No Jewish lawyers picked by Mamdani for NYC’s 18-strong judiciary advisory panel

Jewish legal groups have reacted furiously to New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s exclusion of Jewish lawyers from a local judicial panel, accusing him of continuing to marginalise the city’s already embattled Jewish community.

Whilst an estimated 35-50 percent of New York lawyers are Jewish, not one of them is among the 18 members of the Mayor’s Advisory Committee on the Judiciary (MACJ), which Mamdani said would “reflect” the city’s demographic.

The committee screens and recommends candidates for appointment to New York City courts and Jewish lawyers have served on it under previous mayoral administrations.

New York boasts the largest Jewish population in the US, accounting for around one-in-ten city residents.

In a letter to Mamdani on Monday, the presidents of the Brandeis Association of Queens, the New York County Jewish Lawyers Guild, the Brooklyn Brandeis Society and the Bronx County Jewish Bar Association said they were “deeply disappointed” by the MACJ’s omission of Jews.

The group said the appointments were part of “a troubling pattern”, noting Mamdani’s rejection of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism and the recent glaring omission of historic Jewish quarters from his administration map promoting immigrant neighbourhoods and their contribution to NYC.

The letter adds: “At a time when antisemitism is reaching historic levels in our city, leadership matters. Last week’s attack on a visibly Jewish man on the Upper West Side is yet another painful reminder that antisemitic violence is real and growing.”

Even though the Jewish community represents roughly 10 percent of the city’s population, in the first half of 2026 the New York Police Department (NYPD) recorded 178 confirmed anti-Jewish hate crimes, accounting for 55.3 percent of all confirmed hate crimes citywide.

According to Jewish media outlet Forward, City Hall Press Secretary Joe Calvello has rejected the suggestion that appointments to the 18-member committee were motivated by religion, calling the claim “false”, adding: “To date, Mayor Mamdani has had the privilege of appointing a dozen qualified judges from a range of backgrounds, including Jewish judges.”

The statement added that retired senior judge John Leventhal, mentioned in the letter “did not pass our vetting process” because he served on Ghislane Maxwell’s legal team. Critics have responded by highlighting that the Mayor’s chief counsel Ramzi Kassem represented al-Qaeda operative Ahmed al-Darbi.

In recent days, Mamdani has doubled down on calls for the federal government to execute the International Criminal Court’s warrant to arrest “war criminal” Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

He has also just appointed Madeline Fox to the panel overseeing New York City’s public schools.

In 2025, Fox signed a letter denying there was a “rampant crisis of antisemitism” on college campuses and accusing Congress of weaponising Jew hatred to launch a “far right authoritarian attack” on higher education.

Jewish News has contacted the Mayor’s office for comment.