‘Squad’ Rep. Jamaal Bowman accused of treating Jews like ‘tokens’ after asking for pic ‘to show the world I’m friends with Jewish people’
Embattled “Squad” Rep. Jamaal Bowman once reportedly asked a Jewish leader for a picture of the two of them together to prove that “I’m friends with Jewish people” — prompting outrage from rabbis Tuesday in his Westchester County district.
Jewish leaders from across the spectrum and many of their constituents in the 16th Congressional District accused the far-left pol of treating them like “tokens,” and said they’d be voting for his moderate rival George Latimer in next Tuesday’s Democratic primary.
“I’m looking forward to taking a picture of Jewish leaders enthusiastically watching Bowman’s concession speech,” quipped Rabbi Joseph Potasnik, executive vice president of the New York Board of Rabbis.
He was referring to a private text that surfaced in a report by the Jewish Insider, dating back to when Bowman first ran for re-election in 2022.
“Do you have pics of us?” So I can show the world I’m friends with Jewish People,” Bowman wrote to an unidentified Jewish leader whose support he was seeking, according to the report published Tuesday.
Religious leaders in the district, which takes in much of Westchester and part of the Bronx, told The Post it epitomized how Bowman has mistreated the local Jewish community.
The local leaders said it was unprecedented for them to publicly rebuke their sitting congressman, but that Bowman, who is seeking a third term, had left them no choice.
“One hundred percent I believe that happened,” Rabbi Jonathan Morgenstern, head of Young Israel of Scarsdale, a modern orthodox synagogue, said of the text.
“Bowman tokenizes the Jewish people. Bowman went from bad to worse,” Morgenstern said.
Morgenstern said Bowman not only burned bridges with Jewish leaders in the district, he rarely made an effort to establish any connections in the first place.
“We tried to meet with him. We made the appointment — and then he cancelled,” Morgenstern said.
“Rabbis of all denominations know he’s a dangerous man at a time of rising antisemitism. He’s a representative who doesn’t represent us.”
Bowman — who is part of the left-wing “Squad” of House members that includes fellow New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — was nowhere to be found when two Jewish-run businesses in Scarsdale were spray-painted with “Genocide supporter,” Morgenstern said.
The congressman’s “tone deafness” regarding the Jewish faith was evident as recently as last week when he held a clergy event on June 13 — during the Jewish holiday of Shavuot.
Morgenstern let Bowman’s office know the holiday “precludes me and the great majority of my Rabbinic colleagues [from attending].”
“Congressman Bowman has consistently been tone-deaf and antagonistic to his Jewish constituents, and his antagonism has spanned the spectrum of the Jewish denominational landscape,” he told a Bowman staffer.
He also forwarded a letter to The Post he sent to Bowman in 2021, blasting the congressman for saying Israel was murdering “black and brown” Palestinians.
“Conflating this age-old conflict with racially charged rhetoric is a betrayal of our entire community, stoking anti-semitic sentiment against Jews and making all of us feel unsafe in our own district,” he said.
Rabbi Scott Weiner, leader of Tamid Westchester Synagogue in New Rochelle and a self-described “progressive Jew” who previously voted for Bowman, now backs rival Latimer, the Westchester County executive well known and respected by Jewish leaders.
“Bowman totally lost my support before October 7,” Weiner said, referring to the Hamas invasion of Israel last fall, triggering the raging war in Gaza.
Weiner and others said Bowman denying as a “lie” and propaganda that Hamas militants raped Israeli women during the Oct. 7 invasion was beyond the pale. The congressman later apologized.
“He doesn’t seem to care about Jews in the district — talking to them or working with them,” Weiner said.
But Bowman, during an interview Monday with WNYC radio host Brian Lehrer insisted, “Thank God I still have a lot of support within the Jewish community” — citing backing from-left Jewish groups as Jewish Voice for Peace, which supports the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against Israel.
He also doubled down, accusing financiers behind the American Israel Public Affairs Committee of bankrolling a “racist” campaign against him.
Bowman, who is backed by the anti-Israel Democratic Socialists of America, told the group during a recent endorsement interview that he, too, backs the BDS campaign against the Jewish State.
Bowman also said he now opposes Iron Dome defense funding for Israel, which he previously voted for.
During the WNYC interview, Bowman also defended his statements that Israel is engaging in “genocide” in Gaza, citing the deaths of Palestinian woman and children, when Lehrer pressed him that Israel is not deliberately trying to wipe out an entire population of people.
The Bowman-Latimer battle — the most watched race exposing the divide between the Democratic Party’s left-wing and moderate factions — is the most expensive primary in history, with more than $23 million spent on ads, according to AdI mpact, which tracks ad spending.
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s affiliated group — the anti-Bowman United Democracy Project — makes up 61% of total spending, the tracker said.
