As New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani draws increased scrutiny for picking some top appointees whose past incendiary social media comments have provoked controversy and raised questions over his vetting process, Jewish community leaders are now watching closely for signs of how the administration will make staffing decisions on key issues connected to Israel and antisemitism.

One person to keep an eye on is Josh Binderman, who served as Mamdani’s Jewish outreach director during the campaign and transition. He has largely maintained a low profile in his time working for the candidate and now mayor, garnering just a small handful of mentions in the press, despite his critical position leading engagement with a community that in many ways remains deeply skeptical of Mamdani’s hostile stances on Israel and commitment to implementing a clear strategy to counter rising antisemitism.

Binderman, most recently a communications manager for New Deal Strategies, an influential progressive consulting firm, served until 2024 as a PAC manager and a senior associate for J Street, the progressive Israel advocacy group, according to his LinkedIn profile. 

While Mamdani notably refused to work with the organization when he led a chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine as an undergraduate student at Bowdoin College, the mayor has since developed a friendlier rapport with J Street, which has defended him amid charges that he tapped transition advisors who engaged in anti-Zionist activism that crossed a line into antisemitism.

Mamdani’s decision to employ a former top J Street staffer during the election suggests he could follow a similar approach to key Jewish community posts for his developing administration. If so, it could help to at least dampen some concerns from Jewish leaders who fear the mayor will end up hiring even harder-left members in his coalition such as activists associated with Jewish Voice for Peace, an anti-Israel advocacy group that aggressively promotes boycotts targeting the Jewish state.

It is still an open question, however, how Mamdani will move forward on such issues. His decision last week to revoke two executive orders linked to Israel and antisemitism was widely seen as a discouraging maneuver that eroded goodwill among mainstream Jewish leaders — even as Binderman had reportedly given some advance warning to leaders about the effort before the inauguration.

Mamdani otherwise chose to retain an office to combat antisemitism established by former Mayor Eric Adams. He has not disclosed who will steer the office now, though a person recently in touch with his team told Jewish Insider this week that Phylisa Wisdom, the executive director of New York Jewish Agenda, a progressive Zionist group, was floated as a possible candidate.

For his part, Binderman, who as a student was involved with BBYO, continues to be an unofficial “point person” for Jewish community outreach in the administration, according to one Jewish leader who has heard from him recently. Binderman is still feeling out a potential role in City Hall, according to other Jewish community leaders. He did not return a request for comment from JI.

Dora Pekec, a Mamdani spokesperson, told JI on Tuesday that the mayor’s team would have more to share on related appointments in the coming weeks and that such decisions “are still being worked out.”

Jewish leaders who have engaged with Binderman told JI their interactions with the young Mamdani aide have been largely positive. But they expressed some lingering doubts about his ability to influence the mayor himself. “He does seem eager and willing to help,” said one Orthodox community leader. “He does want to work together.”

“To what extent and how much freedom he has remains to be seen,” the leader explained to JI.

Another Jewish community leader who has spoken with Mamdani’s team echoed that view. Binderman, he told JI, has “always appeared to be level-headed, fair and reasonable. The question is, will the admin listen to his guidance?”

“Only Josh and Ali Najmi,” a top Mamdani advisor who maintains close ties to the Jewish community, “can land the Jewish plane,” the Jewish leader said. “But Zohran has to decide if he wants to land it.”

In the last decade and a half, Hungary has gained a reputation as the most conservative European nation, a distinction happily touted by the country’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, who has been in office since 2010. 

In building that reputation, Orbán has courted controversy — with inflammatory comments about racial minorities and the LGBTQ community, by taking measures that critics say erode the country’s democracy and by adopting a more pro-Russia stance than most of the rest of the European Union. His hard-line policies are part of why Orbán and President Donald Trump have been able to cultivate a close relationship, with the U.S. and Hungary now far more aligned than they were during the Biden administration.

“That’s an understatement,” János Bóka, Hungary’s minister for EU affairs, told Jewish Insider with a laugh during a visit to Washington last week. 

But if Trump has taken a page from Orbán’s conservative governing playbook, bringing the two countries closer together, Bóka said there is one political trend playing out among American conservatives that he hopes Hungary avoids: the rise of antisemitism on the political right. 

“I am aware of the discussion that you are now having in the States on the reviving of antisemitism on the right. One of the added values of my trip in the U.S. is that I can study this firsthand and can discuss this with people so I have a better understanding,” Bóka said. “This phenomenon is something that is very difficult for me to understand, because at least in Hungary and in most parts of Europe, it doesn’t have a parallel, or at least not yet.”

That’s because Bóka says Hungary has all but eliminated right-wing antisemitism and the lingering vestiges of Nazi ideology, or at the very least that the country has made it “politically irrelevant.” 

“I cannot pretend the 20th century did not happen,” said Bóka, who as of May also serves as Hungary’s special commissioner tasked with fighting antisemitism. But, he added, “this government has basically expelled political antisemitism from the political discourse.” 

The situation in Hungary is more complicated than Bóka let on. Orbán has faced criticism from Jewish organizations for years over his targeting of Hungarian Holocaust survivor and financier George Soros, with the Anti-Defamation League writing in 2018 that the Hungarian campaign against Soros is “chilling.” Deborah Lipstadt, the Holocaust historian who served as the State Department’s antisemitism envoy during the Biden administration, said in 2022 that Orbán’s rhetoric warning against racial mixing “clearly evokes Nazi racial ideology.” 

Bóka, who was in Washington to meet with American Jewish communal leaders, said Hungary has adopted a “zero-tolerance policy toward antisemitism,” and said the allegation that Orbán is antisemitic is “wrong” and “a misunderstanding of what he does.”

Similar to Trump, Budapest has adopted the stated goal of combating antisemitism, even if its approach is controversial and targeted toward one particular political ideology. And like Trump, Bóka views the fight against antisemitism as tied to the country’s broader efforts to limit migration. 

“We see some elements coming from the far left and as a part of a European network that is becoming more active and vocal in Hungary as well in the past few months. But I think this is very limited,” said Bóka. “We haven’t seen violent incidents that are in any way similar to what we see in some Western European cities because of the strict migration policy we have in place. And also because of the zero tolerance policy on antisemitism, we don’t see radical Islamism as a political factor in Hungary.” 

Because his job description includes Hungary’s relationship with the EU, Bóka sees his purview as broader than just antisemitism in Hungary. He called it a “European challenge” that must be addressed together. “Antisemitism exists in all EU member states, including Hungary,” Bóka acknowledged. He thinks he — and Hungary — have something to offer other European nations as they seek to combat antisemitism. 

His first lesson to them is about Israel: If you are serious about fighting antisemitism, Bóka argues, attacking Israel’s actions in Gaza in EU forums will undermine that goal. Israel has leaned heavily on Orbán as a pro-Israel bulwark in the EU. Hungary announced earlier this year that it would leave the International Criminal Court to protest its treatment of Israel and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who faces an arrest warrant from the body. 

Jewish communities “will never believe that you are credible, that you have a real political commitment for fighting antisemitism, if at the same time you send very mixed messages as far as your relationship with the State of Israel is concerned,” said Bóka. “If you start speaking the language of isolation, sanctions and so forth, then you will lose the opportunity to cooperate with the State of Israel on fighting antisemitism in Europe, which is indispensable.” 

During his time in Washington, Bóka met with Rabbi Yehuda Kaploun, Trump’s nominee to serve as U.S. antisemitism special envoy. Kaploun had his Senate confirmation hearing last week but has not yet been confirmed. Bóka also met in New York with Jeff Bartos, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations for management and reform. He said he is “convinced” that the U.S. and Hungary can collaborate on fighting antisemitism. 

“I believe that we have a very similar strategic view on objectives and the ways and means to get there,” said Bóka. “I think there’s a lot of openness on both sides to cooperate.”

A book that centers on Palestinian identity is drawing controversy from some Jewish parents in the Montgomery County, Md., public school system after it was assigned to first grade students as required classroom reading, Jewish Insider has learned. 

The book,“Tunjur! Tunjur! Tunjur! A Palestinian Folktale,” written by Margaret Read MacDonald, aims to convey a message to children that there are consequences for taking things that don’t belong to them. It tells the story of a woman who “prayed to Allah” for a child and received a pot as her child. The pot, too young to know right from wrong, had a tendency to steal honey from the marketplace and jewels from the king — until she got caught. As punishment, she was filled with muck. “I hope you’ve learned your lesson,” the pot’s mother tells her. “You cannot take things that do not belong to you.” 

While the book does not mention Israel, local Jewish leaders and parents voiced concern that the required book’s subtext sends an anti-Israel message to elementary schoolers and that the reference to “Allah” does not belong in a public school setting. 

A syllabus notes that students can receive supplemental reading materials if “any instructional material conflicts with your family’s sincerely held religious beliefs.”

The book’s lesson that “‘you cannot take things that do not belong to you’ echoes activist rhetoric that falsely casts Israel as an oppressor and the Jewish people as imperialist rather than indigenous,” Dana Stangel-Plowe, chief program officer at the North American Values Institute, a nonprofit that monitors antisemitism in K-12 schools, told JI.

“It reinforces a false narrative that erases the historic Jewish connection to Israel. It sends a troubling message to Jewish families during a time of rising antisemitism,” Stangel-Plowe told JI.

Not all Jewish communal leaders agreed that the book was problematic. Guila Franklin Siegel, chief operating officer of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington, argued that Jewish families should embrace the book.  

“If the only complaint about this book is that it’s sharing a Palestinian folktale that teaches children not to take things that don’t belong to them, I can’t see what the problem with the book is,” Franklin Siegel told JI. “It will be a shame if Jewish people wind up objecting to books only because they have protagonists who happen to be Palestinian.” 

“There may well be books and materials that do misinform students about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and we always monitor that work,” said Franklin Siegel. “If we turn this into a back and forth where parents are requesting opt-outs for any material that they don’t see eye-to-eye with, we’ll wind up in a situation where we’re seeing a significant number of students whose parents are requesting opt-outs for things like Holocaust speakers.” 

Meanwhile, Margery Smelkinson, a parent of four MCPS students, told JI that she would have preferred the district find a children’s book that teaches not to steal “without causing controversy.” 

“The real problem is that MCPS chose a book that even requires an opt-out form — why not just pick another book?” 

Smelkinson called on the school district to prioritize helping students get up to speed in reading, math and science instead of “creating more barriers to learning.”

“I’m concerned and curious if my child was introduced to [similar rhetoric] last year,” Diana Tung, the parent of an MCPS second grader and kindergartener, told JI. “I assume in a public school setting there’s going to be pretty diverse spiritual beliefs [but] the context of the tale itself [concerns me]. The themes should be taught using a different folktale, I’m pretty confident there are plenty.”  

“Books and materials approved to be available for use in classrooms, beyond being in alignment with curriculum standards, are selected to be representative of our very diverse community,” Christopher Cram, a spokesperson for the suburban Washington school system, which is the 15th-largest school district in the country and educates a significant number of Jewish students, told JI. “Students and families expect to be able to see themselves in the materials we use.” 

The school system has faced several antisemitic incidents since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks, leading to the school board president, Karla Silvestre, being subpoenaed to testify at a congressional hearing in May 2024. Weeks after the hearing, at least six MCPS school buildings — including three elementary schools — were vandalized with antisemitic graffiti. 

The assignment of the Palestinian folktale as required reading comes two months after the Supreme Court ruled in Mahmoud v. Taylor that MCPS must allow parents to opt their children out of lessons and books that feature LGBTQ+ themes if the material conflicts with their religious beliefs.

After a video surfaced last week of Rep. Katherine Clark (D-MA), the House minority whip, referring to Israel’s actions in Gaza as genocide, Clark walked back the remark on Monday — and maintained her endorsement from AIPAC amid the controversy, a spokesperson for the group told Jewish Insider. 

“Last week, while attending an event in my district, I repeated the word ‘genocide’ in response to a question,” Clark told the Jewish News Syndicate on Monday. “I want to be clear that I am not accusing Israel of genocide. … We all need to work with urgency to bring the remaining hostages home, surge aid to Palestinians and oppose their involuntary relocation, remove Hamas from power and end the war.” 

AIPAC spokesperson Marshall Wittmann told JI on Monday that the organization will stick by Clark, the second highest-ranked Democrat in the House.

“We appreciate that the congresswoman clarified her remarks, as Israel is fighting a just and moral war against a barbaric terrorist enemy. Our endorsement is unchanged and based upon her long standing support for the U.S.-Israel relationship,” Wittmann said. 

In a video from an event hosted on Thursday by the Friends Committee on National Legislation in Cambridge, Mass., Clark made a passing reference to Israel’s actions in Gaza. “We each have to continue to have an open heart about how we do this, how we do it effectively, and how we take action in time to make a difference, whether that is stopping the starvation and genocide and destruction of Gaza, or whether that means we are working together to stop the redistricting that is going on, taking away the vote from people in order to retain power,” said Clark.