Mamdani visits Chabad rabbi’s grave, increasingly a pilgrimage site for politicians

Activist for the Hasidic movement says NYC mayor-elect asked to visit the Ohel ‘following the terrorist attack in Sydney’

New York Jewish Week via JTA — Zohran Mamdani visited the gravesite of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement’s late leader on Monday, one day after the shooting that killed 15 people at an Australian Hanukkah event hosted by Chabad.

Yaacov Behrman, a Crown Heights activist who works as a PR liaison for Chabad, said Mamdani reached out about visiting the gravesite, known as the Ohel.

“Following the terrorist attack in Sydney, Australia, the mayor-elect asked to visit the Ohel to pay his respects and came last night,” said Behrman, who was present during Mamdani’s visit.

The New York City mayor-elect did not publicly share anything about his visit to the Ohel on Monday, but a photo obtained and posted by Forward journalist Jacob Kornbluh showed Mamdani wearing a black velvet kippah standing at the gravesite.

Mamdani had shared a lengthy statement on Sunday morning calling the Bondi Beach attack a “vile act of antisemitic terror.”

“I mourn those who were murdered and will be keeping their families, the Jewish community, and the Chabad movement in my prayers,” Mamdani wrote.

Mamdani specifically mentioned Rabbi Eli Schlanger, who was killed in the attack, and his “deep ties to Crown Heights,” the Brooklyn neighborhood that is home to the headquarters of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement.

“What happened at Bondi is what many Jewish people fear will happen in their communities too,” Mamdani wrote.

Monday marked Mamdani’s first known visit to the Ohel, which is in the Old Montefiore Cemetery in Queens, and is a site with particular significance for adherents and admirers of the Chabad movement. It is the resting place of the movement’s two most recent leaders: Menachem Mendel Schneerson, known as the Lubavitcher Rebbe, and his father-in-law, Yosef Yitzchak Schneerson.

In recent years, it has become an oft-visited site by Jewish and non-Jewish politicians and public figures.

The Ohel draws 1 million visitors per year, according to Chabad’s website, who are “religious and not, laypeople and leaders, Jews and non-Jews, each one coming to pray, seek inspiration and find solace.”

Mamdani’s predecessor, Mayor Eric Adams, has visited the Ohel at least seven times, and has said that he finds himself there during “the most difficult days” of his life. US President Donald Trump visited the Ohel to mark the first anniversary of Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel.

Other visitors to the site in the last five years include Ivanka Trump; New York Governor Kathy Hochul; then-Long Island congressman Lee Zeldin, who is Jewish and now heads Trump’s EPA; Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. during his presidential candidacy; US Representative Mike Lawler; Senator Kirsten Gillibrand; and New Jersey Senator Cory Booker. Argentinian President Javier Millei and Sara Netanyahu, the wife of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have both visited from abroad.

“There’s nothing opulent about it,” Rabbi Motti Seligson, a Chabad spokesperson, told the Free Press during a tour of the Ohel in early 2025.

Visitors have found deep meaning in their time in the open-roofed mausoleum. Booker, who prays at the Ohel on the eve of his elections, told the Free Press that he finds “something universally spiritual about that sacred space” even though he is not Jewish.

“I find my visits are both grounding and expanding,” Booker said.

Mamdani’s visit to the Ohel comes as Chabad officials and Jewish leaders are doubling down on their efforts to celebrate Hanukkah with public menorah lightings around New York City. Those events have surged in attendance in the wake of the Bondi Beach attack.

The visit is Mamdani’s most recent appearance in a primarily Orthodox Jewish space as he seeks to overcome skepticism among many Jewish voters who were turned off by Mamdani’s opposition to Israel. Voters in Crown Heights, where the Chabad-Lubavitch community is headquartered, turned out heavily for Andrew Cuomo in November’s general election.

The mayor-elect attended a celebration by the Satmar Hasidic sect last week, which is anti-Zionist for religious reasons. He was endorsed by a Satmar rabbi, Moishe Indig, and was welcomed to a sukkah by Indig in the fall.

During the Democratic primary, he made an appearance at a breakfast organized by the Council of Jewish Organizations of Flatbush, where there was a large Orthodox Jewish population.

The photo of Mamdani at the Ohel circulated in Jewish WhatsApp groups, and has been shared by some local Chabad chapters’ social media pages.

“His decision to go was surprising,” Chabad Virginia Beach wrote in an Instagram post. “But we all know that when light and darkness meet, light has the power to transform. And this place is a place of light.”