It was an agonizing choice which I labored over for weeks and weeks.
As both a New Yorker and a lifelong Zionist, I asked myself, "Who would be the best candidate for mayor to lead our city forward in these dark times?"
It was, however, a talk with a much respected family friend, an Israeli who has lived in New York for 25 years, who helped me make the ultimate decision.
He said the following on Andrew Cuomo, who I already mistrusted as arrogant and too old and a womanizer: "I'd vote for Bibi, who you know I despise, before I'd vote for Cuomo." He also observed at length how Israelis – who all said to me Mamdani was an antisemite who would be the ruination of Jews in America – did not have the context with which to understand this mayoral race, just as Israelis have accused Americans of having the same lack of context when confronted with their overwhelming support of the Palestinian cause.
Americans who were on the side of the Palestinians did not understand what the phrase "From the river to the Sea" actually meant; they had never visited Israel and did not understand how close the borders and constant attacks were: never fully understood how Hamas has deliberately and for decades embedded their fighters and ammunition in hospitals and schools and mosques without regard for their own civilians, or how the Netanyahu government arrogantly dismissed the possibility of a Hamas attack of the severity of October 7. Context is indeed critical.
So what to do? Mamdani is young, energetic and on the side of the poor and working class immigrants who are the engine that drive this city. He is also surrounded by Jews from the previous and this new administration who will advise him and hopefully keep him in check. Even Barack Obama has said he will mentor him if asked, and I truly believe he will be too busy learning how to run this enormous and complicated city to have time to make life miserable for the Jews here.
So, perhaps because I am a life long educator and believer in raising up the disenfranchised, I voted for the future rather than the past.
The writer of this column, a Jew from New York, asked to stay anonymous.
