The rise of Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee for New York City mayor, has sparked a deeper debate among liberal Jews in New York and elsewhere. Mike Segar/Reuters New York —

As a Jew and a New Yorker, Norman Needleman said he finds the city’s mayoral election “painful.”

Waiting in line Friday to vote on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, the 77-year-old Needleman thought Zohran Mamdani, the 34-year-old democratic socialist, would be good for the city’s social needs. But his positions on Israel were just too much for Needleman to accept.

“If I try and bend that far, I’ll break,” he said, quoting the musical “Fiddler on the Roof.”

His comments reflect what has been a fraught debate, among Jews in New York and elsewhere, ahead of the city’s mayoral election Tuesday. Jewish voters h

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