New York City Council Speaker Julie Menin — the first Jewish person to hold her role — slammed a newly elected Brooklyn Democrat’s promotion of antisemitic conspiracy theories, but declined to call her commentary disqualifying.

Jewish Insider reported on Friday that Carmella Charrington, elected in Tuesday’s far-left wave to the unpaid but important party position of district leader with help from politicians in the Democratic Socialists of America, last November shared an antisemitic video endorsing industrialist Henry Ford’s infamous antisemitic pamphlet series The International Jew.

The video, which Charrington declared “the truth” and demanded become “the topic at the table,” blamed Jews for everything from gay rights to slavery and rehashed paranoid fantasies about a world-spanning plot to dominate the media, banks, controlled substances, and the education system.

“Obviously I strongly disagree with those views, and those views are deeply, deeply offensive,” Menin, a Manhattan lawmaker, told JI at an unrelated press conference at City Hall. “It’s unacceptable, it’s abhorrent, and there’s no place for that, and I’ll leave it at that.”

However, she did not answer JI’s question as to whether Charrington’s views should bar her from holding the role to which she was elected, which wields significant power over local party leadership and judicial nominations, as well as positions in the city Board of Elections. 

Charrington, who deleted the post after speaking to JI, did not immediately respond to a request for comment for this story. She initially defended her post as “facts” on Friday, and told a JI reporter to “get your rabbi,” before issuing a written apology to The New York Times and on social media, vowing to “start a dialogue with my Jewish neighbors.” 

To date, none of the officials JI has pressed have called for her to resign. This includes state Sen. Jabari Brisport and Assembly nominee Eon Huntley, both prominent DSA leaders who campaigned alongside her and helped her make the ballot, although both denounced her remarks.

Councilman Chi Ossé, another prominent DSA member who helped make Charrington’s legal battle to recover control of her family brownstone a citywide cause celebre, also condemned the content of her post without calling her out personally. Similarly, fellow district leader Mark Hanna — who served as Charrington’s election attorney and also is the treasurer of the anti-AIPAC American Priorities PAC — argued her commentary “can be a teachable moment” rather than an occasion for criticism.

Charrington has long claimed to have been a victim of deed theft, a form of fraud, and on Friday blamed some of her legal problems on Jewish investors and a Jewish judge. 

New York state Attorney General Letitia James found that her residence was sold as part of a complicated dispute over the estate of her infirm father, who the New York City Sheriff’s office took custody of in Brooklyn on Saturday and returned to Georgia, where a court had declared him a ward of the state.

An activist that two politicians from the Democratic Socialists of America helped elevate to a leadership position in the Brooklyn Democratic Party on Tuesday posted a vitriolic antisemitic screed to her Instagram last year — declaring as “the truth” a notorious work beloved by Adolf Hitler that describes a Jewish world conspiracy.

Carmella Charrington was part of an army of left-wing insurgents who captured office on Tuesday: in her case, the role of district leader in the Brooklyn Democratic Party, an unpaid but important position that elects the party’s influential chairperson and plays a significant role in nominating judges and filling jobs at the city Board of Elections. 

Although the DSA itself did not formally endorse Charrington for the post, two of its most important local figures campaigned with her and helped her make the ballot: state Sen. Jabari Brisport and state Assembly candidate Eon Huntley, who defeated an incumbent lawmaker in a closely watched race earlier this week. 

Charrington’s candidacy was part of a broader campaign to depose the present centrist leadership of the official party organization. But in November 2025, Charrington shared a video to her Instagram account — which features various photos and videos of herself at Brisport and Huntley’s joint campaign headquarters — promoting the “hidden history” in industrialist Henry Ford’s notorious 1920s series of conspiracy pamphlets, The International Jew.

“This better be the topic at the table#dad #deedtheft #ceo #love #ericadams #brooklyn #lovers #lovers #corruption #diddy #nyc ##cardio#cardib #trump,” Charrington captioned the since-deleted post, adding in the comments: “The only way to change is understanding the truth!”

The video itself is a summary and update of Ford’s century-old conspiracy theories, presented by a wellness influencer.

“You find out who owns all the social media, and then who also owns the tobacco industry, the cotton industry, the banking industry, the theater, the newspaper, the radio, and then we can clearly see who owns the government as well,” the speaker in the video says. “This is why in school things like reading the Bible, praying, celebrating Christmas, got to get rid of all that. Then it gets deeper when you find out who brought in all the liquor and all the drugs, and also made people into drunks during the Great Depression, because the same people caused the Great Depression.”

The video further asserts that Jewish people created plastic surgery to “blend in,” “brought the slaves” to America, established the gay rights movement and plotted the infamous 1921 massacre of Black residents of Tulsa, Okla. It asserts Jewish people are “always changing their names” and variously call themselves Zionists, Communists and Bolsheviks.

It then pivots to the issue that propelled Tuesday’s socialist sweep: Israel.

“It gets deeper when you talk about Palestine and the takeover of that with the Rothschilds, same people, and the whole Palestine thing connects back to the Rothschilds, who are the bankers, who then control everything, including the schools,” the speaker continues. “All the media and the newspapers and the radios are owned by a small group of people who control everything.” 

The video concludes with an image promoting the Swedish neo-Nazi film series “Europa: The Last Battle,” the conspiracy tome The Curse of Canaan: A Demonology of History, the Holocaust denial tracts of Fred Leuchter and the anti-Israel pamphlet Zionism: The Terrible Secret of the Cold War.

Reached by Jewish Insider, Charrington maintained that she was not prejudiced, but also insisted the video “was some facts.” She repeatedly told the reporter to “get your rabbi,” as she intended to hold a future “roundtable” on what she called a “bullying community.”

“There’s so much harm that your community has done to me,” she said. “It’s a problem in our community and it needs to be addressed.”

Charrington rose to prominence as part of a legal fight over possession of her family’s brownstone in the historically Black but fast-gentrifying Brooklyn neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant. She alleged in numerous media appearances that she was the victim of deed theft, a form of fraud, but New York state Attorney General Letitia James’ office determined it was a complicated but legal inheritance dispute.

In one of several phone calls with JI, Charrington railed against Jewish investors she accused of gaining access to her home and a Jewish judge who sentenced her to six days on Rikers Island for contempt of court.

Helping to promote her cause has been another leading DSA official: New York City Councilman Chi Ossé, who was arrested demonstrating outside the home in April. The incident inspired New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani to create a new Office of Deed Theft Prevention.

Ossé, for his part, stressed in a phone conversation with JI that he had not endorsed Charrington for district leader and was unfamiliar with her posting history.

“We condemn this antisemitism and bigotry in the harshest possible terms,” Ossé said in a subsequent written statement to JI. “There is no room for this kind of hate in Brooklyn. I reject it completely.” 

Brisport similarly said he was unaware of Charrington’s views but repeatedly refused to answer whether he would have supported her for party office had he seen the video she shared — or if he considered such beliefs disqualifying for a person to hold power in the Democratic Party. Huntley, the nominee for Assembly, did not respond to repeated calls or emails.

However, the two DSA leaders subsequently sent a joint statement denouncing the content of the video, and harping on the right-wing elements of its message.

“The antisemitic post that Carmella shared has no place in our movement. This incident illustrates exactly what antisemitism does — it misdirects the justified anger of working people and oppressed communities away from systems of power and onto Jews,” they wrote. “We are committed to working with all constituents and fellow electeds alike to unlearn and dismantle these deeply antisemitic, anti-LGBT, and anti-communist narratives which hurt and divide our communities.”

JI also contacted Mark Hanna, a Mamdani ally and Brooklyn district leader who served as election attorney for the insurgent slate on which Charrington ran. Hanna is also the treasurer of American Priorities PAC, a committee dedicated to combatting the influence of AIPAC and uplifting anti-Israel candidates.

“Any kind of antisemitism or Islamophobia or hatred I’m not going to be supportive of,” Hanna said in an initial phone conversation.

After JI sent him the video, he wrote back that he hoped the post “can be a teachable moment.”

“I will have to speak with her about it,” he wrote. “I want to work with Carmella on issues related to deed theft and the other concerns she has in her community, and I think calling her in to learn and ensure inclusivity, rather than calling out for a repost, will be more fruitful.”

Hitler reportedly kept German translations of The International Jew in his office, where he also displayed a portrait of Ford. He praised the American industrialist in Mein Kampf, and in 1938 awarded him the Grand Cross of the Order of the German Eagle, a medal the Nazi leader created to honor foreign allies of his genocidal regime.

The Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division is investigating a Brooklyn cafe after it banned Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY) from its store, posting discriminatory messages online that accused the congressman of enabling genocide and tying him to AIPAC. 

“Federal law prohibits public accommodations such as coffee shops from discriminating against patrons based on their race, religion, or national origin. These actions are not only reprehensible, they’re potentially illegal. The Civil Rights Division has opened an investigation, and will bring an enforcement action if warranted,” Harmeet Dhillon, the DOJ’s assistant attorney general for civil rights, said. 

“We see that you stopped by our shop today for a coffee. Do you see how it doesn’t taste like genocide juice?” Poetica Coffee in Williamsburg wrote in a since-deleted Instagram post with an image of Goldman standing at the register. “We don’t serve racists, fascists, homophobes, genocide enablers. Too bad we didn’t recognize you right away, or we would have turned you away.”

“We don’t need your money (it’s probably coming from AIPAC anyways),” the post continued. “Don’t ever come to Poetica.” The shop said it refunded Goldman for his $9.82 purchase.

The coffee shop is owned by Parviz Mukhamadkulov, who has frequently used social media to share posts condemning Israel. Poetica Coffee’s website claims it serves “whoever walks through the door is treated with unconditional dignity.”

Goldman is facing a primary challenge from former New York City Comptroller Brad Lander in Tuesday’s election. Both candidates are Jewish and self-identified “progressive Zionists,” although in a debate earlier this month Goldman declined to join Lander in calling the Israeli military actions a “genocide.”

When Rabbi Joseph Potasnik, an Orthodox rabbi from Brooklyn, stepped up to the microphone in April to share his perspective on what Judaism has to say about artificial intelligence, his remarks resembled a sermon he might deliver on the bimah. 

Except the audience for this talk was not congregants. It was interfaith religious leaders, and — more importantly — representatives of the Silicon Valley giants Anthropic and OpenAI. 

Potasnik quoted the Book of Deuteronomy, when Moses delivers his final address to the Israelites before they cross into the Promised Land. “I call heaven and earth to witness against you today: I have put before you life and death, blessing and curse. Choose life, so that you and your offspring may live,” Moses says, channeling the words of God. 

“Of course you’re going to choose life,” Potasnik said at the AI convening, comments he relayed to Jewish Insider this week. “But sometimes when you choose it, it also comes with certain dangers. If you look at the story of the Garden of Eden, for example, you are forbidden to eat of the tree of knowledge. Why? You can understand when you look at AI, because knowledge without guardrails, knowledge without a moral component, can be a very dangerous thing.” 

Potasnik, who is the executive vice president of the New York Board of Rabbis, delivered this word of caution at the inaugural gathering of a new initiative called the Faith-AI Covenant, which argues that religious communities have something valuable to teach the companies developing the large language models that are reshaping the way many humans engage with knowledge and with the world around them. 

A group of rabbis, educators and thinkers in the Jewish world is deeply engaged in considering related questions.

Some of them are theological, almost halachic: Should rabbis be allowed to use AI to write sermons? Can an AI chatbot be considered a havruta, or study partner, in place of an actual human? Should AI even be used for serious Jewish study?

DZ Kalman, a research fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute who studies Judaism and technology, argued strongly against AI being used to write sermons. “I think people in religious communities would like to know that there’s at least one space in their lives when they are able to be free of machines, when they can actually just be humans interacting with other humans,” he said. 

The Orthodox Union faced criticism from within its ranks after releasing a new app in March that uses AI to help people study Torah. Rabbi Netanel Wiederblank, an instructor of Talmud, halacha and philosophy at Yeshiva University’s rabbinical school, delivered a talk at YU where he criticized the app and said AI should not be used to resolve rabbinic debates. 

“It’s true the OU says you shouldn’t rely on such an app for practical halacha, though one wonders what purpose there is in putting it out,” Wiederblank said. 

Other questions are more philosophical in nature. How can Jewish wisdom guide people who are looking for meaning at a moment of massive technological and even societal upheaval, with the possibility of looming job loss? What is the value of God when AI comes across as all-knowing? 

“We spent a few thousand years thinking really hard about what it means to be human and how to be human and how to live a purposeful life,” said Joshua Foer, the founder of Sefaria, an online library of Jewish texts. “At a moment when we’re going to be really challenged about how to be human, I think Judaism’s got a lot of compelling answers, and maybe this is the moment that we really need to stand up and be a light.” 

And then there is the matter of whether LLMs should be shaped, in some way, by religion. They already are being built with certain parameters for morality. 

Anthropic was created by several former OpenAI employees who were concerned about AI safety, and the company has built its brand on the idea that AI should be constructed responsibly. Anthropic employs Amanda Askell, a philosopher, to teach morality to Claude, Anthropic’s popular chatbot. In January, Anthropic published its 30,000-word “constitution” for Claude, which details how the company trained Claude and the values it hopes to imbue in the chatbot. “We want Claude to have good values,” the document states. 

“A lot of people, I imagine, are very happy just to be told that they’re absolutely right, so I think that this could be an instance where potentially some Talmudic AI that’s more designed to offer a counter argument or multiple perspectives off the bat might be an interesting way to counter this default solipsism,” said Zohar Atkins, a rabbi and philosopher. 

OpenAI also professes to value safety, and OpenAI founder Sam Altman told a Senate hearing in 2023 that people are “rightly anxious” about the technology. The company released a document in December described as its “model spec,” which discusses “our approach to shaping desired model behavior.” ChatGPT is taught to “love humanity,” and “humanity should be in control of how AI is used and how AI behaviors are shaped,” according to the model spec. 

“All of [the chatbots] are interested in the question of how do you align the AI to not do bad things and to do good things, and then there’s obviously a lot of complexity under the hood of defining what the good is and what do you do when there’s ethical dilemmas,” Zohar Atkins, a rabbi and philosopher, told JI. 

Atkins is building an AI chatbot called Yochai to help people engage with Jewish texts. Could there be a “Torah values AI,” he asked, where Jewish virtues like debate and humility are baked into the way a chatbot engages with users? He drew a contrast between that idea to the way most chatbots adopt a sycophantic approach, telling the user what they want to hear.

“A lot of people, I imagine, are very happy just to be told that they’re absolutely right, so I think that this could be an instance where potentially some Talmudic AI that’s more designed to offer a counter argument or multiple perspectives off the bat might be an interesting way to counter this default solipsism,” said Atkins. 

This spring, Anthropic convened two major summits for faith leaders. The first, in March, was a two-day gathering for Christian leaders. Several weeks later, Anthropic hosted another two-day event featuring guests from several religious minorities: Confucian, Hindu, Jewish, Latter-day Saint, Sikh, Unitarian Universalist, African indigenous, Islamic and Taoist, according to Politico. 

“As AI becomes more consequential for society, questions about the values and moral considerations that shape these systems are important ones, and we think they benefit from a wide range of perspectives,” an Anthropic spokesperson told Politico. (JI did not receive a response to a request for comment to Anthropic. OpenAI declined to comment for this article.) 

“Increasingly powerful general purpose AI is not inevitable. It’s a choice, and moral choice as much as anything else. Just because you can build something, doesn’t mean you should build it,” said Alex Pascal, the executive director of Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society and a former advisor to President Joe Biden on AI policy. “What I hope the faith leaders are communicating is that the potential impact of AI and the impact already of AI is gargantuan, and it’s really affecting almost everybody, and that the power to design and deploy the technology should not be in the hands of a very, very select few people.” 

Kalman, who attended the April meeting, declined to share much, noting that it was conducted under the promise of privacy. But he described Anthropic as a new company that “has found itself with huge amounts of power and is trying to understand how to wield that power responsibly.” He entered the meeting with a good deal of skepticism, he wrote in a blog post afterward, but he left feeling hopeful. 

Even if AI companies are engaging with the diverse users of their products in good faith, any guardrails placed on their LLMs come entirely at the discretion of the companies creating those products. That leads to potentially conflicting motivations — grow their product and build their bottom line, or err on the side of responsibility and safety? 

“Right now, there’s gargantuan power asymmetry. It’s really a few people, at the end of the day, who are designing and deploying AI to all of us,” said Alex Pascal, the executive director of Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society and a former advisor to President Joe Biden on AI policy. 

“Increasingly powerful general purpose AI is not inevitable. It’s a choice, and moral choice as much as anything else. Just because you can build something, doesn’t mean you should build it,” Pascal continued. “What I hope the faith leaders are communicating is that the potential impact of AI and the impact already of AI is gargantuan, and it’s really affecting almost everybody, and that the power to design and deploy the technology should not be in the hands of a very, very select few people.” 

Anthropic, for instance, recently said it would not release a new AI model called Mythos because it is too powerful, and runs the risk of severely undermining global security. But any decisions like this rest on the goodwill of the people running these companies, each of whom have their own biases and blind spots. 

“The people creating this are going to introduce a certain level of their own worldview into what they’re creating,” said Rabbi Mordechai Lightstone, the director of Tech Tribe, a New York-based affiliate of Chabad Young Professionals that serves as a gathering place for Jews working in the tech sector. 

Lightstone considers himself an advocate for the technology, but he has warned of the risks of putting too much faith in AI.

“When we ascribe human attributes — emotions, consciousness and ‘soul’ — to AI, we risk transforming a sophisticated instrument into an idol,” Lightstone wrote in a recent blog post. “Key to our harnessing AI is understanding it for what it is: A tool — an immensely powerful one — but not a being with a soul.” 

One Jewish response to the almost-messianic belief that AI will usher in a utopia comes from Sefaria’s chief learning officer, Sara Wolkenfeld and Sam Arbesman, a scientist-in-residence at the venture capital firm Lux Capital. The pair wrote in Arc Magazine last month that a Jewish approach to AI might be rooted in the incremental approach of tikkun olam, repairing the world step by step. 

They compared it to the Talmudic story of Rabbi Akiva, who “is said to have been inspired to reach for greatness after observing the power of water to wear away stone, drop by drop, as he drew water from the local well,” the Wolkenfeld and Arbesman wrote. “Therein lies the potential of artificial intelligence from a Jewish perspective — not as a far-off goal or panacea, but as a set of tools that provide each of us the means to chip away at barriers and obstacles and create an improved society.”

Last month, Pope Leo XIV released a 42,000-word document known as an encyclical that called for the safeguarding of human dignity as AI develops further and becomes even more integrated into people’s lives. Some rabbis have explored similar questions, but nothing has come close to exerting as much power or reach as the pope’s document. Some of that is by design; Judaism has no central leader of any kind. But some of it may be because many religious leaders have not fully comprehended the scope of the developing technology’s potential. 

“A problem I’d say in the Jewish world right now is it’s not clear whose job it is to think about this,” Wolkenfeld told JI. 

“I think the Jewish community needs to be actively grappling with a whole range of questions. What does it mean to be human? What are we outsourcing to technology versus retaining for ourselves? We’re going to be seeing massive job dislocation, and so what does that mean, first of all, socioeconomically in our communities?” Zvika Krieger, the rabbi of Chochmat HaLev, said. “Also, for so much of human history, people’s worth and their days were tied to their profession, and we’re seeing a fundamental change of how to build a meaningful life.”

Zvika Krieger is the rabbi of Chochmat HaLev, a progressive minyan in Berkeley, Calif. He does not have the typical resume for a rabbi: He was Facebook’s director of responsible innovation, and a State Department “ambassador” to Silicon Valley in the Obama administration. He now consults for Silicon Valley tech companies, including both Anthropic and OpenAI. 

“Most of the leaders in the Jewish community don’t know much about AI, so it can feel like the blind leading the blind. I’m often the only person in the room for these conversations who’s actually worked in a tech company, and the knowledge gap limits how productive these conversations can be,” Krieger told JI.

He described AI as an “epochal technology that is going to fundamentally change the nature of humanity in a way that I think we haven’t seen since the printing press.” 

“I think the Jewish community needs to be actively grappling with a whole range of questions. What does it mean to be human? What are we outsourcing to technology versus retaining for ourselves? We’re going to be seeing massive job dislocation, and so what does that mean, first of all, socioeconomically in our communities?” asked Krieger. “Also, for so much of human history, people’s worth and their days were tied to their profession, and we’re seeing a fundamental change of how to build a meaningful life.”

In some ways, conversations about AI are everywhere within the Jewish community — at congregations, at Shabbat dinner tables, at campus Hillels — because of how rapidly the technology has become a part of everyday life. But discussing how to best use specific tools is different than the biggest questions about life and society that AI prompts. 

The Jewish conversation about AI needs to be “top-down and also bottom-up,” said Wolkenfeld. “I think every rabbi needs to be thinking about this.”

Potasnik, the New York rabbi who addressed the interfaith tech convening in April, agrees that AI is a transformative technology. But Potasnik, who is 79, remembers how other technological innovations have upended his rabbinate, too, a perspective he brings into his observations on AI.

“We used to think that the newspaper, the radio, those were the popular places for dissemination of information. Well, how many people listen to the radio for information [now]?” Potasnik said. “When I first became a rabbi, I said, ‘If you don’t know baseball, you can’t be a successful rabbi.’ Today, if you don’t know technology, you’re not going to be successful either. You’re going to be seen as ancient, not advanced.”

But Potasnik believes there is one thing that AI cannot replace that is at the heart of what it means to be Jewish.

“We have what’s called the theology of presence. You have to be present, you have to show up, that’s what people want,” Potasnik said. “I think AI cannot take that from us. We still need the human to hug, to hold. We need to see each other, listen and learn from each other. These are important, indispensable ingredients in our human relationships.” 

New York state Assemblymember Claire Valdez, a far-left Democrat now campaigning to fill an open House seat covering parts of Brooklyn and Queens, sat for a friendly interview released on Friday with a Twitch streamer who was once suspended from the platform for calling Jews a “demonic ethnicity.”

Valdez, who is backed by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and the Democratic Socialists of America’s New York City chapter, joined a nearly hour-long virtual conversation with Michael Beyer, a fellow DSA member who uses the online moniker “Mike from PA” and has drawn criticism for invoking  antisemitic rhetoric about Jews and Israel.

Beyer, who now lives in Los Angeles, was suspended from Twitch last year after offensive comments about Jewish ethnicity he made during a livestream had been resurfaced online. “Jewish is not an ethnicity,” he said in remarks from 2024. “This constructed ethnicity, this demonic ethnicity —, wholly invented.”

The Anti-Defamation League commended Twitch’s decision to implement the suspension, saying that streamers “should use their platforms responsibly and not engage in inflammatory, dehumanizing and antisemitic rhetoric.” 

Beyer apologized for the comments, insisting that he had misspoken and had meant to say that “Jewish ethnicity in Israel is a Zionist construction and is intended to flatten the true diversity of Judaism.” 

Beyer has frequently used inflammatory rhetoric in his social media posts about Israel. He has said that “supporting Israel is treason,” referred to “Zionist spies in this country that must be rooted out” and criticized “Zionist scum,” among other incendiary comments. 

A mayoral candidate in Los Angeles, Rae Huang, who is also a DSA member, faced scrutiny this month after she accepted a campaign donation from Beyer, which she has refused to return.

Valdez, who is facing off against Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso in a competitive race to succeed retiring Rep. Nydia Velazquez (D-NY), has long been an outspoken critic of Israel and supports the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement targeting the Jewish state. 

In a candidate questionnaire solicited by the DSA, Valdez pledged to “refrain from any affiliation with” what it called Zionist lobbying groups including J Street, AIPAC and Democratic Majority for Israel, according to a copy of the document obtained by Jewish Insider.

Shortly after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attacks, Valdez also liked an X post celebrating the violence, according to a screenshot shared with JI. “Glory to the resistance and the people of Palestinian,” the post said on Oct. 7.

During her new interview with Beyer, whose Twitch account claims more than 100,000 followers, Valdez was asked by the streamer if she believed “we need to be challenging more of these kind of Zionist politicians, or these right-wing Democrats.”

“This is such a DSA conversation,” Valdez replied, without directly alluding to Zionists. “This is exactly why I really love being a member of DSA.”

Elsewhere, she said she was running for Congress “in part because the Democratic status quo politicians turned away from our base when they committed to upholding Israel as an apartheid state and as a genocidal state.”

“Seeing how the Democratic base has shifted position on Palestine and Israel over the last two years,. I think there’s a real hunger within the Democratic base to think about our foreign policy and the investments that we’ve been making,” she told Beyer. 

Valdez’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment on Friday afternoon about her appearance on Beyer’s show or the X post she had liked about the Oct. 7 attacks.

Her primary in the 7th Congressional District has been shaping up as a clash between the socialist left  championed by Valdez and traditional progressivism embodied by Reynoso. 

In a recent interview, Reynoso said he viewed himself as the underdog in the race, even as he holds support from the outgoing veteran incumbent as well as state Attorney General Letitia James and the left-wing Working Families Party.

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani toured the Jewish Children’s Museum in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn on Monday — accompanied by the police commissioner, the local city councilmember and a co-founder of the museum’s, but no press or local religious leaders.

The mayor’s stop was first reported by Chabad community news site COLlive, which shared a photo of him entering the building alongside NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch, and inside the lobby with Tisch and Councilmember Crystal Hudson. In another image was Devorah Halberstam, one of the museum’s founders, who COLlive reported provided a “closed-door tour.”

The mayor’s daily schedule released Sunday night said only that Mamdani would visit “a Children’s Museum” in a 1 p.m. slot, and noted it was closed to the press.

Halberstam told Jewish Insider she connected with the mayor following the car-ramming of the Chabad-Lubavitch headquarters, which sits a few hundred feet from the museum and serves as the spiritual center of the neighborhood, and that a meeting had been in the works since before Passover. During his visit Monday, she said she and the mayor discussed her son Ari, a 16-year-old yeshiva student murdered in an antisemitic shooting on the Brooklyn Bridge in 1994, in whose honor she founded the museum in 2004.

Halberstam said that she took the mayor through a floor of the museum dedicated to Jewish holidays, and characterized him as a “very good listener” and “a work in progress” on issues of concern to the Jewish community, particularly the kind of hate and terror incidents that took the life of her son.

“Hopefully there will be movement in different directions. And I hope to help him along with doing that as it applies to the Jewish community,” Halberstam told JI. “He’s young, he’s new to this, he’s on a learning curve, but he definitely wants to learn.”

A source from the Chabad-Lubavitch movement said they were unaware of the mayor’s visit, as did Rabbi Chanina Sperlin of the Crown Heights Jewish Community Council. Sperlin, however, noted that the museum was Halberstam’s “baby” and that she was the community leader most involved with it.

Mamdani’s office did not respond to questions from Jewish Insider about the mayor’s visit. However, he shared a photospray from the visit on X, along with praise for Halberstam.

“Devorah Halberstam has spent her life advocating for the safety and well-being of Jewish New Yorkers,” the tweet from the mayor’s official account reads, noting that May is Jewish American Heritage Month. “We discussed the importance of ensuring this city remains a place where Jewish history can be celebrated and shared with everyone — including young New Yorkers. This Jewish American Heritage Month, we honor the rich culture and history that Jewish New Yorkers contribute to our city daily.”

Halberstam has served in a number of public roles, including currently as honorary commissioner of community affairs and chair of the Hate Crime Review Panel at the NYPD. Former Mayor Eric Adams appointed her chair of the board of commissioners at the Mayor’s Office to Combat Antisemitism.

The first mayor to seek a relationship with the museum was Michael Bloomberg, who also supported it financially.

Police say the 36-year-old who ran his vehicle into the Chabad Lubavitch world headquarters in Brooklyn on Wednesday night had previously attended an event at the synagogue, and was again attempting “to connect with the Lubavitch Jewish community” — but will now face multiple hate crimes charges.

At a Thursday press conference, NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny disclosed that Dan Sohail of Carteret, N.J., was the driver who plowed his Honda Accord into the Crown Heights synagogue and yeshiva of the late Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson. Kenny revealed that Sohail had “recently connected with the Lubavitch community” and attended a “social gathering” at the same location 10 days prior. The vehicle ramming occurred on Yud Shevat, the anniversary of the death of Rebbe Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, the previous Lubavitcher Rebbe, a highly significant date for the Lubavitch community that draws large crowds to the Crown Heights area. 

“We believe he was in Brooklyn last night to continue his attempt to connect with the Lubavitch Jewish community,” said Kenny, who added: “There are currently no specific or credible threats to synagogues, Jewish sites or any houses of worship citywide.”

Kenny, however, reiterated NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch’s promise to add additional uniformed cops, patrol officers and even “counter-terrorism resources where appropriate” to religious institutions citywide, regardless of affiliation.

The police chief revealed the Brooklyn district attorney’s office would charge Sohail with multiple counts of attempted assault, reckless endangerment, criminal mischief and aggravated harassment — all with hate crime enhancements, subjecting the accused to further penalties.

Kenny said that Sohail told officers that “his foot slipped” while driving and he “lost control of the car because he was wearing chunky boots.” But this contrasts with security footage the NYPD official said the department recovered from nearby, which he stated showed Sohail parking his vehicle some distance away, approaching the synagogue on foot and removing bollards that blocked the driveway leading to the entrance. Kenny said Sohail then drove his vehicle up to the iconic red-brick building and got out to remove snow obstructing the sidewalk — then repeatedly drove into the entryway through the path he had cleared.

Kenny said that in video footage of Sohail attending an event at the Chabad headquarters earlier this month he “seemed to be very at home with the Jewish community.”

However, Kenny asserted that hate crime charges were appropriate because Sohail targeted the location due to its religious character.

“The hate crime right now is that he basically attacked a Jewish institution. This is a synagogue, it’s clearly marked as a synagogue, he knew it was a synagogue because he attended there previously,” Kenny said. “It’s a hate crime based on his attack of the Jewish synagogue.”

Kenny declined to confirm reports Sohail had visited Chabad houses in New Jersey, and stated he had no criminal record in New York City. In an interview with the New York Times, Sohail’s father denied that his son hated Jewish people, and had told family he planned to convert to Judaism.

A man drove a Honda Accord sedan “intentionally and repeatedly” into an entryway of the Chabad Lubavitch world headquarters in Brooklyn Wednesday night, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani confirmed.

The NYPD responded to an 8:46 911 call on Wednesday at 770 Eastern Parkway in Crown Heights, the home and center of leadership of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, now a major spiritual, symbolic and organizational hub for Chabad. No persons were injured in the incident, captured on video, and police took the driver into custody. 

“We’re grateful to the Almighty that no one was hurt,” said Rabbi Motti Seligson, a spokesman for Chabad, adding that damage initially appeared limited. “It houses one of the most significant synagogues in the Jewish world.”

Mamdani and Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch went to the scene in the hours following the incident, and a Chabad source told Jewish Insider that the White House reached out and reported that it was monitoring the situation. Tisch said at a press conference outside 770 later Wednesday night that the incident is being investigated as a hate crime and that the NYPD bomb squad had searched the vehicle, finding no explosive devices.

“This is deeply alarming, especially given the deep meaning and history of the institution to so many in New York and around the world. Any threat to a Jewish institution or place of worship must be taken seriously. Antisemitism has no place in our city, and violence or intimidation against Jewish New Yorkers is unacceptable,” Mamdani wrote on X shortly after the incident.

“I stand in solidarity with the Crown Heights Jewish community, and I am grateful to our first responders for taking swift action. I will keep New Yorkers updated as we learn more about the incident.”

Chabad’s social media editor, Rabbi Mordechai Lightstone, whose son was in the synagogue at the time of the incident, said “Antisemitism does not appear to be a factor in this.”

City Council Speaker Julie Menin also reached out to the institution, and many other New York officials shared concern and sympathy on social media. “This is horrific. These acts of violence against our Jewish communities, and any of our communities, need to stop. Now,” New York Attorney General Letitia James posted on X.

New York City Comptroller Mark Levine noted that the “frightening” incident took place on Yud Shevat, a date in the Hebrew calendar of great significance to the Chabad community, when “large numbers are gathering in the neighborhood.” An event taking place from 7:30-8:30 p.m., just before the time of the attack, was expected to draw thousands of young men to the site.

Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt wrote on X that “while [a] motive cannot yet be confirmed, this incident contributes even further to a collective sense of anxiety for Jewish New Yorkers and Jews worldwide.”

Rabbi Yosef Hamra, the brother of the last chief rabbi of Syria, who now lives in Brooklyn, was invited to offer a blessing to Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa during a meeting between al-Sharaa and a variety of Syrian diaspora activists in Washington on Sunday.

The moment produced a striking visual — a handshake between a kippah-wearing rabbi and the new president of Syria, a former Islamist terrorist affiliated with Al-Qaida and ISIS.

“Syrian Jews coming up and sitting down with the president — this is really history,” Henry Hamra, who leads the Jewish Heritage in Syria Foundation with his father, told Jewish Insider. “A lot of people from over here, from our community, were very, very emotional about it. It’s a beautiful thing, and my father was so touched and it was a great moment.”

Hamra said that al-Sharaa had thanked his father for the blessing and said that he would “love to see you again in Syria. And I think it’s happening very soon.”

He said that al-Sharaa had also, during the meeting, expressed a commitment to religious inclusion and pluralism.

“The Jewish community in Syria is exactly the same thing as every community,” Hamra said. “That’s what the president said — there’s no difference between the Syrian Jewish and the Syrian Christian and the Syrian Muslim. We’re all in this together … that’s what he was emphasizing also. And he spoke about all the religions — that everything is the same, the Kurds, the Alawites, everybody is the same.”

Forces aligned with al-Sharaa’s government have carried out massacres targeting the Alawite, Druze and other minority communities.

“We should get ourselves together and try to rebuild again [in] Syria,” Hamra said.

He said the members of Jewish Heritage in Syria also had the opportunity to discuss with both Syrian leaders and U.S. Syria envoy Tom Barrack the work they are doing to support sanctions relief and restore Jewish antiquities and religious sites in Syria. The Jewish group was invited to the meeting by the Syrian Foreign Ministry.

Hamra said that he had invited Barrack to tour Jewish sites in Syria, and Barrack expressed an interest, sharing his personal phone number with Hamra.

“I think the government [is] very, very open for us to start the process of building up, and that’s a great thing,” Hamra said.

Mouaz Moustafa, a Syrian-American activist who leads the Syrian Emergency Task Force, which has been working with JHS in advocating for the repeal of sanctions on Syria under the Caesar Act, said it was “inspirational” and moving to see the meeting between al-Sharaa and Rabbi Hamra.

Henry Hamra, who fled Syria in 1992 at age 15, also recently ran for the Syrian parliament on a platform focused on advocating for sanctions relief, though he was not successful.

Hamra reiterated to JI his desire to see the repeal of the Caesar Act sanctions.

“My goal is to help the Syrian people who suffered a lot, and I think they should have another chance to live in freedom again,” he said. Moustafa, Hamra and Hamra’s father have argued that any restoration work on Syria’s ancient synagogues will be impossible until all sanctions are lifted.

Opponents of the sanctions relief effort say that keeping the sanctions in place is necessary to maintain U.S. leverage and ensure accountability on American priorities like protecting minority groups from further attacks.

The majority Satmar faction in Brooklyn, which represents the largest Hasidic voting bloc in New York City, is backing former Gov. Andrew Cuomo for mayor, lending what is likely to be a major boost to his campaign in the final days of the increasingly competitive Democratic primary.

The Zaloynim Satmar faction based in Williamsburg, led by Rabbi Zalman Teitelbaum, announced on Tuesday that it is ranking Cuomo as its top pick in the June 24 primary, as recent polls have shown a tightening race between the former governor and Zohran Mamdani, a far-left state assemblyman from Queens.

The endorsement is slated to run on Wednesday in Der Yid, a Yiddish paper aligned with the faction — which ranked Adrienne Adams, the speaker of the City Council, as its second pick for mayor, followed by Zellnor Myrie, a state senator from Brooklyn.

Cuomo also notched a key endorsement on Monday from the rival Aroynim Satmar faction led by Rabbi Aaron Teitelbaum, which is a smaller but politically influential community. The group likewise ranked Adrienne Adams as its second pick in the primary to replace embattled Mayor Eric Adams, who is running as an independent.

Because Hasidic communities typically vote in blocs based on rabbinic support, the endorsements could collectively turn out more than 6,000 votes, experts estimate, which could make the difference in a close race.

The dual Satmar backing, highly coveted in New York City races, caps off a string of endorsements Cuomo has accumulated from Orthodox leaders in recent days. Last Friday, he claimed a major endorsement from the Bobov sect, the largest Hasidic bloc in the Borough Park neighborhood of Brooklyn that could deliver more than 4,000 votes, according to experts.

The former governor has also recently won support from the Far Rockaway Jewish Alliance; the Crown Jewish United and the Crown Heights PAC; and the Flatbush Jewish Community Coalition.

Still, there have been a few holdouts who remain bitter over Cuomo’s COVID-era restrictions, which many voters recall as discriminatory, according to one Jewish activist familiar with the situation who spoke on the condition of anonymity to address a sensitive subject.

On Monday, a large coalition of Hasidic sects and institutions in Borough Park broke from the Bobov leadership and announced it was ranking Adrienne Adams as its first choice, followed by Myrie, whose district includes the Hasidic enclave of Crown Heights.

The coalition did not publicly provide a reason for its decision to exclude Cuomo from its ranking. But the Jewish activist, who was privately briefed on its thinking, said that some Hasidic leaders continue to harbor lingering resentment toward Cuomo over his COVID policies, which the former governor has sought to address in a recent series of meetings to mend relationships with a community his campaign regards as crucial to securing the nomination.

“People didn’t find his apology sincere,” the Jewish activist said of Cuomo’s outreach.

The group was also organized by allies of Eric Adams, whose team has privately urged Orthodox leaders not to rank Cuomo first or to exclude him entirely from their endorsement slates, believing that Adams will be best poised to win the general election with Mamdani as the nominee, according to multiple people familiar with the behind-the-scenes push to influence the primary.

One source familiar with the effort said Adams has personally intervened, asking Moishe Indig, a leader of the Aroynim Satmar faction, to include Mamdani in an endorsement slate.

Indig did not respond to a request for comment on the effort, which was reported earlier by The New York Times. 

Most Orthodox leaders have chosen to ignore the lobbying effort led by Adams’ deputy chief of staff, Menashe Shapiro, according to sources, even as the mayor has built close ties to the Jewish community and has recently been highlighting his new efforts to oppose antisemitism, which Cuomo has called “the most important issue” in the race.

A spokesperson for Adams, Kayla Mamelek, said in a statement on Tuesday that the mayor “has always stood with New York City’s Jewish communities — not only working to uplift and empower them, but confronting the disturbing rise in antisemitism in recent years.”

Even as Cuomo has rolled out a range of Orthodox endorsements, Adams’ team is hopeful that Jewish leaders will ultimately reverse course and back the mayor in the general election, according to sources. 

But Cuomo’s advisors as well as Jewish leaders have dismissed that expectation as wishful thinking given the mayor’s precarious standing with voters after he convinced the Trump administration to dismiss his federal corruption charges as part of an alleged quid pro quo.

A recent poll showed that Adams would lose the general election by double digits in hypothetical matchups against both Mamdani and Cuomo, whose comfortable lead in the primary has been dwindling in recent weeks.

Mamdani’s insurgent bid has raised alarms among Jewish leaders who have been troubled by his fierce opposition to Israel amid rising antisemitism fueled by the ongoing war in Gaza.

“Mr. Cuomo’s leading opponent is a self-identified socialist who has expressed views and taken actions deeply offensive and worrisome to our community,” the Flatbush Jewish Community Coalition said in its endorsement on Monday, citing Mamdani’s support for anti-Israel boycott campaigns and his refusal to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state. “These positions are not only controversial, they are outright dangerous.”

Mamdani has condemned antisemitism and said he strives to show his disagreements on Israel are “still based on a shared sense of humanity,” as he put it at a recent town hall hosted by the UJA-Federation of New York.

The democratic socialist has engaged in some direct outreach to the Orthodox community, meeting for an interview with Satmar leaders that was recently published in a popular Yiddish women’s magazine, among other efforts.

Indig, the Aroynim Satmar leader, has met with Mamdani and told the Times he was still weighing if he would add the assemblyman to his endorsement slate, suggesting that Adams’ recent outreach could pay off in the primary.

Indig, who backed Adams last cycle and is a part of his Jewish advisory council, prefers the mayor over Cuomo, said a person familiar with his thinking. He has indicated he will support Adams in the general election.

Unlike other Hasidic sects, the Satmar community is theologically anti-Zionist, opposing Israel on the grounds that the messiah has yet to arrive to usher in the creation of a Jewish state, and does not view Israel as a top issue.

Polling has found that Mamdani holds virtually no support in the Orthodox community, while Cuomo is favored by a sizable number of voters whom he is counting on to propel him to victory in the primary. 

The Bobov sect, a major Hasidic voting bloc in the Borough Park section of Brooklyn, is endorsing former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo for mayor of New York City, a representative for the community confirmed to Jewish Insider on Friday. 

“Leaders of the Bobov community announced their endorsement of former Governor Andrew Cuomo as the Democratic candidate for mayor of New York City in the upcoming primary election,” Joel Rosenfeld, a Bobov representative, said in a statement shared with JI. “After thorough discussions and meetings with numerous candidates, community leaders have concluded that Cuomo is the strongest advocate for the community’s values and the needs of New York City.”

Cuomo has been consolidating support from the Orthodox community ahead of the June 24 Democratic primary, where he is facing competition from a top rival, far-left Queens state Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, whose sharp criticism of Israel has fueled concerns among Jewish voters.

“The primary election features several candidates, including some from the far-left socialist spectrum who have expressed hostility toward the Jewish community and are performing competitively in recent polls,” Rosenfeld said. “This election is critical, and we cannot afford to let those who oppose our values lead our city. We urge every eligible voter to take a few minutes to vote and support a candidate who will champion our community’s interests.”

Earlier this week, Cuomo also picked up an endorsement from an influential Orthodox coalition in Far Rockaway, Queens, and he is expected to win support from the majority Satmar faction in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, early next week, according to a person familiar with the plans.

The Orthodox community represents a key voting bloc and could help tip the scales of what has become an increasingly competitive primary. The Bobov endorsement alone could turn out more than 4,000 votes, according to a Jewish community activist who said that “as goes Bobov so goes Borough Park.”

In a statement shared with JI, Cuomo said he was “so grateful to have the support of Bobov, which is a powerful statement of my continued commitment to the Orthodox community.”

“Bobov cares deeply about keeping their community and families safe, making sure that there are police and appropriate resources in Borough Park and beyond,” Cuomo continued. “I’m honored to have their support and want to thank Joel Rosenfeld for being an ally and a friend. Standing up to hate could not be more important in this election and I’m proud to partner with Bobov to do just that in this election and at City Hall.”

Cuomo has been courting Orthodox leaders in recent weeks as he has sought to mend relationships in the community that deteriorated over restrictions he implemented during the COVID pandemic, which many voters still recall as discriminatory. 

“During meetings with Cuomo, community leaders candidly addressed challenges faced during the COVID-19 period, when the community felt unfairly targeted,” Rosenfeld said in his statement on Friday. “Cuomo expressed deep regret for the distress caused, acknowledging past mistakes and committing to prevent such issues in the future. He pledged to maintain an open line of communication with community leaders and to appoint Orthodox Jewish advisors to his administration to ensure culturally sensitive decision-making.”

The Bobov community also ranked Zellnor Myrie, a state senator from Brooklyn, as its second choice for mayor, followed by Adrienne Adams, the speaker of the City Council, in third.

Leon Goldenberg, a prominent Orthodox Jewish leader in Brooklyn, is endorsing former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo for New York City mayor, he confirmed exclusively to Jewish Insider on Friday.

“I am fully endorsing Gov. Cuomo,” Goldenberg said. “I think he’s the best candidate by far. He’s accomplished for the city and the state. We need somebody who’s going to get things accomplished and who’s going to fight antisemitism as a major issue.”

Goldenberg, who is an executive board member of the Flatbush Jewish Community Coalition, said that he was backing Cuomo in his personal capacity, but he anticipated his group would also endorse the former governor after the Jewish holiday of Shavuot, which concludes on Tuesday evening.

His early endorsement is among the first major signs of formal Orthodox support for Cuomo with just over three weeks until the June 24 Democratic primary. The former governor has in recent weeks engaged in proactive outreach to Orthodox leaders who represent sizable voting blocs that could prove crucial in the increasingly competitive race.

While polling has shown Cuomo leading the crowded primary field, his comfortable margin has narrowed as Zohran Mamdani, a far-left state assemblyman in Queens, has recently come within eight points of the former governor in the final round of ranked-choice voting, according to an independent survey released earlier this week.

Mamdani, an outspoken critic of Israel who is the only candidate in the primary to publicly back the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, has voiced rhetoric that has raised alarms among many Jewish leaders as his campaign continues to surge. 

Recently, Mamdani faced scrutiny for declining to recognize Israel as a Jewish state while speaking at a town hall last week hosted by the UJA-Federation of New York. He also stirred controversy this week over his comments to a mosque in Queens in which he denounced Israel’s pager attack last year against Hezbollah in Lebanon without mentioning it had been aimed at the terror group’s operatives rather than civilians.

Goldenberg said his lone endorsement of Cuomo was in many ways meant to raise awareness about the stakes of what appears to have become a two-person race. 

“We’re trying to get the message out about how important it is to support Cuomo,” Goldenberg said. “Mamdani, who will do very well in ranked-choice voting where Cuomo will not do as well, is really gaining a lot of ground.”

Cuomo has also notched support from Sam Berger, an Orthodox state assemblyman from Queens who has accused Mamdani of stoking antisemitism. But leading Orthodox groups, whose endorsements can traditionally yield thousands of votes that have helped tipped the scales in close elections, have yet to weigh in on the primary.

In recent weeks, Cuomo has met privately with a range of Orthodox leaders to mend relationships that deteriorated over restrictions he implemented at the height of the COVID pandemic, which many community members still recall as discriminatory.

The former governor has voiced regret for creating “the impression that the community was targeted,” which he said was not his intention, and recognized that he “could have done more” to address concerns at the time.

Though Orthodox leaders have been receptive to his outreach, constituents are still bitter about Cuomo’s COVID record, even as he has expressed contrition, according to people familiar with the conversations.

For his part, Goldenberg, whose group in Flatbush met with Cuomo this month, said that he had been satisfied with Cuomo’s response to criticism during their discussion, but emphasized he is now engaging in outreach to younger voters who may not be closely following the primary. 

Mamdani “is not going to be a friend of the Jews,” Goldenberg told JI. “That’s the message that just has to get out more and more forcefully, especially in the Orthodox community, which is still incensed about COVID.”

Even as Mamdani has also sought to engage with the community, a recent poll showed his support at 0% among Orthodox voters, while faring better with other Jewish denominations. Cuomo, meanwhile, performs strongest in the Orthodox community, claiming 41% of the vote, according to the poll.

In the broader Jewish community, Cuomo, who has frequently touted his support for Israel while calling antisemitism “the most important issue” in the race, is leading the field with a relatively small plurality of the vote, recent polls suggest.

Despite leading all publicly available polls, Cuomo also holds high unfavorability ratings stemming in large part from his resignation as governor amid allegations of sexual misconduct, which he denies.

In a tight race, the Orthodox community could help close the margins for Cuomo, as previous primaries have shown. Mayor Eric Adams, now running as an independent, narrowly won the nomination in 2021 with critical support from Orthodox leaders, whose communities tend to vote as a bloc.

“The Orthodox community can make a difference,” said Goldenberg, whose group endorsed Adams last cycle. “If we come out forcefully.” 

He estimated there are at least 100,000 Orthodox voters in Flatbush alone, but was unable to share a party breakdown. “We have been pushing people to register as Democrats, and have had some success,” he told JI. “We’ll keep pushing it.”

In the meantime, Goldbenberg said he expects other Orthodox leaders will also soon fall behind Cuomo. “I think it really has to happen across the board,” he told JI. “So many others are holding back, but I think we have to get the momentum.”

“Sometimes there’s a choice and you’re wavering until you get near the end,” he said, but dismissed the other candidates as unviable. “There’s no other choice today.”

One Orthodox leader, who spoke anonymously to address private discussions, suggested that “by the end of next week” endorsements would likely begin to roll in. 

A major Satmar faction in Williamsburg, home to the largest Hasidic community in New York City, is currently planning to endorse Cuomo the week after next, according to a community leader familiar with the matter.

“Nothing is final until final,” the community leader clarified on Friday, “but that’s the expectation.”

With his towering 6-foot-10 frame topped by a bundle of impressive dreadlocks, Robert Cornegy, Jr., a New York City councilmember who until recently claimed the title of tallest politician in the world, was hard to miss as he sauntered into Basquiat’s Bottle, a trendy bar and restaurant on a commercial drag in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant. 

“This is one of the restaurants that’s kind of central to the community,” Cornegy, 55, told Jewish Insider on a recent Sunday afternoon, settling in at a table in the back while contemplating an order of shrimp and grits.

Cornegy, whose district includes Bedford-Stuyvesant as well as Crown Heights, is now competing for the more high-profile role of Brooklyn borough president — and he has been savoring the opportunity to step away from Zoom, hit the pavement and make a more personal impression on potential voters with just weeks remaining until the June 22 Democratic primary.

“Because I’m such an attraction, I’m used to meeting people and engaging people,” said Cornegy, who wasn’t boasting so much as accurately characterizing his striking height. “I’m on the doors, I’m in the streets, I’m in bars, I’m in restaurants talking to people. When people generally get a chance to speak to me and know me, whether they’re with me or not, they walk away with a solid impression.”

But Cornegy is relying on more than just his memorable presence as he jockeys to succeed Eric Adams, the outgoing borough president and mayoral hopeful. In recent months, Cornegy has established himself as a leading contender in the crowded field of more than a dozen candidates, tying for first place in one poll alongside fellow city councilmember Antonio Reynoso, with Assemblymember Jo Anne Simon, who leads in fundraising, not far behind. 

Robert Cornegy in Coney Island (Courtesy)

While Reynoso has pulled in support from a number of leading progressives, Cornegy is carving out a center-left lane, having earned endorsements from several prominent Jewish community leaders as well as influential celebrities including Tracy Morgan and Spike Lee. 

Facing term limits in the City Council, where he has served since 2014, Cornegy believes that he is best qualified to usher his home borough into a post-pandemic era, citing his current role leading the housing and buildings committee as well as his prior experience chairing the small business committee.

“During the pandemic, it became incredibly evident to me that whoever was going to lead this borough had to have a solid understanding for the recovery process of small business and job creation and responsible development,” said Cornegy, who is also chairman of the council’s Democratic Conference. “While we try to fight for affordability in an ever-increasing, unaffordable borough, the person couldn’t be just a ‘no, no, no’ person. It had to be somebody who was willing to fight the hard fight around affordability and who had some acumen within that.”

The borough presidency is largely ceremonial, holding some substantive duties like community board appointments and zoning and land use recommendations. But Cornegy says he is excited by the role because it nevertheless represents a powerful platform. 

“We have the largest bully pulpit probably in the state outside of the mayor of New York and the governor,” he argued, indicating that the primary pillars of his campaign are job growth, affordable housing and public safety — perhaps the issue on which he is most passionate.

The city councilman was an active presence last summer at social justice demonstrations in his district, where a Black Lives Matter mural was painted in bright yellow letters onto a block-length stretch of Fulton Street he helped turn into a pedestrian plaza. But while Cornegy advocates for increased policy accountability, he has distanced himself from efforts to defund or abolish the police. 

“I don’t think it’s mutually exclusive to demand reform and accountability in the criminal justice system — I’m a Black man in America — while still supporting a platform for solid public safety,” said Cornegy. “I don’t think you have to abandon one for the other.”

He says his constituents are largely in agreement with his views. “My community, the community of Bedford-Stuyvesant and northern Crown Heights, has never demanded abolishing or defunding the police,” said Cornegy, who believes that police officers should live in the neighborhoods they work in and advocates for the establishment of a mental health emergency response unit. “They’ve demanded policing in their communities that didn’t violate their civil and human rights, and I think most people would agree with that as a narrative.”

Henry Butler and City Councilman Robert Cornegy speak during “The Last O.G. Season 2” Garden Party For Good at the Hattie Carthan Community Garden in Brooklyn on March 28, 2019 in New York City. 547100 (Credit: Mike Coppola/Getty Images for TBS)

Still, Cornegy has found himself at odds with progressives who support more sweeping reforms. “He’s trying to signal that he understands policing is a problem, but almost every elected official is saying that,” said Alex Vitale, a professor of sociology at Brooklyn College and the author of The End of Policing. “He does support some small investments in non-police public safety strategies, but those proposals are very small in scale and don’t reduce the burden of policing.”

Cornegy took issue with such criticism, noting that he is deeply engaged in reform efforts, pointing to his sponsorship of a chokehold criminalization bill as well as his support for ending qualified immunity, which has long protected police officers from wrongdoing. 

“I can go all the way back where we’ve been witnessing this regularly in our communities and trying to find a substantive way for long-term, substantial change, and have been working towards that,” he told JI. “I think that there was a little bit of a disregard for that hard work that some of us have put in.”

Others have appreciated his approach. “Security is a major issue, especially considering all the anitsmeitic incidents,” said Leon Goldenberg, a prominent Orthodox Jewish real estate executive and talk radio host in Midwood who, as a member of the Flatbush Jewish Community Coalition, recently endorsed Cornegy.

If elected, Cornegy said he will use the borough president’s office as a “sanctuary” for victims of hate crimes while working to assemble a task force for attacks within Brooklyn. “In order to get a hate crime designation, it takes almost an act of god,” said Cornegy, who adds that he will encourage Brooklyn’s district attorney to act more forcefully on such designations. “This kind of hatred, unchecked, only escalates.”

Cornegy has longstanding ties with Brooklyn’s Orthodox Jewish community thanks in part, he said, to his support for causes like security funding of yeshivas. “My agenda for public safety certainly encompasses the Orthodox community and my narrative around public safety,” he said.

Such relationships, he says, have only accrued over time. “I celebrate the fact that, yes, while I’ve gotten Orthodox support,” Cornegy said, “it has come out of hard work together.” 

Robert Cornegy in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn (Courtesy)

“I’ve worked on behalf of an issue that was germane to a particular demographic, and so that demographic now feels confident that, as a Black man, I could still have Jewish issues or Hispanic issues or Polish issues. I have a Polish contingency,” Cornegy told JI. “But those are all forged out of doing work that positively impacted those communities. So there’s this kind of feeling that, ‘OK, he’s Black, but he has a larger view of what the needs of public communities outside of his own are, and potentially can advocate on our behalf as well.’”

“I would say his claim to fame is he’s really a consensus builder,” said David Greenfield, the CEO of the Met Council and a former city councilman who served alongside Cornegy. “In Brooklyn, which is a big, complicated, complex borough, he’s done a good job bringing people together.”

The son of a Southern Baptist minister who grew up in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Cornegy — now a father of six — played basketball at St. John’s University, went to the Final Four and then played professionally overseas for 15 years. He spent some of that time playing in Israel in the early ’90s — while also living briefly on a kibbutz because he wanted to immerse himself in the culture — an experience he describes as formative. “I played on teams where they were professional athletes and still served in the military,” he recalled. “When I would ask why, there was a level of patriotism that existed that I didn’t even think existed in the United States.” 

“I’m a patriot,” Cornegy said. “I love the United States of America. But I hadn’t seen that before.”

Cornegy described the recent violence between Israel and Hamas as “incredibly disturbing,” adding: “I was there, and I understand protecting your homeland from people who really have to do that on a consistent basis.” 

“Because we’re such a diverse borough, it is always on my mind how to bring peace here, at least, because you’ll see that there are conflicts that are happening on our homeland because of what’s happening there,” Cornegy told JI. “That disturbs me a lot, because for the most part, here in the borough, we kind of live cohesively together, and I’m always thinking about what can I do as the Brooklyn borough president to alleviate some of that pressure that people are experiencing.”

Robert Cornegy at a rally

That impulse was on display, on a smaller scale, at Basquiat’s Bottle in Bedford-Stuyvesant the other day, when a kitchen worker approached Cornegy to thank him for providing a free suit for his graduation not long ago. And although the city councilman only had a glass of water, he still bought a round of drinks for the wait staff — he abstained — rather than leaving the restaurant without having ordered anything.

It was clear that Cornegy was enjoying his status as a kind of community fixture as he campaigns for the opportunity to expand his web of connections.

Cornegy gained some prominence outside of Brooklyn when, having undergone a rigorous vetting process, Guinness World Records deemed him the world’s tallest politician a couple of years ago. But he lost his crown after an insurance commissioner in North Dakota beat him by a centimeter. “A centimeter,” Cornegy emphasized, sounding a note of amused annoyance, “and some obscure elective role that I’ve never even heard of before.”

He didn’t seem too bothered by it, though. “I’m still the people’s champ here in New York,” he said. “I’ll take that.”