What Does Mamdani’s Response Mean for Jewish New Yorkers?

“You shall possess the land and dwell in it,” God tells the Jewish people in Numbers 33:53. In accordance with this commandment, thousands of Orthodox Jews each year dutifully make Aliyah to the land of Israel. Yet it is now in question whether they can do so—or even gather to consider doing so—in Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s New York.

The issue came into sharp relief Wednesday evening, when a vicious protest erupted outside Park East Synagogue in Manhattan. Demonstrators assembled to harass attendees of an event organized by Nefesh B’Nefesh, an organization that helps Jews make Aliyah.

This was not a protest of the Israeli government and its actions, but of fellow New Yorkers considering living in another country in accordance with their faith. Nor was the protest particularly civil in tone: “It is our duty to make them think twice before holding these events,” one protester told the crowd, according to the New York Post. “We need to make them scared. We need to make them scared. We need to make them scared,” he subsequently added. Also on offer: chants like “From New York to Gaza, globalize the intifada” and “resistance you make us proud, take another settler out.”

Some might call this free expression. Others might call it obstruction and intimidation of people seeking to exercise their First Amendment right of religious freedom at a place of religious worship, a violation of 18 USC 248; or criminal interference with religious worship, a violation of NYPL 240.71.

But how does Mayor-elect Mamdani view the situation? Dora Pekec, the twentysomething professional Democrat who has landed her latest gig as the spokeswoman for Mamdani, offered Jewish Insider a careful splitting of the baby on the mayor’s behalf. “The mayor-elect has discouraged the language used at last night’s protest and will continue to do so,” she said. “He believes every New Yorker should be free to enter a house of worship without intimidation, and that these sacred spaces should not be used to promote activities in violation of international law.”

The invocation of “international law” is Mamdani’s tactic for avoiding expressing his substantive opinions on the Jewish state. Seth Barron ably skewered this dodge in City Journal months ago. The idea that the mayor of New York should try to enforce the edicts of the U.N. or other international bodies is a bizarre theory heretofore unfamiliar to New York City politics.

What is alarming about Pekec’s comment is the implied equivalence between the protesters outside and those exercising their religious rights inside. Perhaps the people outside Park East Synagogue were breaking the law by intimidating those entering a house of worship. But in Pekec’s telling, so too were those inside, merely for contemplating a religiously motivated move to Israel.

Which raises some uncomfortable questions. Does Mamdani really regard what was happening inside Park East Synagogue as a violation of international law? Does he believe that he has the authority to enforce that law? And will he attempt to do so as mayor? Will the NYPD be instructed to arrest representatives of Nefesh B’Nefesh? Will they be prosecuted?

Mamdani’s team, playing damage control, subsequently clarified to Jewish Insider that the second half of Pekec’s statement “was specifically in reference to the organization’s promotion of settlement activity beyond the Green Line,” which “violates international law.”

Let’s assume that this is what Pekec really meant. Settlement in the West Bank is, of course, controversial. But that hardly resolves the question of what Mamdani plans to do to New Yorkers who “conspire” to cross the line, or whether he believes he has the authority to do anything at all. (If he doesn’t, why did she suggest he does?) Nor does it make matters better that Mamdani’s representative responded by identifying wrongdoing on both sides.

Concerns about Mamdani’s labeling of his own city’s citizens as criminals are not academic. It is one thing to posture on campus or on the stump; it is another to serve as chief executive of the most important city on earth, responsible for an army of police officers, and to declare worshippers no better than those trying to prevent them from worshipping.

This should concern more than just Jewish New Yorkers. The city is home to millions of devout Catholics, Protestants, Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, and others across the panoply of American religious life. Many of these people, and their families, came to this country to enjoy the blessings of religious liberty.

They should be able to do so without intimidation. And when their soon-to-be mayor can’t help but endorse the views of intimidators, based on claims of defending the law—international law, no less—they, too, should be alarmed.

Top Photo by Selçuk Acar/Anadolu via Getty Images