Mamdani appoints head of progressive Jewish group to lead antisemitism office

Phylisa Wisdom of NY Jewish Agenda to head city’s Office to Combat Antisemitism; her group is Zionist, unlike Mamdani, though she has also expressed opposition to IHRA definition of antisemitism

By Luke Tress

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5 February 2026, 4:44 am

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Luke Tress is The Times of Israel's New York correspondent.

NEW YORK — New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has appointed the director of a progressive Jewish group, Phylisa Wisdom of the New York Jewish Agenda, to head his Office to Combat Antisemitism, a Mamdani spokesperson said on Wednesday.

The office, housed in City Hall, coordinates the response to antisemitism in city agencies.

Mamdani’s predecessor, Eric Adams, established the office in May 2025, and Adams’s appointee Rabbi Moshe Davis led the body since Mamdani’s inauguration last month.

Mamdani’s potential appointee to the office had been the subject of speculation for weeks.

Wisdom and the New York Jewish Agenda are progressive, but support a Jewish Israel, putting them closer to New York’s Jewish center than Mamdani, who has identified as an anti-Zionist. The group identifies as Zionist, and is opposed to the Netanyahu government, as well as the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign targeting Israel, which Mamdani supports.

Under Wisdom’s leadership, the New York Jewish Agenda has spoken out against antisemitism on both the left and right. After a pro-Hamas protest outside a synagogue last month, for example, the New York Jewish Agenda decried the rally as “unambiguous and unacceptable antisemitism,” while Mamdani spoke out against the protest, but did not mention antisemitism.

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani arrives for a visit of the Department of Sanitation’s snow melting operations in New York, January 29, 2026. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)

Wisdom’s appointment could lead to tensions with some Hasidic communities, however.

Wisdom has led the New York Jewish Agenda since 2023. Before that, she worked for Yaffed, an organization that pushes for secular education reforms in Hasidic yeshivas. The Hasidic community is firmly opposed to forced reforms in the yeshiva system, a cornerstone of the community, and Yaffed is viewed with deep enmity.

Mamdani has found allies within the Satmar Hasidic community, the group most targeted in the campaign for reforms in yeshivas.

Mamdani has said he would not support forcing reforms on the school system.

Orthodox Jews are disproportionately targeted in antisemitic hate crimes.

Illustrative: A man walks as police patrol a neighborhood in Brooklyn with a large Orthodox Jewish community on October 12, 2023, in New York City. (Spencer Platt/ Getty Images/AFP)

Davis said he wished Wisdom well and that he “genuinely hopes she succeeds in making New York City safer for a Jewish community that is understandably on edge,” but added that he was “concerned about this appointment.”

“The Mayor’s Office to Combat Antisemitism was built to be operational, not symbolic. It requires government experience, strong agency relationships, and trust across the Jewish community to function effectively from day one,” Davis said. “Without those foundations, there is a real risk the office will struggle to deliver when Jewish New Yorkers need it most.”

The New York Jewish Agenda, founded in 2020, is not among the larger Jewish groups active in the city. There was no immediate comment on her appointment from the city’s leading Jewish groups.

Wisdom said she will step down from her role at the New York Jewish Agenda in two weeks to take the reins of the antisemitism office. The group’s board chair, Nancy Kaufman, said in a statement that she will manage the group’s affairs while it searches for its next director.

Mamdani repealed City Hall’s use of the IHRA definition of antisemitism on his first day in office, leaving the Office to Combat Antisemitism without a definition to guide its policies. The IHRA definition equates some forms of Israel criticism with antisemitism, while stating that criticizing Israel like other countries is not antisemitic. Wisdom has expressed opposition to the IHRA definition in the past.

The issue of antisemitism is a concern in the city because Jews are targeted in hate crimes far more than any other group.

In January, Mamdani’s first month in office, Jews were targeted in an average of a hate crime per day, a steep increase over January 2025, but a slight decrease from the previous month.

The City Council established a parallel antisemitism task force last week, but it remains unclear how or if the council’s group will interact with the task force in City Hall.

The Jewish City Council speaker, Julie Menin, has also pushed a five-point plan for combating antisemitism that took shape last week with the introduction of several bills, including one that would limit protests at synagogues and other sensitive sites.