When I saw that my Bluesky feed was smitten with a New York City mayoral candidate, a state assemblyman named Zohran Mamdani, I thought a few things. First, I figured, if Bluesky is 100% behind a candidate, this person stands no chance. I was seeing things about free buses and rent freezes and thinking, yes, it tracks that progressive-heavy platform Bluesky wants this. Remember the old saying, Twitter isn’t real life? Bluesky is even less representative of anything. Then again, I thought Hillary would win. Don’t go to me for prognostication.

Next, I thought, wait a second, I don’t live in New York City! What did I care who became its mayor, let alone in who won a Democratic mayoral primary? It felt a bit like having to care about the goings-on of Harvard University. OK, not quite, because I’m from NYC, and more to the point, because this is an objectively high-stakes election involving a city with more than eight million inhabitants and an outsized cultural, economic, and political impact. The importance here is more than symbolic. This was still not enough to get me to sit down and read the candidates’ platforms and pick which one I would vote for if I could vote in that election, which I cannot.

Third, I immediately registered the fact that Mamdani is good-looking. Our society is weird about male beauty, pretending not to see it. Women in particular may be reluctant to speak about it because we get accused of being too frivolous for politics. But I am not afraid to say it: Mamdani is a conventionally attractive man, in the visual tradition of Barack Obama and Justin Trudeau. Do I think his floppy-haired heartthrob looks singlehandedly explain his popularity? No—policies, charisma, and timing all play a role. But yeah it mattered that he’s cute.

It took me longer than it should have to give any thought any which way about what Mamdani’s candidacy means for Jews, or indeed that Mamdani would, if elected, be the city’s first Muslim mayor. (He is of Indian-American heritage and was born in Uganda.) This is either the most or least significant thing about this story, depending whom you ask.

***

I witnessed much rejoicing on Bluesky over what it means that New York, such a Jewish city, went for Mamdani, some going so far as to claim that this is itself evidence of the spuriousness of the antisemitism claims against him. Numerically, though, a candidate succeeding in New York is neither here nor there. It’s Jewish as cities go, but approximately seven out of eight New Yorkers are not Jewish. A Democrat’s success in New York could indicate Jewish support, but wouldn’t necessarily.

If a candidate’s votes came almost exclusively from that non-Jewish majority, then that candidate could be neither here nor there where Jews are concerned, or even catering to disparate groups who’ve found common cause in hating Jews. New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg gives as additional evidence for the case that, per the headline, “Plenty of Jews Love Zohran Mamdani,” that “he won most of Park Slope, a neighborhood full of progressive Jews, and held his own on the similarly Jewish Upper West Side.” Again, this could point to Jewish support, but it could also mean that the non-Jews in these areas are not so keen on their Jewish neighbours. Such things have, historically,........

© Canadian Jewish News