By Donald H. Harrison in San Diego
NATIONAL
A Muslim who told thousands of well-wishers that he grew up “eating bagels and lox every Sunday” was sworn in twice on New Year’s Day 2026 as New York City’s 112th mayor.
Moments after midnight, Zohran Mamdani was sworn in a private ceremony in the railroad station below City Hall by New York State Attorney General Letitia James. On Thursday afternoon, Jan. 1, Mamdani, a former New York State assemblyman, was inaugurated in a public ceremony with U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (Independent-Vermont) – a leader of the Progressive movement – administering the oath of office.
In the same afternoon ceremony, Mark Levine, a former Manhattan borough president, was sworn in as City Comptroller and Jumaane Williams was sworn in for another term as New York City’s Public Advocate. Mamdani took his oath of office with his hand placed on a Quran, Levine took his on a Chumash, and Williams took his on a Christian Bible.
In his year-long campaign for the office, Mamdani had built a following opposing Israel and supporting Palestinian aspirations for statehood, while also making it a point to attend Jewish religious ceremonies. He announced during the campaign that he would reappoint a member of a prominent Jewish family, Jessica Tisch, as New York City’s police commissioner.
Besides by Levine and Sanders, Jews were very much in evidence at Thursday’s inaugural ceremony. Actor Mandy Patinkin led a multiracial, multiethnic children’s choir in singing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” made famous by Judy Garland in the 1939 classic movie, The Wizard of Oz.
In his first speech as mayor, Mamdani paid tribute to Sanders “whose leadership I seek most to emulate.” Stressing the city’s diversity and the unity of its working people, the Democratic Socialist mayor said New York belongs to many people, including “those who feed us biryani and beef patties, picanha and pastrami on rye.”
He said his administration will be a “tale of 8 ½ million cities, each of them a New Yorker with hopes and fears, each a universe, each of them woven together. The authors of this story will speak Pashto and Mandarin, Yiddish and Creole. They will pray in mosques, at shul, at church, at gurdwaras and mandirs and temples – and many will not pray at all. There will be Russian Jewish immigrants in Brighton Beach, Italians in Rossville, and Irish families in Woodhaven….”
Then came the biggest applause and cheer line: “They will be Palestinian New Yorkers in Bay Ridge, who will no longer have to contend with a politics that speaks of universalism and then makes them the exception.”
Mamdani vowed to “govern without shame and insecurity, making no apology for what we believe. I was elected as a Democratic Socialist and I will govern as a Democratic Socialist.” Building on the introduction that Sanders gave him, before the swearing in, he said: “I will not abandon my principles for fear of being deemed radical.”
Sanders, in his speech, ticked off some major economic tenets of Mamdani’s campaign: making sure that people live in affordable housing; free childcare; free bus transportation; access to high quality food, and making the wealthy and large corporations start paying their fair share of taxes. After reciting each of those planks in Mamdani’s platform, he added the refrain; “is not radical.”
As Sanders brought Mamdani to the platform to be sworn in, the crowd of 4,000 invited guests chanted “Zohran, Zohran!” Another 40,000 people were accepted into designated space behind barriers across the street.
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INTERNATIONAL
Eyal Ostrinsky was unanimously elected by the 37-member board of Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael – Jewish National Fund (KKL-JNF) to be their chairman. A resident of the Jerusalem suburb of Mevasseret Zion, Ostrinsky served previously as the World Zionist Organization’s head of Israel and Diaspora Relations and prior to that as senior adviser to Amir Peretz, Israel’s minister of economy and industry.
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Historian Rafael Medoff writes in a Facebook column that Spain is hypocritical in banning the import of products from Judea and Samaria, territories that it says are illegally occupied by Israel. What about Catalonia in northern Spain, Basque country in northwest Spain, people of Celtic heritage in northwest Spain, and the residents of the Canary Islands. Independence from Spain is sought by many residents of all these areas.
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Mark Goldfeder of the National Jewish Advocacy Center has notified Amazon that selling the book of Francesca Albanese, the United Nations’ special rapporteur on the Palestinian territories, may violate U.S. sanctions law. He urged Amazon to halt the sales of When the World Sleeps: Stories, Words, and Wounds of Palestine.
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STATE & LOCAL
Carly Gammill, director of legal policy & litigation at StandWithUs’ Saidoff Law, hailed a federal court judge’s decision to deny a preliminary injunction against the implementation of a California bill aimed at combating antisemitism in public K-12 schools. She said: “The court correctly acknowledged that public school teachers do not have free speech rights in the classroom, because when they deliver lessons to students they are speaking on behalf of the government. While teachers can speak freely in their private lives, they cannot use K-12 public education as a platform for bigotry against Jews or other groups. School districts and state officials have both a right and a responsibility to protect students from instruction that crosses the line into antisemitism.”
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Donald H. Harrison is publisher and editor of San Diego Jewish World
Mamdani’s “block party” failures are a foreshadow of how he will govern in NYC; no food and restrooms for supporters, lack of planning, etc.
Commie Mamdani falsely accused Jewish people of “colonizing” their indigenous homeland Israel. Hypocrisy is common among the antisemitic extremists like Mamdani, his Syrian wife and his parents, who were actual colonizers in Africa when they went to an Uganda and became settler colonists.