Declaring himself a ‘Maccabee,’ NYC’s Adams bids farewell to Jewish allies on Hanukkah

NEW YORK — At a Hanukkah party on Monday night, New York City Mayor Eric Adams walked past the podium ahead of his speech to deliver his address from the floor, standing among the Jewish crowd.

“I wanted to come down among you because all of these ropes keep us away from each other,” Adams said. “I’m not here to be treated as though there’s a level of royalty that’s associated with being the mayor of New York. I want you to know that your pain, I feel your pain.”

The Hanukkah party, held at a historical courthouse in downtown Manhattan, marked Adams’s final public Jewish event before his successor Zohran Mamdani takes office, heralding a seismic shift in the Jewish community’s relationship with City Hall. For the first time, the US city’s Jews — the largest Jewish Diaspora community — will be faced with an anti-Zionist mayor viewed as a threat by the majority of Jewish New Yorkers, an abrupt shift from Adams’s outspoken support for Israel and conservative Jewish communities.

Adams has deep bonds to New York City’s Jews stretching back decades, particularly Orthodox communities in Brooklyn, while Mamdani has had a rocky relationship with mainstream Jews due to his antagonism toward Israel and Zionism, and has allied with far-left Jewish critics of Israel and the Adams administration.

The mayor’s alignment with mainstream Jews and Israel was on display on Monday night.

In his speech, Adams tied contemporary antisemitism to historical persecution of Jews, citing ancient Rome, the Spanish Inquisition and the Holocaust.

“This is not about Israel. This is about Jewish people. And they can use whatever terms they want. They can sugarcoat it all they want,” he said of antisemites. “We have to be dedicated to stopping the ignorance, to stopping the false narratives that are out there, to stopping those who want to start spreading this hate even more.”

Adams’s recent statements have been rife with criticism of Mamdani’s anti-Israel rhetoric, without mentioning his successor by name.

“I am not going anywhere, and we have a job in front of us in the next administration,” Adams said on Monday.

He implied that Mamdani was a hypocrite for refusing to recognize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state in comments at the Hanukkah party and a media event before it.

“Go to the Vatican. That’s a Catholic country. Go to Tibet. That’s a monk country, or go to Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Oman. I’ve visited these countries, folks. These are Muslim countries,” he said at the media event. “You can’t say, ‘You can’t have a Jewish state, but you can have a state for any other group.’ Come on.”

“This is not about Israel, this is about hate for Jewish people and we have to be honest with that. This country and this globe is known to hate groups and right now, what is happening to Jewish human beings, it’s just wrong,” he said.

Adams said he did not have an immediate desire to remain in public life, and that his plans included smoking cigars, drinking Scotch and spending time with family, and could be summed up in “just three letters — fun.”

Before becoming mayor, Adams climbed the police ranks, then became a local and state elected representative in Brooklyn, building ties with Jewish communities in the borough. The crowd at the Hanukkah party was heavily Orthodox, reflecting Adams’s connection to Brooklyn’s Jews.

While he shepherded the city’s recovery from the COVID pandemic and brought down crime, his administration was plagued by corruption allegations and his dealings with the Trump administration, sinking his public approval, although he maintained a well of support among Jews. He dropped out of the mayoral race to endorse his former adversary, the centrist Andrew Cuomo, who lost to Mamdani. It wasn’t until Adams dropped out that Orthodox groups lined up behind Cuomo.

His identification with the city’s Jews appears to be based on genuine affinity for the community, and not political expediency. Since dropping his reelection bid, Adams has consistently spoken out against antisemitism, warning that discrimination against Jews was spreading “like a cancer.” He issued executive orders supporting Israel and the Jewish community in his final weeks in office, setting up roadblocks for the Mamdani administration.

He has a long, personal relationship with Devorah Halberstam, a Chabad community leader in attendance on Monday whose son, Ari, was murdered in a terrorist shooting in 1994. Halberstam has said that Adams has supported her family for decades, and “not just when the cameras were there.” One of Adams’s final trips abroad as mayor was to Israel.

A lawsuit a former staffer filed against Adams in October showed that, behind the scenes following the October 2023 Hamas attack on Israel, Adams was damning toward anti-Israel protests in the city, comparing the demonstrations to Ku Klux Klan rallies. Adams’s speech after October 7 struck a chord with New York Jews, while Mamdani focused his criticism on Israel.

In addition to his relationships with Jews from Brooklyn, Adams, who is Black and Christian, has often linked his support for Jews to the alliance between the Black and Jewish communities in the struggle for civil rights.

“We’ve always been side by side, and we’ve lost an entire generation that don’t understand the history that we had together, and we need to remind them of that,” he said on Monday.

‘Fight for what is right’

Adams’s instinctive, old-guard connection to mainstream and religious Jews contrasts with Mamdani. The mayor-elect has Jewish allies who vouch for him, but they are led by progressive activist groups that are critical of Israel. If Mamdani holds Hanukkah parties as mayor, the makeup of the crowd will likely be drastically different from that in attendance at Adams’s event.

In one exception, Mamdani has found a warm welcome with the Satmars, a leading Hasidic community in Brooklyn, appearing at Satmar community events this week. The Satmar leader who brokered the relationship, Rabbi Moishe Indig, has said the relationship was “transactional,” though, and that he was unable to endorse Mamdani while Adams was still in the race “because we are loyal to our friends.” The Satmars are theologically non-Zionist, smoothing out their relationship with Mamdani.

Adams’s support for Israel sometimes veered past the mainstream Jewish community’s position, for example, heralding Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for “defending the Western world” in September — an accolade even many pro-Israel Jews would shy away from. Mamdani has vowed to arrest Netanyahu if given the chance, despite lacking the authority to do so.

Adams maintained his steadfast support for Israel as the destruction in Gaza progressed, his Democratic party became increasingly hostile to the Jewish state, and other pro-Israel New York leaders criticized the war. Adams does not appear to have ever said a bad word about Israel.

At the Monday night Hanukkah event, Adams lit a menorah that Israeli artist Eli Gross made out of fragments of missiles fired at Israel. The “Hanukkiah of Hope” was previously installed in Tel Aviv’s Hostages Square.

The massacre of Jews in Australia this week drew another line between Adams and Mamdani. Adams said the attack was “exactly what it means to ‘globalize the intifada,’” in another implicit criticism of Mamdani, who welcomed the phrase last year, before later saying he would “discourage” the slogan.

“The next administration has to be extremely clear,” Adams said on Monday. “You can’t stand in front of a synagogue and call for ‘Globalize the intifada.'”

“You just can’t do these things and the mayor can’t be slight, he has to be very clear: ‘This is not acceptable’. And all those who are part of his team and supporters, he needs to tell them, ‘Listen, you can’t support me and do disruptive behavior in the city,'” Adams said.

The attack in Sydney is exactly what it means to “globalize the Intifada.”

What we witnessed in Australia was the real-world application of that call to violence.

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Some of my remarks today in the aftermath of a horrific antisemitic terror attack in Australia, carried out as Jews… pic.twitter.com/5cBupyhxC2

— Eric Adams (@ericadamsfornyc) December 15, 2025

The killings presented a challenge to Mamdani as Jewish leaders called out his past support for the “Globalize the intifada” protest slogan as contributing to threats against Jews.

Mamdani has shown a lack of understanding of mainstream Jewish positions, having to repeatedly modify statements about Jews or Israel. After a caustic protest outside a synagogue last month, Mamdani spoke out against both the protesters and the synagogue for allegedly violating international law. The synagogue had been hosting an event about immigrating to Israel, and the organization holding the event provides some information on moving to settlements for those interested. After Mamdani’s statement, his transition team was reportedly surprised by the backlash.

His response to the Sydney massacre was more adept from the Jewish community’s point of view. His condemnation of the shooting seemed to hit the right notes, calling the killings “a vile act of antisemitic terror.”

The attack targeted an event hosted by the Chabad Hasidic movement, whose home base is in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, and Mamdani said he would hold “the Chabad movement in my prayers.”

Chabad holds public menorah lightings around the city, but Mamdani would likely be unwelcome at the events. Jewish Crown Heights overwhelmingly voted for Cuomo in the mayoral race.

Mamdani instead quietly visited the gravesite of Chabad’s late, venerated leader, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson. Photos showed Mamdani, wearing a kippah, praying at the holy site in Queens. The visit was a kind gesture to the Chabad movement, and a low-stakes one. The gravesite has an open-door policy toward all visitors, including politicians, and is a revered holy site, making turmoil during his visit less likely.

???????? NYC Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani visited the Ohel of the Lubavitcher Rebbe in Queens this evening to pay his respects to the victims of the Bondi Beach terror attack.

Mamdani also made a private prayer at the grave. pic.twitter.com/W7KKLwpkYz

— Jacob N. Kornbluh (@jacobkornbluh) December 16, 2025

A Mamdani spokesperson did not respond to a request for information about his plans to visit Hanukkah events.

Adams closed his Hanukkah speech by declaring himself a “Maccabee,” referring to the Jews who led the Hanukkah revolt in ancient Israel, a comparison he has made before.

“What we’re asking today, on this night of Hanukkah, [is] where are the Maccabees? Where are the populations that are willing to stand up and fight against darkness? I am a Maccabee. And I want the rest of the Maccabees to stand up and fight for what is right,” he said.