When Mayor Zohran Mamdani entered City Hall in New York, his plans for the Office to Combat Antisemitism prompted curiosity and some suspicion, given his stance as a fervent defender of Palestinian rights.
As the mayor navigated the complex world of Jewish politics in the city, he committed to keeping the office, which was created by his predecessor, Eric Adams.
Now he is preparing to announce its leader: Phylisa Wisdom, a fixture in Jewish political circles who runs the New York Jewish Agenda, a liberal organization that has criticized Israel’s conduct in Gaza.
But unlike Mr. Mamdani, Ms. Wisdom believes in Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state — part of a worldview that several people who know her describe as liberal Zionism.
Ms. Wisdom did not respond to multiple requests for comment, but she confirmed her pending appointment.
Ms. Wisdom is a former senior official at Yaffed, a group formed by people who had attended Hasidic schools, known as yeshivas, and who claimed that the schools had left them woefully unprepared to navigate the outside world.
A New York Times investigation found that scores of Hasidic boys schools across Brooklyn and the lower Hudson Valley had failed to provide a basic education in English or math. Yaffed has long been seen as an insidious force by Hasidic leaders and some ultra-Orthodox Jews, who have accused the group of sowing discord within the Hasidic community and smearing its education system to the outside world.
For the last decade, Hasidic leaders’ top political priority has been resisting government oversight into the yeshivas, which receive hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer support each year.
Hasidic power brokers have sought guarantees from politicians that they wil not interfere with the yeshiva system. Ms. Wisdom’s new role in city government could threaten the fragile détente that Mr. Mamdani’s administration has with the Satmar Hasidic sect that is represented in part by Moishe Indig, the only prominent Hasidic leader to endorse Mr. Mamdani in the general election.
Mr. Indig, reached by phone, declined to comment on Ms. Wisdom, as did a representative for another prominent Satmar leader in Brooklyn, David Niederman.
Mr. Mamdani pledged last year not to interfere with yeshivas.
“The issue of your education is something I will listen to your leaders,” Mr. Mamdani said, in an interview with a Yiddish-language Hasidic news outlet.
In setting up the Office to Combat Antisemitism in May 2025, as the war in Gaza raged, Mr. Adams said that the Police Department had reported that 54 percent of all hate crimes in New York City were against Jews the prior year, a number that rose to 62 percent during the first quarter of 2025.
Sally Goldenberg is a Times reporter covering New York City politics and government.
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