The sheer number of letters by rabbis circulating about Zohran Mamdani’s New York City mayoral campaign is “mind numbing,” a rabbi friend texted me earlier this week.
There’s the public letter decrying Mamdani, the Democratic candidate, sponsored by The Jewish Majority, which as of this writing has 1,138 signatures from rabbis, cantors and rabbinical students. But two or three other letters are also making their way through her circles. (One affirms a belief that Mamdani’s support for Palestinian rights comes from “deep moral convictions”; the others have not yet been made public.) “Make it stop,” she wrote.
The last two years have been unbelievably difficult for American Jews, and particularly so for rabbis. Rabbis have been tasked with counseling congregants deeply affected by the trauma caused by Oct. 7 and the rise in antisemitism, as well as the global outcry against Israel’s brutal bombardment of Gaza. Not to mention navigating efforts by certain political actors to weaponize Jewish pain in order to silence pro-Palestinian activists, remake higher education and accelerate an aggressive deportation agenda…