Zohran Mamdani’s Chanukah Video Is Ridiculous

Eight candles in menorah for day six

Mayor-elect Mamdani released a cringe-worthy Chanukah video that featured him celebrating the holiday in an unconventional manner alongside a bitter critic of Israel.

The mayor-elect of New York, Zohran Mamdani, chose Saturday morning to release a “Happy Hannukah!” video showing him making latkes with actors Mandy Patinkin and Kathryn Grody.

Since most observant Jews don’t use social media on the sabbath, the timing suggests that it wasn’t really about wishing a Happy Chanukah to observant Jews, but more about minimizing any pushback that Mamdani would get from such Jews for the video, which was absurd.

The holiday of Chanukah celebrates in part the rededication of the Jewish temple in Jerusalem under Jewish sovereignty. That’s the same sovereignty that Mamdani is committed to eliminating by his support for the movement to boycott, divest, and sanction Israel.

Patinkin gave an interview to the New York Times in July of 2025 bitterly attacking Israel and its leaders while it was in the midst of a war against Hamas terrorists:

“I ask Jews to consider what this man Benjamin Netanyahu and his right-wing government is doing to the Jewish people all over the world. They are endangering not only the State of Israel, which I care deeply about and want to exist, but endangering the Jewish population all over the world. To watch what is happening, for the Jewish people to allow this to happen to children and civilians of all ages in Gaza, for whatever reason, is unconscionable and unthinkable. And I ask you Jews, everywhere, all over the world, to spend some time alone and think, Is this acceptable and sustainable? How could it be done to you and your ancestors and you turn around and you do it to someone else?”

And it’s not a new thing for him. According to a JTA report, in 1998 he declined an invitation to participate in a celebration of Israel’s 50th birthday.

That’s the home where Mamdani celebrates Chanukah?

The video, released the morning of the sixth day of the holiday, shows the Patinkin family and the mayor-elect with a Chanukah candelabra, menorah, or chanukiya with eight candles in place plus a helper candle to light the other ones. The standard practice I’ve typically seen is to place in only the candles that are being lit that night. The discrepancy with standard practice would be glaringly obvious to most observant Jews. That may seem pedantic or a minor ritual detail, and people’s practices and customs certainly may vary. Yet given the scrutiny that Mamdani is under for his anti-Israel activism—President Trump has said Mamdani “hates Jewish people,” and the chairman of the UJA-Federation of New York, Marc Rowan, described Mamdani as an “enemy”—you’d think Mamdani would at least attempt to get it right.

(The Patinkins also don’t appear to have enough oil in the frying pan for properly crispy latkes. In the video, they recited only one of the two proper blessings (or two of the three, if the video was from the first night). No one pictured saying the blessing was wearing a yarmulke while doing so.)

It’s the second time Mamdani has botched the details of a Jewish holiday video.

I wrote about it in September:

Mamdani also blundered in his New Year’s greeting to “our Jewish friends and neighbors.”

“The Jewish calendar turns to the year 5786. That number alone speaks to the endurance of this faith over millenia,” Mamdani said. But in Jewish tradition the year 5786 is a count of the years since the creation of the world, not the age of the Jewish faith. It’s not like Christianity, which marks years from the birth of Jesus. In a message presumably intended to reassure Jewish voters disgusted by his extreme anti-Israel activism (a boycott of Israel, an arrest of Netanyahu, false charges of genocide) and his socialism, Mamdani winds up just betraying his ignorance—or his lack of Jewishly literate inner-circle campaign advisers.

My sense of it is that none of these videos are aimed at actual traditionally observant Jews. The videos appear instead aimed at Christians or people of no religion who oppose bigotry and are seeking reassurance that Mamdani is not a Jew-hater. It’s somewhat comforting that the politics are such that Mamdani feels the need to put out images of himself with Jews celebrating the holiday as a way to demonstrate that he is not hostile. If Jews and the Jewish religion were genuinely unpopular, he would not even bother. But anyone with background can see this is an artificial show, just as phony as the Columbia professor’s son posturing as the voice of the working class.

The Anti-Defamation League was mocked by the New York Times for setting up a project to monitor the Mamdani administration for antisemitism. This week, the ADL exposed the person Mamdani had named “as his director of appointments, a job in which she would have overseen City Hall hiring,” for having tweeted about “money hungry Jews.”

Zohran Mamdani speaking at a May 11, 2021, rally to boycott, divest, and sanction Israel

Maybe Mamdani will be a positive surprise as mayor. Or maybe he will be such a disaster that his hate of Israel and distance from the mainstream Jewish community will wind up seeming like small potatoes compared to his other flaws. For now, he just looks ridiculous.

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