Rabbi Dr. Ari Berman, president of Yeshiva University, said it in five words. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is an “arsonist posing as a firefighter.”
The mayor’s defenders will call that unfair. So let’s be scrupulously fair. Set aside the atmosphere, the feelings, and anything Mamdani could pin on someone else. Judge him only on what he has said and done himself, on the record, much of it on camera. That record is more than enough.
What he said
In June 2025, a podcast host asked Mamdani about the chant “globalize the intifada.” He did not condemn it. He said what he heard in that language was a desperate desire for equality and Palestinian rights. Days later on NBC’s Meet the Press, Kristen Welker asked him three times to condemn the phrase. Three times he would not. He offered only that it was not language he used, and that a mayor should not police speech.
That was weeks after Jews were murdered in Washington and firebombed in Boulder, Colorado, attacks that New York’s Jewish federation tied directly to this kind of rhetoric. UJA-Federation of New York and other Jewish groups had publicly asked every mayoral candidate for exactly one thing: to condemn it. Only later, in a private meeting with business leaders, did he reportedly say he would “discourage” the phrase.
He has repeatedly accused Israel of genocide. He supports the boycott movement against Israel. And just last month, as Israel’s prime minister came to New York for the United Nations Security Council, the mayor of this city vowed to seek his arrest.
What he did
Last November, a crowd massed outside Park East Synagogue in Manhattan during an aliyah event, chanting “globalize the intifada.” The mayor-elect had a choice. His spokesperson’s statement faulted the synagogue, claiming the event violated international law. Jews were menaced at the door of their own house of worship, and the incoming mayor’s office scolded the Jews.
On January 1, within hours of taking the oath, Mamdani revoked the city’s adoption of the IHRA definition of antisemitism and its order barring city agencies from boycotting Israel. To his credit, he reissued an order on protests at houses of worship. The definition and the boycott protections stayed gone.
In April, he used his veto for the first time as mayor. He did not use it on a budget line or a zoning fight. He used it to kill a bill creating protest buffer zones around schools, over the objections of UJA-Federation of New York and a coalition of major Jewish organizations that called the veto a profound failure.
City Council’s own antisemitism task force has noted that roughly a quarter of antisemitic hate crimes in the city target children. A companion bill protecting houses of worship passed with a veto-proof majority. He let it become law without his signature and announced that he disagreed with its framing.
And this week, he unveiled an antisemitism strategy that refuses to define antisemitism and never mentions anti-Zionism.
What he is paying
Now look at what that plan puts on the table to physically protect houses of worship: $1 million, in a city budget of $126 billion. That is less than one penny out of every $1,000 the city spends.
And it is not even reserved for Jewish institutions. It covers vulnerable nonprofits and houses of worship of every kind. The same budget found $175m. for a new rental voucher program, 175 times as much.
The “more than $30m.” in the headlines is a magic trick. Most of it is a $26m. increase to the city’s general hate crimes office, which serves every community and was announced months ago.
Out of that pot come grants capped at $10,000 apiece. Another $4.5m. goes to a Holocaust memorial garden in Queens and a Jewish cultural center in Brooklyn. Worthy causes, but neither one stops a man with a knife at the door of a synagogue.
Meanwhile, Jews were the victims in 57% of all reported hate crimes in New York City through the first seven months of this year, according to NYPD figures. One community is absorbing more than half the hatred in the most diverse city on earth, and its mayor answered with a rounding error.
Put down the match
None of this is about feelings. Every word above is something Mamdani said, signed, vetoed, or chose not to say. That is what Berman means. You cannot spend years supplying the fuel, then show up with a squirt gun and ask Jewish New Yorkers to applaud.
If the mayor wants to be believed, the most important item in his plan would cost the city nothing. Condemn “globalize the intifada” by name, publicly, with no qualifiers. Stop calling Israel a genocidal state. Restore a definition of antisemitism that reflects what Jews are actually facing. Then fund security to match the threat, not the press release.
Until then, Jewish New Yorkers should take every dollar, apply for every grant, and never once mistake a gesture for protection. Call your council member. Demand that security funding be measured against the hate crime numbers, not last year’s budget line, and that City Council revisit the school buffer zone bill he vetoed.
We are not asking for special favors. We are asking for what every New Yorker deserves: to send our children to school and walk into our houses of worship without wondering who is waiting outside.
New York does not need a firefighter with a gas can in the truck. It needs a mayor who puts down the match.
The writer is an author and strategist whose work explores Jewish life, culture, and public affairs. She is the founder of 250Shabbat, a grassroots initiative strengthening Jewish identity through the shared experience of Shabbat, and host of The Silent Revolution podcast.