Tikkun olam, the Jewish call to “repair the world,” has long inspired Jews to champion justice, defend the vulnerable and fight oppression. For much of the 20th century, that ethos naturally aligned with the Democratic Party, widely seen as the defender of civil rights and social progress. Jewish activists stood at the forefront of labor movements, civil-rights marches and anti-apartheid campaigns, believing that liberalism and Jewish values were one and the same.
But the political landscape has changed—and dangerously so.
The Democratic Party has veered sharply left, embracing ideologies like intersectionality and decolonization that recast Jews not as a historically persecuted people, but as privileged oppressors. Israel is increasingly depicted as a colonial aggressor, and Jewish students are harassed on campus under the banner of equity. “Zionist” has become a slur, blood libels are reframed as “resistance,” and Hamas apologists are cheered at protests. What was once fringe rhetoric is now normalized—on college campuses, in progressive media and in Congress.
This is not merely a distortion of progressive values; in many influential circles, it is what progressivism has become. Members of Congress invoke antisemitic tropes with impunity. Swastikas appear at Ivy League schools. Radical campus groups openly justify terrorism against Jews, calling it liberation.
And all the while, Democratic leaders remain either conspicuously silent or actively complicit. The party’s refusal to confront the antisemitism festering within its ranks has not only allowed it to grow; it has legitimized it.
Yes, there are exceptions. Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) and Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.) have taken principled stands in defense of Israel and the Jewish people, but they are outliers. The broader party leadership has failed, morally and politically, to protect the Jewish community from rising hostility.
Jewish liberalism emerged from generational trauma. Jews who had endured exile, pogroms and genocide brought with them a deep-seated moral imperative to defend the oppressed. In America, this history inspired Jewish involvement in progressive causes, from organizing the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union to marching for civil rights with Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma, Ala.
But the noble instinct to fight injustice has now been weaponized against the Jewish people. By continuing to align with a left that cloaks antisemitism in the language of justice, many Jews are unwittingly empowering ideologies that threaten their safety and future. The Jewish community is fracturing between those who recognize the danger and those who rationalize or ignore it.
Silence, however, is not neutrality; It is complicity.
While many Jews remain loyal to a party that has grown increasingly hostile, conservative leaders have taken concrete steps to protect Jewish interests. The Trump administration defunded the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), confronted entrenched anti-Israel bias at the United Nations, moved the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem and cracked down on antisemitism on college campuses.
These are not symbolic gestures; they are actions. And they matter.
Yet many Jews continue to reject these allies, shaped by media-driven narratives and partisan inertia. A Harvard University study showed that media coverage of President Donald Trump was overwhelmingly negative—more than 90% at CNN, NBC and CBS, and more than 80% at The New York Times and The Washington Post. When perception is shaped by constant vilification, it becomes difficult to see the facts.
Justice lies at the core of Jewish identity, but it must be grounded in truth, not ideology. Loyalty to a party that increasingly tolerates, enables or promotes antisemitism is not a virtue. It is a vulnerability.
This moment demands moral clarity. Voting based on tradition or inherited affiliations is no longer enough. If the Jewish community is to defend its future, it must choose its allies based not on rhetoric, but on reality. It must see past the noise, break old habits and act courageously.
The stakes are too high for anything less.