Jews are right to be alarmed about Zohran Mamdani

 "While I will not tell people who I think they should vote for, I will continue to examine, through a Jewish lens, issues of concern I hope my congregants will consider when they vote. "   As well as so many Democrats.

"While Mr. Mamdani can muse about the countries surrounding Israel on all sides renouncing their Muslim character, it sounds ridiculous to the point of comical. No Jews I know are asking for that. We just need a secure Israel and a sense of safety for our community."

"The “Weekend Update” segment of a recent Saturday Night Live episode featured an interview with a fictional New Yorker, Rhonda LaCenzo, about her anxieties over Zohran Mamdani potentially becoming the city’s next mayor. Many of her objections to Assemblymember Mamdani were rooted in unambiguous Islamophobia. Yet, while she referred to him as a “hipster jihadist,” nowhere did the sketch address substantive concerns about his stance on Israel and the way his positions and words feed Jewish anxiety.

"Admittedly, that may have been too much to expect from an SNL comedy sketch. However, the segment left me worried about the conflation of hateful anti-Muslim bias and legitimate alarm over Mr. Mamdani’s anti-Zionist views.

Muslim-Jewish relations

"As a congregational rabbi, I have spent 25 years involved in initiatives bringing American Muslims and American Jews together. We share so much in common: Not just our founding narratives of Abraham, Sarah, Hagar, Isaac, Ishmael, and Joseph but also our more recent experiences as immigrant populations who looked to and came to America as a land of opportunity and religious freedom. 

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"Both communities have known the challenges of acculturating without assimilating and integrating while maintaining our unique ethnic and religious heritage. We have also both known bigotry and exclusion. I believe it would be an extraordinary achievement for New York City, the most culturally diverse metropolis in the world and one that prides itself on such diversity, to elect a Muslim mayor." . . .   More...

Bannon’s WarRoom "BANNON: The Mamdani movement in New York City is a Marxist–jihadist revolution, and it’s working. "A Ugandan-born radical, a citizen for just six years, is bringing Bolshevism to our biggest city. "We have to wake up before it's too late.