Where Is Mamdani’s Antisemitism Tsar?

The pressure has been on Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s pick to lead City Hall’s Office to Combat Antisemitism, Phylisa Wisdom, to prove that an anti-Zionist mayor is committed to the safety of the city’s Jewish community. More than 100 days after her appointment, however, critics say she has little to show for it.“There’s really nothing going on,” the minority whip of the New York City Council, Inna Vernikov, tells the Sun. “It’s like there isn’t an office to combat antisemitism.”Born into a Reform Jewish family at San Diego, Ms. Wisdom, 39, has built her career as a liberal Jewish advocate. Those politics have shaped her vision for the office, and upon her appointment in February she pledged to “model what a real, progressive commitment to combating antisemitism can look like.”The office was formed under Mayor Eric Adams in 2025 and is tasked with developing efforts to combat anti-Jewish hate crimes, support victims of antisemitism, and celebrate Jewish culture. It is expected to liaise with the city’s Jewish community, the New York Police Department, a bipartisan City Council antisemitism task force, and other city agencies.Ms. Vernikov, a Ukrainian-born attorney whose alarm over the rise of antisemitism in New York prompted her to run for City Council in 2021, says the office has fallen short on all fronts. She criticizes the office for having no X page — ironic, she says, given the mayor’s “robust social media presence” — and condemns Ms. Wisdom for reportedly ducking the Israel Day on Fifth parade last month. (Mr. Mamdani, who rejects Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, also skipped the march, becoming the first mayor in decades to do so.) Ms. Vernikov also accuses the office of staying silent on a string of antisemitic incidents that have occurred since Ms. Wisdom’s appointment, and for failing to engage with the council’s bipartisan antisemitism task force, of which she is co-chairwoman.So what has the office been up to these past four months? An activity log on the mayor’s website offers an underwhelming account. Among the listed achievements are accompanying Mr. Mamdani to the Jewish Children’s Museum and to a pair of Passover seders, assisting the mayor at a single Kosher for Passover food distribution event, and organizing a 45-minute roundtable between the mayor and several Orthodox Jewish leaders.The page notes that the office is “currently embarking on a listening tour” on issues related to antisemitism but offers no updates on its progress. The office has not yet responded to a request for comment.Ms. Wisdom’s predecessor, Moshe Davis, says the office’s first priority should be protecting Jewish New Yorkers from hate crimes, which have climbed to multi-decade highs amid the anti-Israel protest movement that erupted following Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack and Israel’s response. Although Jews make up roughly 10 percent of the city’s population, they are targeted in more than half of all hate crime incidents. Many have grown more fearful given the mayor’s anti-Zionist views and his endorsement of the anti-Israel protest movement.“The direction I want to see is not, ‘Oh, let’s combat hate crimes by bringing people of different backgrounds together to sit over a nice babka,'” Mr. Davis tells the Sun. “It’s about safety and making sure that the measures are in place, that enforcement is in place. That’s key.” He adds that “there’s a limited amount of new information needed to fight violence against Jewish people.”Before Mr. Mamdani took office, Mr. Davis says he spent hundreds of hours compiling a report with budgeting guidelines, safety measures, and existing projects, hoping to give the incoming administration the tools to continue his office’s initiatives. “I hope they’re actually going to continue the work,” he says. “But I haven’t seen anything like that in the budget.”Perhaps the office’s most consequential decision — notably absent from its website — is its refusal to adopt a definition of antisemitism. The office had previously operated under the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition, which identifies the denial of Jewish self-determination as a potentially antisemitic act. The IHRA framework is the most widely adopted of its kind globally and has been recognized by the American government, but Mr. Mamdani on his first day in office reversed the executive order codifying it. Rather than craft a replacement, Ms. Wisdom has opted to go without one. Testifying before the Council’s antisemitism task force in April, she said the office would recognize antisemitic hate when it sees it and judge incidents “case by case.”Mr. Davis, who advised Mr. Adams on adopting the IHRA, argues the framework is an essential educational tool, particularly for those without firsthand experience with antisemitism. “People understand that the Jewish community is being targeted and they want to help,” he says. “And so much of what we’re seeing now is anti-Israel activism leading to violence against Jewish people. So you want to provide a framework that encompasses that.”Ms. Wisdom has faced an uphill battle winning over parts of the Jewish community from the start. Her appointment drew immediate backlash from Orthodox leaders who pointed to her past work for Yaffed, an advocacy group that campaigns for greater state oversight of secular studies in Hasidic schools. At the time, the vice chairman of Community Board 12 in Brooklyn, Yaakov Kaplan, called it “mind-boggling” that Mr. Mamdani would choose someone that “Orthodox Jews see as an adversary.”She also drew early rebuke after a 2021 post on X resurfaced in which she responded to an expression of solidarity with Israel from a then-mayoral candidate, Andrew Yang, as it faced rocket fire from Hamas. “As an American Jew and a New Yorker, I am floored by this tweet (although never surprised),” she wrote. “NYC deserves a mayor who will stand up for Palestinians in the face of state-sanctioned violence.”Mr. Davis, however, is still holding out some hope. “I want to give the office space to do the work,” he says. “It’s only been a couple of months.” He notes that his door remains open. “I’m still around in New York City. I’d love to be able to help them do the work.”

Where Is Mamdani’s Antisemitism Tsar?

Where Is Mamdani’s Antisemitism Tsar?

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