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✍ The Jewish past of Morris Katz
Mamdani political advisor Morris Katz attends Zohran Mamdani ‘s inauguration as the 112th mayor at City Hall on Thursday Jan. 1, 2026 in New York, New York. (David Dee Delgado/Getty Images)
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Morris Katz, the 26-year-old political strategist who shot to stardom as Mamdani’s right-hand man, has a rich Jewish lineage, reported The New York Times.
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The strategist grew up as a “Woody Allen-watching, Philip Roth-reading, Bob Dylan-listening occasional truant who dreamed of becoming a screenwriter,” according to the Times, before he became a key liaison between Mamdani and Jewish leaders. He joined Mamdani in a recent meeting with Steven Spielberg.
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Katz’s great-grandfather built a prosperous hosiery business and created a family crest to prove that Jews could have one — a crest that Katz now has tattooed on his arm.
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His grandfather, Harry Jay Katz, was a media fixture in Philadelphia. At his funeral, when Katz was 14, the grandson earned laughs throughout the synagogue with an anecdote about how the elder Katz used him to pick up strangers.
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Katz supports Mamdani’s pro-Palestinian advocacy. His own views on Israel grew increasingly critical as he came of age, he told Haaretz, with AIPAC’s role in electoral politics becoming the “main accelerator that radicalized” him.
- Katz’s extensive comments to The New York Times come as he did not respond to multiple JTA requests for interviews over several months made through both Mamdani’s campaign and his own consulting agency.
❄️ Mamdani shovels Hasidic streets
Mayor Zohran Mamdani shovels snow on Jan. 25, 2026 in New York City. (Screenshot from X)
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Zohran Mamdani earned praise for his handling of the weekend’s snowstorm, including from Jewish residents.
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Rabbi Moishe Indig, a leader of the Satmar Hasidic faction who endorsed Mamdani during his campaign, applauded the mayor for helping people shovel out a car in a heavily Hasidic part of Brooklyn.
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“Not a photo op — a shovel,” Indig said on X, posting a vide of Mamdani. “NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani is out on Myrtle & T[h]roop in Williamsburg, helping neighbors dig out cars and clear snow during the snowstorm.”
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The United Jewish Organizations of Williamsburg and North Brooklyn also said that Mamdani showed “hand on leadership” and thanked him for “being out on the streets ensuring that the city is moving.”
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Mamdani’s technique sparked debate online, with one X user saying he ”shovels snow like he’s putting dirt on a coffin at a Jewish funeral.”
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The weekend wasn’t all shoveling, and Jews across the city didn’t miss their chance to have fun. Chabad yeshiva student Omri Bachar, who is from Israel, reveled in his first snow experience by showing how he turned it into fresh ice cream.
📚 Columbia gets a Jewish president
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Columbia University has selected Jennifer Mnookin, the chancellor of University of Wisconsin, as its fourth president in two years.
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Mnookin is the first Jewish leader to take the helm since the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel, which unleashed an Israeli military campaign that roiled the campus with pro-Palestinian demonstrations.
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Columbia is still grappling with the fallout from those protests, including penalties from the Trump administration, rapid leadership changes and anxiety among Jewish students.
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Mnookin was raised in a Reform Jewish family in the Bay Area that deepened its Jewish engagement when she asked to celebrate her bat mitzvah, according to her father.
🚨 ‘No Jews’ graffiti
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Graffiti of a swastika and the words “No Jews” was discovered inside a Brooklyn NYCHA building on Sunday, reported Williamsburg 365.
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The incident is the latest in several recent appearances of antisemitic vandalism, including dozens of swastikas sprayed on a playground in a Jewish Brooklyn neighborhood last week.
💼 Mamdani appoints Waleed Shahid
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Mamdani has appointed Democratic strategist Waleed Shahid as his deputy communications director of economic justice.
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Shahid, who started his career working on Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign, has been a vocal advocate for Palestinians. His wife Emily Mayer is a founding member of the Jewish anti-occupation organization IfNotNow.
🗳 From the campaign trail
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Micah Lasher, Jerry Nadler’s Jewish protégé who is running to succeed him in Congress, headed to Minneapolis on Sunday as the city convulsed over the killing of two U.S. citizens by federal immigration agents within two weeks.
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Lasher said he joined protests downtown “in solidarity with the people of Minneapolis” as they fought “against this fascist regime” amid the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement crackdown.
