A version of this piece first ran as part of the New York Jewish Week’s daily newsletter, rounding up the latest on politics, culture, food and what’s new with Jews in the city. Sign up here to get it in your inbox.
Justine Olderman, Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s choice to lead his Office of Criminal Justice, led the Bronx Defenders during a bitter internal dispute about responding to the Hamas attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Olderman, a New York University Law professor and then-executive director of the Bronx Defenders, condemned a statement from the public defense organization’s union issued on Oct. 20, 2023. The statement said that Israel’s assault on Gaza was “genocidal,” affirmed support for “Palestinian liberation and resistance under occupation” and did not mention the Israelis killed on Oct. 7.
Olderman told her staff that the letter “caused grave risk to the organization and our ability to serve the people who need our representation,” according to a New York Times report in December 2023.
Olderman stepped down from her post in December 2023 after an announcement of her departure in August, prior to the Oct. 7 attacks. In March 2023, she publicly apologized to a staffer, Debbie Jonas, who sued the Bronx Defenders for alleged antisemitic harassment.
Jonas won a $170,000 settlement that included mandatory antisemitism training for Bronx Defenders employees administered by the Brandeis Center. Olderman said in her apology, “I feel a special kind of shame for not speaking up in the face of internal emails containing hateful personal attacks on you and your family.”