Last week, Jewish Insider broke a story that should have been everywhere. Rama Duwaji, the wife of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, liked over 70 Instagram posts celebrating Hamas’ October 7 massacre. Not posts criticizing Israeli policy. Posts cheering the murder of 1,200 people. Posts with livestreamed footage of terrorists breaching Israel’s border. One called documented reports of sexual violence against Israeli women a “mass rape hoax.”
When reporters asked Mamdani about it, he said: “My wife is the love of my life, and she’s also a private person who has held no formal position on my campaign or in my City Hall.”
That’s it. That’s all he had.
No condemnation. No daylight between himself and what she endorsed. Just: she’s private, it’s not my problem. Which raises a question the Bible actually has a lot to say about: when your spouse publicly celebrates something evil, what exactly does your silence mean?
Scripture gives us two marriages that answer that question in opposite ways.
The first is King Ahab and Queen Jezebel, probably the most toxic marriage in the entire Bible. Jezebel was a Phoenician princess who dragged Baal worship — Canaanite idol worship — right into the center of Israelite life. She funded 450 prophets of Baal, hunted down and killed the prophets of God, and basically hijacked the spiritual direction of the kingdom. And Ahab? He was the king. He had the power. He had the title. And he just… let her.
But the story that really shows what their marriage was made of is the vineyard of Naboth in 1 Kings 21. Ahab wanted a vineyard. The owner, Naboth, said no — it was his family’s ancestral land. So Ahab went home and sulked. Literally lay on his bed, turned his face to the wall, refused to eat. Jezebel found him moping, rolled her eyes, and handled it. She forged letters in his name, staged a fake trial, had two men lie under oath, and got Naboth executed. Then she told Ahab: go get your vineyard. And he went. Didn’t say a word. Just walked onto a dead man’s land and took it.
God’s response?
Look at that verse carefully. Jezebel incited. She was the mastermind. But Ahab is the one God calls the worst king in Israel’s history. Because he never pushed back. Never said stop. Never said this is wrong. He enjoyed the fruit of her evil and pretended it wasn’t his business. God wasn’t buying it.
Now flip to the Book of Job. Here’s a man who has lost literally everything — his wealth, his ten children, his health. He’s sitting in ashes scraping his sores with broken pottery when his wife comes to him and says:
You can hear the grief in her voice. She lost those children too. She’s watching her husband rot. But what she’s telling him to do — abandon God, curse the only source of meaning they have left — is dead wrong. And Job knows it. He doesn’t smile and nod. He doesn’t say, “Well, she’s entitled to her opinion.” He looks at her and says:
That’s a rebuke. Loving, yes. But unmistakable. Job tells his wife to her face: what you just said is beneath you, and I won’t go along with it. He doesn’t divorce her. He doesn’t shame her publicly. But he refuses to let something dangerous stand unchallenged in his own home.
Two husbands, same test. Ahab folded. Job stood up. And the Bible is clear about which one got it right.
There’s actually a command for this:
The Hebrew doubles the verb – to intensify the obligation. You must rebuke. If that’s true for a neighbor, it’s doubly true for the person who shares your bed and your name.
And this isn’t just about one mayor’s wife. We’re watching the same failure of moral courage across the political spectrum. On the left, antisemitism hides behind words like “resistance” and “liberation.” On the right, Tucker Carlson has spent the past year platforming Holocaust deniers and pushing conspiracy theories about Jewish control. Candace Owens has promoted Khazar theories and amplified antisemitic content to millions. For months, the people closest to them said nothing — until figures like Ted Cruz finally broke ranks and called it what it is. Silence is silence, no matter which side of the aisle it comes from.
Mamdani chose Ahab’s path. The turned face, the quiet walk to the stolen vineyard, the careful non-answer. Job lost everything and still had the guts to tell his wife she was wrong. The Bible has never accepted silence as neutrality.
You either speak up, or your silence speaks for you.
