“They just couldn’t figure out how to represent 11 per cent of the city,” stated Avital Chizik-Goldschmidt, a writer and New York resident. “Couldn’t decipher where the Jews are from. Asked everyone. Huge riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.”
The map was intended to show parts of the city that have “substantial foreign-born populations from regions and countries around the world,” according to City Hall. “It does not highlight religious groups.”
It added that a map of Little Odessa depicts a neighbourhood with a substantial Jewish population.
“Also, no Italian or Irish enclaves in New York City? Interesting,” stated Karol Markowicz, a prominent, Jewish conservative columnist. “The two Staten Island flags look funnier the longer I look at this. Two small ethnic populations and absolutely no others in the whole of Staten Island.”
“The major Sephardi corridor of South Brooklyn, Syrian, Egyptian, Lebanese, and others, from the East side of Avenue J down toward Avenue V, gets left out completely,” added Isaac Choua, a board member of the Sephardic Jewish Brotherhood of America. “So does the Bukharian Jewish community in Queens, largely from Uzbekistan and Central Asia.
"The Brooklyn community is not some tiny side community.
“Flatbush, Midwood, and Gravesend alone have roughly 54,000 people living in Jewish households, comparable in size to the Pakistani community being recognised here.”
“This is not a small omission,” he went on. “It is one of New York’s most distinctive immigrant-descended Jewish communities, and it gets erased from the story. Weirdly enough, Zohran Mamdani’s office wanted to speak with me about this very issue and has not followed up since the election.”
However, others dismissed the purported controversy.
“The Chasidic neighbourhoods are overwhelmingly composed of American citizens, who have been here a long time,” said journalist Jesse Singal. “I don’t get this. It comes across like looking for something to get mad about.
"Could just as easily 180 this and be, ‘Oh, so you’re saying they aren’t quite American?”
Rabbi Mordechai Lightstone, a Chabad rabbi, added that he finds “the absence frustrating as well”.
“But what exactly would we call it and where?” he asked. “Little Israel? Surely not the right name for Borough Park, the largest enclave of Jews and Jewish culture. Doesn’t really work for the Upper West Side or the Lower East Side either.”
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A map of New York City's immigrant neighbourhoods produced by the city's official marketing group (NYC website)[Missing Credit]