{"id":308400,"date":"2026-07-29T07:40:12","date_gmt":"2026-07-29T07:40:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/308400\/"},"modified":"2026-07-29T07:40:12","modified_gmt":"2026-07-29T07:40:12","slug":"jewish-legal-groups-slam-mamdanis-exclusion-of-jews-from-judicial-appointments-panel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/308400\/","title":{"rendered":"Jewish legal groups slam Mamdani’s exclusion of Jews from judicial appointments panel"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jewish legal organizations have assailed New York City\u2019s 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 \u201creflect\u201d the city\u2019s population.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s Advisory Committee on the Judiciary (MACJ) recruits its members.<\/p>\n

In a letter<\/a> 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 \u201cdeeply disappointed\u201d by the MACJ\u2019s omission of Jews.<\/p>\n

\u201cExcluding 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,\u201d the letter said, citing Mamdani\u2019s omission<\/a> of Jews from a map of New York\u2019s ethnic enclaves and his revoking<\/a> of an antisemitism definition that stigmatizes the denial of Jewish self-determination.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt a time when antisemitism is reaching historic levels in our city, leadership matters. Last week\u2019s attack on a visibly Jewish man on the Upper West Side is yet another painful reminder that antisemitic violence is real and growing,\u201d the letter said.<\/p>\n

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Mamdani critics had blamed the attack<\/a>, in which the assailant yelled \u201cAllahu Akbar\u201d before stabbing an Asian man and an Orthodox Jew, on the mayor\u2019s anti-Israel rhetoric, including a video statement the day before in which he demanded the arrest of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.<\/p>\n

\t\"\"<\/a>
\n\t\tThe scene of a stabbing on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, New York City, July 23, 2026. (Luke Tress\/Times of Israel)<\/p>\n

The Jewish lawyers\u2019 letter to Mamdani said his \u201cunprecedented rejection\u201d of Jewish MACJ candidate John Leventhal, a retired judge on the Appellate Division of the New York State Supreme Court, was \u201cparticularly disconcerting given the lack of Jewish representation on the committee.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a statement quoted by The New York Times<\/a> and Forward<\/a>, Mamdani spokesman Joe Calvello said it was \u201cfalse\u201d to suggest the selection of MACJ members was \u201cmotivated by religion.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cTo date, Mayor Mamdani has had the privilege of appointing a dozen qualified judges from a range of backgrounds, including Jewish judges,\u201d said Calvello.<\/p>\n

According to the spokesman, Mamdani\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\t\"\"<\/a>
\n\t\tPro-Israel protesters hold signs at a rally in opposition to New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani in New York, July 26, 2026. (AP Photo\/Ryan Murphy)<\/p>\n

Calvello did not specify whether other Jewish candidates had been considered, and did not challenge the charge that the MACJ announced<\/a> by Mamdani last Wednesday excluded Jews altogether.<\/p>\n

The announcement quoted Mamdani\u2019s chief counsel, Ramzi Kassem, as saying the members \u201coffer a truly representative cross-section of the legal profession in New York City.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mamdani, who took office on January 1, also said in a January 2 executive order<\/a> establishing the MACJ that \u201cmembership of the Committee shall reflect the cosmopolitan population of the City of New York.\u201d<\/p>\n


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\t\t\tAlready a member? Sign in to stop seeing this<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jewish legal organizations have assailed New York City\u2019s anti-Zionist mayor, Zohran Mamdani, after he announced a panel on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":308401,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[3862,9,24,55,96686,54,81621,56,82],"class_list":["post-308400","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-antisemitism","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-headlines","tag-new-york-city-jews","tag-new-york-city-news","tag-new-york-jews","tag-ny","tag-zohran-mamdani"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308400","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=308400"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308400\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/308401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=308400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=308400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=308400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}