An investigation by Olam has documented that Steven Spielberg's Righteous Persons Foundation, established in 1994 with $100 million in profits from Schindler's List, has directed $2.4 million since 2020 to Jewish advocacy organizations that oppose the international definition of antisemitism, demand arms embargoes against Israel, and provided critical support to elect Zohran Mamdani as Mayor of New York City.
Mamdani, a BDS supporter who has refused to affirm Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state, was inaugurated January 1, 2026, as the mayor of the city with the largest Jewish population outside Israel. On January 5, 2026, Mamdani's first full week in office, Spielberg hosted the new mayor at his Central Park West apartment. The meeting was confirmed by both Mamdani's office and Spielberg's spokeswoman Terry Press.
The funding trail shows no direct contribution from the foundation to Mamdani's campaign. Instead, the pattern reveals how foundation dollars indirectly enabled his victory: Spielberg's foundation funded the organizations that campaigned for him.
The Grant Recipients and Their Positions on Israel
The Righteous Persons Foundation's three largest grants to progressive Jewish organizations since 2020 went to groups with explicitly anti-Israel positions:
Bend the Arc — $1.2 million. The largest domestic-focused progressive Jewish advocacy organization in the United States, Bend the Arc publicly opposes codification of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism—the working definition adopted by the U.S. government, the European Union, and more than 40 national governments. In September 2025, Bend the Arc made its first-ever endorsement of a mayoral candidate, backing Zohran Mamdani. The organization subsequently claimed credit for shaping the election outcome, stating: "With support from people like you, Bend the Arc helped shape this monumental victory with our air game and ground game."
T'ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights — approximately $650,000. T'ruah has organized street blockades protesting Israel's military campaign in Gaza. Chief Executive Rabbi Jill Jacobs has accused Israel of "deliberately starving" Palestinian civilians and called Israel's 2024 pager operation against Hezbollah operatives a "war crime." Jacobs has also publicly criticized American Jews for discussing October 7 and hostages "without once mentioning the unbearable death toll among Palestinians."
Jews United for Justice — approximately $900,000. The organization has signed letters arguing that Jewish institutions should be "held accountable" for Palestinian oppression. It publicly opposes the IHRA definition of antisemitism.
An additional quarter-million dollars flowed to the Jewish Social Justice Roundtable, the umbrella coalition encompassing all three groups.
The Mamdani Connection: Bend the Arc's Role in a Mayoral Victory
Zohran Mamdani, a Queens assemblyman and founder of a Students for Justice in Palestine chapter at Bowdoin College, has been a public BDS supporter for years. He held a hunger strike at the White House in November 2023, six weeks after October 7, demanding President Biden cut military aid to Israel. He introduced the "Not on Our Dime Act" in the New York State Assembly, legislation designed to bar state charitable organizations from supporting Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria.
Bend the Arc's September 2025 endorsement was unprecedented. The organization had never previously endorsed in a mayoral race anywhere in the United States. The endorsement was followed by an independent campaign: Bend the Arc raised money for Mamdani, canvassed for him, and purchased television advertising. In its post-election communications, the organization explicitly claimed responsibility for the victory.
That money, the funding for Bend the Arc's campaign infrastructure, came substantially from Spielberg's foundation. The foundation did not write a check to Mamdani's campaign. It wrote checks to the organization that delivered him.
Spielberg's Public Statements on Israel vs. Foundation Grantmaking
The discrepancy between Spielberg's public statements and his foundation's grantmaking presents an explicit contradiction.
In December 2023, eight weeks after October 7, Spielberg announced the Countering Antisemitism Through Testimony initiative through the USC Shoah Foundation, which he also founded: "I never imagined I would see such unspeakable barbarity against Jews in my lifetime." In March 2024, accepting an honor from USC, he warned of "the machinery of extremism" on American college campuses and called the rise of antisemitism "increasingly alarming."
That same year, the foundation's grantees included the organizations whose staff had built infrastructure for campus protest movements targeting Israel. That same year, the foundation was funding organizations actively campaigning against the IHRA definition Spielberg's own public rhetoric implicitly endorsed.
The Central Park West Meeting
The meeting between Spielberg and Mamdani on January 5, 2026, occurred under particular circumstances. Spielberg moved his primary residence from California to Manhattan in late 2025—during months when wealthy New York residents earning above $1 million annually were openly threatening to leave the city in response to Mamdani's proposed two-percentage-point income tax hike. Spielberg's relocation was in the opposite direction of that migration.
According to the New York Times and Hollywood Reporter, the meeting was arranged by an unnamed third party who "wanted the mayor and director to meet," with Spielberg now a full-time New York resident. No formal agenda was disclosed. Spielberg's wife Kate Capshaw, their son Theo, and Theo's wife attended, along with Mamdani's advisor Morris Katz.
Why This Matters
The Righteous Persons Foundation has paid out more than $160 million in grants since 1994. For much of the foundation's history, those grants supported Holocaust education, survivor support, and Yiddish cultural preservation. The post-2020 pivot to progressive Jewish organizations represents a fundamental shift in philanthropic mission, one that Spielberg himself appears not to have publicly acknowledged.
In his 1994 founding statement, Spielberg called the Schindler's List profits "blood money" that "needed to be put back into the Jewish community." Thirty years later, the foundation is funding organizations whose leadership has called Israel a perpetrator of war crimes, whose staff has accused the Jewish community of moral failure for defending Israel, and whose advocacy contributed to the election of a BDS founder as mayor of New York City.
The foundation's grant record, spanning five years and $2.4 million in commitments, represents a sustained pattern rather than isolated decisions. By any standard of institutional accountability, the discrepancy between Spielberg's stated mission and the foundation's funded organizations demands explanation.
