At T’ruah’s annual gala last Tuesday night, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani stood on stage and praised T’ruah’s “legacy as a force for good,” including our efforts to protect immigrants targeted for deportation, to close the deadly Rikers Island city jail, and to end solitary confinement. He thanked me personally for being “a partner in navigating the increasingly complex waters of New York City,” and he publicly lauded an Israeli-American peace builder for “bringing Israelis and Palestinians together.”

This was an important moment for the New York Jewish community. 

Gili Getz

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani speaks at T'ruah's annual gala at B'nai Jeshurun on June 2, 2026.

Major legacy Jewish organizations have effectively declared war on  Mamdani. At UJA-Federation of New York’s Wall Street dinner in December, board Chair Marc Rowan pronounced him “our enemy.” Last week, UJA CEO Eric Goldstein published a letter implying that Mamdani’s rhetoric about Israel helped inspire the terrifying but thankfully thwarted plot by an Iraqi organization to attack a major synagogue. Rabbi Avi Weiss has advocated for refusing to meet with him altogether. 

It may therefore be surprising that he showed up at the T’ruah gala on June 2 to praise our organization, which is committed equally to the human rights and safety of both Israelis and Palestinians, and which has long believed that the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state side-by-side with a Jewish and democratic Israel is the best means to ensuring the self-determination, security and dignity of both peoples. We also welcomed Comptroller Mark Levine, the city’s highest-ranking Jewish elected official, and Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal. 

So why invite him to speak at our gala rather than keep any conversations private? T’ruah was not bestowing an award or an honorary degree upon Mamdani, but rather demonstrating to him our power as a national organization that cares deeply about both Israelis and Palestinians and can fill a room with hundreds of Jewish leaders, while also demonstrating to the Jewish community the impact of investing in relationships with elected officials. And, while many Jews have heard the Jewish establishment rail against Mamdani and refuse to engage with him, seeing the mayor onstage at T’ruah’s gala provides a different opportunity: to hear what he is actually saying, to see him address our communities’ priorities, which include but are not limited to antisemitism, and to consider what might be possible if Jewish leaders worked with the mayor for a better New York. The mayor does not need T’ruah to give him a platform. New Yorkers can access his words on social media or the evening news any day of the week. This was a unique opportunity for him to speak directly to a room full of rabbis and other Jewish community members, and to respond to our concerns. 

After Mamdani triumphed in the primaries last year, I was nervous about how his history of pro-Palestine and anti-Israel activism would affect his posture toward Jews, including Israeli and Israeli American Jews. Like most Jews, I worry that my own synagogue, the offices of my organization, and my own family and community will be targeted by antisemitic hate crimes. I find some of Mamdani’s past statements about Israel, as well as many of the statements and activities of organizations with which he has been affiliated, including Students for Justice in Palestine  and Democratic Socialists of America, to be offensive and often dismissive of Israeli Jews and of American Jews who care about Israel and Israelis. There’s no question that the rhetoric of some pro-Palestine groups has gone far beyond criticism of Israeli policy and actions and has included antisemitic speech and actions. 

And yet, over the past year, I have had multiple opportunities to be in dialogue directly with the mayor and with his staff. I have found him to be open to listening and learning, and have seen him change his language as a result of his many conversations with rabbis and New York Jewish leaders, including leaders of legacy organizations. Last summer, in a NY1 interview with Errol Louis, he spoke movingly about how conversations with rabbis have helped him understand the horrors of the Second Intifada’s suicide bombings, and have changed his stance toward the phrase “globalize the intifada”. After an initial misguided response to the protests of a Nefesh B’Nefesh event outside of Park East Synagogue last November, he responded to antisemitic language at a similar protest in January with a condemnation that demonstrated that he had listened to Jewish leaders in the interim.

More recently, he explained his decision not to march in the Israel Day on Fifth parade last month by noting that he has made his “views on the Israeli government abundantly clear” yet refrained from any comments about the country as a whole. He directed the NYPD to provide the most robust protection ever for the parade, and affirmed his commitment to protecting the “safety and well-being” of participants. He also defied his left-wing activist base by declining to veto a law requiring the NYPD to write out their policies regarding the establishment of buffer zones outside of religious establishments. And he made good on his campaign pledge to increase hate crime prevention funding by over 800%. 

Mamdani and I will likely never agree about the politics of Israel and Palestine. He supports a single democratic state. I support two democratic states, Jewish and Palestinian, each committed to the equal rights of the minority populations within them — still the least unpopular position among both Israelis and Palestinians. Neither of us is likely to be at the negotiating table when, God willing, Israeli and Palestinian leaders agree upon a long-term solution. I am sure that he and I will continue to debate this point, as well as other points of disagreement regarding language and policies.

But when there is some demonstrated openness to listening and learning, the response to disagreement should be to double down on staying in relationship with elected officials who are open to dialogue. Indeed, I have yet to meet an elected official with whom I agree on every policy. Building a strong working relationship with elected officials and their administrations includes advocating for one’s preferred positions and calling out elected officials, both privately and publicly, when they fail to do what is right. 

The Jewish community understands this mode of politics intimately. For millennia, Jews have negotiated political power while living under every possible type of government, including those that more or less left Jews alone or even protected them, and those that were outwardly hostile or even murderous. In the United States, where Jews have enjoyed safety almost unprecedented in other places where we have lived, the Jewish community has felt more comfortable than ever advocating for policies important to our community, from the freeing of Soviet Jews to the funding of emergency food pantries to support for the long-term safety of Israel and for nonprofit security funding. These efforts have included engaging privately and publicly with a range of elected leaders with whom our communal leaders and organizations disagree on many other points. 

And Jews have long understood that we will only be safe in places that ensure the safety of all communities. “Seek the welfare of the city to which I have exiled you and pray to God in its behalf; for in its prosperity you shall prosper,” the prophet Jeremiah exhorts the people (29:7). “A person should not make their supplications and their requests for their own needs alone, but rather should pray for all people, that they may live in peace, for in the peace of the kingdom, there is peace in the world,” added the 13th-century commentator Rabbenu Yonah (commentary on Pirkei Avot 3:2), There is no safety for Jews in New York or anywhere unless all people, including all minority communities, are safe. 

The Jewish organizations and leaders who have declared war on Mamdani rather than accept his invitation to conversation have effectively abandoned any opportunity to shape his policy and language regarding antisemitism and Israel — not to mention all of the issues on which Jewish New Yorkers should agree: the new 2-K program, expansion of affordable housing and increased funding to combat hate crimes. This is self-defeating.

Some of those who have criticized T’ruah’s invitation to Mamdani have contrasted this decision with our condemnation of the parade’s hosting of Israeli Ministers Bezalel Smotrich, Amichai Eliyahu, Yitzchak Wasserlauf and other extremist members of the Israeli government. But this comparison is misguided. Smotrich, Eliyahu, Wasserlauf and their ilk have explicitly called for violence against Palestinians and have advanced laws and policies that mandate this violence and that destroy Israeli democracy, and have certainly never been open to dialogue or to changing their minds. (While leaders of UJA and JCRC may not have known ahead of time about Smotrich’s appearance, the other members of the delegation were announced days earlier.) Even those who are the most vehemently opposed to Mamdani’s positions and affiliations and believe that these endanger Jews cannot legitimately claim that he has similarly called for violence.

Right now, New York Jews are afraid for our safety. We have the choice of retreating further and further into isolation, or reaching out and building relationships with those who have the power to make change. I choose relationship. 

Rabbi Jill Jacobs is the CEO of T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights.