Why American Jews No Longer Understand One Another
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It is a tense time in the Jewish family group chats. The consensus that held American Jewry together for generations is breaking down. That consensus roughly was this. What is good for Israel is good for the Jews. Anti-Zionism is a form of anti-Semitism. And there will someday soon be a two-state solution that reconciles Zionism and liberalism. At the very least, Israel is seeking such a solution. Every single component of that consensus has cracked. And as I've been talking to people from different walks of American Jewish life, politicians and rabbis and activists and analysts and journalists, what you realize is there is nothing coming in to replace it.
Young Jews look at Gaza and say, everything I was
taught in religious school, tells me this is wrong. People want to say, oh, I just want to extricate Zion from Judaism. You do that, you get a different form of religion.
I was sort of like hit by this. It was almost physical. Like, this is the question of this moment in Jewish history.
Zoran Mamdani's triumph in New York City's Democratic primary for mayor has forced, among many Jews, a reckoning. A reckoning with how far they've drifted from one another, how little they now understand each other. Mamdani doesn't use a slogan globalizing defada, but he does not condemn those who do, although he more recently said he would discourage it. Mamdani said that if he were mayor, Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, would face arrest on war crimes charges if he ever set foot in New York City. And then, a few weeks before the election, Mamdani went on a local morning show, Good Day New York, and said this.
Do you support Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state?
I support Israel's right to exist as a state with equal rights. Why not as a Jewish state? Because I'm not comfortable supporting any state that has a hierarchy of citizenship on the basis of religion or anything else. I think that in the way that we have in this country, equality should be enshrined in every country in the world. That's my belief.
Many older Jews I know are shocked and scared by Mamdani's victory. Israel, to them, is the world's only reliable refuge for the Jewish people. They see opposition to Israel, particularly this kind of opposition to Israel, opposition that questions its fundamental nature as a Jewish state, as a form of antisemitism. They believe that if the United States abandons Israel, then Israel will sooner or later cease to exist. To them, Mamdani is a harbinger. If he can win in New York City, then nowhere is safe. At the same time, many younger Jews I know voted for Mamdani. They're not afraid of him. What they fear is a future, many would say a present, in which Israel is an apartheid state ruling over ruins in Gaza and Bantu stance in the West Bank.
They fear what that means for anti-Jewish violence all over the world. They fear what that will do. They fear what that has already done to the meaning of Jewishness. Their commitment to the basic ideals of liberalism is stronger than their commitment to what Israel has now become. To call Mamdani an anti-Zionist is accurate, but the power of his position is that it is thoroughly, even banally, liberal. Go back to that line he said in that interview, I'm not comfortable supporting any state that has a hierarchy of citizenship on the basis of religion or anything else. There are ethno-nationalists who might object to that sentiment, but the flourishing of American Jews is built atop that foundation.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–5:04
2
Why is the long‑standing consensus among American Jews now breaking down?
5:04–12:33
3
How did Zoran Mamdani’s mayoral victory force a reckoning within the Jewish community?
12:33–18:28
4
What are the generational differences between older and younger American Jews on Israel and Gaza?
18:28–24:11