Jewish legal organizations have assailed New York City’s 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 “reflect” the city’s population.

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’s Advisory Committee on the Judiciary (MACJ) recruits its members.

In a letter 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 “deeply disappointed” by the MACJ’s omission of Jews.

“Excluding 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,” the letter said, citing Mamdani’s omission of Jews from a map of New York’s ethnic enclaves and his revoking of an antisemitism definition that stigmatizes the denial of Jewish self-determination.

“At a time when antisemitism is reaching historic levels in our city, leadership matters. Last week’s attack on a visibly Jewish man on the Upper West Side is yet another painful reminder that antisemitic........

© The Times of Israel