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Jewish voters in Park Slope say they are ready for a change

Maya Kornberg, a Jewish Democrat running to unseat far-left city councilmember Shahana Hanif, said ‘the City Council is not the State Department and is not going to solve a conflict by passing a resolution’

An incident of antisemitic vandalism targeting a popular Israeli-owned restaurant in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn on Sunday morning sparked an outcry from the city’s elected officials, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) and Mayor Eric Adams, who condemned the attack that scrawled graffiti reading “genocide cuisine” and “Israel steals culture” while splattering red paint on the entrance.

For Jewish community members, the vandalism of Miriam, a beloved Middle Eastern eatery, was the latest instance of rising antisemitism fueled by the Oct. 7 attacks and Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza, contributing to a growing sense of unease that many Park Slope constituents feel their local representative has failed to address.

Shahana Hanif, a far-left city councilmember who has faced backlash from the city’s Jewish leaders over her hostile positions on Israel and handling of antisemitism in the district, posted a statement to social media denouncing the attack, which she called a “hateful act” that “threatens the safety of our community,” and offered her support to the restaurant’s owner.

But her response to the incident, which did not mention antisemitism, drew widespread criticism from Jewish leaders who insist Hanif has exhausted goodwill from the community — particularly after a tense meeting last year during which she dismissed concerns that some of her statements on Israel were stoking antisemitism and refused to commit to a request to publicly condemn Hamas, among other comments that participants found alarming.

Even as Hanif has more recently made overtures to the Jewish community as she faces reelection in the June primary, activists eager for new representation are hopeful that her challenger, Maya Kornberg — a Jewish Democrat who announced her candidacy last month — will be more sensitive to their needs amid an uptick in antisemitic activity in central Brooklyn and beyond.

For her part, Kornberg, who is now on maternity leave from her role leading research on elections and government at New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice, responded to what she described in social media comments as “blatant antisemitism” against Miriam, saying that she was “deeply saddened to see” it had been targeted. On Sunday night, she was among several local community leaders who visited the restaurant for dinner, posting a photo with the owner. 

In a recent interview at a cafe not far from Miriam, Kornberg, 33, said her experience launching her first campaign for public office had underscored the persistence of antisemitism as she faced a swell of online vitriol attacking her Jewish identity. 

When she announced she was running on social media in December, she was “shocked to see the blatantly antisemitic comments,” she told Jewish Insider last week. “There were people saying ‘Jews don’t belong in public office,’ ‘You kill children in Gaza’ and ‘You’re a pro-genocide candidate.’ There was someone posting a swastika,” Kornberg added. “I screenshotted and took all of those down because there was no place for them on my platform.”

“I study violence facing electeds. I know that Jews and other marginalized groups and minorities in this country face violence, but it was different to experience it personally,” she said. “That galvanized me even more to say this is not the America that I’m raising my kid in. This is not the city that I want to raise the next generation of Jewish Americans in.”

Drawing a contrast with Hanif, who in the past expressed support for defunding the police in comments she recently scrubbed from her social media profile and campaign site, Kornberg said she is in favor of  working with local law enforcement to address hate crimes — even as she also endorsed “alternatives” to policing including “restorative justice practices” to help target what she described as a related mental health crisis.

Meanwhile, Kornberg, who identifies as a pragmatic progressive, clarified she had not entered the race to join an ongoing debate over Israel that she sees as a distraction from more pressing local issues shaping the district, listing the affordability crisis, maternal health care, public safety and climate change among her top areas of focus. 

In an implicit dig at Hanif, whose frequent vocal commentary on Israel has sown division within the deeply progressive district, Kornberg asserted that “the City Council is not the State Department and is not going to solve a conflict by passing a resolution. I don’t believe that.”

While she acknowledged that concerns over rising antisemitism, which she has heard in discussions with Jewish voters, have “a strong relationship to the conflict in the Middle East,” Kornberg argued that focusing on foreign policy is a “disservice” to the community. “I am thrilled that we are sitting together after the cease-fire has gone into effect,” she said of the negotiated deal between Israel and Hamas to halt hostilities in exchange for the release of hostages. “I have been praying for a peaceful resolution and the return of the hostages now for over a year.”

“But I do think that in a City Council race, the focus has to be on local issues,” added Kornberg, who has family in Israel and said that she knows people “on both sides” of the conflict. “You have a platform as an elected, and I think that platform should be used to focus on local issues and not to be sounding off on geopolitics.”

As President Donald Trump swiftly implements his agenda, Kornberg said she chose to run in large part because she views local government as the “best line of defense” to challenge his policies while serving in a legislative body “with tremendous power to make change.”

Hanif’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment from JI on Monday.

The race in one of the most heavily Jewish council districts in the city is expected to be hotly contested, with several Jewish and pro-Israel groups planning to target the incumbent. Meanwhile, in a messaging strategy used in other primaries where divisions over Israel have featured prominently, Hanif’s allies have cast Kornberg as beholden to MAGA interests, using campaign contributions from a handful of pro-Israel Republican donors to support their claim.

But Kornberg, who has long been active in local Democratic clubs, dismisses such accusations as “ludicrous,” saying her “majority donor is the city,” having qualified for public matching funds. “Amidst a sea of local donors, there are a handful of wealthy individuals who donated relatively small amounts,” she told JI, adding many of her contributors live in the council district. “I think that shows the amount of enthusiasm for my race and for the issues we’ve been raising,” she added. “It shows the hunger for change.” 

The two Democratic rivals are virtually tied on fundraising, the latest filings show. Kornberg has raised around $63,000, while Hanif has pulled in just over $68,000, and also qualified for matching funds.

Last week, Kornberg, who recently hired a campaign manager and is assembling a team of volunteers, announced two new endorsements from former Assembly members in Brooklyn, including Joan Millman, who argued in a statement that the “district needs a representative in City Hall who will put service over ideology and prioritize the needs of her constituents.”

Raised in Northern California, Kornberg moved to New York over a decade ago for graduate school at Columbia University, and eventually settled in Brooklyn. The daughter and granddaughter of Nobel laureates in chemistry and medicine, respectively, Kornberg, who holds a Ph.D.in politics from Oxford, said that “debate and learning” are among the Jewish values she prizes.

Her Jewish “legacy,” including her ancestors’ immigration journey from Eastern Europe to the U.S. to escape persecution, she said, also informs her approach to politics amid fears over Trump’s mass deportation threats. 

Kornberg, who attends High Holiday services at Congregation Beth Elohim, a Reform synagogue in Park Slope, said she has appreciated engaging with a diverse range of Jewish voters across the district — including Hasidic constituents in Borough Park who are “disproportionately targeted” in antisemitic attacks.

As she continues to hear voter concerns, Kornberg said she believes the district “can do better when it comes to” constituent services as well as the “bread-and-butter issues” that have been overshadowed by ongoing debates over Israel. “I think there’s a real appetite for more responsive representation in City Hall,” she said.

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