Mamzer-dani

Children of Israel Are Never Alone

Hey, beloved tribe.

Thank you for abiding with me through the intensity of Nationals. I’m so glad it’s over.

It’s always somewhat eye-opening when I step back from political immersion for an all-consuming personal event that stretches over several days.

It really is like living in a different world, though even in alternate landscapes like that, I’m still wearing my Am Yisrael Chai choker and my hostage dog tags and other Jews still find me in those crowds. I love this — it’s like some fantasy fiction plot, where characters recognize tribe members who are wearing some kind of special amulet or secret ring, signifiers that are meaningless to anyone outside the fold but draw us together like magnets.

I’ll be real: it can be an inexpressible relief to be lifted, even for just a brief span of days, above the world of Trump’s Big Beautiful (monstrous, hideous) Bill, the world of would-be Mayor Mamdani, Kneecap and Bob Vylan, ICE and CECOT, an anti-science Department of Health and climate collapse.

But I’m back in the heart of it again, and it’s no better than before; in fact, it’s only getting worse by the hour.

I promised thoughts on Zohran Mamdani — or as I have come to think of him, Mamzer-dani. One of the best pieces I’ve read on all the complexities of this topic was written by my cherished friend and college classmate Victoria Cook, who founded Torah Trumps Hate (an activist community of mostly Orthodox Jews who loathe Trump) and is one of NYC’s top entertainment lawyers.

In a Facebook post that was later run in its entirety in Talking Points Memo, she wrote a Talmudic response to his primary victory that included the following excerpts:

I want to emphasize that I am not scared of Zohran as a person, I probably would really like him if I met him, in a million ways he seems like an older version of my son’s awesome smart and funny precocious friends from Bronx Science, I agree with most of his agenda, I voted for Brad Lander, but would love a younger vibrant brilliant communicator version who himself is an immigrant to lead this city of immigrants, especially now, but I am indeed scared of the ideology of some of his activism.

She went on to say that she worries about his commitment to the Boycott, Divest & Sanction movement, which rejects any efforts of dialogue and diplomacy with Israel as “normalization” and instead seeks to weaken her economically and make her a global pariah.

She also writes that his campaign rhetoric reinforces the destructive and harmful trope of “good Jews” (the anti-Zionist ones) and “bad Jews” (who won’t renounce our attachment to the Jewish nation).

And then she adds:

But much more scary to me is that his worldview connects the litany of not only global but local city ills to the Jewish State — like police abuse in NYC is because of Israel (the “Deadly Exchange”), the water crisis in Ferguson was because of Israel (“From Ferguson to Palestine”), the fires in LA were because of Israel (climate change because of the war, war spending meant no money for LA fire department, take your pick), NYC libraries are underfunded because of funding for Israel (cities have no impact on funding any part of the Israeli military) — these are not just random signs at marches, they are part of scholarly journals and part of the talking points of the leaders of the movement(s) which then end up as Instagram infographics — and to Within Our Lifetime, even cancer hospitals should be targeted by marches accusing them of collaborating with genocide because of a donor also giving money to Israel.

In this way of looking at the world’s ills, since everything is ultimately interconnected, the message is often expressly but most of the time implied, that if we could only get rid of this one thing — Zionism and the Zionist state (not the fantasy Israel he is ok with existing, the one with all of its issues like all nation states that currently actually in the real world exists where half of the remnant of world Jewry live most as refugees from the Judenrein world) then we could not only free, free Palestine but we could free the whole entire world from all its evils. I hear the message of this logic loud and clear. Maybe to others they can’t hear it because they agree with it, or it sounds like a mere whisper but to me it is quite literally shouting in my ear that the “Jewish Problem” still exists and eradication is the only solution.

I urge you to read this excellent post in its entirety here if you haven’t already.

My overriding impression of him is that he’s essentially a male version of AOC: handsome, charismatic, with very appealing politics outside the realm of the Middle East theater but very unfortunately no friend of ours within the context of the latter.

I remember how much I intially found to admire about AOC. Beautiful, sassy, young, fun, bringing fire to the fight against Republican sociopathy, populism and greed.

It was wildly disappointing to realize how much she hated Israel.

But it was even more disillusioning to realize how little she knew about it. I’ll never forget watching the interview that included this exchange:

So she hated Israel, but didn’t know why. She didn't even know what she herself meant by “occupation”.

And then she cried literal tears on the Congress floor when Israel’s Iron Dome was re-funded.

Take just a moment and think about that: she not only opposed funding a purely defensive technology — which has never killed a single human being but just protected the citizens of Israel from death! — but wept when her opposition was overridden.

So I can admire every aspect of all her other political convictions but I can never feel warmth or a sense of camaraderie with her again. Nor would I vote for her to be president, should she ever run. Even if she were running against a representative of MAGA, I would vote for a third party.

The difference between AOC and Mamdani is the latter knows more and I believe he’s more dangerous. I see in him that perfect Trojan horse combination of western leftist savvy and charm masking lethal hatred. If Qatar has spent a fortune attacking the West from within by funding the most prestigious institutions of higher education in the U.S. —and seeding them with pseudo-intellectuals speaking the language of the left to promote jihadist ideology — then Mamdani represents the perfect incarnation of that strategy.

Our space between the left and the right keeps narrowing, fam. One could call it a narrow bridge. I promise I’ll keep reaching for ways not to be afraid.

As we go into our Sabbath on what happens to be on the U.S.’s Independence Day, during a year when I’ve never felt less proud to be an American, let’s remember once again that our tribe has been through much worse, that this has always been our lot in this realm, and that somehow we survive and prevail.

I’ll be back with you next week. So much love to you all in the meantime.

Shabbat shalom.

Am Yisrael Chai.