They rallied rabbis against Mamdani’s anti-Zionism. What does The Jewish Majority do next?
The upstart group’s founder says he is fighting an information war with the left-wing Jews in Mamdani’s tent
New York City mayoral candidate Zohran K. Mamdani and NYC comptroller Brad Lander speak during the Jews For Racial And Economic Justice’s Mazals Gala on Sept. 10 in New York City. Photo by John Lamparski/Getty Images
(JTA) — Plenty of Jews were concerned about the specter of Zohran Mamdani becoming mayor of New York. But few did as much to mobilize other Jews around the issue as Jonathan Schulman.
Via his newly formed organization, The Jewish Majority, Schulman circulated a letter to rabbis and cantors around the country opposing “rising anti-Zionism and its political normalization throughout our nation.” The letter, which called out Mamdani by name, was signed by more than 1,100 Jewish congregational leaders — one of the most widely endorsed missives of its kind — and galvanized many clergy who had been reluctant to use their pulpits to wade into a political arena.
They didn’t get what they wanted. Yet the day after a decisive victory by Mamdani, Schulman wasn’t as despondent as one might imagine. Instead, he sees his group’s work as a success.
“This wasn’t about Mamdani,” he told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on Wednesday, rejecting the suggestion that his campaign amounted to an effort to get Jews to vote against the mayor-elect.
Instead, Schulman said, The Jewish Majority proved that it could combat a “subversion of the accurate representation of the Jewish narrative.”
He sees his work as simple: providing an organized Jewish voice, on Israel and other issues, to counteract what he sees as the growing influence of left-wing Jewish groups like Jewish Voice for Peace and Jews for Racial and Economic Justice. As members of those groups have aligned closely with Mamdani and stand to grow their influence under his administration, the Jewish Majority aims to serve as a counter-narrative.
“They exist to present fringe views to the public as normative,” he said. “If we decide to let them be the only ones to hold the microphone, that would be a mistake we can’t afford to make.” That includes on the issue of “political anti-Zionism,” which Schulman insists was the goal of the rabbinic letter — rather than an explicit anti-endorsement of Mamdani as a candidate.
There are an estimated 3,000 to 4,000 rabbis in the United States, meaning that potentially a third of them signed on to a single statement. Others indicated that they agreed with the sentiments but chose not to sign for other reasons.
“We’ve seen countless examples over the past couple of years of Jews coming out in support of anti-Zionist candidates,” Schulman said. “And now that narrative has shifted. Now you look at that narrative and it’s hard to say, ‘Well, look, these rabbis are supporting this candidate.’ Well, in fact, what you’re seeing is overwhelmingly one of the largest displays of rabbinic unity that we’ve seen in our country, saying we don’t accept the normalization of political anti-Zionism.”
He is skeptical of early exit polling purporting to show as many as one-third of Jewish voters in New York breaking for Mamdani, and suspects the actual number is closer to the “80-20” split that research suggests also reflects the Jewish consensus around Zionism.
Promoting an institutional Jewish consensus will continue post-Mamdani. Schulman insisted The Jewish Majority would not be making policy, only amplifying the views of major Jewish groups such as the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Congress, Jewish federations and the New York Board of Rabbis. He also said he would not seek to join the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Groups or other coalitions.
“We’re here to reflect,” he said. “It’s not my job to weigh in.” One item on his agenda, he said, is instituting “training programs” to teach Jewish leaders how to “present normative communal perspectives.”
Schulman has felt his own priorities within the Jewish community shift. Before striking off on his own, he spent 18 years at the pro-Israel lobbying giant AIPAC. One of his duties was to “work with congregations throughout the United States to increase the level of pro-Israel political activism in American synagogues.”
He left AIPAC in August 2024, as the group’s brand was becoming increasingly toxic amid the war in Gaza. Today even some moderate Democrats, like Massachusetts Senate candidate Seth Moulton, have sworn off accepting AIPAC donations. When radio host Charlamagne tha God wanted to insult Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries as someone with no real principles, he called the Brooklyn congressman “AIPAC Shakur.”
Schulman declined to comment on whether he had split from AIPAC ideologically. “I have a lot of respect for my former colleagues, and it’s a great organization,” he said. Nor does he see his work with The Jewish Majority as a throughline from his work there. Despite the overlapping focus on Jewish clergy, he insisted, this is “not ‘AIPAC by a different name.’”
Instead, he said, he left AIPAC because he had identified this new problem — the growing influence of left-wing Jewish groups after Oct. 7 — and wanted to counteract it, in a way he deemed non-political in nature. Even with all the Jewish organizations that were opposing anti-Zionism on the national stage, he said, “there is nobody whose job is to make sure that the Jewish community is accurately represented, that Jewish communal values are accurately represented.”
Those same Jewish groups, whose priorities he hopes to give a megaphone to, are scrambling in the wake of Mamdani’s big win. The ADL has launched a “Mamdani monitor” to keep tabs on the new mayor’s administration. JFREJ, meanwhile, sees no reason to come to the Jewish center: A victory Zoom call scheduled for Thursday to “celebrate our massive win” is set to feature pro-Palestinian activist Linda Sarsour and Jamaal Bowman, the former “Squad” congressman who is rumored to be on Mamdani’s schools chancellor shortlist.
Schulman is optimistic about building an organized Jewish counter-narrative to that perspective — so long as the ceasefire in Gaza holds.
“The American Jewish community has been undergoing a profound change, and because we’ve been in the middle of this war, which has been a propaganda war here in America that we’ve seen proliferating, we haven’t had the capacity to really think about, ‘What is the future going to look like?’” he said.
“People are starting to finally say, OK, the fighting has stopped, and we need to think about how the Jewish community is going to be able to represent itself for the long haul.”
