More than 100,000 people in New York City speak Yiddish. And if any of them were listening to Brad Lander on Wednesday, they may have wanted to cover their ears.
That’s because Lander, the city comptroller and a candidate for mayor, decided to clap back at a diss from Andrew Cuomo with a curse of his own — in Yiddish.
“A beyzer gzar zol er af dir kumen,” Lander, who is Jewish, said at a press conference.
It’s a phrase that translates literally to “May an evil decree come upon him.” But in the words of one Brooklyn political reporter, the rough translation is a little more colorful: “Get the f— out of here.”
Lander added, “Andrew Cuomo doesn’t get to tell me how to be Jewish.”
Lander was responding to a recent speech in which Cuomo addressed antisemitism — and hinted that some of his opponents, including Lander, were part of the problem.
“It’s very simple: anti-Zionism is antisemitism,” Cuomo said in his speech Tuesday at West Side Institutional Synagogue. He proceeded to accuse some of his rivals of fitting the bill, and claimed that Lander divested city funds from Israel — which Lander has denied.
The speech was the latest of several instances in which Cuomo, the frontrunner in New York’s crowded Democratic primary, has focused his campaign on Israel and antisemitism — which he called “the toughest issue that is facing the city of New York.” Among other things, Cuomo called for a ban on masks at protests and to more forcefully prosecute hate crimes.
The emphasis dates back to the aftermath of his 2021 resignation as governor, as he faced allegations of sexual harassment.
Cuomo has fiercely contested the allegations in court, but a recent profile in New York magazine said that he, a Catholic, performed a Jewish ritual to seek private atonement — casting his sins into the water, akin to the Rosh Hashanah practice of Tashlich.
“At one point, he said, he wrote down his sins on a piece of paper and tossed it into the waters off the Hamptons, where he was staying with his sister,” the article said.
Cuomo's COVID-19 measures
Cuomo had sparked controversy among haredi Orthodox New Yorkers as governor for instituting measures to fight COVID-19 that, some felt, unfairly targeted haredi neighborhoods. He was also accused of allegedly saying “these people and their f—ing tree houses” while campaigning in a haredi neighborhood during Sukkot — a claim he denies.
But Cuomo has tried to cozy up to the Jewish community as 2025 approached. Back in the Hamptons last year, he kicked off a project fighting antisemitism, and even joined the legal team for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as he faces charges of war crimes in the International Criminal Court.
Lander isn’t the only candidate who took flak from Cuomo in the synagogue speech. The ex-governor also condemned Zohran Mamdani, who has voiced support for the movement to boycott Israel. (Mamdani was also recently dubbed “DANGEROUS MAM” by the front page of the New York Post, which told its readers to “stop the anti-Israel forces” standing behind him.)
So will Cuomo’s bid to portray himself as the Big Apple’s “Shabbos goy” carry him to victory? Ruminating on his political fortunes to New York magazine, Cuomo reached for another Yiddish adage: “Men plan and God laughs.”
