What Made This Seder Different From Any Other Seder?
Answer: The presence of the first Muslim mayor of New York.
Zohran Mamdani on March 31, 2026.
(Lev Radin/Sipa USA via AP)
One of the few real pleasures I remember during the five years I attended Hebrew school three days a week in Northeast Philadelphia was the model of seders—radically slimmed down, kid-friendly versions of the annual Jewish celebration of our people’s deliverance from slavery and the subsequent exodus from Egypt. The food served at these events was lighter than my mother’s notoriously heavy cooking (even her matzoh balls were “leads”), while the presence of my school friends provided unsuspected opportunities for fun during the strict recitation of the entire reading. Haggadah (in Hebrew) by my father and my uncle.
Yet over time, the full version of Passover that I had once yearned to escape became my favorite Jewish holiday. Maybe it was my mother’s desserts – still not light, but very tasty – or the opportunity to spend time with my older cousins. Or our loud singing, both traditional Seder songs like “Dayenu” and “Chad Gadya” and also the spiritual “Go Down Moses.” By the time we were invited to a model seder at Union Temple in Brooklyn, where my oldest son was in preschool, I was happy to go.
But that was more than 30 years ago, and although our family eventually developed its own set of rituals for the holiday – Sephardic lamb instead of Ashkenazic brisket, abbreviated versions of Hebrew chants – and even our own HaggadahI assumed my Seder pattern days were in the past.
Until Monday, when I learned that Mayor Zohran Mamdani would be attending an adult version — a downtown seder — at City Winery that evening and asked if I could go with him. Michael Dorf, owner of City Winery, who has been a chew on the New York art scene since he founded the Knitting Factory in 1987, has been organizing these gatherings for more than 30 years. The event was once described by The New York Times as “a cross between a Jewish summer camp in the Catskills and a progressive jazz concert.” Past incarnations have starred Laurie Anderson, Philip Glass, Lou Reed (played as the “good kid” in the film). Hagaddah), and Peter Yarrow. The lineup this time included indie rock trio Betty, David Broza, Jesse Malin, Meg Okura and Yola, economist and podcaster Stephen Dubner and, in a video reprise of his in-person appearance in 2024, Al Franken singing “Go Down Moses.”
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But it was the political players who caught the attention of many of those in attendance: Besides former CNN host Don Lemon (offering a riff on the Four Questions, which, as the 60-year-old YouTuber pointed out, is a task traditionally assigned to the youngest person in attendance) and Mamdani, Council Speaker Julie Menin and former New York Comptroller Brad Lander were also on the program.
Not everyone was happy to see the mayor. On the way to my seat, a woman, noticing the press badge around my neck, asked me what media outlet I was from. When I told her, she asked me if The nation I had supported Mamdani’s campaign, and when I confirmed that we had supported him, I replied: “So you are one of those Jews who supports anti-Semites!” At least she was there; Mamdani’s mere presence was enough to prompt Orthodox Israeli-American comedian Modi Rosenfeld, also on the program, to withdraw from the event. (I’ll leave it to more experienced Talmudists to explain how to reconcile the Torah’s condemnation of gay sex with Modi’s life as a married homosexual.)
In this case, the mayor momentum on “broken matzo, a physical reminder of the ruptures that have so defined Jewish history, a physical reminder of how broken and incomplete our world today remains,” was both respectful and timely.
Condemning “the rising tide of anti-Semitism [that] has caused enormous pain to so many Jewish New Yorkers,” Mamdani called on his audience to “build a city where every New Yorker enjoys the dignity of rest.” Where even the poorest among us know that their cup will be filled. And we all know that if they look for shelter, they will find it. If they are hungry, they will be fed.
“There is a crack, a crack in everything,” he concluded. “But as Passover teaches and as Leonard Cohen sings: “This is how the light comes in.” Even though things can be broken, they also become whole again. Heckled before he even began speaking, Mamdani handled the interruptions deftly, joking: “We know that if decorum was perfect everywhere we were, we would have to wonder if we had left the city we love.” At the end of his speech, Mamdani drew warm applause from the room.
At the time he spoke, the mayor and council president Menin were not yet at war over the budget. Those hostilities only erupted on Wednesday, when the council released its own plan to balance the city’s finances — without raising taxes on the wealthy or (the alternative threatened by the mayor) raising property taxes.
“Any proposal claiming we can close this gap without generating significant new revenue is unrealistic,” Mamdani said in a statement, adding that the council’s proposal “would force the city to cut services.” He also attempted to leverage one of his most powerful weapons – his ability to create viral content – by releasing a scathing video denouncing Menin’s plan. This particular drama still has several months to go, but at least now we know the battle lines.
In her remarks at the seder, the speaker took a brief victory lap by celebrating the council’s recent passage, by a 44-5 margin, without a veto, of its bill to establish “buffer zones” around the city’s places of worship — a bill the mayor did not support, citing concerns about the right to protest. But that bill — initially submitted in response to protests outside the Park East Synagogue in November — was just a small symptom of a larger rift between Mamdani and even many of his supporters present Monday night.
For decades, left-wing Jews have applied a “Palestinian exception” to our calls for social justice. It turns out that the most sophisticated justification, both for the flattering claim that our history gives Jews a special role in liberation struggles, and for the belief that somehow the Palestinian cause is exempt from such demands, was articulated by the political philosopher Michael Walzer in his 1985 book. Exodus and revolution. Like many speakers Monday, Walzer sought “to draw a continuous line from the Exodus to the radical politics of our time.”
But for anyone who actually reads the Bible, there are serious problems with deriving your politics from the Exodus: not just the murder of the Egyptian firstborn celebrated in the Passover story, but the divine injunction to exterminate all the indigenous inhabitants of the lands the Israelites will conquer.
Mamdani was too polite – or perhaps too political – to shatter his audience’s comfortable illusions. Or even mention the word “Palestine”. It was probably the right decision since, as he has often said, his responsibility is to be the mayor of all New Yorkers, including some who will never be reconciled to his presence in power because of his religion or his support for the Palestinian cause.
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So, on the very evening that the Israeli Knesset passed a law to hang Palestinians for murders deemed “acts of terrorism,” it was left to Brad Lander to reckon with the ghosts of Zionism. “Since October 7, I have felt broken to the point that it is very difficult to imagine rebuilding myself,” he said. Recalling the progressive Zionist values of his own upbringing, Lander said he “simply cannot reconcile that with Israel’s destruction of schools and hospitals” in Gaza. In his anguish, the note of prophecy could finally be heard.
As for me, I went home and picked up Edward Said’s “Canaanite Reading” of Exodus – a complete demolition of Walzer’s moral evasions and philosophical pretensions that remains bracingly relevant 40 years after its publication.
Said’s argument is worth reading in its entirety – especially if you still harbor illusions about the future of “liberal Zionism” or view Jews as mere intruders in the Middle East. But if I had to pick one line, it would be this: “Exodus is perhaps a tragic book in that it teaches that one cannot both “belong” and care about the Canaanites who are not part of it.
A tragic book, indeed. By the time you read this, I will be on my way to my son’s house outside of Philadelphia, where we will tell the story of slavery and redemption, unleavenedsip wine and sing Dayéno—with “Get Down Moses.” I’m told the mayor will also hold a proper seder for his staff this week. For everyone celebrating with us, I wish you a zissen pesach. And for all of us, since we have the right to dream, of peace and justice during our lives.
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