After New York City’s Election, Jews Must Rise Again

Thirty years ago this week, I was studying for the year in Jerusalem when the news broke: Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin had been assassinated—by a Jew. It was one of those moments you never forget. The streets fell silent. An eerie stillness settled over the country. By the next morning— the entire nation was at a standstill. And then — something remarkable happened. Millions streamed to the Knesset to pass before Rabin’s casket. Crowds gathered in the streets — lighting candles, singing softly, crying, praying, comforting one another. A broken people — finding one another again. I remember feeling that I was witnessing both the lowest point and the highest point, the descent into tragedy, and the ascent of unity.

I thought of that moment again this week, as New York—the city I love—elected a man who calls Israel’s self-defense “genocide,” embraces those who chant “From the river to the sea,” and has long championed boycotts of the Jewish state. The descent we feel now is not only political. It is moral, spiritual, and deeply personal.

For Jews, the rhythm of fall and rise is as old as our story itself. Abraham descends to Egypt and emerges strengthened in faith. Joseph is thrown into a pit and rises to save a nation. Enslaved Israelites become a free people at Sinai. The destruction of the Temple births a portable Judaism that outlasts empires. Even the ashes of the Holocaust gave rise to the rebirth of Jewish sovereignty and learning.

The Lubavitcher Rebbe called this pattern yeridah l’tzorech aliyah—descent for the sake of ascent. What looks like failure from the outside can be formation from within. Every exile, every darkness, becomes the soil from which Jewish renewal grows.

That belief has sustained us through millennia of persecution and isolation. But the test before us now is of a different kind. It is not famine or exile. It is the corrosion of moral clarity—the normalization of anti-Zionism, the claim that one can hate Israel yet love Jews.

That distinction collapses under scrutiny. Anti-Zionism is not separate from antisemitism; it is one of its modern expressions. As Yossi Klein Halevi wrote in his 2024 essay, “Is Anti-Zionism Antisemitism? It Doesn’t Matter,” the debate itself misses the point. What matters, he argues, is that to call for the dismantling of the Jewish state is to call for the endangerment of seven million Jews. After October 7, no one can seriously argue that Jews can survive in the Middle East without sovereignty, without an army, without the means to defend themselves.

Zionism was never a post-Holocaust reflex; it was a 19th-century realization that Jewish survival required self-determination. The destruction of European Jewry only confirmed that truth with unbearable clarity. The return to Zion was not a political experiment—it was a moral resurrection. To turn that story of faith and courage into a crime is to deny the legitimacy of modern Jewish life itself.

That is why this election feels so heavy. It’s not only about policy—it’s about belonging. When I see intelligent, decent neighbors willing to look past such rhetoric, to overlook alliances with those who call for our destruction, I feel a different kind of insecurity. Not fear for my physical safety—I walk through the world proudly and visibly Jewish, and will continue to do so—but a deeper doubt: about my place as an American, my sense of belonging, and whether this city that celebrates diversity still has room for unapologetic Jewishness. That uncertainty—of place, of identity, of acceptance—is the deeper descent.

Yet Jewish history insists that no descent is final. The famine led to faith. The exile led to freedom. Even Rabin’s assassination, for a brief moment, led to extraordinary unity. Ours is a people that rises not in spite of the fall but through it.

Perhaps this descent will awaken a new ascent—a renewed Jewish engagement like we saw after October 7, when synagogues filled and Israelis and Diaspora Jews rediscovered one another. Perhaps it will remind us that we cannot rely on others to defend our story; we must tell it ourselves. Perhaps it will strip away the illusion that acceptance equals safety and teach us again that pride, solidarity, and faith are our truest protections.

Maaseh avot siman l’banim—the actions of our ancestors are signposts for us. From Abraham and Joseph to generations who turned despair into destiny, the task is always the same: transform yeridah into aliyah.

The election is over. The work is not. Now is the time to stand taller—to fight for truth, to teach our story, to live our Judaism with confidence and courage.

That is how we go forth. That is how we rise. That is how every generation of Jews has turned yeridah into aliyah—by knowing that the story of our people is never over, and that the next chapter is always ours to write.