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| New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani (center) visits Satmar community leaders in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, October 10, 2025. (credit: SCREENSHOT/X/@ZOHRANKMAMDANI) |
There are moments in Jewish history when silence becomes complicity. When neutrality morphs into moral cowardice. When the lines that divide ideological disagreement from spiritual treachery must be redrawn — sharply, publicly, and without apology.
Such a moment is upon us.
Last week, a faction aligned with the Satmar Hasidic community openly lent support to New York State Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani — a man who has never hidden his hostility toward Israel and who traffics in the oldest, ugliest antisemitic tropes, now dressed up in the language of “anti-Zionism.” Mamdani, the self-styled “Palestinian socialist,” has accused Israel of genocide, championed the BDS movement, and cheered for the delegitimization of the world’s only Jewish state.
That any group of Jews — worse, Jews wearing the banner of Torah — would stand behind such a man is beyond disgrace. It is a moral catastrophe.
And Agudath Israel of America, the historic umbrella organization that has long claimed to represent Orthodox Jewry in the United States, must not look away. If Agudah wants to preserve even a shred of credibility as a voice of Torah in public life, it must do what decency, halacha, and Jewish history demand: explicitly reject and condemn the Satmar faction that endorsed this anti-Israel, anti-Jewish politician.
The Satmar faction’s flirtation with Mamdani is not a minor political gesture. It is an endorsement of hatred cloaked in the pretense of piety. Let us be clear: Mamdani’s record is not one of “principled critique” or “progressive values.” It is one of relentless demonization of Jews who live in their ancestral homeland.
He has marched with those who chant “From the river to the sea,” a slogan whose plain meaning is the eradication of Israel and the Jews within it. He has excused or minimized the October 7 atrocities — one of the darkest days in Jewish history since the Holocaust — as somehow “contextual.”
And in the face of that, a group of Satmar Hasidim smiled, posed for pictures, and called him a “friend.”
This is not Judaism. This is not holiness. This is political opportunism masquerading as righteousness, and it mocks every Jew who bleeds for Am Yisrael.
To understand the poison here, one must recall the Satmar ideology itself — born from the trauma of Europe but hardened into a theology of negation. Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum, the Satmar Rebbe, built his empire on the claim that the State of Israel is a heresy, a rebellion against G-d’s will, and that the Holocaust was a divine punishment for Zionism.
It was a theology of exile frozen in amber — one that refused to see the miraculous rebirth of Jewish sovereignty as anything but a sin. In 1948, when the rest of Jewry wept with awe at the reestablishment of a Jewish homeland, Satmar wept in rage.
That ideology might have remained a footnote — eccentric, tragic, but contained — had it not metastasized into political activism. Over the decades, Satmar built alliances with anti-Zionist forces, aligning with the far left, the Islamist world, and anyone else who hated Israel enough to make common cause.
The result? Today we witness the grotesque spectacle of Jews shaking hands with men who would gladly see Jews murdered in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, or Sderot.
The Rambam writes in Hilchot De’ot that one must distance himself from the wicked, lest he learn from their ways and be destroyed by their company. This is not merely social advice — it is a Torah imperative.
To ally with an avowed hater of Jews is to desecrate the Name of Heaven. The Talmud in Avodah Zarah 18a teaches us that even the perception of association with idolaters or enemies of Israel can bring scandal to Torah itself. How much more so when the association is public, photographed, and celebrated in newspapers and social media?
Agudath Israel cannot pretend this is a “Satmar matter.” Silence here is endorsement. Failure to condemn is partnership.
If the Agudah leadership shrugs this off as "another “local issue", they forfeit their moral claim to speak in the name of klal Yisrael.
It was not always so. The original Agudath Israel of prewar Europe — the movement of giants like the Chafetz Chaim — sought to protect Torah life through engagement, not isolation. They argued against Zionism politically, yes, but never allied themselves with enemies of the Jewish people.
They fought their battles within the Jewish world, not by empowering our external foes.
The founders of Agudah would have shuddered at the sight of Hasidim applauding a politician who slanders their brothers and sisters in Israel.
And make no mistake: many of today’s Agudah rabbis and lay leaders privately do shudder. They know this alliance is abhorrent. But private revulsion is not enough. The Torah demands public rebuke. “Hoche’ach tochiach et amitecha” — you shall surely rebuke your fellow.
To remain silent now is to invite G-d’s rebuke instead.
Satmar defends its political deals with anti-Israel figures by invoking “Torah values” — claiming to prioritize yeshiva funding, welfare benefits, or community protection over Israel’s fate. This is a grotesque distortion of Torah ethics.
The same Torah that commands us to love every Jew and defend Jewish life cannot be twisted into a tool for transactional politics. To barter away Jewish dignity for state funding is to sell our birthright for a bowl of lentils.
When Satmar activists cozy up to Mamdani, they are not practicing pikuach nefesh — they are practicing political idolatry, worshipping power and money in the guise of faith.
Agudath Israel now faces a defining test. Will it stand for Jewish unity rooted in truth, or will it allow fanaticism to drag it into moral bankruptcy?
It must issue a clear, unequivocal statement declaring that no Jewish organization can support a politician who traffics in antisemitism or calls for the destruction of Israel. It must name Mamdani for what he is — a demagogue — and the Satmar faction that supports him for what they have become — collaborators in our people’s humiliation.
Such a statement would not divide the Orthodox world; it would save it.
Because the greatest threat to Torah is not modernity, not secularism, not Zionism — it is hypocrisy. The hypocrisy of those who cry “Torah, Torah” while standing shoulder to shoulder with those who hate Torah Jews.
Satmar has inverted courage into cowardice. They have mistaken exile for holiness, submission for faith, and betrayal for purity.
And Agudah must not follow them down that pit.
This is not about politics. This is about Jewish survival — moral, spiritual, and historical.
Every yeshiva student who loves Torah should weep when Jews cheer for our enemies. Every rabbi who invokes ahavat Yisrael must condemn those who betray it. Every parent who teaches their child to say “Shema Yisrael” must remind them that Israel — the name itself — means struggling with G-d but standing with our people.
If Agudath Israel cannot find the courage to say that, then it will have surrendered the moral authority it once claimed.
But if it does — if it speaks truth, if it draws the line, if it reclaims the mantle of authentic Torah — then perhaps we can still hope that the rift within Orthodox Jewry can heal, not through silence, but through truth.
The world must know: There is no Torah without loyalty to the Jewish people. There is no holiness in betrayal. And there is no justification, ever, for standing with those who hate the children of Israel.
REPUBLISHED:
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/agudath-israel-must-condemn-the-satmar-faction-that-supported-zohran-mamdani/
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