feel protected, respected and welcome—not singled out.”
Wildes told JNS that his family escaped the Holocaust and “made their way through America’s golden doors, merely a few nautical miles away where Lady Liberty still stands.”
“I have spent a lifetime fighting antisemitism,” he told JNS. “I believe we must reject rhetoric that further inflames hatred and polarization.”
Rivky Feiner, a community activist from Rockland County, N.Y., which includes the Orthodox enclave of Monsey, told JNS that residents, who are about 30 miles northwest of Manhattan, are “deeply concerned about Mamdani’s influence.”
“New York City is only a short drive away, and many of us have family, businesses, and daily ties there,” said Feiner, who is a board member at but didn’t speak on behalf of a local Jewish Federation.
“We are worried for our brothers and sisters who live in the city,” she said. “We are concerned about the impact his policies and political movement could have beyond its borders.”
Feiner told JNS that it was a “wake-up call” when candidates backed by the Democratic Socialists of America and sympathetic to its views, including former city comptroller Brad Lander, won Democratic primaries in New York City.
“Seeing candidates aligned with the Democratic Socialists of America make significant gains reinforced for us that we cannot take any election for granted,” she said.
“Our community is more engaged than ever in supporting candidates at the local, state and federal levels who we believe will protect public safety, religious freedoms and the values that are important to our community,” she told JNS.
To Feiner, Mamdani is not “an isolated New York phenomenon.”
“He reflects a broader political movement that has gained traction nationally, and that is why communities everywhere must stay vigilant,” she said. “The warning signs are disengagement, low voter turnout and assuming that these movements cannot succeed locally.”
“The answer is not fear. It is civic engagement,” she told JNS. “Vote in every election, know who is on your ballot and never take your community’s future for granted.”
Cohen, the Connecticut rabbi, told JNS that he and members of his synagogue would plan to go to Turtle Bay to show support for Netanyahu if the Israeli premier opts to attend the U.N. General Assembly in September.
“We’re one nation as a Jewish people,” he said. “We all stand and should stand shoulder to shoulder with the Jewish community and, for that matter, with people of good nature in New York who understand that there is no place for this sort of rhetoric, intolerance, hate and violence.”
The rhetoric that enabled Mamdani to take power is a “virus” that can spread to any community, according to Cohen.
“We’re living in a society, unfortunately, which is so polarized, where people cannot have conversations with people that they disagree with without demonizing them and portraying them as wicked and evil,” he said. “That also creates an environment that is ripe for antisemitism.”
One way to fight rising Jew-hatred in America is by “increasing our light,” Cohen said.
“Every synagogue should be feeding the homeless,” he told JNS. “Every synagogue should be out there thanking the first responders. We all should be doing that and not just retreating into our own towers.”
“By doing that, we create more sanctification of God’s name,” Cohen said. “Maybe somebody will then look at a Jew and say, ‘You know what? It’s amazing, this person, what he’s doing. I want more of that.’”
