New York Board of Rabbis president and Stephen Wise Free Synagogue senior Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch urged New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani to abandon positions that were geared toward delegitimizing and dismantling Zionism and Israel, the prominent NYC Jewish leader related in an interview with The Jerusalem Post, explaining that such ideas generated an atmosphere of hate that allows antisemitic attacks to thrive.
Hirsch explained that in every case in which anti-Zionism had gained strength, such as in Soviet Russia, it had also normalized antisemitism. Therefore, Mamdani’s rhetoric, in which he rejected the existence of Israel as a Jewish state, called Zionism racist, and supported groups like Students for Justice in Palestine that sought to destroy Israel, put Jews at risk.
The rabbi offered to sit with the NYC assemblyman to try to convince him that the views he holds are illiberal, as they delegitimize Judaism, the Jewish community, and do not represent a liberal yearning for diversity. If not with him, Hirsch hoped that he would seek out Jewish community members who don’t agree with him for a greater understanding of the Jewish community’s concerns and its history of persecution.
'Work with him everywhere we are able, oppose him wherever necessary'
With Mamdani projected among most polls to become the city’s next mayor, Hirsch found it all the more important for the politician to move past supporting an ideology that sought to destroy Israel and slander it with “blood libels.” If he did so, then the potential mayor would be better equipped to work on local issues with the Jewish community.
“If he is elected, then we will have to find ways to work with him everywhere we are able to, but to oppose him wherever necessary,” Hirsch said.
Hirsch said that he tried his best not to “engage in partisanship, I don’t think that religious figures, including rabbis, should engage in partisan politics – but I do believe that they can engage in policy matters.”
Policies that reflected morality were the purview of religious figures like rabbis, he said. Hirsch found the position of anti-Zionism to be a “profoundly illiberal position,” because he believed in the collective right of self-determination for peoples, as the vast majority of American Jews, including liberals, did not support anti-Zionism and considered Israel an important component of their identity. He was concerned that the media was amplifying Jews who were antizionist and critics of Israel, which is why, as a rabbi, he felt he had to speak up.
“The vast majority of US Jews are Zionist, even if they have profound differences with the Israeli government,” said Hirsch. “For those that say publicly, ‘as a Jew I’m supporting an antizionist candidate because of his antizionism,’ I feel as a rabbi I have to counter that.”
Following his October 16 video statement to Mamdani, he had received hundreds of responses from throughout the US, “spanning the spectrum of different religious ideologues,” thanking him for his statements. They spoke of gratitude, in his estimation, yearning for some like-minded people to speak on their behalf. He respected the right of those Jews to be able to say that they were against Zionism, but there was also an obligation to represent mainstream Jewish values.
Hirsch also believed that most Jews who were supporting Mamdani were not doing so because of his antizionist position, but rather despite it. They rationalized that “Israel is not the only issue on the political docket” and that the mayor of NYC had little influence on foreign affairs. He could understand, given that Judaism had “a lot to say about poverty, immigration, death penalty, taxes, safety,” and all the “issues that characterize political campaigns in general,” that they had prioritized those issues.
A transitional period
However, according to Hirsch, world Jewry was facing historically critical times, and that “hundreds of years from now historians will mark these days as transition days for Jewish people,” with severe attacks in both Israel and in the diaspora. Now was the time to speak up with the stakes so high, and while Judaism was a religion that granted importance to debate and disagreement, it was necessary to “unify around the need to coalesce against these physical and ideological threats.”
“Whatever can be placed aside during these very dangerous times for the sake of the broader unifying positions we need to coalesce behind, each one of us should strive to do that, both Israel and here, avoid unnecessary partisanship and acts that lead to polarization and disunity.”
In an expression of that unity, Hirsch was one of the major voices supporting a Wednesday open letter of rabbis calling for the public to reject antizionist rhetoric among politicians. Almost 1000 rabbis signed the letter, which criticized Mamdani for refusing to condemn slogans like “globalize the intifada,” denying Israel’s legitimacy as a Jewish state, and accusing Israel of genocide.