Mamdani Redux
I was a Mamdani guy from the very beginning. I liked everything about him and what he said about America: an observant believer from a family of Muslim intellectuals could win the title of America’s Mayor. Even if it wasn’t exactly that, his politics landed in my progressive heart: shelter for the homeless, universal day care, and a healthy focus on affordability for everyone. Would it be good for New York to be within financial reach if your last name did not happen to be Bezos? I think that would be a plus for America.
In the midst of all of this, the Jewish stuff was secondary, even if it’s gone south from the election forward. Many Jews in the city continue to support him for all the reasons that I named above. With a little bit of luck and favorable news on the economy, there is a chance that he will pull off some of his program, especially in the area of public transportation. But he seems to have a knack for unnecessary disappointment when it comes to a substantial percentage of Jewish citizens. Every mayor of NYC has to be a version of the Levy’s commercial. You don’t have to be Jewish, but you have to love rye bread. You need to be a smiling friend of every minority.
Zohran Mamdani fails when it comes to smiling. On the other hand, he performs a deeply useful function when it comes to the difference between Israel and anti-Semitism. He is clearly not an enemy of the Jewish people. Some of his best friends (?!) are Jews and he takes Jewish issues seriously. Just before he took office, he dismissed a would-be official for old social media posts that were provocative and unfriendly. He put some distance between himself and his wife when it came to light that she had associated herself with over-the-top pronouncements by a friend. That’s quite a test for anyone in a new marriage.
On the other hand, he has lines that he will not cross. If you ask him to march in a pro-Israel parade whose featured guests are Israeli lawmakers from the messianic edge of anti-Palestinian zealotry, he will politely decline and seek out other avenues of support. You can’t blame him for refusing to stand with Bezalel Smotrich. At the risk of offending, I would do the same.
We would all say, of course, that he has a way to go. I don’t like limitations on protected speech, and Mamdani was right to call the new buffer rule into question. At the same time, it was wrong, insensitive, and non-empathic. Jews have experienced a surge of anti-Jewish agitation and feel justifiably concerned about congregating in public. A 50-foot buffer zone would have been a defensible compromise, as Kathy Hochul and the NY Legislature have apparently decided. Mamdani will be defeated, and rightly so.
Because he needs to release himself from whatever commitment (or stranglehold) that kept him from doing the same. But I don’t believe that he acted out of anti-Semitism. We are all going to need to clarify these distinctions.