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- [00:01]
Yehuda Kurtzer
What if prayer doesn't work? This question strikes us as a distinctly modern one, an outgrowth of the slow disenchantment of the world. But in truth, the question is an old one and one given. Space to breathe Here from the Sholom.
- [00:17]
Podcast Host (Rabbi Jessica Fisher or Announcer)
Hartman Institute, Thoughts and Prayers is a new podcast that explores what Jewish prayer means and why it still matters. Join host Rabbi Jessica Fisher as she weaves together stories, classic texts and conversations with leading rabbis and thinkers like Yossi Klein.
- [00:31]
Yehuda Kurtzer
Halevi Judai is about the democratization of the spiritual of revelation.
- [00:36]
Podcast Host (Rabbi Jessica Fisher or Announcer)
Rabbi Lauren Holtzblatt I was representing the second gentleman Emhoff as his rabbi on that stage.
- [00:41]
Howard Wolfson
What you had in that moment was.
- [00:43]
Podcast Host (Rabbi Jessica Fisher or Announcer)
The pluralism of America and Rabbi Josh Warshavsky.
- [00:47]
Yehuda Kurtzer
Prayer helps me be the best version of myself.
- [00:49]
Podcast Host (Rabbi Jessica Fisher or Announcer)
It helps me figure out what do.
- [00:51]
Yehuda Kurtzer
I need in my spiritual backpack.
- [00:53]
Podcast Host (Rabbi Jessica Fisher or Announcer)
Thoughts and prayers inspiring new connections to Jewish prayer in a changing world. Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts.
- [01:07]
Yehuda Kurtzer
Hi everyone. Welcome to Identity Crisis, a show from the Sholem Hartman Institute, creating better conversations about the essential questions facing Jewish life. I'm Huda Kurtzer. We're recording on Thursday, October 16, 2025. In 2018, when the actress Cynthia Nixon was running her long shot campaign for mayor, she made headlines, at least in the Jewish media and then in the New York Post with her dastardly bagel order at Zabar's on the Upper west side. Her order was cream cheese, lox, capers and onions and tomatoes. So far so good on a cinnamon raisin bagel. The people in Zabrs were horrified. New York Post loved it the next day. The message in this coverage was unspoken but clear, and you'll forgive me for the phrase it suggested that Nixon was just too hopelessly goyish to be the mayor of New York City. But not so Zoran Mamdani, it seems, as judged by this particular test, the upstart candidate who looks very likely to be elected mayor of New York, which represents, I think, a political earthquake for the city and maybe even for the United States, eats the perfectly respectable poppy seed bagel with scallion cream cheese. He even had the chops to name the bagel place absolute bagel on the Upper west side of blessed memory, thus separating himself from the field who might have just defaulted to saying something like Zabar's or Rusten daughter's conventional and popular appetizing shops around New York City. If you want, you can read about all of the primary level mayoral candidates bagel orders in a piece by Hannah Fiore Back in the forward in June the worst of the bunch, an arguably anti Semitic order, was Andrew Cuomo's choice of a bacon, egg and cheese on an English muffin. Framing this challenging episode on a challenging topic in this way was a light way for me to introduce what I see as the Jewish complexities, maybe even paradoxes, of Zoran Mamdani. New York City has either the most Jews of any city in the world or the second most, depending on how you calculate the surrounding areas of Tel Aviv. But even separate from those numbers, which would make Jews about 12% of the city's population, New York City is saturated with Jewish history and Jewishness expressed in culture, language and power centers. Namdani has come along and effectively seized on the changing demographics and dynamics of New York City Jews to become a new Rorschach test for American Jews. He represents a proof of the end of the great American Jewish post war consensus. He is a perfect foil to President Trump in some ways, in my mind at least, a progressive version of Trump's radical class based performative politics. He's also one of the most divisive local politicians I can ever remember the Jewish community having to reckon with. Earlier in his candidacy, it was easy to claim, absent any real evidence that the Jews supporting Mamdani were the noisy radical fringe of the Jewish community today, I think it's reasonable to assume he will get at least a plurality, if not a majority, of New York Jewish voters, simultaneously becoming the most feared politician that other New York Jewish voters, the ones who are not voting for him, have ever confronted. Now, if you removed his ethnic background and his religious affiliation, I think Mamdani and his democratic socialist politics would be a completely coherent darling politician for plenty of New York Jews at the turn of the 20th century, at home in the radical politics of the Forward and the Lower east side. If you took away his Israel stuff, Mamdani would seem an obvious expression of exactly the kind of generational change you might want to see in an aging New York City Democratic Party. New York Jews, meanwhile, represent widely disparate socioeconomic status, some 20% of its households considered poor. We also range across the spectrum of ethnic diversities. Mamdani speaks that language, the language of ethnic and racial diversity, the language of socioeconomic diversity. And his campaign makes the most sense when you watch his YouTube ads trying to figure out why the city's arcane bureaucratic rules and tax schemes make it impossible for halal truck operators to sell a plate of chicken over rice for less than $10. But of course, Mamdani also represents perhaps the most pronounced rejection of the consensus pro Israel Zionist sympathetic politics that have dominated Jewish communal politics for the last 75 years. Those politics inside the Jewish community which characterized for a long time Jewish institutional power. Those in turn informed the boundaries in which politicians hoping to curry favor with the Jewish community needed to operate. Those days, it seems, are over. It's hard to tell what percentage of Mamdani's Jewish supporters support him despite his pro Palestinian, anti Israel commitments, or what percentage support him because of them. Some of the ultra Orthodox power centers in Brooklyn do not seem to care one way or another about his Israel attitudes. And taken together, the Mamdani candidacy doesn't only threaten the status quo of New York City's stance on Israel, which actually can show up meaningfully in some real decision making as we'll talk about today. But it demonstrates the growing weakness of those same Jewish communal institutions that benefited for so long from that shared consensus to those that fear Mamdani's candidacy. It's not just about the endangering of Jews and Israel under this administration. It's also the recognition of what they now may be feeling for the first time, of a loss of the power to prevent it. I had an English teacher in high school who deducted points from our essays. If we ever described something as interesting, she said that that adjective said nothing. Today I think there are many New York Jewish voters who exhibit wildly more expressive adjectives in their feeling about Zora Mamdani, ranging from ecstatic to terrified. Still, for the purpose of today's discussion offered by our nonpartisan organization, there is indeed a lot that is interesting about the Mamdani candidacy for New York City, for Jews and for the Jewish community. That's where we're here to explore. I'm thrilled today and honored to be talking to Howard Wolfson, who served as deputy mayor under Mike Bloomberg for Government Affairs. He was instrumental in the policy and political universe of Mike Bloomberg, running his super pac, advising him on politics and communication. Now directs the education program at Bloomberg Philanthropies. He has a long and storied career as a Democratic political strategist. Served as a communications director for the Senate campaigns of Chuck Schumer 1998. A while ago, Hillary Clinton, Ned Lamont, and as the co chief strategist and Communication director for the Hillary Clinton 2008 presidential campaign. Thanks for coming on Identity Christ today. Howard, thanks for being with us.
- [08:03]
Howard Wolfson
Pleasure to be with you. That was a very thoughtful introduction.
- [08:05]
Yehuda Kurtzer
No, appreciate that. Let's start general and then get narrower. I'm curious what it looks like to be on the inside of trying to manage New York City. There are such wide disparities socioeconomically, ethnically. There are so many religious communities, political viewpoints. It's one of the most diverse cities in the world. It looks impossible. I'm curious, even before we get to the Jews who exhibit, by the way, all of those spectrums, right. We're not one Jewish community. Can you talk a little bit about the day to day work of trying to hold a city together that represents so many of these different viewpoints, what that actually looks like in practice, and where the real thorny challenges of that work look like?
- [08:45]
Howard Wolfson
So I think on one level, people from every background, every ethnicity, every part of the city have some things in common. They want the trash picked up every day. They want streets that are paved, they want good schools for their children. They want streets that are safe to walk around, subways that show up on time. And the sort of basics of the job, the blocking and the tackling of those kinds of things is at heart the job. And it's not an easy job. Some of that stuff is really hard. And it's not to say that there aren't profound disagreements about how people police or about whether we should have a bike lane or not a bike lane. But at the end of the day, there is an awful lot that people have in common, regardless of where they're from, whether they've been here or their parents, grandparents have been here 100 years, or whether they came five years ago. Then there are the set of issues that maybe fall under the rubric of ethnic politics. This is an incredibly diverse city. People are very proud of where they have come from. And there is an awful lot of affiliation keeping that exists. People whose parents may have come from Ireland in the 1850s feel as connected to their Irish heritage as somebody whose parents came from India five years ago feels about India. And there has to be a certain amount, in my view, a certain amount of deference and respect for these kinds of ethnic affiliations. Almost every ethnicity in the city has a parade, they have a festival. It's important for the politician to show up. Eric Adams is famous for this. Any group of people larger than 10 that is affiliating with some ethnicity is going to have a visit from Eric Adams waving a flag, proclaiming some degree of solidarity with that group. That may be an extreme example, but any New York politician, every New York politician is going to go to parades, to houses of worship, to restaurants, to the signifiers of our connection to our own heritage and our own ethnicity, which, in a place like New York, remains a vital part of our civic life.
- [11:18]
Yehuda Kurtzer
It's interesting that you cite that because it means that, you know, you start with basically the political challenge of making sure the city operates and all of those challenges, and then you move to what sounds almost like a symbolic, representational piece of leadership. And I'm curious whether you think a mayor can kind of get away without doing the symbolic side of the work, if they're very good at column A. And it comes to Mamdani, because Mamdani has said explicitly he will provide security to the Salute to Israel parade, which is, for better or worse, the Jewish community's parade. Well, it's a salute to Israel. It's not a Jewish heritage one. But he has pretty clearly also indicated. Doesn't mean he's going to be on a float going down Fifth Avenue with an Israeli flag behind him. He almost certainly will not.
- [12:01]
Howard Wolfson
No, that seems unlikely. Most important thing is to provide the basics, right? So if the city is clean and well maintained and safe and the schools are working and the subways are moving on time, you can get away with an awful lot in lots of other arenas. Having said that, I do think that it is important to show some degree of respect. And I think maybe more to the point of your question, you try to avoid offense, right? So in the dispute between India and Pakistan, to the extent that plays out in New York City, most politicians will avoid taking one side or the other unless they represent lots of Indian New Yorkers or Pakistani New Yorkers. It's just there's no reason to offend somebody about a dispute that is occurring on the other side of the world. I think for a long time, it's pretty clear that there were Muslim Americans and Arab Americans living in New York who felt offended by the pro Israel sentiments of most of our politicians. There were perhaps not enough of them to have an electoral impact. They were not necessarily organized enough to manifest their displeasure. That's no longer true. Right. The demographics of the city are different and the politics has changed. And so you have a candidate in Mandami who is quite willing and sometimes, I think, even eager to poke a finger in the eye of pro Israel voters. And that's something that we have not experienced before. As New York Jews, we had some expectation that the default was a pro Israel position. And I think, as you got at very thoughtfully in your introduction, Mandami has changed the calculus. And he has changed the calculus, I think, for any number of reasons. One of them is, I said demographic a Hundred years ago, the city was nearly 30% Jewish. It is, let's call it roughly 12, 13% Jewish today. That has real implications for our politics. When I started working in New York City politics In the early 90s on Capitol Hill, there were nine members of the New York congressional delegation that were Jews. Today there are two. And so the demographics have changed. There are fewer Jews in New York. The Jewish community in New York, as you pointed out, is somewhat fractured and splintered along the this question of Israel and Palestine. And then we now have many more Muslim New Yorkers, Arab New Yorkers, who have a different orientation towards this conflict in the Middle East. And so the politics have been upended. In some respects, Mandami is a product of that change. In other respects, I think he is shaping the change. But the change is here. And anyone who thinks that we're going back to the status quo ante is very much mistaken in my view. We are in a new world that requires some new thinking and some significant tactical and strategic adjustments to the extent that those of us in the pro Israel community want to maintain some degree of power and influence.
- [15:26]
Yehuda Kurtzer
So I want to come back to that in a moment, but I want to riff a little bit off of your example of two members of the congressional delegation. So, you know, one of them is retiring now. Jerry Nadler seems very likely on the Upper west side to be replaced by someone else who's also Jewish. And I think when we were talking before, you had mentioned that there were three Jewish New York City mayors in the past 50 years. And who knows whether there will be another. I'm wondering how much the personal, ethnic, religious, even political opinions really matter in governing the city. And it stays on this symbolic question. I mean, I look at Bloomberg, who is Jewish, but, like, it didn't seem to matter. In other words, he didn't wear his Jewishness on his sleeve. In that way, ran the city more like the CEO of an incredibly successful corporation. And I'm curious, like, whether the mayor should be a little bit more neutral, whether that actually serves us in the long run around managing these coalitions. That way you can show up with a flag in any particular parade or event, but nobody thinks that it's actually an expression of your views. Mamdani is kind of the antithesis of that. In some ways, he's like Ed Koch, but in reverse curse. He's heavily not Jewish and his passions are somewhere else. I'm curious how you think about that from the perspective of public leadership in the city.
- [16:41]
Howard Wolfson
You rightly point out that in many respects, Mayor Bloomberg saw himself as something of a CEO of the city, focused on the kind of day to day tasks. But even he, on several occasions while mayor went to Israel to express solidarity during periods of difficulty there. Perhaps in an ideal world we could avoid a situation in which a mayor was putting a thumb on the scale or picking sides in a dispute in the old country, as it were. But I think there is a hope and an expectation that many New York voters have that the mayor will side with them in some of these politically thorny issues that are more about the world that they left behind than the world that they are currently living in. And you correctly make a distinction between the sort of the day to day policies that result in the streets being clean and safe and some of the politics of symbolism. But politics is pretty deeply symbolic. And I want a mayor who is going to clean my streets and pick up my trash. And I also want a mayor who's going to express some degree of empathy or solidarity with my very passionately felt core views. And I think on the question of Israel, there are people who feel wounded that a New York City mayor would be so anti Zionist because Zionism is so core to so many of our beliefs about who we are. And this question of symbolism and substance becomes really just inextricably entwined in ways that I think are very difficult to unpack for people.
- [18:34]
Yehuda Kurtzer
Yeah. And I think there's actually a third category, so the symbolism of the substance. But there's a third category which is places in which foreign policy attitudes do actually inform city decisions and city policy. And here Mamdani has been, I think, especially slippery because on one hand he says, uses the phrase, you know, Palestine is central to my politics. Right. Which that's a very, I think, complicated phrase for those for whom Zionism is central to their politics. It's actually useful acknowledgement. Okay, well, we are really different and we are opposed and therefore I don't have to line up with you. Right. But that's the symbolic piece. Right. Who, who I stand for and what I believe in. And at the same time, Mamdani has said things like, and some of his supporters will say New York City doesn't have a foreign policy. And I've always felt like that wasn't exactly right. New York does have a foreign policy, or at least put differently, there seem to be a lot of places where an anti Zionist, anti Israel position could translate into meaningful city policy. The awarding of city contracts, policies about boycott, decisions to use or not send in the NYPD when protests cross a threshold. So I'm curious where you think that those issues are not merely about symbolism, but also could have ramifications on real city policy.
- [19:49]
Howard Wolfson
Well, BDS would be a city policy, right? It would be something that could have a significant impact on investment in Israel. We'll see to what extent if madame is elected, how much he prioritizes that. We had a city comptroller who was on his way out, Brad Lander, who basically stopped investing in Israel bonds. The Israel economy did not collapse as a result of this. But these are things that have impact. The decision. In my view, the insane promise or commitment to arrest Bibi Netanyahu if he comes here, which Mr. Mandami has put forth, would obviously have a significant foreign policy implications should he try to actually pursue that. So, yes, I think there are some areas where a New York mayor could have a substantive impact on actual foreign policy. I don't want to overstate that. We don't have an army, but we do have a big police force and a big economy. And there are obviously some areas where a New York City mayor could have a substantive impact. I think it is fair to say, and I think we should just acknowledge this. I think even he would acknowledge it, that Mr. Madame's views on the subject of Israel and Palestine are long standing. They are passionately and deeply felt. They are well informed, at least from his perspective. They are not at all casual and they are not really subject to negotiation. And as you pointed out in your introduction, there are some people, some Jewish New Yorkers who may vote for him despite those things. And I think increasingly, and this is a subject that those of us in the Jewish community need to really grapple with, there are some Jews in New York who will be voting for him because of those things. And that too is a major change in our civic life and our politics.
- [21:46]
Yehuda Kurtzer
I'm curious if I can go back to the experience of walking into this position for a new mayor of New York City. It feels like to me as an outsider, both a position of immense power. You're enormous city with enormous influence, a massive economy, as you said, a very significant police force. At the same time, it is a city that has a lot of that power concentrated in power centers that are bigger than the mayor. I think of the unions, I think of the police force themselves, and the responsibility of a wise mayor to figure out not how to rule over those centers, but how to negotiate between them, how to be able to move things probably more glacially than radically. Can you talk a little bit about the experience that you got to witness firsthand of a mayor coming into the city and figuring out, well, I had all of these 12 ideas that I wanted to do to improve the city, But I'm only going to be able to move as quickly as, for instance, the teachers union will allow me to move on education or the police force will be allowed to move. I'm saying this in part because Mamdani himself, earlier in his career was of the defund the police crowd. He has walked that back over several years, and it's very clear, recognizes that you can't actually do that in New York City. You can't lose the police. You can't. You'll. You'll have no public safety. Can you talk a little bit about that negotiation between the power that the mayor's office wants to exercise and the recognition of the power centers that already exist within the city?
- [23:15]
Howard Wolfson
Yeah, there are significant checks on the mayor's power. The governor is a significant check on the mayor's power, because the city is technically a kind of a creature of the state, and we don't have the ability, for instance, to raise our own income taxes. And there are many other laws that the state will pass that impact what the city does either positively or negatively. For instance, in the most recent term, the city passed a law that mandated a class size, certain number of. Maximum number of students per class in the schools, didn't provide any funding to pay for the new teachers in the new classrooms. That has a major impact on the school budget and how school resources are going to be allocated. That's a decision that the state made that the city has to figure out how to work around and live with.
- [24:02]
Yehuda Kurtzer
Has to live with. Yeah.
- [24:03]
Howard Wolfson
And also, as you point out, there are unions, there are newspapers, there's media, there's real estate, there's finance. So there are many other power centers in New York. And frankly, the job is to navigate all that and try to get stuff done. I think I work for a guy who was as good at that as anybody in the history of the city. He had some advantages walking in the door. He was very wealthy. He had run an incredibly successful business. So he had some equities and some strengths in some areas outside of politics that not every politician has. But even he was stymied by forces that he could not control. Tried to build a stadium on the west side of Manhattan, was shot down. Tried to get congestion pricing, was shot down. We made an enormous amount of progress, made an enormous amount of change. I think we pushed a lot of envelopes more than Anyone in my view, almost in the history of the city, maybe outside of LaGuardia, but even Mike bumped up against some limits and some ceilings. And navigating those limits and those ceilings is a big part of the job. The biggest part of the job is managing the workforce, attracting and retaining talent at the senior level, deploying 300,000 people in service of better schools and safer streets and cleaner streets and garbage pickup. That's the most important part of the job. But then navigating, as you point out, all of these disparate power centers is another huge part of the job.
- [25:33]
Yehuda Kurtzer
The most profound skeptics, before those who engage around Israel even enter the conversation, are those who ask, can a 35 year old with no executive experience come in and run a city like this? And it feels like a virtually impossible task. The other big power question that looms over all of this is the President and the ways in which Mamdani positions himself as the one who will stand up to the power of the President. It's not hard to imagine that there are folks in the President's circle who are salivating at the prospect of a Mandani mayorship and who could envision this as being a lever for kind of anti Mamdani sentiment to fuel the Republican Party and its growth. Can you reflect a little bit on that and how significant the mayor's office is relative to national politics and how you think about the question of the relationship between the city of New York and the federal government in general?
- [26:21]
Howard Wolfson
Yeah, the city gets an enormous amount of money from the federal government. If the federal government decides to stop funding things in New York, it would have a significantly negative impact on our civic life.
- [26:32]
Yehuda Kurtzer
Parenthetically. By the way, I'm going to interrupt you. I don't know if you this yesterday weird comment by the President who said he has stopped the funding of the, of the Hudson Tunnel.
- [26:42]
Howard Wolfson
That's just one example. Look, I think on the one hand, there are people around the President who will understand that a Mandami mayoralty would be good for them politically because it would provide a foil. On the other hand, you have a president who owns real estate in the city. He has lots of friends who own real estate in the city. And so if the real estate values decline because we have a bad mayor who's running the city poorly, that's not good for the President's bottom line or the bottom line of lots of people he cares about. So my guess is he probably thinks about this in both ways. Right. There's some political advantage. There's Also a real kind of bottom line downside to him and lots of people he is friends with and cares about. And I think there is something about this city, despite the hostility that the President has shown towards it at times, that retains an interest, an outsized interest and an attraction for a guy who was born in Queens and spent his professional career here. Look, I worry about this enormously. You have seen what the President is doing in Chicago and Los Angeles. I don't want masked men in body armor with automatic weapons seizing people off our streets. Some of them might well be citizens, some of them wouldn't be. That would be profoundly disturbing to us as New Yorkers and profoundly destabilizing. I think there's every reason to believe that if Madame is elected, we might well see that. And that would be a crisis for those of us who understand how damaging that would be to the fabric of our city's life.
- [28:15]
Yehuda Kurtzer
I guess I have two. I don't know if they're nightmares or reasonable fears of what may happen in an early term confrontation between the mayor and the federal government. One is initiated by the mayor, which is either actually arresting Bibi if he came to New York City and inviting a federal government response, or initiated by the supporters of the mayor who do some sort of big performative protest or something which invites the mayor to have to make a decision one way or another, or a senior employee of the mayor who makes a BDS decision prompting the mayor to have to respond. Or it could actually be initiated by the federal government. You know, let's send in ICE troops in either of those scenarios. I guess maybe I'm asking you as a therapist, how scared should we be of those scenarios coming to play? And could this really be ground zero of a real, for the first time, confrontation between a major American city, the federal government, which has not really been amounted in other cities, the federal government has come in, come out. How scared do you think we should be of this as the site where that confrontation really takes place?
- [29:24]
Howard Wolfson
I think as an American, we should be really concerned about what is happening in our national life and our civic life and our politics. We are seeing things every day in this country that I don't think any of us thought that we would ever see. And things that are profoundly at odds with my understanding of what it means to be an American, what I believe this country stands for and is about. And I guess back to the point you were making about symbolism versus substance. When an ICE agent in Los Angeles, masked body armor, automatic weapon, seizes a woman and a child off the streets. That doesn't directly impact my life at that moment in the city, but it tears at the heart of what I believe it is to be an American and what the country stands for. And I can't divorce my feelings about that from the actual more day to day substantive concerns that I bring to our politics. And my guess is a lot of New Yorkers feel that way. And if that's how we feel about watching it in Los Angeles or Chicago, I think it will be even more profoundly destabilizing when and if it happens here.
- [30:46]
Yehuda Kurtzer
Yeah, there's so much to talk about here in terms of the fight against anti Semitism and what keeps us safe. I guess I want to come back to something you said earlier, which I think is the crux of this conversation, which is how does the Jewish community operate differently given the change in status quo, given the change of the demographics of the Jewish community? I'd love for you to reflect a little bit on how the Jewish community politically has evolved in the last 20, 30 years in relationship to city government and what's on the horizon for this. One Jewish communal insider said to me, we're not designed to be outside of great state mansion. We're designed to have access and we're not fully prepared for what it looks like to be on the outside as opposed to being on the inside. Can you talk a little bit about the mayor's office relationship to the kind of formal infrastructure of the organized Jewish community and what you see as changing?
- [31:36]
Howard Wolfson
Let me take a step back and say I don't think we would be in this situation if the Jewish community was itself more solidified and united. The first order problem we have is that for lots of reasons that I think were brought to a head by Gaza, the Jewish community is profoundly disunited. Profoundly disunited may be overstating it. Disunited. I still think the vast majority of Jewish New Yorkers are Zionists. They are pro Israel, but it ain't 100%. And the younger Jews, it may not be a strong majority at all. And when a community is itself in conflict with itself, it is hard to exercise power on its own behalf because you have some not insignificant number of Jewish voters who are voting for Mandami. So what's the incentive for him to approach the Jewish community as if we are anywhere close to being monolithically opposed to him or even willing to exercise power against him? We're not. So that's just a reality and we're gonna have some real work to do in our own House to figure out how we can present a more united front going forward than we are currently able to present. And I think that there are lots of people that I talk to in the community who just don't seem to get that this is not the Jewish community versus Mandami. This is the Jewish community at heart against itself to some extent, and then some portion of the Jewish community against Mondamini.
- [33:19]
Yehuda Kurtzer
I guess that leads to two possible scenarios. One is a strategy towards greater unification, solidifying the kind of core of the Jewish community. I believe in that. Hartman Institute believes in it. That's part of why we advocate for pluralism. It's actually to build a stronger, more robust tent, even as we represent an ideological worldview that includes Zionism as part of what we consider that tent that feels like tilting against windmills, feels like a very, very hard uphill battle. And it also postpones the possibility of collective power, because until we do the internal work, we won't be able to do the external work. What are the other kind of strategies that would be available to a Jewish community that says we're not going to get to a place of being able to be a united front, but we. The organizations that once represented the establishment, even if they're a shrinking percentage that you don't fully speak on behalf of the Jewish communities, what are the strategies that would be available for them to have greater influence in city politics, greater influence in advancing a kind of pro Israel position against an unsympathetic mayor? What else is in the toolkit?
- [34:21]
Howard Wolfson
Yeah, it's a very reasonable question. I think that we've got to pursue two strategies simultaneously. One is some degree of intergroup reconciliation and solidarity, and the other is some degree of better, greater ability to exercise electoral power on behalf of those of us who are pro Zionists. Let's say there are organizations in New York City that are working to organize Jewish New Yorkers to more effectively wield political power on behalf of a pro common sense agenda locally and a pro Israel agenda internationally. I think those efforts are important and I think that they deserve our support. The Jewish community may not end up effectively wielding power again in New York or finding intergroup solidarity until it really sees manifest the downsides of not doing so. Right now, it's all theoretical. You and I. You say you have a nightmare. I can imagine the worst case scenario, but we haven't lived it. And sometimes you got to get hit over the head in order to understand what it feels like to get hit over the head. And you can imagine it. And until it happens, you don't know what it feels like. And sometimes that's how politics works.
- [35:48]
Yehuda Kurtzer
Yeah. It does seem to me like there could be a negotiated outcome here, which wouldn't necessarily make everybody happy, but could be a modus operandi for the Jewish community. But it feels unlikely that the Jewish community would pursue it, which would be to try to convince the mayor elect, should he be elected mayor, which seems likely that as long as there's no significant change in the political status quo vis a vis Israel and Zionism in the city, that the Jewish community could tolerate less symbolic shows of support for Israel.
- [36:18]
Howard Wolfson
I'm not clear that that's a deal he's going to take.
- [36:21]
Yehuda Kurtzer
Yeah.
- [36:21]
Howard Wolfson
He says on the one hand that this is not going to be his priority. And then I look on his social media feed and he's running in a race for Gaza in Prospect park last weekend. You know how a candidate spends his time, tells you what their priorities are. And we're a month out from the election and he's raising money for Gaza and a race in Prospect Park. So it seems to me it's a priority. And I go back to what I said. His views on this topic have animated him his whole adult life. Deeply felt, longstanding, and quite sincere.
- [36:56]
Yehuda Kurtzer
Sincere, Yeah.
- [36:57]
Howard Wolfson
I met with him. Others have met with him. This was right after he won the primary. And we tried to persuade him to change his view of what globalizing the Intifada meant. And it took him a month to basically say, I'll discourage people from saying that. And if it takes a month to get to that pretty weak place, I think it's pretty indicative of a guy who is not going to trim a lot of sales in this space.
- [37:27]
Yehuda Kurtzer
Yeah. You know, it's interesting, for better or worse, New York City mayors have never gone on to national political leadership.
- [37:34]
Howard Wolfson
And worse, in my view, in one particular case. But yes.
- [37:37]
Yehuda Kurtzer
Yeah. Well, in one particular case, at the same time I looked up there's 91 mayors in the history of the city of New York, but really only 10. 10 to 12, because the first kind of 300 years of the mayorship were one and two year positions. For the first 150 years, they were all Dutch. The mayorship really takes on a different quality starting in the beginning of the 20th century, but only in the last 60, 70 years, only five mayors had one term. So on one hand, it seems like a job that is set up for being able to leave a real imprint on the city. On the other hand, it's very, very hard to move from this to somewhere else. I wonder if you have any thoughts as to why that is on both ends.
- [38:14]
Howard Wolfson
Yeah, I actually think it's pretty simple. New York City is an outlier among America, American cities and American life. If you travel around the United States, there's no other city like New York. Even other big cities are not like New York. So the skills and record and background and temperament that you need to lead New York are not the skills, background and temperament that are required or asked for to lead the rest of the country. We're this amazing, unique place that a lot of people want to come live and visit, but we are very idiosyncratic compared to the rest of the country.
- [38:51]
Yehuda Kurtzer
It always seemed to me like a place where people should go after they become President of the United States. Like that's the most comparable job. Let me ask you a lot of this question, Howard. Thank you for giving of your time, generously talking as a pro Israel New York Democratic strategist. Maybe just play out a little bit of what you think is the worst case scenario of what the next couple years could look like, and then play out what could be the best case scenario for us thinking about the future of our politics. This city.
- [39:17]
Howard Wolfson
I'll approach this first. As a New Yorker, regardless of religion, my biggest fear is that you have a young man with very little experience managing large, complex organization who has some pretty radical views on policing and in my view, education and taxes. And then also Israel, who may be a pretty bad mayor, who may find the job overwhelming or may pursue a set of strategies that I think are very much at odds with the kind of city that I want to live in and that I think most New Yorkers would want to live in. Yeah, so that's my biggest fear as a New Yorker. As a Jewish New Yorker, my fear is that you have a mayor who uses his platform and his canvas. And the New York City mayor has an enormous platform and an enormous canvas to energize and support a movement making Israelis less safe and Israel less secure.
- [40:17]
Yehuda Kurtzer
Do you have a good case scenario?
- [40:19]
Howard Wolfson
Yeah, I'll give a good case scenario. You have a very intelligent, hardworking, charismatic individual who has some pretty rare gifts and talents, who manages to rise to the occasion and surprise us pleasantly by moderating in ways that make sense to help him do his job and help this city become more affordable and more livable for people in all walks of life. That's the best case scenario.
- [40:54]
Yehuda Kurtzer
Yeah, well, listen, we have a couple of interesting weeks, months and years ahead of us. It's really interesting to be having this conversation right on the heels of the ceasefire that we hope will persist in Gaza and with that, a lifting of some of the tensions that have been fueling the polarizing politics in the city.
- [41:12]
Howard Wolfson
Yes, there is no Mandami mayoralty without Gaza. That his election is possible because his views on Israel would have been too outside the mainstream. I think his views on Israel became more mainstream because people's views on Israel hardened against Israel.
- [41:27]
Yehuda Kurtzer
Yeah.
- [41:28]
Howard Wolfson
And God willing, we will have peace in the area and in the region and perhaps we can see some depolarization, some less hostility towards Israel and Jews. That is a profound hope. I guess the other thing I would say is that best case scenario, sometimes people will surprise you. And I would not have expected Donald Trump to have been as successful a peacemaker in Israel as he has turned out to be. There is so much that he's doing in the United States that I have disagreement with. But he deserves, in my view, enormous praise for what he has been able to accomplish in the Middle East. And if you had asked me at the beginning of this year was that the trajectory that we were headed on, I would have absolutely said no. Sometimes life surprises you in negative ways, but sometimes it surprises you in positive ways. And people can sometimes surprise you positively.
- [42:26]
Yehuda Kurtzer
It's a great place to stop. Thanks so much, Howard. Thanks for being with us today.
- [42:29]
Howard Wolfson
Thank you.
- [42:39]
Podcast Host (Rabbi Jessica Fisher or Announcer)
Here are some other things that are happening at the Shalom Hartman institute this week. November 4th marks 30 years since the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. And we're still asking, what if the assassination had not dealt a fatal blow to Israel's fragile peace process and irrevocably shifted the course of its politics and diplomacy. Yehuda Kurtzer will be speaking as part of a panel on Yitzhak Rabin 30 years later on Tuesday, November 4, at 7pm Eastern Time. Register to attend in person at the Temple Emmanuel Stryker center in New York City or for streaming at the link in the show notes. The Hartman Institute is cultivating a new generation of leaders for the Jewish community of tomorrow. We've begun a new year of the Hartman Teen Fellow Fellowship, our signature leadership program for high school sophomores, juniors and seniors. This past weekend at their opening Shabbaton, over 370 fellows from 32 different US states and Canadian provinces spent a weekend building pluralistic community and engaging with important Jewish questions. The week before, they attended their first virtual Beit Midrash session with Daniel Hartman. And next week they'll embark on their first trimester of online learning. We wish our teen fellows a productive year of growth and leadership. We're grateful to the Charles H. Revson foundation for supporting the Shalom Hartman Institute's digital work, including Identity Crisis. Thanks for listening to our show and special thanks to our guest Howard Wolfson. Identity Crisis is produced by me, Tessa Zitter and our executive producer is Maital Friedman. This episode was produced with assistance from Annie Beyer Chaffetz, researched by Gabrielle Feinstone and edited by Josh Allen with music provided by so called transcripts of our show are now available on our website. Typically a week after an episode airs, we're always looking for ideas for what we should cover in future episodes. So if you have a topic you'd like to hear about or if you have comments about this episode, please write to us@identitycrisisalomhartman.org for more ideas from the Shalom Hartman Institute about what's unfolding right now. Sign up for our newsletter in the show Notes or subscribe to this podcast everywhere podcasts are available. See you next time and thanks for listening.