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A group of social justice rabbis, including a transgender rabbi who reportedly mingled with Iran’s president and was kicked out of the Biden White House for hijacking the event to call for a ceasefire in Gaza, headlined an ad to get Jews for Zohran to go out and vote in the waning days before the New York City mayoral election.
Rabbi Abby Stein, who is transgender, was one of the four rabbis featured in the Jews for Zohran advertisement shared on social media by Jews for Racial and Economic Justice (JFREJ), which has been accused by the leader of the Anti-Defamation League oc being “out of touch.”
The other rabbis who spoke in the advertisement included Emily Cohen, Miriam Grossman and Rachel Goldenberg.
“As Jews, as rabbis, as New Yorkers, we believe that all people deserve to thrive. Zohran agrees,” they say in the ad.
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Stein co-authored an article in Autostraddle after a 2024 Pride Month event at the White House under former President Joe Biden in which she and another protester, a former White House staffer, described the incident where she hijacked Jill Biden’s speech to yell about a ceasefire in Gaza. The pair were ultimately escorted out of the event.
Stein has also been criticized for her affiliation with Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian during the United Nations General Assembly in October 2024. Stein reportedly participated in the event, which aired on Iranian state television, alongside several Iranian officials, such as Pezeshkian, just days before Tehran launched hundreds of missiles at Israel amid the country’s offensive in Gaza.
Other attendees of the event reportedly included members of the ultra-orthodox Haredi group Neturei Karta, which has members who oppose the existence of an Israeli state.
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The other rabbis in Mamdani’s advertisement include Cohen, whose official biography on Manhattan’s West End Synagogue’s website states her professional experience “ranges from baking challah with preschoolers to herding teenagers on wilderness treks to developing curricula for adult education classes on Judaism and social justice.”
Cohen has similarly written about her social justice efforts online, including during the 2020 George Floyd riots when she chronicled how she stood between protesters and police during a protest in hopes the officers’ “racism and sexism” would prevent them from going after anyone.
Grossman, another left-wing social justice activist, has said in sermons that Jewish “texts and traditions permit abortion and sometimes even require it” and that “pregnant people aren’t necessarily all women.” Meanwhile, in a blog post about the Dakota access pipeline, Grossman complains that Native communities have “suffered (and persisted” under centuries of “environmental racism.”
Queens-area Rabbi Goldenberg, the fourth rabbi featured in the Mamdani ad, can also be found online in videos of her New York City-based activism or blog posts. In one online editorial, Grossman discusses how the Jewish community should be more open to the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement, which many pro-Israel critics have accused of being antisemitic.
Goldenberg is the founder of Malkhut, which says it is aimed at building a “progressive Jewish spiritual community” that practices “ecstatic, musical, and contemplative prayer, mindfulness meditation through a Jewish lens, study of Jewish sources, and social justice work.”
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