Although most date the beginning of the arrival of Jews to America to 1654, with the landing of families of 23 Jews (four couples, two widows and 13 children) who had fled Dutch Brazil when the Inquisition-minded Portuguese took over, already in 1621, the Jew Elias Legarde was living in Virginia. In 1628, he was growing grapes on 100 acres on the west side of Harris Creek in Elizabeth City, today in North Carolina.
Perhaps the first Jew to wield a semblance of political power was Asser Levy. He had preceded the 23 but was Ashkenazi, originally from Vilna. He was the kosher butcher for the small Jewish community and waged a political campaign for Jewish rights in the Dutch colony. He secured the right of Jews to be admitted as Burghers and to serve guard duty for the colony when, on Nov. 5, 1655, he demanded to serve in the militia or eliminate a tax in lieu of service, an unfair financial burden on him.
Concerning the background of today’s growing anti-Zionist climate in the United States, it would be worthy to recall that the first Jewish sermon preached in America, which was published, was spoken at the Touro synagogue in Newport, R.I., on May 28, 1773. He was Raphael Hayyim Isaac Carregal. He was a shadar, collecting donations for the Jewish settlement in Hebron, and a close acquaintance of Ezra Stiles, the president of Yale University.
Since those times, Jews have been a central element in America. To name but a few, there was Haym Salomon, who helped finance the American Revolution; Judah P. Benjamin, who was elected a U.S. senator from Louisiana as a professing Jew in 1852; Oscar S. Straus, the first Jewish cabinet member in American history, serving under President Theodore Roosevelt; and Louis D. Brandeis, appointed in 1916 as the first Jewish justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.
Today, there are different prominent Jews.
This group—elected officials, appointed officials, actors, entertainers, reputed intellectuals and media personalities—tout their anti-Israel positions. Some are very much anti-Zionists. Others carry on a sorry “revolutionary struggle” on behalf of an ideological cause that has caused the deaths of thousands of Jews, in Israel and abroad, and ignited a severe wave of antisemitism.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) forced votes in the Senate in April to block nearly $446.8 million in arms sales to Israel. Journalist Peter Beinart uses his opinion pieces in The New York Times to champion the dissolution of Israel’s sovereign statehood. Shaul Maggid and Benjamin Moser champion anti-Zionism and a renewed Diasporism of neo-Bundist character. Recently elected New York Rep. Brad Lander was recently off picking olives (or at least, he was in an Arab olive grove) near Bethlehem. And all are anti-AIPAC.
But that is only one side of the change. In addition, they lend their support and seek the votes of Jews for some of the most dubious politicians of Jewish sympathy.
Moving from the Democratic Party to the Democratic Socialists of America, these Jews began to pull into positions of power a very specific type of political candidate: one who was not only anti-Zionist but Muslim as well, helping them up the ladder of success.
Zohran Mamdani earned one-third of New York’s Jewish votes, of those who voted (which wasn’t that large) in the summer of 2025, to become mayor of New York City. This victory was gained despite his “Globalize the intifada” sloganeering and other signs of a latent animosity, especially in dealing with Jewish security issues and the protection of synagogues.
What followed was a fierce effort to divide and conquer the city’s Jewish political power structure. Even now, his Jewish support is considerable, it seems, according to a new poll. His 2023 “Not on Our Dime” state assembly initiative, intended to prohibit tax-deductible donations from being used to “expel Palestinians from their land and to prevent other activities widely regarded as war crimes under the Geneva Conventions,” is still very much alive.
The election campaign of Dr. Abdul El-Sayed in defeating the Republican Mike Rogers in Michigan for the state’s U.S. Senate seat was this year’s focal point for Jewish discombobulation.
Jews supported El-Sayed, who reportedly has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, and who notoriously reacted to an anti-Jewish terror attack at a synagogue in Michigan as a matter of “Hurt people hurt people,” in that the perpetrator’s family members, Hezbollah terrorists, were killed by Israel.
Michigan’s Jewish attorney general, Dana Nessel, enjoined fellow Jewish voters to put their concerns over their own security second to broader political considerations. Andy Levin, a former congressman, endorsed El-Sayed as well, despite disagreeing with him on Jewish issues.
Jewish actor Mandy Patinkin saw in El-Sayed a candidate who is willing to fight for “Jewish safety [which] is tied to the health of our democracy. We can’t protect one without protecting the other.”
Just one day later, El-Sayed was requested by Osama Siblani—an Islamist activist in Dearborn, Mich.— to “soothe” anti-Israel voters. Siblani had called for Israeli Jews to be sent “back to Poland.” Patinkin’s parents hail from that very country.
Two days later, the Rebellion PAC released its antisemitic scapegoating video, declaring that American aid to Israel “for killing Palestinians” was causing inflation on food prices in American grocery stores—namely, on bananas. El-Sayed neither condemned the ad nor minded appearing alongside antisemitic streamer Hasan Piker.
In New York, Claire Valdez, a Not on Our Dimer and newly converted to Islam, and Darializa Avila Chevalier, who talked about a U.S. arms embargo on Israel and the Palestinian right of return, won their congressional seats as Democratic Socialists of America.
A Justice Democrat—Eastern Orthodox Christian Melat Kiros of Colorado’s 1st District—won her race. She described the 2025 firebombing in Boulder of Jews trying to bring attention to Israeli hostages still held captive in Gaza after the Hamas-led terror attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, as “a political attack” against Zionism. That incident led to the death of Karen Diamond, an 82-year-old Holocaust survivor. It was not necessarily “antisemitic,” they said, yet it still garnered Jewish support, even while calling for an arms embargo on Israel that includes funding for defensive systems such as Iron Dome.
This significant bolstering of anti-Zionist, anti-Israel, anti-Jewish politicians on the national level is not in itself the fruition of a prophecy of doom.
Nevertheless, it does point to three major weaknesses.
The first is the inability of Jews to care for themselves and their fellow Jews in using the power of the vote. The second is the extreme stances taken by a minority of Jews who do exploit the political system very well. The Philadelphia boycott campaign against Jewish and Israeli-owned businesses is a sign of things to come.
Thirdly, there apparently is no agreed-upon plan to counter this increase in what, ultimately, could become a very dangerous situation for American Jewry, taking into the equation political commentators and podcasters Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens; Holocaust denier “groyper” Nick Fuentes; and the rest of the “America First” segment on the right.
American Jewry’s political position is in a downslide. It need not be doomed.
