New York Police Department Commissioner Jessica Tisch, the Jewish head of the NYPD, personally apologized to mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani after her brother called him an “enemy of the Jewish people,” the New York Post reported Saturday night.
Benjamin Tisch, the younger brother of the senior NYPD official, publicly attacked the incoming mayor during a speech at a charity event on Wednesday evening. Tisch, an executive at the Loews Corporation, expressed concern about the city’s future following Mamdani’s election victory last month.
“The commissioner apologized to my team for those remarks,” Mamdani said. “I look forward to being a mayor for each and every New Yorker, including Jewish New Yorkers.” The Post also reported that Mamdani declined to say whether Israel should exist as a Jewish state, insisting the comments would not affect his working relationship with the NYPD commissioner.
Jessica Tisch, a member of one of the world’s most prominent and influential Jewish families, was appointed NYPD commissioner about a year ago, becoming only the second woman in history to hold the position. A Democrat, she began her public-service career in 2008 as a counterterrorism analyst at the NYPD and rose through the ranks to become the department’s deputy commissioner for technology.
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Jessica Tisch and Mamdani with police officers in New York
(Photo: Richard Drew / POOL / AFP)
From 2019 to 2022, she served as the city’s commissioner of information technology and telecommunications, and in 2022, she was appointed sanitation commissioner, where she became a recognizable figure for her uncompromising campaign against the city’s rat infestation.
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Jessica Tisch and Mamdani near the New York Police Department Memorial
(Photo: Richard Drew/Pool via REUTERS)
Her father, billionaire James Tisch, heads the Loews Corporation and is considered a leading philanthropist for Israel. He served as chair of the Jewish Agency’s board of governors. In late October 2023, the Tisch family projected images of Israelis kidnapped by Hamas onto the façade of New York University’s library — without the university’s approval. The projection was carried out from inside NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts building, named for the family since 1982. Family members said the move was a response to incidents in which posters of the hostages were torn down on campus, and Jewish students reported antisemitic harassment.