The Jewish moment in America is over! Finished

 

How in the world did a Jew-hating Muslim who considers Israel and its supporters illegitimate become the Mayor-elect of New York City? 

And what are its implications for the Jewish future in America and for the State of Israel?

First, a basic rule of politics is that you can’t beat somethin’ with nothin’. There is much to say about incoming NYC Mayor Mamdani, and little of it positive, but the reality is that his opponents were not serious and not competitive.

 Incumbent Eric Adams, who dropped out a few months ago after flopping in the Democratic primary, was compromised by his bribery indictment and perceived connection to Donald Trump. Andrew Cuomo was despised by much of the electorate, both because of his moral failings and his catastrophic Coronavirus policies that literally killed thousands of people. It is a mystery why he thought his failures as New York state governor qualified him to be New York City’s mayor. And Curtis Sliwa, game and colorful as always, was as credible a candidate as the Republicans are a functioning political party in New York, which is to say not at all.

How these characters were the nominees is itself an indictment of American society.

Second, there has always been a strain of Jew hatred in American political life but it has been a long time since it was so mainstreamed in one political party (the Democrats) and a rising force in the other party (the Republicans). 

Mandani and others have been allowed to get away with the subterfuge that they love Jews but hate Israel. Really? 

Imagine if someone said that he loves Muslims but finds it offensive and racist that Muslims believe that Mohammed was a prophet. Or, imagine if someone said that she loves Christians but resents any Christian who worships the cross because such is exclusivist and thus abhorrent to the modern mind.

The right of the Jewish people to the land of Israel is so integral to the Torah that, as we see in the Torah readings this time of year, G-d repeated this promise to each of our forefathers. These rights, along with the Torah, are the two pillars of the covenant between G-d and Israel. Anyone who repudiates that and declares that Israel has no right to exist as a Jewish state is repudiating the Torah, the covenant, and an essential definition of Jewishness. Such a person is a Jew hater, period, and not just - as the whitewashed euphemism would have it - someone who has a grudge against Semites.

It is quite astonishing that Mamdani launched and sustained his career through animus against the one Jewish state in the world but finds nothing troubling about the more than the fifty Muslim states that dot the globe.

 It becomes even more reprehensible when one considers that most of those Muslim states came into existence around the same time Israel did, give or take a few decades, and in the same manner - through world powers carving up the Middle East into different countries. Nonetheless, he only takes issue with Israel where Arabs have more freedoms than in any Arab country, many of which even deny admission and certainly residence to Jews.

Yet, Mamdani is entitled to his rabid Jew hatred and his denials of same, one price of living in a free society. 

What should trouble New York Jews even more is this:

More than a million of their fellow New Yorkers - their neighbors and co-workers, their co-strap hangers on the subway and people they see in the streets - overlooked (if indeed they did) Mamdani’s anti-Jewish and anti-Israel obsessions and overwhelmingly voted him into office. These are the people among whom you live, ready to protest any criticism of any ethnic group and their creed and values, except if you are a Jew. That should be hard to swallow.

Worse, Mamdani apparently received close to a third of the Jewish vote. To be sure, Jews are not always the most sagacious voters; it has been widely reported for ninety years that Adolf Hitler in 1933 received about 5% of the Jewish vote, from those Jews who assumed that Hitler’s Jew hatred was a phase that he would have to abandon once he took power. (That itself is eerily similar to the claims of almost two decades ago that Hamas in Gaza would also have to moderate since they would now be forced to pick up the trash and pay teachers’ salaries. Sure.)

And imagine how many more Jewish votes Hitler would have received had he run as a Democrat! This fascination of Jews with the Democratic Party is itself worthy of analysis. Suffice it to say, as the outcome and Jewish voting patterns make clear, being a Democrat is more consequential to the identity of liberal Jews than is being a Jew, and in any conflict between the positions of the Democratic Party and the tenets of Judaism, Judaism will be jettisoned or at least redefined.

This is the inevitable consequence of assimilation and intermarriage but it is more than that. 

Sure, so many American Jews have intermarried with Gentiles that there are hundreds of thousands of halakhic Gentiles who begin their critiques with “as a Jew,” but, more tellingly, they have primarily intermarried a culture, a value system, and a world view that is not theirs. I am actually surprised that only 33% of NY Jews voted for Mamdani! Perhaps the percentage was reduced because of the huge Haredi turnout for Cuomo.

Third, as in many areas, President Trump’s bluster and bravado are not always rooted in reality. He is a polarizing figure, such that his influence is greater in Republican primaries than in general elections. 

In other words, a Republican cannot win if Trump opposes him but a Trump endorsement is anything but a harbinger of victory in a general election. The endorsement probably turns off more voters than are turned on. And even though the major elections which Democrats won this week were in Democratic states and thus not necessarily indicative of a lasting trend, it does say something. The Trump era may come to an earlier end than people think, and we in Israel should be prepared for the day after.

What does Mamdani-rule mean for Jews? 

The class warfare embraced and popularized by Democrats for years now does not bode well for American Jews. Democrats have for years popularized the perception that society is in the midst of an ongoing conflict between haves and have-nots. 

Jews are seen as the “haves” who are exploiting the “have-nots” - in housing, education, jobs, money, etc. The reality is almost immaterial. It is a classically Marxist view, which can only be implemented by humbling the “haves” and making them, as the perennially-undefined and unquantified cliche goes, pay their “fair share.” The rosy promises of “free stuff” is a sweetener eagerly swallowed by the young, the gullible, and probably those who know how they will force the wealthy to pay for the “free stuff.”

Jews will not be attacked in the streets in a Mamdani tenure, any more than they are assaulted now. But what might happen is that the police will be redeployed. 

The have-nots will be allowed to vent (as in Minneapolis, Portland, and elsewhere) marauding, looting, rioting, and burning, without arrest or prosecution. (Note that an incompetent like Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg was reelected with almost 75% of the vote.) What will be the reaction to a “smash and grab” invasion of 47th Street or to renewed harassment of Jews on college campuses? I fear we may find out and we might not like what we find.

It would not be surprising if the Israel Day Parade was canceled on “security” grounds, or charged an additional fee to pay for security, or have it supplemented with a “Salute to Palestine” parade. Mamdani would of course, march in the latter, not the former.

Life for Jews in New York will not end but it will become more unpleasant, more discomfiting, more disconcerting. Where Jews were once cultural icons and pillars of respect, they might now find themselves ideological second-class citizens, possessing unwelcome views and archaic and repugnant attitudes, especially concerning Israel.

Some Jews - it has happened to many already - will seek to protect themselves by blaming Netanyahu, disassociating from Israel, and currying favor with the progressive left whose hatred for Israel is as pathological as it groundless. Eventually, though, the bell will toll for them as well, as has occurred numerous times in history when Jews sought to ingratiate themselves to their enemy, who soon after devoured them anyway.

The golden age of American Jewry has passed. It does not mean that the end is coterminous with a Mamdani administration. It does mean that it will come and that it is unavoidable. 

The two inexorable rules of Jewish history are that every exile comes to an end, and that Jews are always too late to realize that and overstay their welcome until catastrophe overwhelms most of them. I have hope but no expectation that this mindset will change in this case.

It is certainly not helpful when a distinguished rabbinic colleague, living in the United States, pleads with his former British compatriots to leave a dangerous United Kingdom and come to … America, as if we are living in the 19th century and not the 21st. 

Why has the Lord returned us to the land of Israel - and enabled a thriving Jewish state despite all the problems - if not to impress upon all Jews that it is time to come home?

The Jewish moment in America is over.

 Hollywood no longer reckons with us. Open and unabashed Jew hatred exists in both political parties, only one of which is even concerned about it. Fewer and fewer Jews are among the great business tycoons in America. The Jewish state is no longer widely admired as a plucky little country defending itself against countless and evil enemies but vilified as the aggressor and the greatest threat to world peace in accordance with the absurd Progressive doctrine that the victim is always moral and always right. (We earned the world’s sympathy for a few days after the Hamas massacre of October 7 but lost that when we went to war and transformed our attackers into “victims. "Yes, it is illogical, but such is Progressivism.)

The world’s current mania with the creation of another Palestinian Arab state (in addition to Jordan) is just another symptom of the malady. A Jew can only purchase standing in American society by declaring his embarrassment by the State of Israel.

If history has taught us anything, it is that Jews will twist themselves into pretzels trying to harmonize their views with the zeitgeist and to remain on good terms with their enemies who are their political fellow travelers. 

Instead of defending ourselves, we will trip over our own feet trying to rationalize our enemies’ hatred. We will blame ourselves for our enemies’ animosity. We will fail to recognize the changing attitudes of American citizens and the ascendancy of Islam in the US which has already been previewed for us in Europe. We will not react with sufficient strength and resolve when we see that Jew haters in politics, the media, and the culture pay no price for their malevolence and, instead, find their careers boosted and their popularity enhanced.

King Shlomo taught us (Kohelet 2:14) that “the wise man's eyes are in his head,” meaning, as Rashi comments, “at the beginning of the matter, he contemplates what the end will be.” Yet, again, we are provided an opportunity to demonstrate to the world that we are, indeed, “a wise and discerning people” (Devarim 4:6). The signs are there, the clouds are gathering. We can say as Jews often have, “this too shall pass.” Or we can draw conclusions, seize our destiny, and hasten the redemption.

Rabbi Steven Pruzansky is a rabbi and attorney who lives in Israel and serves as the Senior Research Associate at the Jerusalem Center for Applied Policy. He is the author of six books.