When New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani released his strategy to combat antisemitism last week, media coverage stated that Jewish leaders were divided over it.
I understand the headline, but I see something else at work: Jewish leaders share one goal, which is for Jews in New York to be safe. What we are confronting is a deliberate and consistent effort to split the Jewish people into two camps, and some of our leaders have taken the bait.
I’ll begin with what the plan gets right: It puts money into security for Jewish institutions, Holocaust education and preventing hate crimes. These are worthwhile investments, and every Jewish family in this city will be grateful for them.
A strategy to fight a disease, however, should be willing to name it. The mayor’s report lists several competing definitions of antisemitism and then declares that the city can fight antisemitism effectively without adopting any of them. Israel goes unmentioned throughout.
This comes from a mayor who, within days of taking office, revoked the city’s adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Association’s (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism and an order barring city agencies from boycotting Israel.
The IHRA defines antisemitism as “a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews.” It includes 11 illustrative examples of this hatred, including: Calling for or justifying violence; making dehumanizing allegations; assigning collective blame for historical wrongs; invoking blood libels; denying the Holocaust; accusing Jews of exaggerating the Holocaust or of being more loyal to Israel than to their home nations; denying the Jewish people’s right to self-determination, claiming that the existence of the State of Israel is a racist endeavor or applying double standards to Israel; using classic antisemitic symbols; comparing Israel and Jews to the Nazis; and holding Jews collectively responsible for the actions of the State of Israel.
By leaving Israel out of the strategy completely, Mamdani was making a choice, and a revealing one at that. Since Oct. 7, a great deal of the hatred Jews have faced on New York City streets has arrived dressed in slogans attacking Israel. Crowds have gathered outside synagogues chanting for an “intifada.” A plan that refuses to say where opposition to Zionism turns into hatred of Jews leaves the most dangerous ground completely undefended.
Arguing among ourselves is a very different matter from inviting those who wish us harm to decide which of us counts.
From the beginning, the one constant in the mayor’s approach has been an effort to sort us. On one side stand the acceptable Jews, the ones who keep their distance from Israel. On the other side stand the rest of us, the overwhelming majority who love Israel, pray for it and see it as part of who we are. In this framework, a Jew earns legitimacy by how far he is willing to move away from the Jewish state and from his fellow Jews.
We all know the “as a Jew” phenomenon. Find a Jew with little connection to Jewish life, or a leader who has decided that state funding and social service dollars matter more than the security of the Jewish people, and put him in front of the cameras. His presence becomes proof that the Jews who object to a specific policy or ideology are extremists. It is an old tactic, and it works only when Jews agree to play along.
Sadly, there have been quite a few of those.
Jews argue with one another constantly, and that is healthy. The Talmud preserves the debates of Hillel and Shammai for a reason. We can disagree about Israeli politics, about religious practice, about almost anything and remain one people. Arguing among ourselves is a very different matter from inviting those who wish us harm to decide which of us counts.
I often think about the Maccabees. We celebrate their victory over the Greeks every Chanukah, but their story didn’t end there.
Generations later, their descendants, Hyrcanus and Aristobulus, fought one another for the throne, and each appealed to Rome to settle the dispute. The Roman general Pompey answered the invitation, took Jerusalem, and Rome never left. The Temple the Maccabees had rededicated was eventually destroyed by the very power those brothers had called in to judge between them. This story illustrates how, whenever we allow outsiders, especially those with no love for us, to arbitrate who the real Jews are, the outcome is the same.
That is what is happening in New York today. Any Jewish leader who stands beside Mamdani and lends his name to this campaign of division may believe he is building bridges. In practice, he is helping to weaken the very community he claims to represent.
Our answer must be unity. Unity does not demand that we agree on every question about Israel or New York politics. It demands that we refuse to be sorted.
Jewish leaders across every denomination and every political stripe should say clearly that the safety of Jews in this city cannot depend on their relationship to Israel; that a Jew who prays for Jerusalem deserves the same protection as one who does not; and that any serious plan against antisemitism must say plainly where hatred of Israel becomes hatred of Jews.
Our enemies have always been happy to tell us which Jews they are prepared to tolerate. The Jewish people have endured by refusing to accept their list.
