Janeese Lewis George, a Democratic Socialists of America-endorsed candidate for mayor of Washington, D.C., met with prominent local rabbis and Jewish community leaders last week amid fallout over a DSA questionnaire she filled out outlining her views on Israel and antisemitism.

The March 19 meeting, at the Orthodox Ohev Sholom Congregation in Shepherd Park, was arranged after her responses to a DSA endorsement questionnaire were made public last month, according to two sources familiar with the meeting. 

In the questionnaire, Lewis George pledged not to attend events focused on “promoting Zionism and apartheid.” She also said that she had attended a D.C. Jewish Community Relations Council event in December only to talk about opposing Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s deportation measures in the region, and that she did not agree with JCRC’s stances on Israel, Zionism and antisemitism. 

At the meeting at Ohev Sholom, Lewis George apologized for her statements in the questionnaire, one of the event’s attendees told Jewish Insider, and cried when someone in the meeting described feeling hurt by her answers in the questionnaire. 

She blamed the anti-Israel responses on one of her staff members, and said she would have submitted a different response if she had seen it before it was submitted. 

However, she has not expressed that same sentiment publicly. A spokesperson for Lewis George did not respond to multiple requests for comment on Monday. 

Lewis George did not make any promises to apologize publicly or to further address her comments in the DSA questionnaire, according to the meeting attendee. 

The meeting included rabbis and senior leaders from Milton Gottesman Jewish Day School, the Edlavitch D.C. JCC, Temple Sinai, Ohev Sholom, Adas Israel Congregation, Tifereth Israel Congregation, the JCRC and Tzedek DC, a legal services organization. 

Lewis George will appear at a rally hosted by the Metro DC DSA chapter on Wednesday alongside Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), one of the most vocal detractors of Israel in Congress.

Ron Halber, the CEO of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington, wrote in an op-ed published Monday that Metro DC DSA threatens “the sense of attachment and belonging that we [Jews] have long enjoyed in D.C.”

“Their questionnaire for political candidates encourages the systematic erasure of Jewish and pro-Israel Americans from public life. It is an outrageous and revolting display of religious discrimination,” Halber wrote in Washington Jewish Week. He did not specifically mention Lewis George.

Correction: A previous version of this article identified Temple Micah as one of the participants in the meeting. They did not have a representative in the room.