Rabbi Eric Yoffie embraces Greek virtues, not Jewish values, in discussing Zohran Mamdani ~ Elder Of Ziyon

Tuesday, September 09, 2025

Rabbi Eric Yoffie embraces Greek virtues, not Jewish values, in discussing Zohran Mamdani

Rabbi Eric Yoffie, President Emeritus of the Union for Reform Judaism, writes in Haaretz:

Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee for New York City mayor, is charming, attractive, bright and a natural politician. Energetic, enormously talented and only thirty-three years old, in the Democratic primary he ran a brilliant campaign.

Is Mamdani too good to be true? Unfortunately, he is.

Despite his many virtues, this attractive, articulate man, with the popular touch and Trumpian feel for politics, is a virulent, relentless anti-Zionist.

There is a huge difference between Greek-style virtues and Jewish-style values. Yoffie is dazzled by the former and seems uninterested in the latter.

In Greek thought, aretē means excellence - personal charm, beauty, eloquence, or skill - and these virtues have become considered moral in themselves in Western thought.

Look at Yoffie's list of Mamdani's virtues - he is charming, attractive, bright, energetic. These correspond to Aristotelian personal virtues like rhetorical skill, aesthetic grace and friendship.

But virtues aren't values. Values are reflected in what a person does, not in personality traits. Values transform reality towards the good; virtues are window dressing.

Awful people can have charisma. Greek virtues like courage, intelligence and eloquence can be used for moral or immoral purposes.

Jewish ethics knows this. While Maimonides discusses Aristotelian virtues in detail, he positions them as a prerequisite to getting close to God and to do mitzvot properly - they are a means, not an end.

A better article would have examined Mamdani's claimed values. Mamdani says he wants to help the poor and oppressed, yet his implementation of such programs is classically socialist. He wants to redistribute wealth, dividing New Yorkers into "oppressed" and "oppressors," and fostering hate instead of unity. Socialists like Mamdani promulgate a simplistic view of the world that sound attractive but are unjust.

We know from history that Jews end up always being categorized and stereotyped as the oppressors, not the oppressed, in socialist circles.

Yet Yoffie doesn't even engage in that discussion of the shortcomings of Mamdani's intended policies and how they are likely to affect Jews. He doesn't even consider what Mamdani would do to the economy and safety of the city as a whole. Instead, he praises virtues as if they are values on their own. He correctly calls Mamdani an Israel-hater, but that is only the beginning of the objections to his policies, even for Jewish liberals.

When people cannot distinguish between virtues and values, they lose all perspective of morality. For a rabbi to do this so enthusiastically shows that Jews themselves need to relearn the basics of Jewish values and how to act according to them.