But for other Jews around the US who were already struggling with their place in the progressive movement, Mamdani’s stunning victory confirmed their worst fears about the direction of the American left.
It fuelled a sense that urgent concerns about the community’s safety are being dismissed in a movement and a city that Jews helped build.
“It’s not that they expect to be run out, or they expect that the NYPD won’t be there to protect them,” said Deborah Lipstadt, who was the Biden Administration’s special envoy to monitor and combat anti-Semitism.
“It’s just another hit in the jaw, that these very deep-seated concerns could have been so easily brushed off by so many people.”
The politics of Israel have shaken the Democratic Party for years, accelerated by fierce debates about the war in Gaza, the rise of the far-right Netanyahu Government and a running argument about when criticism of Israel veers into anti-Semitism, the source of much of the anxiety about Mamdani.
Nearly seven in 10 Democrats now express an unfavourable view of Israel, compared with 37% of Republicans, according to polling released by the Pew Research Centre this northern spring.
Those tensions, which US President Donald Trump has sought to exploit at every turn, have intensified within the Jewish community, too, especially along generational lines.
Younger, more progressive Jews have grown increasingly critical of Israel, and impatient with older generations, whose religious identities have long been tied up with support for the Jewish state.
Such divides were on vivid display in the primary contest.
“There’s zero possibility of the Jewish community saying, kind of very clearly, ‘We oppose this candidate’, when he has supporters from within the Jewish community,” Yehuda Kurtzer, the president of the Shalom Hartman Institute, said of Mamdani.
“Whenever you have a phenomenon like this, it’s hard to peel apart the different layers. How much of this is generational, how much is this connected to larger trends around political polarisation?”
For many New Yorkers, including Jewish ones, their votes were driven by concerns about affordability, or by a desire to stop the comeback of former Governor Andrew Cuomo, who had resigned in disgrace — and plenty either agreed with Mamdani’s views on Israel or were willing to look past them.
“The results show that most Jews, at least in New York City, at least in my district, agree he’s not anti-Semitic,” Nadler said in an interview, saying he had spoken with Mamdani yesterday.
He came away from the conversation reassured about where the Assembly member stood, and willing to help him win over Jewish voters, Nadler said.
Mamdani has said repeatedly that he abhors anti-Semitism and has said that if he were elected, he would increase funding to combat hate crimes.
He alluded to concerns from the Jewish community in his election night speech, noting the “millions of New Yorkers who have strong feelings about what happens overseas”.
“While I will not abandon my beliefs or my commitments, grounded in a demand for equality, for humanity, for all those who walk this earth, you have my word to reach further, to understand the perspectives of those with whom I disagree, and to wrestle deeply with those disagreements,” he told a crowd in Queens.
Historically, Jewish voters have been an important and, at times, decisive factor in city elections.
New Yorkers with distinctive Jewish last names represent 13% of the city’s 4.6 million active registered voters, according to Jerry Skurnik, a senior consultant for Engage Voters US, a political consultancy. Of those voters, 62% are Democrats and 16% Republicans.
Support from Hasidic Orthodox Jews, who often vote in a bloc based on rabbinic endorsements, helped Mayor Eric Adams win in 2021.
But many Jews in New York City are not observant or strongly tied to Jewish institutions like synagogues, religious schools or social organisations.
They are less likely to prioritise Israel as a top consideration in their vote, or even to reflexively support its right to exist as a Jewish state.
Many younger New Yorkers from a range of backgrounds found Mamdani to be a fresh and exciting communicator.
As the Muslim son of Indian emigres who was himself born in Uganda, where his father grew up, he represented an inspiring new, New York, version of the American dream.
Still, questions about his views on Israel and anti-Semitism loomed large in a city where hate crimes against Jewish people are on the rise.
A 2024 report from Thomas DiNapoli, the state comptroller, found that anti-Jewish hate crimes had increased by 89% in New York state from 2018 to 2023.
The primary contest unfolded at an especially uneasy time for many American Jews, who despise Trump and his invoking of anti-Semitism to attack American universities and round up activists but are also keenly aware of recent instances in which opposition to Israel’s war in Gaza has manifested in violence against Jews.
“Jewish New Yorkers rightfully believe themselves to be at risk, and it’s unthinkable that the city with the largest Jewish population outside of the state of Israel should have so many of its Jewish citizens finding themselves in a vulnerable state of affairs,” said Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove, who leads the influential Park Avenue Synagogue and gave an impassioned address about the stakes of the mayor’s race for the Jewish community.
New York City, he said in those remarks, has become, “in far too many quarters, inhospitable not only to open expressions of Zionism, but to Judaism itself. And what’s more, this reality could worsen and even receive official sanction.”
Prominent Jewish leaders and activists were especially rankled by Mamdani’s refusal to condemn the phrase “globalise the intifada”.
Palestinians and their supporters have called the phrase a rallying cry for liberation, but many Jews consider it a call to violence, a nod to deadly attacks on civilians in Israel by Palestinians in uprisings in the 1980s and 2000s.
“The Jewish community has seen time and again how violent rhetoric has transformed into actual violence, so for us it’s just deeply unsettling to have a mayoral candidate who condones and uses that language,” said Rabbi Diana Fersko, senior rabbi at the Village Temple, a Reform congregation in Manhattan, and the author of a book on anti-Semitism.
“My hope is that if Mamdani is elected, he will become more sensitive and more aware of the needs of a significant part of the population that he is going to be leading.”
Many elected Democrats, including prominent Jewish leaders like Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, oppose the policies of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Mamdani’s views go beyond disagreeing with Israel’s elected government.
He has called Israel’s actions in Gaza a “genocide” and, when pressed, has not said if Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish state, though he has said it has “a right to exist and a responsibility, also, to uphold international law”.
He supports the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement, which calls for governments, consumers and investors to cut financial ties with Israel in protest against its treatment of Palestinians. And he has dodged questions of whether he would advocate for that policy as mayor.
He issued a statement on October 8, 2023 — the day after the Hamas attacks in Israel — condemning Israel and saying that “a just and lasting peace can only begin by ending the occupation and dismantling apartheid”, with no mention of Hamas. He has since condemned the Hamas attacks as a “horrific war crime”.
On private text chains and WhatsApp groups, Jewish voters circulated mock ballots showing Cuomo ranked first to stop Mamdani’s rise.
Social media influencers with large pro-Israel followings circulated Mamdani’s past statements about Israel, saying he would threaten Jewish safety in the city.
“I feel like last night’s NYC election result is like a spiritual Kristallnacht. It proved Jew hatred is now OK,” posted Jill Kargman, a Jewish writer and actress.
After Mamdani won, dark jokes circulated on some of the same chains about moving out of the city.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Katie Glueck and Lisa Lerer
Photographs by: XXX
©2025 THE NEW YORK TIMES
