Crumbs

So, Zohran Mamdani won.

The long culmination of the inevitable happened, and yet, like his resounding victory during the mayoral primary, there is still genuine shock and confusion among the Jewish community for the entire dismaying debacle…and this may just sum up the politically handicapped state of American Jews today.

It’s true that American Jews have historically trended left due to previously shared values, and it’s true that many continue to cling to the withering shell of what it once may have been, still assuming the fiction that the left is the only side fighting for “humanity”…despite an overwhelming mound of evidence screaming otherwise. If there is any dark humor to be found, it is the very opposite of “enlightened liberalism” that it took the completely unavoidable to bring people to the already-existing, longest-standing reality. And it is a far greater admission of one’s own hand in promoting regressive politics over the years than yet another pathetic politician openly showing his.

But for those not blinded by membership in any particular party, it was extremely easy to not only imagine this outcome, but literally see it coming to fruition.

This is exactly what the future of the left looks like, at least until enough of its own can start prioritizing concrete necessities over synthetic labels. Many Jews have now seen it playing out for the past two years, and those of us involved in fighting other parallel ideologies have seen it happening for much longer. The problem is simply that what is recognizably untenable for some continues to be extremely attractive to more.

For better or worse, the left generally seems to be on a suicidal trajectory, and we can and should admit that too many in our global Jewish community are complicit in supporting this harm.

There is, of course, the issue of “self-hating Jews,” as we can see from the thirty some percent of NYC’s own who willingly supported Mamdani and his anti-Jew platform to their own future detriment. This is obviously not difficult in the least to imagine there or across the country, considering we have our own local contingent (and I do not mean just JVP) who continue to happily support bad actors, from regional council members to state representatives to federal Congress members.

But the bigger problem seems to be the issue of self-harming Jews, those that cling to outdated titles and movements out of nostalgic and misplaced pride or deep desire for identity, passively and inevitably helping to enable these outcomes by enabling overlapping, detrimental ideology…either obtusely overlooking or deliberately defending that the Venn diagram of such issues is always nearing a full circle.

Past and present demonstrate that it will always come back to bite one in the ass, and if one still thinks such issues aren’t interwoven after a two year crash course, one has either chosen oblivion or hypocrisy.

However, perhaps the biggest problem is simply complacency and removal from reality…the reality that too many don’t have an accurate reading of political temperature and truly assume that such failures can’t happen…the reality that too many still consider this to be a negligible fringe nuisance of their wing and not a core infection of the mainstream.

This is not to blame Jews for depressing outcomes, as we’ll always be grossly outnumbered compared to the rest of the populace. However, I still tend to have higher standards for us (despite a few quite desperately intent on proving that those are woefully misplaced), and actions or lack of over time cannot be denied. This mayoral race did not take place in a vacuum: it is a result of years of allowing objective reality to lapse and subjective fantasy to be fed, a refusal to leave the safe comfort of partisanship for the uncomfortable necessity of critical thought…and now it has started to heavily hit home for the community. Jews as a whole must in real life start actively treating and handling threats with the respect and gravity which we easily give them in rhetoric online. Jews as a whole must do diligent homework on every candidate, protest, organization, and kumbaya hand-holding in the false name of “tikkun olam” to see what else they are actually supporting beneath the catchy slogans and pretty colors. Jews as a whole must stop prioritizing personal aspirations and suicidal saviorism over deeper needs so that we are not hurt as a whole.

Jews have historically fought for many others due to past shared values and goals, and it is a sad reality that through historically necessary assimilation, Jews also learned a bad habit of tempering our specific suffering to that of all others’, to prove our humanity against the antisemitism that insists we have none.

That is no longer a working survival method, and our reality is more than enough on its own. Our intangible fears and our tangible targeting is enough to put first. To be very frank, so many others don’t take us seriously precisely because so many of us don’t take us seriously ourselves.

Until Jews everywhere start realizing that luxury beliefs have real world implications, nothing will change. Until Jews everywhere start marching and protesting for themselves before doing so for others, things will stay the same. Until Jews everywhere start putting their own interests equal to and over others’ and show more interest in demanding that we stand up for ourselves in meaningful ways over asking when others will stand up for us…well, you know.

All our enemies, from loud and proud, to pathetically apathetic, to wolves in sheep’s clothing, won’t be changing anytime soon, so it’s all the more reason for us to do so. Give them something to take seriously. We simply cannot afford to not only accept crumbs from others, but crumbs from ourselves.