After weeks of speculation about whether he’d stay in his modest Queens rental, incoming Mayor Zohran Mamdani confirmed that he and his wife, Rama Duwaji, will pack up their Astoria apartment and settle into Gracie Mansion once he’s sworn in. The choice, he explained, wasn’t symbolic or political — it was personal.
“My wife Rama and I have made the decision to move into Gracie Mansion in January,” he said, making clear that the move was driven by concerns close to home.
“This decision came down to our family’s safety and the importance of dedicating all of my focus on enacting the affordability agenda New Yorkers voted for.”
For years, Mamdani’s critics hammered him for his rent-stabilized, $2,300 one-bedroom — a setup they said was wildly out of sync with his six-figure earnings in the Assembly and his calls for sweeping rent freezes. The tension around the apartment only intensified during the mayoral campaign, with opponents repeatedly framing his living situation as hypocritical.
Even as the firestorm built, Mamdani stayed largely silent about whether he’d abandon the Astoria unit for the official residence on the Upper East Side. He finally broke that silence, framing the decision within his broader vision for the city.
“My priority, always, is serving the people who call this city home. I will be a mayor for the line cooks on Steinway, for the children swinging at Dutch Kills Playground, for the bus riders waiting for the Q101,” he said.
“While I may no longer live in Astoria, Astoria will always live inside me and the work I do.”
Throughout the campaign, opponents seized on his apartment as a political weak point. Andrew Cuomo — running as an independent — accused Mamdani of misusing the rent-regulated system, arguing that someone with his family background shouldn’t occupy a unit that could go to a struggling tenant.
Mamdani, the son of filmmaker Mira Nair and Columbia professor Mahmood Mamdani, pushed back throughout the race. He has long maintained that when he first moved in, he had no idea the place was rent-stabilized. His team also pointed out that he’d been earning only $47,000 at the time.
Still, even as he prepares to step into the mayoralty, Mamdani acknowledged that leaving his longtime home won’t be easy. He reflected on the details of daily life in the building that had shaped his years in Astoria.
“Cooking dinner side by side in our kitchen, sharing a sleepy elevator ride with our neighbors in the evening, hearing music and laughter vibrate through the walls of the apartment,” Mamdani said.
“To Astoria: thank you for showing us the best of New York City. We have called this neighborhood home as our city weathered a devastating pandemic, cruel attacks on immigrants, and years of an affordability crisis,” he continued.
“Time and again, this community has shown up for one another. We will miss it all — the endless Adeni chai, the spirited conversations in Spanish, Arabic and every language in between, the aromas of seafood and shawarma drifting down the block.”
{Matzav.com}Images of stray dogs with striking blue coats wandering through the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone set off a frenzy of online theories earlier this year. With the backdrop of the 1986 nuclear catastrophe, many quickly imagined radiation-induced abnormalities or strange genetic twists behind the vivid color.
But according to the scientists closest to the scene, those theories could not “be further from the truth.”
Timothy Mousseau, a University of South Carolina researcher who advises the organization overseeing the dogs, says the explanation is far more mundane — and far less dramatic. As he put it on the Dogs of Chernobyl Facebook page, “The blue dye likely came from a tipped over port-a-potty where the dogs were rolling around in the poop, as dogs are prone to do.”
He compared it to a familiar household problem. “The blue coloration was simply a sign of the dog’s unsanitary behavior!” he explained. “As any dog owner knows, most dogs will eat just about anything, including feces!” The behavior, he noted, mirrors the way some dogs are mysteriously attracted to cat litter boxes.
Mousseau further emphasized that none of the dogs’ unusual appearance signals anything dangerous or biologically altered. Their fur does “not reflect any kind of mutation or evolutionary adaptation to radiation,” he said.
Dogs of Chernobyl — a program supported by the Clean Futures Fund (CFF) that provides care for the roughly 700 strays still living around the former nuclear plant — first posted the images in October. Staff at the time had not yet managed to bring the brightly colored animals in for examination.
“We are on the ground catching dogs for sterilization, and we came across three dogs that were completely blue,” the group wrote on Instagram. “We are not sure exactly what is going [on]. … We do not know the reason, and we are attempting to catch them so we can find out what is happening.”
Those dogs are descendants of pets abruptly abandoned in 1986, when over 120,000 residents were forced to leave. As CFF recounts, “The evacuees were not allowed to bring anything that they could not carry, and their pets had to be left behind.” The site notes, “They were told they would return in 3 days, but they were never allowed to return. Their pets became abandoned.”
{Matzav.com}
A senior figure in the prime minister’s office confirmed that Bibi Netanyahu is set to sit down with President Donald Trump in the United States on December 29, according to information provided to The Times of Israel.
Another Israeli official noted that the conversation between the two leaders is slated to occur at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, where arrangements for the gathering have already been put in motion.
The same official added that Netanyahu is weighing a U.S. itinerary stretching from December 28 through January 4. While the visit would span the start of the new year, American government agencies will be closed on January 1, limiting formal activity that day.
{Matzav.com}
Dear Matzav Inbox,
A few days ago, a Yid published a letter on Matzav titled “Hello From the Invisible Me.” It was raw, vulnerable, and painfully honest. He described feeling small, overlooked, ordinary to the point of disappearing—a man working tirelessly to support his family, doing everything right, yet sensing that he barely registers in a world that applauds only the loud, the successful, the extraordinary.
And then Klal Yisroel answered.
Fifty-six comments (as of my writing) appeared beneath his letter. I read every one of them. And with each comment, a single phrase rose in my mind and refused to let go:
Mi kiamcha Yisroel.
Not one harsh word. Not a trace of judgment. Nothing dismissive or cold. Instead, there emerged a tapestry of love, understanding, and empathy—woven by total strangers who instantly recognized his pain as their own.
Some responded with deep chizuk, reminding him that quiet perseverance is treasured in the eyes of Hashem. Others opened their hearts and shared their own struggles so he would know he wasn’t alone. Still others offered guidance, warmth, and sincere encouragement—words written with dignity, with heart, with soul.
And beyond those fifty-six comments, I have no doubt that hundreds more Yidden read his letter silently—and felt it. Felt his hurt. Felt his loneliness. Felt the urge to reach out and say, “I see you. I’ve been there too.” Even those who did not type a word were standing with him in that moment.
Because that is who we are.
We are a nation that instinctively surrounds a hurting Jew with care. A people who cannot bear to let another Yid feel invisible. In a world obsessed with the spotlight, our hearts still know how to honor the quiet man, the hardworking father, the Yid who shows up every day with no applause and no fanfare.
What other nation does this?
What other community responds to a stranger’s cry with pure achdus, pure love, pure dignity?
Mi kiamcha Yisroel is not poetry—it is reality. It is what I saw in fifty-six luminous comments and in the silent empathy of countless others.
One Yid whispered from the shadows, “I feel invisible.”
Klal Yisroel turned toward him, together, and answered:
“You are seen.
You matter.
You are one of us.”
In an increasingly fractured world, this moment reminded me of the indescribable beauty of our people.
Mi kiamcha Yisroel—truly, there is no one like us.
Proud to be Part of Klal Yisroel
To submit a letter to appear on Matzav.com, email MatzavInbox@gmail.com
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The opinions expressed in letters on Matzav.com do not necessarily reflect the stance of the Matzav Media Network.
{Matzav.com}
Advisers cautioned Joe Biden during his 2020 campaign that his immigration agenda could unleash serious instability at the southern border, but the recommendations were brushed aside, according to a newly surfaced internal memo. The New York Times reported that Biden received the document while running against President Donald Trump, and it laid out a stark assessment of what his proposed approach was likely to trigger.
“A potential surge could create chaos and a humanitarian crisis, overwhelm processing capacities and imperil the agenda of the new administration,” his advisers wrote, flagging the risks months before Biden took office. The memo said a major spike was plausible due to the policy shifts Biden was championing, the backlog left from the Trump years, and economic stresses tied to COVID.
The campaign team proposed several ways to counter the risk of spiraling illegal crossings, including streamlining the rejection of meritless claims, keeping asylum seekers in “reception centers” until their hearings, and relocating some migrants to additional countries while their cases were processed. Despite the detailed warnings and specific tactical options, Biden opted not to adopt the recommendations.
Once inaugurated, Biden’s policy specialists continued to press the administration to strengthen border enforcement and aggressively address the uptick in crossings. Those suggestions were sidelined again, as senior aides contended that tougher enforcement would alienate progressives and argued that immigration was not a dominant issue among voters outside border communities.
In Biden’s first quarter in office, illegal border entries surged to levels that exceeded any recorded under President Trump. Advisers also floated an idea to help overburdened border towns by having federal authorities assist in transporting migrants to their intended destinations within the United States. That proposal — which resembled the later busing campaign run by Texas Governor Greg Abbott — was dismissed by Biden’s aides, who claimed it would incentivize additional asylum seekers to come.
According to former members of the Biden administration, the missteps and refusal to act on early counsel played a central role in Biden’s 2024 election defeat. Biden has pointed the finger elsewhere, saying Republicans blocked his efforts to implement a workable immigration agenda.
He ultimately used executive authority to close the border without Congress’s involvement near the end of the 2024 campaign. “When it became clear Congress wouldn’t act, Biden took decisive action on his own,” a spokesperson for Biden told the Times in a statement.
{Matzav.com}
A number of mezuzahs were torn from the doorways of Jewish seniors’ homes in an apartment building in North York, Toronto, Canada on Shabbos.
Toronto police’s Hate Crime Unit launched an investigation into the matter, according to CTVNews.
No leads about the culprits were communicated to the public.
Toronto City Councilor James Pasternak tweeted that the vandalism was “an act of hate directed at Jewish residents—seniors who deserve safety, stability, and dignity in their own homes. There is no excuse for targeting people because they are Jewish.”
He added: “Toronto cannot look the other way while seniors are intimidated in their hallways. We will continue working with residents, Toronto Seniors Housing, and police until safety is restored.”
Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow called the incident “outrageous and [a] vile act of antisemitism.
“Jewish Torontonians deserve to live in peace and safety. Thank you Councillor Pasternak for connecting residents to the police who are investigating,” she wrote on X.
Speaking to channel CP24 later on Sunday night, Pasternak said that the Jewish elders in the residential building “were shocked and dismayed that this kind of antisemitism and hate would be in our city.”
They “always felt that their building was welcoming and safe. They chose that building because of its community,” Pasternak remarked.
He moreover noted that the Jewish tenants attend a small shul within the building on a daily basis, and have “always lived their lives openly, celebrated their religion, and their history. And so, this is a major shock that someone would go through the night ripping off or tearing off these mezuzahs, and they were fixed very strongly so it’s not an easy task to pry off.”
B’nai Brith Canada responded to the incident, stating on X that the Jewish organization has “engaged municipal leaders and the Toronto Police after being made aware” of the vandalism.
The historic NGO said that the act “is yet another example of the consequences of the antisemitic environment that has been allowed to fester.”
It further charged the city’s “permissive” response to the rising levels of incitement against the Jewish community, describing the “inability” to protect Jewish seniors as a “sign of the further decay of our society.”
B’nai Brith added that it will arrange this week an event for mezuzah donations for the seniors in the Toronto Seniors Housing Corporation building on 6250 Bathurst Street.
The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs association in Canada remarked, “We’ve seen hateful conduct go from shouting in the streets to targeting Jews outside our homes to now in the hallways of our own buildings.”
CIJA urged Canadian leaders “at all levels” to take action that will protect the Jewish community.
{Matzav.com}
