Is success our ruin?
Zohran Mamdani’s victory in the election for Mayor was a devastating blow to the Jewish community of New York City. Yet it is in part our success through the years that sowed the seeds that made his victory possible.
The Jewish community organized for this election as never before. I have organized many successful political campaigns in the Queens Jewish community. The way that our community organized for the recent election was way beyond anything I ever did. Yet we were totally outgunned by Mamdani and his progressive supporters. For the members of the Democratic Socialists of America and likeminded groups, politics is their religion. Their social lives revolve around their political involvement. They will spend their time knocking on doors, working phone banks, and attending political fundraisers. We have better things to do with our time and money. Many of us are going to minyan, attending shiurim, and engaging in acts of chesed, while working full time and raising our families. We are spending our money on yeshiva tuition and shul membership. If we have something extra, we would rather give it to tzedakah than a political campaign. Our success in building and maintaining a Torah observant community means we will never match the messianic fervor that the progressives bring to their political campaigns.
Demographics in New York City have changed. The children of the Jewish peddlers, tradespeople, and shopkeepers have become professionals, entrepreneurs, and Talmudic scholars and have gone to live where the professionals, entrepreneurs, and Talmudic scholars live. As a result, Jews who once accounted for 20% – 30% of the vote in New York City elections are down to 10%. This obviously makes Jews less influential in local elections.
But the impact of demographic change goes far beyond the declining number of Jews. There are many neighborhoods throughout New York City that were never predominantly Jewish but had substantial Jewish populations. If you were a non-Jew in those neighborhoods, there was a good chance that the mother who sometimes drove your kids to school in the car pool, the grocery store owner who sold to you on credit, the parents who hired you to babysit, or the next door neighbor who lent you his lawn mower was Jewish. I grew up in one of those mixed neighborhoods. We interacted with our non-Jewish neighbors on a day-to-day basis. Our neighbors did not follow the news from Israel closely, but they felt the Israelis were people like the Behars and the other Jewish families on the block. They understood that Israel was important to us and they were sympathetic. Local officials who were not Jewish understood that they had to be responsive to the concerns of a significant Jewish community and avidly supported Israel and other Jewish causes.
We have retreated to our Jewish bubbles with shuls, yeshivot, and kosher stores, which feel like Jerusalem. The people in the neighborhoods we left behind are more likely to interact on a day-to-day basis with Muslims worried about their relatives in Gaza and their neighbors and elected officials are sympathetic.
For Jewish immigrants, good union jobs in civil service and the trades were a ticket to the middle class. Jews were a significant presence in the labor movement. The American labor union movement was founded by Jews like Samuel Gompers. Through most of the twentieth century, giants of the labor union movement, Jews like Alex Rose, David Dubinsky and Albert Shanker, and sympathetic non-Jews like George Meany, Lane Kirkland, and Bayard Rustin, were sincerely and deeply devoted to Jewish causes. The labor union movement was once a bastion of support for Israel. Unions supported and provided the foot soldiers for the campaigns of liberal candidates with strong pro-Israel credentials like two of my political heroes and mentors, Henry M. Jackson and Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Working class voters, taking cues from their unions, supported these pro-Israel candidates. As the parents became more successful, the children were able to attend college and move on to more lucrative positions. As their parents retired, they were replaced by immigrants with very different opinions of Israel. Unions that were once dominated by Jews have virtually no Jewish presence. The unions that once provided the foot soldiers and votes for Jackson and Moynihan, now provide the foot soldiers and votes for Zohran Mamdani and AOC.
As Jews became more successful we were able to send our children to the elite colleges that once barred us. But academia in the humanities and social sciences is now dominated by leftist ideologues promoting an ideology that is antisemitic, anti-religious, and anti-American. They claim that the United States was founded by white colonialist settlers who committed “genocide” against the indigenous Native Americans and enslaved the Africans. Americans, who were successful are the beneficiaries of “white privilege.” They are determined to topple the “white power structure.” Academics once championed the cause of Jews as victims. But as Jews attained power and influence, we became part of the “white power structure” that needs to be toppled. The State of Israel was founded by “colonialist settlers,” who stole the land from the Indigenous Palestinians. Israel’s innovations in high tech and its military prowess were the result of it being an “apartheid state,” committing “genocide” and “war crimes.” The “good Jews,” can atone for the sins of their parents by renouncing the “racist” ideology of Zionism and joining the just struggle of the “people of color” to topple the “white power structure. Our professional and financial success has enabled us to pay tens of thousands of dollars to the “elite” institutions where students are indoctrinated in this poisonous ideology.
Much has been made of the generational divide in the Jewish community, with older Jews voting overwhelmingly for Cuomo and younger Jews voting for Mamdani. This generational split has been apparent since the Democratic Primaries of 1976. Older, more religious, and working-class Jews, whose world view was shaped by the Holocaust and World War II, supported Henry Jackson for President and Pat Moynihan for the US Senate. Younger, less religious, and more affluent Jews, whose world view was shaped more by the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements, supported Mo Udall for President and Bella Abzug for the US Senate. But the younger Jews who supported Udall and Abzug were still strongly supportive of Israel, even if that support was less intensive and visceral then that of their parents. The young Mamdani supporters of today are products of an education system that has made them estranged from and even downright hostile towards Israel.
We know that woke ideology is making its way from colleges to high schools and even elementary schools. In 1976 the United Federation of Teachers supported Jackson for President and Moynihan for Senator. In 2025 the United Federation of Teachers supported Mamdani for Mayor. That is an indication of who was teaching in our public schools then and now.
Our success has helped to create the conditions that allowed Zohran Mamdani to be elected Mayor. We are obviously not about to give up the success we worked so hard to achieve. So, what can we do? If success helped to create the problem, it can also be our best revenge. We need to double down on our commitment to Judaism and the Jewish people. Devote more time to Torah, mitzvoth and gemilut chasadim. Strengthen our Jewish institutions. Invest in Israel Bonds. Buy Israeli products. Make the next Celebrate Israel Parade the most successful one ever. Support Israel. Even better, come to Israel. Send your children to learn in Israel.
I spent most of my career in politics and Jewish organizations working to build a strong Jewish community in Queens and throughout New York. On the morning after the election, I was deeply depressed.
But as I walked through the streets and saw old people walking and children playing, I was reminded of the Gemara at the end of Makkot. When Rabban Gamliel, Rabbi Elazar Ben Azaria, and Rabbi Yehoshua saw a fox emerging from the Kodesh Hakodashim on Har Habayit they cried. Rabbi Akiva laughed and comforted them with the words of Zechariah (8:4): “There shall yet be elderly men and women in the streets of Jerusalem, each with staff in their hand because of their great age. And the streets of the city shall be crowded with boys and girls playing in her streets.”
Rabbi Akiva did not live to see the prophecy of Zechariah fulfilled. We see it being fulfilled every day before our very eyes.
For Jews in New York, it’s been a great run. We have the opportunity to end it on our terms. We can vote with our feet and leave with our heads held high, taking our assets with us. The time has come to move on to the one place G-d has chosen as our eternal homeland.
