I'd like to see more acknowledgment from the media, and from Zohran and his allies, that concerns over his views are not just abstract disagreements over issues irrelevant to the office he's seeking, but that what he's advocating for has a direct impact on the lives of Jewish New Yorkers.

Of course, there are endless bad faith attacks on him coming from this angle, but as this article shows, there are also a lot of people struggling to reconcile their support for his local policies with the way his other viewpoints affect aspects of their lives and identity.

I like many of his ideas for improving the city and making it a better place to live, and I think he does want what's best for New York (unlike Cuomo), but I also don't think he's demonstrated an understanding of where the anxiety around his views on this set of issues is coming from.

That even if we agree with him on local issues, and even if we agree with him on the actions of the Israeli government and military, we might also have no desire to go back to a world where we could only hope our countries would let us work and pray, and wouldn't arbitrarily dispossess or kill us?

Has he not fully thought through that the world he has spent his life fighting for, where Jews return to the disastrous existence of depending on local and national leaders in other countries to keep us safe and allow us to live and worship freely, would feel like a threat to many of us?

In his view of the world, we don't deserve the choice to live in a country where we can rule ourselves and take ownership for our own lives. We can live in a democracy somewhere else and have a vote in electing our leaders, but our only option is to trust or hope that they will protect us.

So when Zohran comes into our communities and shuls to ask for support to become the leader of one of the most Jewish cities in the world, he is asking Jews to entrust him to be among the people who he believes should be solely responsible for our ability to freely and safely live our lives.

The implication of his anti-Zionism is that the Jewish people are uniquely undeserving - amongst all the nations of the world - of self-determination, and that we should be eternally doomed to diaspora, to living (and dying) at the whims of those who have power over us.