He wished Jewish New Yorkers a happy new year in Hebrew. He checked in with community leaders. And on Monday night, Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee for New York City mayor, attended Rosh Hashana services for the first time.
For most New York politicians, the High Holy Days each autumn present an easy opportunity to show support for the city’s vibrant Jewish community. They share holiday greetings on social media, or perhaps show up at a temple or two.
But for Mr. Mamdani, the 10-day stretch will be something more complicated, a high-profile election-season test of his relationship with a group of New Yorkers that is deeply split over his candidacy.
It is no simple balancing act. Mr. Mamdani, a state assemblyman and democratic socialist, has no intention of backing off his strong criticism of Israel, which has unsettled some Jewish voters, especially older ones. Yet allies say he is trying to reassure even those who oppose him that he values their interests and would seek to protect them as much as he would other New Yorkers.
Monday night’s services offered the friendliest of preludes. He planned to sit next to Brad Lander, the comptroller and an ally, in Brooklyn at one of the city’s most progressive synagogues, Kolot Chayeinu. Neither man was expected to speak, as is customary.
In a minute-long video on Monday, though, Mr. Mamdani, 33, spoke of how Jews had endured “wave after wave of persecution.” He name-checked conservative Jewish communities in Williamsburg in Brooklyn and Riverdale in the Bronx, and suggested that the introspection of the Jewish holidays should inspire all New Yorkers.
“It is a tradition we could all do well to emulate: to build a city that feels sweet and learns from what did not work in the past, where we are not afraid to admit our failings and grow accordingly,” he said. “And where, above all, every New Yorker is safe and cherished by the city they love.”
“Shana Tova, New York,” he concluded.
In the coming days, Mr. Mamdani, who is Muslim, plans to do something he has seldom done on the campaign trail: show up at explicitly Jewish spaces where he is not universally liked and where rabbis typically fight to protect services as a place for prayer, not politics.
Next week, Mr. Mamdani intends to join Representative Jerrold Nadler for Yom Kippur services at a more mainstream congregation on the Upper West Side. Some congregants, the congressman said, “would be frankly very upset to see him there.”
Other plans were still taking shape, the Mamdani campaign said. But Jewish allies said his outreach was important, especially as his political opponents continue to portray Mr. Mamdani’s rise as a threat to Jewish New Yorkers.
“When it comes to identity politics, everything in New York City is always touchy,” said Ruth W. Messinger, an elder stateswoman in Manhattan’s Jewish circles who was the Democratic nominee for mayor in 1997. “It’s important for the Jewish community to see he recognizes this holiday and sees its significance.”
Mr. Nadler, who has endorsed Mr. Mamdani, was more blunt. “Obviously he ought to be trying to reassure the Jewish community,” he said. “The community is very divided, basically on age lines.”
Indeed, spread across five boroughs and a handful of denominations, New York’s Jewish community is the largest in the world outside Israel, and is far from monolithic.
While some high-profile rabbis and congregations have objected to his pro-Palestinian stances, polls suggest Mr. Mamdani is still winning a substantial portion of Jewish New York. Support is especially strong among younger Jews who are more likely than their parents and grandparents to share his criticism of Israel and its war in Gaza.
Kolot Chayeinu, a nondenominational synagogue known for its progressive activism, was carefully chosen as a first holiday stop. It is based in one of the city’s most affluent liberal neighborhoods, a stretch of brownstones near Prospect Park where Mr. Mamdani won nearly 50 percent of the vote in June’s Democratic primary, followed by Mr. Lander.
In October 2023, the congregation was among the very first to call for a cease-fire in Gaza, just weeks after Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel, the deadliest assault on Jews since the Holocaust. Since then, the congregation has drawn national attention as a hub for Jews organizing on behalf of Palestinians and against Israel as a Jewish state.
The services on Monday were being held at Cornerstone Baptist Church in Bedford-Stuyvesant to accommodate a larger crowd. Sam Kates-Goldman, the congregation’s rabbi, declined an interview request.
Mr. Mamdani is not the only candidate trying to step into less familiar spaces to build support. After facing sharp criticism for neglecting the city’s Muslim population, former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, his top rival, recently paid a series of visits to mosques around the city. (On Friday, he was heckled during one such visit.)
Mr. Cuomo, a staunch defender of Israel, is aggressively competing for the Jewish vote, too, and stopped in a more politically conservative Brooklyn synagogue over the weekend. Mayor Eric Adams, another Israel ally who is running on a third-party line, planned to attend a Rosh Hashana service on Tuesday, his spokeswoman said.
But the stakes are different for Mr. Mamdani, and not solely because he is the front-runner to become the city’s next leader. He also has few ties to mainstream institutions in a Jewish community that has formed a key plank of every winning Democratic mayoral coalition for decades.
Where his predecessors like Mr. Adams or Bill de Blasio spent decades building relationships with a diverse array of Jewish New Yorkers, from the nonreligious to the ultra-Orthodox, Mr. Mamdani has been much more closely associated with other groups.
As a candidate, he has tried to draw a distinction between his views toward Israel and toward Jews in New York and abroad, arguing passionately that being anti-Israel does not make him antisemitic.
Mr. Mamdani supports the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, or B.D.S., to try to pressure Israel to grant Palestinians full rights. He has denounced the war in Gaza as a genocide and does not believe Israel should exist as an explicitly Jewish state.
During the primary, Mr. Mamdani set off a political firestorm when he declined to condemn the phrase “globalize the intifada,” a common pro-Palestinian rallying cry. He has since said he understands that many Jews hear the phrase as a call to violence, and that he will discourage its use.
And in a recent interview with The New York Times, Mr. Mamdani renewed a promise to, if elected, arrest Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel on an international criminal warrant should he visit the city.
But he has also called for significantly increasing funding for hate-crime prevention programs in New York City. He recently recorded a video with the comedian Ilana Glazer, who is Jewish, to highlight how the safety of Jews and Muslims is “inextricably linked.”
The High Holy Days appearances come after Mr. Mamdani has spent months meeting privately with rabbis and Jewish political leaders. Mr. Mamdani had hoped to visit more synagogues sooner, but several people familiar with the discussions said some leaders had been hesitant to host him.
David G. Greenfield, a prominent Orthodox Jewish Democrat who has not backed Mr. Mamdani, urged the candidate to talk more about campaign issues over the holidays, and to stress to New Yorkers “that he is committed to their identity and safety.”