When more than 100 demonstrators gathered outside Park East Synagogue on Manhattan’s Upper East Side Tuesday evening, the scene quickly drew national attention: Hezbollah flags, chants of “intifada revolution,” and a Jewish preschool that closed early because administrators said they could not ensure a safe dismissal.

But the statement that drew perhaps the sharpest criticism did not come from the protesters. It came from Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

Hours before the demonstration, a spokesperson for the mayor said he was “deeply opposed” to the real estate expo being held at the synagogue that evening, which included the promotion of property in Yehuda and Shomron. The mayor’s office added that it was committed to ensuring safe entry and exit from the building – but critics said leading with condemnation of the event inside, rather than concern for the people attending it, crossed a constitutional line.

“When a crowd targets a house of worship, the mayor’s job is not to explain why the crowd has a point,” wrote Rabbi Mark Goldfeder, CEO of the National Jewish Advocacy Center and a law professor at Touro Law School, in a piece published Wednesday by National Review. “It is to protect the people inside.”

The event in question was an aliyah fair — a gathering where attendees could consult experts on relocating to Israel. Its website invited attendees to “listen to experts” on topics including aliyah, higher education in Israel and finances in Israel. Among the potential landing spots listed was Gush Etzion, a cluster of Israeli settlements.

The protest was organized by Pal-Awda, a hardline anti-Zionist group that supports Hamas, Hezbollah and other terror groups. Chants of “There is only one solution, intifada revolution,” “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” and “We don’t want a two-state, we want ’48” rose from the crowd; slogans that Jewish organizations have characterized as calls for violence and the elimination of Jewish presence in the region.

City Council Speaker Julie Menin, who had recently passed legislation compelling the NYPD to codify protocols for buffer zones around houses of worship, offered a pointed critique of both the protesters and the police response. “I’m deeply disturbed by the hateful rhetoric heard last night outside Park East Synagogue,” she said. “Calls for the destruction of Israel and the glorification of Hezbollah are horrific, intimidating, and only fuel the flames of antisemitism.”

Mamdani, by contrast, reiterated his criticism of the event on Wednesday and doubled-down on his position at a press conference. “I think that critique of the policies of a government is very much separate from bigotry towards a people of a specific religious faith, and there is no tolerance for anti-Semitism,” he said.

Goldfeder’s legal argument centers on what he describes as the constitutional significance of official condemnation. Citing Bantam Books v. Sullivan (1963) and last year’s unanimous Supreme Court ruling in NRA v. Vullo, he argues that a mayor’s statement can chill protected religious activity even without any formal government action.

He also invoked Masterpiece Cakeshop (2018), in which the Supreme Court held that official hostility toward religious motivation constitutes a constitutional violation regardless of whether formal enforcement follows.

Speaking with Belaaz, Goldfeder elaborated on the distinction he sees between permissible political speech and actionable government conduct. “A mayor is allowed to have foreign-policy opinions,” he said. “He is not allowed to use the authority of his office to single out a lawful Jewish religious event for condemnation while that event is being targeted. That is where political speech starts to look like viewpoint discrimination and unequal protection. The mayor is not just another commentator on X. He speaks for the city.”

Goldfeder explained that “If a pattern emerges in which Jewish institutions are treated as ideologically suspect when they need protection, that can become evidence of municipal policy or custom for purposes of civil-rights liability.”

Such a pattern, critics say, has already been demonstrated. Mamdani has previously deleted city statements about protecting Jewish New Yorkers, rescinded an order adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism, reorganized the city’s Office for the Prevention of Hate Crimes into a broader office and vetoed a bill requiring buffer zones for protestors at schools.

The Anti-Defamation League’s New York/New Jersey branch said the mayor “had a responsibility to de-escalate. He did the opposite.”

Goldfeder rejected that framing. Aliyah, he wrote, is not a detachable political position for most Jews – it is bound up with theology, history, and religious identity. Official condemnation of a Jewish gathering on those grounds, he argued, “tells Jewish institutions that protection may come with ideological conditions.

The preschool attached to the synagogue did not reopen for regular dismissal that afternoon. For Goldfeder, that was the central fact the mayor’s statement failed to acknowledge. “A Jewish preschool closed early,” he wrote, “and the mayor’s first move was to explain the grievance of the people outside.”