Jewish legal groups slam Mamdani’s exclusion of Jews from judicial appointments panel

Jewish legal organizations have assailed New York City’s anti-Zionist mayor, Zohran Mamdani, after he announced a panel on local judicial appointments that included not a single Jew among its 18 members, who the mayor had said would “reflect” the city’s population.

New York is home to the largest Jewish population in the US. Jews count for about one-tenth of city residents and are ubiquitous in the legal professions, from which the Mayor’s Advisory Committee on the Judiciary (MACJ) recruits its members.

In a letter to Mamdani on Monday, the presidents of the Brandeis Association of Queens, the New York County Jewish Lawyers Guild, the Brooklyn Brandeis Society and the Bronx County Jewish Bar Association said they were “deeply disappointed” by the MACJ’s omission of Jews.

“Excluding Jewish representation from this committee is neither reflective nor inclusive. It follows a troubling pattern that has left many Jewish New Yorkers feeling increasingly marginalized,” the letter said, citing Mamdani’s omission of Jews from a map of New York’s ethnic enclaves and his revoking of an antisemitism definition that stigmatizes the denial of Jewish self-determination.

“At a time when antisemitism is reaching historic levels in our city, leadership matters. Last week’s attack on a visibly Jewish man on the Upper West Side is yet another painful reminder that antisemitic violence is real and growing,” the letter said.

Mamdani critics had blamed the attack, in which the assailant yelled “Allahu Akbar” before stabbing an Asian man and an Orthodox Jew, on the mayor’s anti-Israel rhetoric, including a video statement the day before in which he demanded the arrest of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The Jewish lawyers’ letter to Mamdani said his “unprecedented rejection” of Jewish MACJ candidate John Leventhal, a retired judge on the Appellate Division of the New York State Supreme Court, was “particularly disconcerting given the lack of Jewish representation on the committee.”

In a statement quoted by The New York Times and Forward, Mamdani spokesman Joe Calvello said it was “false” to suggest the selection of MACJ members was “motivated by religion.”

“To date, Mayor Mamdani has had the privilege of appointing a dozen qualified judges from a range of backgrounds, including Jewish judges,” said Calvello.

According to the spokesman, Mamdani’s team passed on Leventhal upon learning the retired justice had served on the legal team of convicted child sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell, accomplice of the high-flying late financier Jeffrey Epstein.

Calvello did not specify whether other Jewish candidates had been considered, and did not challenge the charge that the MACJ announced by Mamdani last Wednesday excluded Jews altogether.

The announcement quoted Mamdani’s chief counsel, Ramzi Kassem, as saying the members “offer a truly representative cross-section of the legal profession in New York City.”

Mamdani, who took office on January 1, also said in a January 2 executive order establishing the MACJ that “membership of the Committee shall reflect the cosmopolitan population of the City of New York.”