It’s high time for atonement.
Zohran Mamdani has “failed miserably” at showing real contrition as he changes his tune on his past hardline anti-police and anti-Israel rhetoric, a high-profile New York rabbinical leader wrote on the eve of the penitential Jewish High Holidays.
Rabbi Marc Schneier, in a pointed op-ed in amNY on Monday, argued the mayoral frontrunner has shed some of his controversial views out of political expedience, rather than a genuine change of heart.
“Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee for mayor of New York City, has repeatedly stated that his views have ‘evolved,’” Schneier wrote.
“But what he presents is not regret. It is repositioning. The first step in acknowledging your mistakes is to express regret for past actions.”
Schneier pointed out Mamdani’s flip-flops or awkward silences on his past pushes to decriminalize prostitution, abolishing the city’s specialized high school entrance exam and calling the NYPD “racist.”
But the prominent Hamptons-based rabbi reserved particular scorn for Mamdani’s refusal to condemn the “globalize the intifada” rallying cry and recent call to drop a Holocaust remembrance group’s definition of “antisemitism.”
“The High Holy Days demand of us a genuine process of introspection and self-evaluation,” Schneier wrote.
“By not expressing his contrition and confession, Mamdani has failed miserably at this test.”
The op-ed exposes the lingering distrust many New Yorkers, particularly in Jewish communities, feel toward Mamdani as the democratic socialist tries to soften his lefty edges ahead of November’s mayoral election.
A prominent Brooklyn synagogue recently restricted coveted High Holidays seats to congregants if they weren’t registered to vote — in what a source said was a move directed at the Democratic mayoral nominee.
Mamdani, who’d be the city’s first Muslim mayor if elected, drew fear among some Jewish New Yorkers for his support for the boycott, divest and sanctions movement against Israel and pledge to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he sets foot in the Big Apple.
Schneier is a friend and supporter of Mamdani’s mayoral rival Andrew Cuomo.
He recently attracted scrutiny after his 5-year-old son was listed as a donor for Cuomo’s campaign, the New York Daily News first reported.
Mamdani, a Queens lawmaker, has repeatedly contended he’s not antisemitic.
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