Herbert Henry Lehman (1878-1963), didn’t come from humble beginnings. He was the son of one of the three Lehman brothers who founded the global financial services firm that bears their name. Lehman Brothers was the fourth-largest investment bank in the U.S. The firm had some $600 billion in assets when it filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy (the largest such filing in U.S. history) in 2008, at the center of the subprime mortgage crisis.

Herbert Lehman became a partner in that firm in 1908. Other than his service in World War I (he attained the rank of Colonel and was awarded the Army Distinguished Service Medal), he remained with Lehman Brothers until 1928, when he began his political career.

Herbert Lehman. Public domain.

That career actually had earlier beginnings, when he managed Alfred E. Smith’s gubernatorial campaign in 1926 and became chairman of the finance committee of the Democrat party in 1928. It was also in that year that he was elected lieutenant governor of New York.

Lehman was New York’s first and only Jewish governor until Eliot Spitzer was elected in 2006. Both were Democrats, but whereas Herbert Lehman served four terms with relative distinction, Spitzer lasted little more than a year in office before being forced out amid a prostitution scandal.

In 1941, Lehman withdrew from participating in a fundraiser for anti-Nazi activists imprisoned in France, on the grounds that some of the other sponsors had communist ties. Although, as a Jew, he was conflicted over (and drew criticism for) his withdrawal of support, this was his commitment to opposing communism wherever it might raise its head.

Lehman resigned from office just shy of the end of his term in 1942 to accept an appointment to the State Department. He then continued his career in public service as U.S. Senator from New York from 1949 to 1957.

So, why am I bothering to tell the political history of Herbert Lehman, who has been gone since 1963? What could he have to do with anything going on today?

Well, in addition to being a politician, Lehman was a philanthropist. Throughout his life, his generosity benefited organizations such as the Henry Street Settlement and the NAACP. He established the Herbert Lehman Education Fund, which provides scholarships to outstanding undergraduate and law school students. Lehman College at CUNY is named for him, as are buildings in several other colleges and universities, as well as the Herbert H. Lehman Center for American History at Columbia University.

Also at Columbia is the Herbert Lehman Professorship of Government. This is what brings Herbert Lehman into relevance to current events. Herbert Lehman endowed a chair at Columbia, and who should be the current occupant of that chair but Mahmood Mamdani, the father of Zohran Mamdani (aka Mamdani, Shmamdani), the man currently running for mayor of NYC!

Zohran Mamdani’s policies clearly exhibit a fondness for communism and an animus toward Israel and Jews. One has to wonder whence came such beliefs and attitudes, and whether “the apple does not fall far from the tree.” For evidence of the elder Mamdani’s attitudes regarding Israel, see here. He’s fully on board with condemning Israel’s actions in Gaza as “genocide.”

So, is this yet another case of Jews enabling those who would destroy them? Is Herbert Lehman rolling over in his grave at the realization that his endowing a professorship at Columbia has made it possible for the occupant of that chair to instill in his son a fondness for a failed political system that has spread misery and death wherever it has been implemented? Has Herbert Lehman’s philanthropy also enabled that same professor to raise a son who praises Israel’s avowed enemies, even the enemies who perpetrated the worst slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust?

Has Herbert Lehman’s generosity helped set the wheels in motion for the city with the largest Jewish population outside Israel to be on the brink of being governed by an avowed hater of Jews, a keffiyeh-wearing, “Palestinian” flag-waving champion of a global intifada? Not to mention that a man who steadfastly opposed Communism may have, by his philanthropy, helped set the stage for NYC to elect a Communist mayor!

None of this, I’m sure, was Herbert Lehman’s intent. It’s in no way on par with the actions of disgusting, self-hating Kapos like Bernie Sanders and Chuck “Schmucky” Schumer, who have stood beside Zohran Mamdani and enthusiastically endorsed his candidacy (as well as standing idly by as their party embraces other virulent Jew-haters), but it’s still an example of a Jew taking actions that will ultimately harm Jews everywhere. It’s a lesson in irony, a phenomenon that’s been compared to “chickens voting for Colonel Sanders.”

I’m sure that Mahmood Mamdani, who is still among the living, is smiling at what he has wrought. I wonder whether Herbert Lehman, who is no longer among the living, is also smiling at what he (albeit inadvertently) has wrought.

Stu Tarlowe has been contributing to American Thinker since 2010; most of his work for AT can be viewed here. He has also been published by World Net Daily and JPFO. He posts irregularly on Stu’s Stack o’ Stuff, where subscriptions are currently free and where the content is not exclusively political, but includes memoirs, observations, and even jokes.