OP-ED: We’re Jews in Zohran Mamdani’s neighborhood. We love New York — but not like this.

By ASHER BUTLER, HANNAH CASTILLO and TAL GUIGI

(JTA) — The excitement in the air is palpable as our neighborhood turns out for Zohran Mamdani. In many ways, we know him well: he’s been our assemblyman for the last four years. In any other world, we would be excited by the possibility of a man like Zohran — an eloquent speaker, attuned to the affordability crisis, relatable despite his family wealth, a first-name figure in the community — rising up to challenge the establishment.

The restaurant King of Falafel and Shawarma in Astoria, Queens, has long been decorated with anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian paraphernalia. (Grace Gilson)

But that is not our portion. As Jews of District 36, Zohran’s Assembly district, we live in a world where his tenure and campaign have fragmented our community, fractured our trust in each other, and upended our sense of belonging and safety. We are left-wing Jews, right-wing Jews, and out-of-the-box Jews who want nothing more than to focus on the kinds of policy questions that affect our material conditions as New Yorkers.

But our experience in our neighborhood has torn us away from everyday concerns like making the rent and paying for groceries. That’s because the vision that Zohran said drew him to the Democratic Socialists of America five years ago — a stance on Palestine that calls for the isolation of Zionists, rejects “normalization” or relationships between anti-Zionists and supporters of Israel, and sanctions armed violence — has shaped what it’s like to live here since Oct. 7, 2023.

We go to different synagogues, work in different fields, and have different Jewish backgrounds. But when we came together as friends and neighbors in a local WhatsApp group for Astoria Jews in the aftermath of Oct. 7, we learned we had a common experience — one that we unfortunately shared with others in our neighborhood’s diverse Jewish community. Here, with the collective input of local Jews — religious and irreligious, queer and traditional, Mizrahi, Sephardi and Ashkenazi — we explain why our objections to a Mayor Mamdani are rooted not in abstract fear or deep-seated bias, but the product of daily life in a community shaped by Zohran’s public political choices.

On Oct. 8, 2023, just hours after the Hamas attack in Israel, Mamdani opted for a political statement of blame, rather than words of comfort and care so desperately needed by his own constituents. Since then, we’ve seen graffiti reading “Long Live Hamas,” “Sinwar Lives,” “Kill Yourself Zionist,” and Hamas red triangles spray-painted on residential buildings and businesses. Flyers attacking “Zionist capital” were distributed during a local rezoning debate, and people waving Hamas flags have rallied in our streets.

At a holiday block party, a mother was called a “genocidal killer” in front of her preschool-aged children; another was called a “bitch” by a man miming throat-slitting while she scraped graffiti from a lamp post. At a neighborhood bar’s karaoke night, a man sang “Deutschland über alles” while giving a Nazi salute. Posters and stickers with keffiyehs and machine guns have regularly appeared near playgrounds and public spaces.

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Our teens have skipped school on cultural appreciation days to avoid being ostracized, and our hearts have shattered as our children reassure us of their safety with phrases like “don’t worry, no one knows I’m Jewish.” Signs that welcome the stranger, the immigrant — a longstanding Jewish value immortalized in verse by the Jewish-American poet Emma Lazarus — now live alongside swastikas and hate-speech on lampposts and shop windows across the district.

What we haven’t seen is any meaningful response to just how normal this has become. When a local business hung a massive, blinking “Fuck Israel” sign alongside a portrait of Hitler, we spoke up at our community board meeting in front of a silent Mamdani representative, to no response. We have filed complaints, we’ve removed stickers, we’ve spray-painted over violent imagery — and we’ve been at it alone. This is not the New York we want to live in, and this is not the New York of equality, safety and inclusivity that Zohran is promising.

In a city as diverse as New York, where nearly 40% of residents are immigrants and many more are part of transnational or multicultural communities, Jewish New Yorkers are not unique in carrying layered identities. The 80% of American Jews that consider Israel to be an “essential or important component” of their identity, are mirrored by Indian, Korean and Dominican Americans who feel the same connection to their homeland. What is unique, and unacceptable, is being sent the message that this connection is somehow at odds with our identity as New Yorkers.

This election is not a referendum on Israel or the place of Jews in New York City. It is, more pointedly, a reflection of a referendum that has already taken place; one that shaped the culture in which Zohran was raised as a cosmopolitan scion of the academic and cultural elite, with access to some of the best resources this city has to offer.

These resources — private grammar schools, specialized high schools, wealthy neighborhoods, the glitter- and literati — hold hints of old-boys-club antisemitism filtered through the lens of new-age anti-Zionism. Left unquestioned, they lay the foundation for an unrecognizable New York. When 54% of all hate crimes last year targeted Jews, we would argue we are already halfway there.

When we heard Zohran describe the fear of his Muslim family members in the aftermath of 9/11, we wondered why he can’t see the fear of most Jewish New Yorkers today.

We took notice when he said, as he was reported as saying in Brooklyn, that he would be here for us “when the mezuzah falls.” We want to be clear: a mezuzah doesn’t fall. A mezuzah is taken down discreetly while the streets echo with calls to globalize the intifada. It is kissed one last time, while the memory of being called a genocide lover in front of your children infuses the parchment. It is wrapped and placed in a box alongside other whispering mementos from grandparents who survived Iraq, Morocco, Poland, France, Uzbekistan, as we wonder if its hum has gotten loud enough for us to listen and know that the time to leave has come once more.

Our pain and fears are real and valid; the frustrations on all sides of the Jewish spectrum come from a shared concern for the wellbeing of our city and all of humanity. In our synagogues, alongside the prayer for Israel, we say the prayer for our country and wish wisdom upon its leaders, just as Jews have wished upon the leaders of every Diaspora nation where we have lived.

Our history has taken us, the Jewish people, through many lands, from our origins as a people called Israel in the Levant through thousands of years of exile, transfer and return. Today, just over a million of us — still that same people — are proud to call New York City home, and we want to keep calling this city home. We have given deeply to this place, pouring in whatever we had in every generation: labor, culture, protest, philanthropy, policy, innovation. So, too, have we been nourished by this city.

We love New York. We want to stay, not in silence, not on sufferance, but fully and without fear. We wonder if that is possible in a city led by Zohran Mamdani.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of JTA or its parent company, 70 Faces Media.