Two of the city’s largest Jewish organizations say they will not attend Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s Jewish American Heritage Month celebration at Gracie Mansion on Monday night.

The UJA-Federation of New York and Mark Treyger, the chief executive of the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, the city’s two leading Jewish communal bodies, told The New York Post they will skip the event. Joseph Potasnik, executive vice president of the New York Board of Rabbis, said he will also stay away.

“We will not be attending the Jewish American Heritage Month celebration at Gracie Mansion being hosted by a mayor who denies a core pillar of our heritage, the State of Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people,” the UJA-Federation said in a statement.

“Jewish heritage should include recognition of the State of Israel,” Potasnik said. “Jewish history didn’t end in 1946.”

MAILBAG: When Representation Becomes Exploitation; Askanim Must Not Allow Mamdani To Use Them As Political Props

Mamdani’s office is billing the gathering as a “Pre-Shavuot Celebration in Honor of Jewish American Heritage Month,” with a kosher dairy menu. About 150 guests representing different segments of the city’s roughly one million Jewish residents are expected to attend, according to City Hall.

Among those who say they will attend is Rabbi David Niederman, head of the United Jewish Organizations of (Satmar) Williamsburg, who told The NY Post that participation was “right and appropriate.”

The boycott follows a Nakba Day video released by Mamdani’s office on Friday afternoon, shortly before the start of Shabbos, that prompted a wave of outrage among Jewish leaders. The video featured Inea Bushaq, a translator described in the mayor’s official post as a “New Yorker and a Nakba survivor,” and framed the events of 1947 to 1949 as the expulsion of more than 700,000 Palestinians during the creation of the State of Israel.

Jewish leaders said the video presented a one-sided account of Israel’s War of Independence that omitted the invasion of the nascent Jewish state by five Arab armies, the massacres and expulsions of Jewish communities during the war, and the subsequent expulsion of more than 800,000 Jews from Arab and Muslim countries. Critics also said the video carried the implication that Israel’s existence itself is an ongoing catastrophe, the literal meaning of the Arabic word “Nakba.”

Treyger said the Friday video had sharply worsened tensions with the Jewish community. His council organizes Israel Day on Fifth, the annual pro-Israel parade scheduled for May 31, which Mamdani has said he will not march in. The mayor also declined to recognize Israel’s Independence Day last month.

Mamdani, a democratic socialist who rose to power aligned with pro-Palestinian activism, has refused to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, has supported divestment from Israel Bonds and has accused Israel of committing genocide during the war in Gaza that followed the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks. He has nevertheless insisted he will protect and “cherish” Jewish New Yorkers.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)