New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani continued to face questions on Wednesday about how he managed to appoint a panel of attorneys to recommend city judges that did not include a single Jewish member.

The  absence of any Jewish representation on the Advisory Committee on the Judiciary — which evaluates potential appointees to New York’s family and misdemeanor courts — came despite a vow from the mayor’s chief counsel, Ramzi Kassem, that the panel was “truly representative cross-section of the legal profession in New York City.” 

The move sparked outcry from an array of Jewish legal groups and the Anti-Defamation League earlier this week, who noted that the absence of Jews on the body is at stark odds with the large number of Jewish New Yorkers working as attorneys in the five boroughs. Some estimates find that between a third and a half of all lawyers in New York City are Jewish.

The mayor, at an unrelated event on Wednesday, maintained he had not inquired about nominees’ religious affiliations.

“Any suggestion that there would be any decision made or motivated by religion, it does bother me,” Mamdani told reporters. “Any suggestion that the composition of the advisory committee was motivated by religion is false.”

The mayor defended his rejection of retired state Supreme Court Justice John Leventhal, one of nine recommendations to the panel to come from outside his office, on the grounds he had served on the legal defense team of accused sex criminal Ghislaine Maxwell, the longtime partner of Jeffrey Epstein.

“As much as possible we thought it best to avoid any association between the committee that would be appointing judges and the Epstein world,” Mamdani said.

The mayor said that he had nominated and renominated multiple Jewish judges during his first months in office.

“That will continue because of the mere fact of, as a reflection of, what the city looks like,” he said.