Rabbi Steven Burg, CEO of Aish, spent Election Day in New York City discussing the U.S. midterms as a panelist on an Indian news channel.
“I was up late just watching it all come in, monitoring X to see the commentaries that were going on, trying to figure it out in relation to Israel,” the Orthodox rabbi told JNS, “and then getting on and discussing the ramifications of these American elections to the world.”
For Burg, who divides his time between Israel and New Jersey, the midterm election results also raise concerns about American Jewish safety.
American Jews have faced “hateful mobs, intimidation and violence,” he told JNS.
The Anti-Defamation League documented more than 20,000 incidents across the United States from Oct. 7, 2023, until December 2025.
U.S. Jewish communities spend more than $1 billion annually on security, a 33% increase since 2024, according to a recent Jewish Federations of North American study. Jewish leaders have called the need to spend those monies a “Jewish tax.”
Burg worries that the U.S. election results will embolden those who wish to attack Jews.
“What makes tonight different is that some of the political movements associated with that hostility are now gaining greater institutional power,” he told JNS on Tuesday night. “That is a very serious development and one that I believe will make the coming years particularly challenging for the American Jewish community.”
Burg pointed to the election in New York of Brad Lander, Claire Valdez and Darializa Avila Chevalier, who were “all backed by Zohran Mamdani,” the anti-Israel mayor of New York City.
“Just one day before the election, Jewish school buses in New York were defaced with swastikas. Jewish children who have absolutely nothing to do with the politics of Israel or America are being targeted with Nazi symbols,” Burg told JNS. “This is the environment in which our children are growing up, and inflammatory political rhetoric has real consequences.”
“We are witnessing the growing political influence of a movement in which hostility toward Israel has become a rallying cry,” he said. “This should concern every American who cares about the future of the Jewish community.”
Burg told JNS that as a rabbi, he looks at the current situation for U.S. Jews “through the lens of 2,000 years of Jewish history.”
“We have seen what happens when hatred of Jews moves from the fringes of society into organized political power,” he said. “History teaches us that gaining power does not necessarily moderate that hatred. Sometimes it emboldens it.”
Burg was particularly concerned with the election of Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, senator-elect in Michigan and, according to the Republican Jewish Coalition, the most anti-Israel Senate hopeful in the country.
“Not only was he consistently and constantly attacking us, but anytime anyone said anything, frankly, the Democratic Party would call us ‘Islamophobic,’” he told JNS. “One would only have hoped that they would find conscience and call out antisemitism.”
“Obviously every religion needs to be respected. That’s the principle of American freedom of religion,” he said. “But what senator El-Sayed has done is taken it to the next level in terms of his hate for the Jewish people and certainly for Israel.”
“I think we’re going to get that on a consistent basis in the Senate,” Burg told JNS.
He worries that the people on “the fringe” will be brought to the middle and that “hate rhetoric from folks that are not elected but are closely aligned to the political movement is going to be really damning for the Jewish people.”
Burg hopes that voters will realize that “these leaders who are scapegoating the Jews on such a consistent basis are not going to provide for the American people.”
“But there will be a lot of pain to Jews along the way,” he said. “The Jews of America need to put on a seatbelt. We’re going to see even more hate. We’re going to see more and more in the coming days.”
Despite his fears for Jewish safety, Burg is confident that “the Jewish people are not going anywhere.”
“We have survived 2,000 years of persecution, and we will survive this as well,” he told JNS. “Yet we would be foolish not to recognize what is happening.”
