For many New Yorkers, Election Day was cause for celebration: the anticipation of a new mayor with new ideas on how to address longstanding challenges from affordability to crime.
But other New Yorkers, including many (though not all) Jews, were rattled by the decisive victory of Zohran Mamdani, whose anti-Israel rhetoric has frightened them in a global environment already rife with antisemitism.
My concern is not only, or even primarily, for New York City. The Jews of New York will be fine. We are strong, resilient, and alert. Long before Oct. 7, we were on guard against hateful words and acts. Our synagogue security teams are well-trained and vigilant. Our communal leaders know how to respond to anti-Zionist and antisemitic rhetoric promptly and forcefully.
And I expect that Mamdani will now shift from anti-Israel tropes toward a tone that eases the Jewish anxiety he has stoked. He is smart, savvy and wants to succeed — and with goals we believe will strengthen our city we should want him to.
What alarms me most about the election, is how Mamdani’s anti-Israel rhetoric, no different than what has sparked a rise in antisemitism and antisemitic violence for two years now, became politically acceptable — and how he employed popular anger against Israel over the war in Gaza to attract to a local mayoral campaign a core of supporters who linked perceived injustice abroad with inequities at home.
These concerns were identified in last month’s letter published by the Jewish Majority and signed by 1,200 Jewish clergy. Because of my synagogue’s prominence, my name was the first on that letter. But after the more than 100 New York City clergy who added theirs, followed another thousand colleagues from across the country who have experienced or fear these trends in their own communities.
It surprised no one that progressives like Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Bernie Sanders supported Mamdani given his principled focus on systemic inequality and affordability. But when Democrats like Gov. Hochul and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries endorsed him, they rendered his anti-Zionist beliefs kosher for the party’s mainstream. And if his anti-Israel attitudes are now excusable to them, I question whether the political left can be a safe home for Jewish interests. Will other candidates now use anger at Israel as a lever to galvanize their supporters?
But for those who would run to the right, there are other concerns. While the Trump administration and most conservatives have stood behind Israel in its efforts to defang Hamas and Iran and bring home the hostages, goals unattainable until the president’s active involvement, and while the president continues to push hard for the normalization of relations between Israel and the Muslim and Arab world, and fight antisemitic harassment on college campuses (though often in ways that raise legitimate alarms about First Amendment freedoms), elements of the right have engaged in egregious antisemitism.
Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts’ defense of Tucker Carlson after his friendly interview of white nationalist antisemite Nick Fuentes, an Office of Special Counsel nominee admitting to having a “Nazi streak,” and the Young Republicans’ chat group lauding Hitler are just recent examples.
Reaching back a decade, the nativist rhetoric employed throughout Donald Trump’s first successful campaign coincided with the sharp spike in right-wing antisemitic violence that included shootings at synagogues in Pittsburgh and Poway.
The Jewish community’s best hope — for its own wellbeing and for continued bipartisan support of Israel — is to strengthen a political center that brings together moderates from both parties who reject the ideologues on their flanks. And not only would it be good for the Jews, it would also be good for a bitterly divided Congress and country.
I believe Mamdani’s intentions when he promises he will do whatever he can to protect the Jewish community. Now it will be up to the leadership of our community to hold him to that commitment and help him understand that anti-Israel rhetoric runs counter not just to our safety, but also, for most of us, to our Jewish identity. In short, we should concede the election but not the concern, working with Mamdani where we can, and opposing him where we must.
We Jewish New Yorkers will be OK. Though some have suggested they may now flee to the suburbs, this city is our home, the capital of the Diaspora Jewish world, and we are not going anywhere.
As for our political home, it may be time for American Jews to forge a new one.
Davidson is the Peter and Mary Kalikow Senior Rabbinic Chair of Congregation Emanu-El of the City of New York.
