When it comes to Israel, there are disagreements within the Jewish community that are healthy and necessary. We argue over Israeli policy, governments, settlements, war conduct and what a moral Zionism demands in this moment. Those arguments are meaningful because they begin from a shared assumption: that Israel must exist as a Jewish and democratic state.

That is why the decision of T’ruah, a human rights organization that claims to represent more than 2,300 rabbis, to invite New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani to address its recent gala felt like such a profound rupture.

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New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani (left) at T'ruah's gala at Congregation B’nai Jeshurun in New York City, June 2, 2026.

Until now, we believed that despite our disagreements with T’ruah on policies like their opposition to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism or their opposition to state anti-BDS laws, that the organization still understood itself to be part of the Zionist conversation. After all, the organization asserts plainly that it is “committed to the State of Israel’s, Medinat Yisrael’s, future as a Jewish and democratic state side by side with Palestine.”  We believed that T’ruah’s criticism of Israel came from a desire to strengthen Israel, to push it toward its highest democratic and moral ideals.

But its decision to platform Mayor Mamdani raises a harder question: what does it mean to assert commitment to Israel’s future as a Jewish and democratic state while warmly embracing a politician whose public life has been defined not simply by criticism of Israeli policy, but by opposition to Zionism itself? How does an organization square its commitment to Israel’s future as a Jewish and democratic state with its giving its biggest stage to a politician who does not believe that Israel should exist as a Jewish state?

At some point, communities must decide what their red lines are.

To be clear, the issue is not that Jewish organizations should never engage people with whom they disagree. Serious communities should host difficult conversations. They should expose themselves to competing viewpoints.

But engagement is not the same thing as celebration. There is a difference between dialogue and validation, between inviting someone into conversation and elevating them as an honored guest.

The invitation to Mayor Mamdani obscured an equally troubling decision: at the gala the ostensibly Zionist group bestowed its Raphael Lemkin Human Rights Award on an activist who accuses Israel of “genocide“ and “apartheid.” These are terms that have been redefined by anti-Zionists to brand Israel guilty of the most heinous crimes, and then, intentionally or not, used to justify antisemitic attacks on American Jews.

The data bears this out. A recent poll found that most Jewish voters in New York link rising antisemitism to the normalization of anti-Zionism. At a certain point, you cannot separate the fire from the smoke.

An organization like T’ruah that claims to fight antisemitism while platforming the most prominent politician legitimizing anti-Zionist antisemitism is like the firefighting arsonist: helping ignite the blaze, then presenting itself as uniquely qualified to put it out. 

The contradiction becomes even harder to ignore because T’ruah’s leadership recently urged the Jewish Theological Seminary to disinvite Israeli President Isaac Herzog from speaking at commencement. There is something profoundly revealing about a moral framework that seeks to deny a platform to the president of the Jewish state while enthusiastically offering one to a politician openly hostile to its existence.

This is not only a problem on the left. Any serious moral community must be capable of confronting extremism in its own camp. The Jewish right must confront racism and Jewish supremacism honestly. The Jewish left must confront anti-Zionism honestly. Too often, both sides prefer tribal loyalty to moral clarity.

Watching an organization that claims commitment to Israel’s future as a Jewish and democratic state celebrate figures like Mayor Mamdani who are openly hostile to Israel’s existence as a Jewish state is not a paradox to be explained away. It is a signal. Commitment to Israel’s future is not self-executing, it requires institutional choices that match stated values. T’ruah has now made its choices visible. The Jewish community is obligated to take seriously the dangers they represent.

Rabbi David-Seth Kirshner is the senior rabbi of Temple Emanu-El in Closter, NJ. 

Rabbi Erez Sherman is the senior rabbi of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles. 

Rabbi Neil Zuckerman is a rabbi at Park Avenue Synagogue in New York City.