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New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has officially picked his antisemitism czar – he’s chosen the leader of a progressive Jewish group who, unlike him, supports Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state.
Phylisa Wisdom, who has led the advocacy group the New York Jewish Agenda (NYJA) since 2023, was named executive director of the Mayor’s Office to Combat Antisemitism on Wednesday afternoon.
Wisdom declined to comment, but both she and a Mamdani spokesperson confirmed her appointment.
Although her appointment seems promising, Rabbi Moshe Davis, who was the executive director of this mayoral office, told The Jerusalem Post he was concerned over Mamdani’s choice.
“Antisemitism cannot be addressed with slick videos or empty remarks,” he said. “It requires policy, budgets, enforcement, and sustained follow-through.”
“The Mayor’s Office to Combat Antisemitism was built to be operational, not symbolic. It requires government experience, strong agency relationships, and trust across the Jewish community to function effectively from day one,” Davis continued.
“Without those foundations, there is a real risk the office will struggle to deliver when Jewish New Yorkers need it most.”
“@phylisajoy is the perfect person for the job,” tweeted Brad Lander, Mamdani’s most prominent Jewish ally and a co-founder of NYJA. “I’ve had the blessing to watch her lead @NYJewishAgenda in many critical moments.”
Speculation had been building over who Mamdani would appoint since his first day on the job, when he announced that he would retain the office created last year by his predecessor, Eric Adams, even as he repealed Adams’ anti-BDS executive order. Jewish leaders have closely watched Mamdani’s moves to monitor whether and how he might import his longstanding opposition to Israel into his leadership of the city.
By tapping Wisdom, he is choosing someone to the left of Adams’ antisemitism czar – Moshe Davis – but with no track record of anti-Zionism.
On its website, NYJA says it is made up of “liberal and progressive Zionists,” and that it is “committed to the idea of Jewish self-determination and to the right of all people to live in free and just societies.” The group opposes the movement to boycott Israel.
Wisdom had been rumored to be in the mix over the last couple of weeks. Some Orthodox Jewish leaders voiced concern about Wisdom’s past work for Yaffed, an organization that advocates increased oversight of secular education in New York’s hassidic and haredi (ultra-Orthodox) yeshivas. Wisdom spent a year as Yaffed’s director of development and government affairs before joining NYJA in 2023.
“The leader of the Office of Antisemitism cannot have a contentious relationship with the [hassidic] yeshiva community,” wrote Yaacov Behrman, a Chabad PR liaison, on X/Twitter in January.
“And in New York, a large share of antisemitic hate crimes target [hassidic] and Yeshivish Jews,” he wrote without naming Wisdom. “It is difficult to understand how someone who has spent years publicly antagonizing yeshivas could build the relationships or provide the reassurance needed for the community most often targeted by antisemitic attacks.”
A coalition of 13 pro-Israel Jewish organizations and institutions, including the NYC Public School Alliance, End Jew Hatred, Progressives for Israel, and the Hannah Senesh Community Day School in Brooklyn, petitioned Mamdani to select someone “in the mold of” Davis.
“The individual selected must be able to command trust even among those who may not share their personal views,” they wrote.
Wisdom is “fantastic at bringing people together across many lines of difference,” Lander wrote in his tweet on Wednesday, adding, “She loves what an extraordinary & diversely Jewish place New York City is, and she’ll work hard every day to keep it that way.”
A San Diego native who now lives in Brooklyn, Wisdom started her position at NYJA just a few months before Hamas’s October 7, 2023, massacre. Her grandmother was a Ladino-speaking Sephardic Jew who was raised in the Bronx.
In 2024, Wisdom told the New York Jewish Week that NYJA was playing “a key role in helping liberal New York Jews navigate the complexity of this very difficult post-Oct. 7 world, where many on the political poles are trying to divide us and insisting that one must be simply pro-Israel or pro-Palestine.”
She has indicated that she is aligned with Mamdani in opposing the codification of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism, which characterizes some forms of Israel criticism as antisemitic. Mamdani repealed Adams’ executive order adopting the definition.
Mamdani’s antisemitism czar nominee called on campuses to not adopt IHRA’s definition
Wisdom has called on universities not to adopt the IHRA definition of antisemitism.
“I am calling upon every university to NOT adopt the IHRA definition but instead make like the Biden administration & adopt an approach that uses some of IHRA and @NexusProjectUS’s definitions,” she wrote in 2024. “The author of the IHRA definition himself has said it’s not for legal codification.”
Wisdom’s stance on the definition drew immediate criticism from Marc Schneier, the senior rabbi of the Hampton Synagogue, who has been a vocal critic of Mamdani.
“The leader of the Office to Combat Antisemitism must understand a basic truth. Israel cannot be bifurcated from Judaism,” he said in a statement. “Ms. Wisdom’s opposition to the IHRA definition of antisemitism, adopted by 50 nations worldwide and 37 of 50 states in America, calls that understanding into question.”
The executive director of the Office to Combat Antisemitism, as outlined in Mamdani’s executive order, is tasked with identifying and developing “efforts to eliminate antisemitism and anti-Jewish hate crime,” and establishing a task force with representatives from agencies including the Office for the Prevention of Hate Crimes, police departments, and the New York City Commission on Human Rights.
Jews are the target of a large proportion of hate crimes in New York City. The NYPD reported 31 alleged antisemitic hate crimes in January, an average of one per day, and a 182% increase from last January.
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