The victory of Zohran Mamdani is a watershed moment for American Jewry, says JNS editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin. For the first time in living memory, the Jewish community in the United States is dealing with a surge of antisemitism that the election of an avowed anti-Zionist will exacerbate. He is joined in this week’s episode of “Think Twice” by Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch of the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in New York City, a leading liberal critic of Mamdani.
According to Hirsch, the danger from a Mayor Mamdani for New York Jews isn’t necessarily a matter of his downgrading protection for Jewish institutions. Rather, he says, “History demonstrates to us that wherever anti-Zionism is normalized and wherever it has support, anti-Zionism has support from high-level government officials, as night follows day, hostility to Jews increases.”
Moreover, as he learned from a meeting between the mayor-elect and a group of rabbis, Mamdani is ideologically committed to the war against Israel, it’s “the core principle of his political ideology. That’s why he can’t explain away his support for the idea behind that oft-heard chant that mobs on college campuses and in the streets of New York City: “Globalize the intifada.”
Hirsch also notes that the surge of antisemitism since Oct. 7 has traumatized liberal Jewish New Yorkers, who have seen their erstwhile allies fail them. “Many of them disappointed us, and some of them actually betrayed us.”
The rabbi also noted that the disaffection from Israel on the part of many American Jews is partly due to the failure of liberal Jewish religious denominations, including his own Reform movement. He says that they “mistaught” the concept of tikkun olam by failing to make it clear that while universal values are a vital part of Jewish identity, many of the youngsters involved in social-justice projects didn’t also learn that defending Jewish rights and expressing Jewish particularism, including support for the State of Israel, is also integral to liberal Judaism.
At the core of the problem is, he said, “There’s simply a very deep and broad Jewish illiteracy in the American Jewish community” that can only be corrected by increased emphasis and support for Jewish day schools, Jewish summer camps and trips to Israel.
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