New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani followed up his meeting with a group of rabbis earlier this week by touting a plan to battle antisemitism in the five boroughs — without committing to making changes in his rhetoric toward Israel that the group of Jewish religious leaders demanded.

“I had a candid and productive conversation with rabbis representing a wide swath of New York’s Jewish communities and affiliations, and I appreciated hearing from them,” Mamdani said after an unrelated event in Manhattan on Thursday. 

During the mayor’s roundtable with Reform, Reconstructionist, Conservative and Modern Orthodox rabbis from predominantly liberal-leaning parts of the city, the rabbis made a near-unanimous call for Mamdani to back off his excoriations of Israel, warning that his focus on the Jewish state was alienating and even endangering Jewish New Yorkers.

But Mamdani did not explicitly state on Thursday that he would act on their recommendations, instead touting his increased spending on groups that run anti-hate crime initiatives and a plan his Office to Combat Antisemitism will release next month to tamp down on the anti-Jewish bias incidents that have risen on his watch.

“Our administration has been making steps, taking steps over the last many months of enacting that,” he said. “Expanding our city’s Office to Combat Antisemitism to its largest-ever size while developing a first-in-the-nation municipal response to combating antisemitism.”

“My door will always be open to every Jewish New Yorker. That is a door that is open not only to a conversation but to a commitment of what it actually looks like to deliver on an ideal of a city where not only is everyone safe but everyone belongs, everyone is made to feel as if this is their home,” he continued. 

Mayor Eric Adams, Mamdani’s predecessor, released a “blueprint” for tackling antisemitism on his last day in office, largely detailing steps his office had already taken. This included an executive order Adams signed adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism as official city policy. Mamdani repealed that order the day he assumed office.