New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s pre-Rosh Hashanah visit to Brooklyn’s Borough Park turned turbulent on Wednesday after a Jewish activist approached him inside the famed Eichler’s Judaica store, leveling sharp accusations regarding the surge of antisemitism across the city.
Mamdani arrived at the store as part of a tour through the heavily Orthodox neighborhood, meeting with local community representatives, viewing holiday essentials, and receiving traditional honey ahead of the Jewish New Year, while a local representative demonstrated how to blow a shofar.
During the visit, Stephanie Benshimol, a Jewish activist and granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, directly confronted him in front of customers and cameras: “This is all because of you that we have so much antisemitism; you have such nerve coming here,” she called out.
Benshimol stressed that Borough Park is the sanctuary where her family rebuilt their lives after the Holocaust, demanding that the mayor take uncompromising action against anti-Jewish hatred and charging that his obsessive hostility toward Israel directly jeopardizes the safety of New York’s Jewish community.Following the heated exchange, security personnel and members of the mayor’s detail moved in to push Benshimol away.
According to local reports, she was ushered from the premises while Mamdani was quickly escorted outside by his protection unit without addressing the accusations on site.
The confrontation comes amid sustained outrage within the Jewish community over Mamdani’s radical political record, set against NYPD statistics documenting a steep climb in hate crimes—where over half of all targeted bias incidents across New York City continue to single out Jews.