Zohran Mamdani held a closed press meeting with rabbis on Monday afternoon, but one of the most prominent rabbinic groups in New York said it was shut out. The New York Board of Rabbis said it was not invited to the roundtable, even though the mayor’s office said the meeting was slated for 3:45 p.m.
The question now is not simply that Mamdani met with rabbis, but which rabbis were actually in the room. The New York Board of Rabbis represents more than 750 rabbis across religious denominations in the New York area, and it said bluntly that it had no role in the gathering. “He didn’t go through us,” the group said, adding, “We had nothing to do with it.”
That matters because the meeting lands at a moment when Mamdani has drawn criticism from rabbis and Jewish organizations over his criticism of Israel and his response to Jew-hatred in New York. The optics of a closed conversation with selected clergy were always going to be read against that backdrop, especially with the city’s Jewish community watching for signs that he was trying to repair relations rather than stage a narrow outreach event.
Rabbi Chaim Steinmetz said he also was not invited and dismissed the move as selective outreach. “My initial reaction is it’s classic Mamdani,” Steinmetz said. “He has no interest in the serious work of rebuilding his relationship with the Jewish community.” He added that Mamdani “wants to feign interest in the Jewish community, but is only ready to meet with Jews who he picks and chooses as ideologically comfortable,” before concluding, “Turns out, even they are fed up with him.”
Rabbi Etan Tokayer, the president of the Rabbinic Council of America, said he had not received an invitation either. Tokayer said he wrote a letter several months ago to the mayor’s Jewish liaison after it was reported that Mamdani’s wife, Rama Duwaji, had made “venomous antisemitic comments” in the past. “It was a strong but thoughtfully balanced note,” Tokayer said. “I received no reply.”
Tokayer said, “Absent any context, I cannot say whether I would attend had I been invited,” which leaves the main unanswered point in place: whether Mamdani’s meeting was meant to signal broad outreach to the Jewish community or only to a chosen few. For now, the only thing that is clear is that the biggest rabbinic voices involved in the backlash say they were not in the room.
