The curtain is falling on the Eric Adams era in New York City. The mayor was indicted yesterday on an array of corruption charges. This comes on the heels of the resignation of several high-level members of his administration. Team Adams has been in free fall of late.

What comes after Adams’s tenure depends greatly on how and when he leaves office—he can resign, he can be removed by the governor or legislature, or he can stick it out under a cloud, but that might be paralyzing to the city. He is, after all, the first New York City mayor to be criminally indicted in office.

But one possible consequence of Adams’ downfall is a weakening of the bonds between the city government and New York’s Jewish community.

If Adams resigns or is removed from office, he will be replaced by Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, who will become acting mayor. Williams will have to call a special election to finish out Adams’s term, which will be about a year, as laid out by The City. After that, the regularly scheduled mayoral election in November 2025 will go on as planned. If Adams leaves after late March of this coming year, it’ll be close enough to the planned primaries that the city will forgo a special election and Williams would serve out until the fall.

Immediately behind Williams in the line of succession is city comptroller Brad Lander, who would be a leading candidate for the special election as well. Both Lander and Williams, according to The City, would be eligible to run in the 2025 mayoral election regardless of what happens this year.

Williams and Lander are progressives whose elevation to the mayoralty would also herald the arrival of a progressive generation atop city politics. And that would come at a moment when progressive city politics is shaped disproportionately by the post-October 7 divide over Israel and anti-Semitism—both particularly salient issues in New York.

Williams’s immediate response to the attacks on October 7 was to criticize them while also noting that “Palestinian life/suffering often goes undervalued,” a “both sides”-type post that left little doubt where he’d go on the issue as opposition to Israel’s response developed. Sure enough, he went on to label Benjamin Netanyahu “quite literally” a war criminal and opposed his visit to Congress.

A key moment came when Williams made a supportive visit to a faculty anti-Israel encampment at the New School, which was set up by teachers there after a student tent city was dismantled. “We call on faculty across all universities to escalate and take risk in solidarity with the student movement, their demands, and the people of Palestine,” the protesting faculty posted on Instagram. They “renamed” the New School University Center, calling it Bisan Hall—after Bisan Owda of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The faculty also demanded the school divest from Israel.

Williams made his visit an explicit challenge to Mayor Adams, who had been staunchly supportive of Israel against the Hamas terrorist group: “We have a mayor that hasn’t mentioned the word Gaza, as I mentioned, the word Palestine, hasn’t mentioned the word ceasefire. People are not feeling heard.”

Adams, for his part, has been a beacon for the Jewish community during an outbreak of anti-Semitism in the city not seen in decades. “Your fight is our fight,” he said on October 10, just days after the attacks. “Your fight is our fight. And right here in New York we have the largest Jewish population outside of Israel. This is the place that our voices must raise and cascade throughout the entire country. We will not be all right until every person responsible for this act is held accountable. And we don’t have to pretend.” He denounced the fact that “right here in the City of New York you have those who celebrate at the same time when the devastation is taking place in our city.”

He also spent a few days in Israel last summer, before the attacks, giving the country a pep talk in the midst of its upheaval over judicial reform and reminding Israelis that they must not let their society come apart at the seams over such an issue; they were stronger than that, no matter which way the reforms ended up going. During his mayoral campaign he joked about wanting to retire in the Golan Heights. He received large support from New York’s Orthodox community during that year’s Democratic primary.

As much as Williams would draw a contrast with Adams, it’s Lander who arguably puts the city’s Jews in a worse position. Lander has a penchant for allying with open anti-Semites and with As-A-Jew organizations and figures, a combination with the potential to supercharge incitement in a city already dealing with accumulating years of street violence against Jews.

Lander has an efficient way of incentivizing Jew-baiting. In May, he rallied for outgoing congressman Jamaal Bowman, who spent the past year behaving like a lunatic trying to whip up Jew-hate with an intensity that shocked even some progressive allies. Not Lander: The event he spoke at was the Fight Back Against AIPAC rally, an example of Bowman’s descent into paranoia. By the end of the campaign, Bowman was referring to AIPAC as “the Zionist regime.” Before leading chants of “Fired up! Ready to go!” Lander gave his enthusiastic endorsement to Bowman.

His allies include the staunch anti-Zionist agitator Linda Sarsour, and he has backed candidates affiliated with the Democratic Socialists of America, a pro-BDS organization that has more recently thrown its lot in with Hamas’s American supporters. He elevates any remotely anti-Zionist Jewish group he can find and pits them against traditional communal organizations.

Of course, the curveball will be thrown if and when former Gov. Andrew Cuomo jumps into the mayoral race, either this year or for the 2025 election. But Cuomo, having resigned amid mounting allegations of abuse of power, would be a one-man show, not a movement. A Cuomo victory could forestall New York’s leftward lurch but it could not, on its own, reverse it.

All of this comes amid polls showing increasing support for Donald Trump among Jewish voters in New York, so a clash may be coming from both directions: A community trending slightly less liberal may run headlong into a generation of ruling Democrats sprinting to their left.