A new narrative for progressive Jewish New Yorkers

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Tuesday was a good day for New York City progressives as their candidates won primaries nearly across the board. Suddenly progressives were fighting on the front foot, with old Democratic party attitudes, especially on Israel, looking more and more like fossils. Depending on your perspective, the city’s political landscape had just shifted in a dramatically positive direction, or in a terrifyingly bleak direction. But one thing was universally understood; something seismic had just happened. 

I didn’t expect to feel so deeply about the primary results. While I live in a district that held a highly-visible and contentious primary, my enthusiasm for elections has waned during the second Trump administration as authoritarianism surges and normalcy evades us. Even if we elect more progressives and Democrats take control of both houses of Congress, I’ve frequently wondered, what then? For the next two years, Trump would just kill anything good and hopeful, right? What I didn’t realize until Tuesday’s results came in was that while I obliquely believed a better country was possible, I had severely tempered my expectations to avoid more heartbreak. 

But as I learned, a jolt of hope will kick you in the head when you least expect it.

New York City has been on a winning streak, despite the country’s macro sense of loss. On January 1st we inaugurated a young Democratic Socialist named Zohran Mamdani as Mayor who immediately got to work deftly clearing sidewalks after snowstorms and fixing potholes with the same joy and ease displayed during his campaign; On June 13th, the Knicks won the championship for the first time in 53 years, creating a moment of collective ecstasy and making the case for why living in the city rules; and on the 23rd, a slate of progressives beat out more centrist incumbents or challengers to send a message that the status quo wasn’t good enough. But one dark cloud has persisted in this town: The politics around Israel and Palestine, and how our local, state and federal leaders engage with the issue.

As it turns out, my congressional district has the highest Jewish population of any in the country. NY-10 spans lower Manhattan and a large swath of Brooklyn, going as far North as the Meatpacking District, as far South as Borough Park, with neighborhoods like the Financial District, Lower East Side, Brooklyn Heights, Park Slope and Sunset Park in between. Nearly a quarter of the people who live here are Jewish. If there was anywhere the debate over US support for Israel would reach a tipping point one way or another, it would be here. And so it did when former city comptroller and councilman Brad Lander challenged incumbent Dan Goldman in the 2026 congressional primary. Both men are Jewish; but only one has called Israel’s destruction of Gaza a genocide. And voters took note.

Lander rose to national prominence after launching a revolutionary bromance with Mamdani to co-promote their candidacies in the 2025 ranked choice primary that Mamdani eventually won. Lander then spent all summer hyping him up for the general, his good sportsmanship and team playing abilities setting the stage for his ascendance. Goldman, known for his work on the first Trump impeachment, was only in his second term and didn’t have the same deep roots in that community that longtime Park Slope resident and politician Lander did. 

It would be unfair to say this race turned solely on Israel, but with October 7th happening within his first year in office, Goldman’s nearly unconditional support for Israel became a focal point of his service—and left a gaping hole for Lander to fill as someone who calls the situation in Gaza apartheid and supports ending US aid to Israel. And in the background of the race stood a Jewish community torn apart by these issues, especially since Mamdani’s election. 

Pro-Israel New York Jews see Mamdani’s rejection of a single Jewish ethnostate and his support of an Israel with rights for all people as a repudiation of Judaism itself. That’s because for so many years the ideas of Zionism and Judaism were like two fingers of the same Kit Kat, with all but a small minority questioning this intrinsic tie. But what October 7th and the fallout thereafter has revealed is that there is very much a Judaism that exists independent of Zionism, and American supporters of Israel feel threatened by the spectre of divorce. And Lander’s trouncing of Goldman in Tuesday’s primary became an extension of this threat. It doesn’t matter that Lander has broad Jewish support; he has support from the “wrong” type of Jews, in their estimation. Jews like me.

I looked over at the social platform Threads late Tuesday night, which had been flooded with anti-Lander and anti-Mamdani sentiment in the preceding days. Mamdani had recently referred to AIPAC—the powerful conservative pro-Israel lobby—as “monsters,” as the conflation of antizionism and antisemitism was on full display. Because Threads operates on an algorithm, it’s impossible to say if my experience on there Tuesday into Wednesday was the same as others; but the mood I witnessed was equal parts funereal and angry. 

“Sad day for NYC, esp The Tribe,” one post read. “We are totally fucked.” Zionist activist Lizzy Savetsky took to the platform with a video captioned “Hey NYC— this is war. Diplomacy is dead. It’s time to play dirty.” And in her video, she addressed Lander directly. “I have a message for you Brad: The self-hating Jews were also gassed at Auschwitz."

Over the last few years when the issue of Israel has come to a head amongst American Jews, it’s left me feeling alienated and alone. Despite the valiant work of Jewish organizations like If Not Now, Jews for Racial and Economic Justice and Jewish Voice for Peace, I couldn’t conceive of a reality where progressive Jews had real electoral power. Though powerful anti-genocide voices like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib and Delia Ramirez exist in Congress, I couldn’t imagine a point where opposing Benjamin Netanyahu’s government was a candidate’s selling point. But that changed on Tuesday.

I posted to Threads myself Tuesday night, writing that I was proud of the message the Jewish voters of NY-10 had sent by choosing Lander over Goldman. I reference ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt’s recent bogus claim that 85% of Jews support Israel, and how it was disproven by the primary results. And I made clear that Lander supporters are not “self-hating Jews” or antisemitic; we display our profound love of Judaism by holding firm to the idea that we will not perpetuate violence in our name.

Unsurprisingly, my comments drew mostly ire.

“Being the last one on the train will be an exciting moment for you,” one reply read. Another said: “They’ll come for you the same as they’re coming for all of us. You’re deluded. Kapo.” I was called “a fool,” “painfully naive,” and “a useful idiot.” One reply read: “The irony is that you are no different than the German Jews who initially supported the Nazis.” 

That last one would be a stinging accusation if I hadn’t heard the same thing five years ago from a member of my own family.

At that time, though I was far behind many of my Jewish peers in understanding the scope of Israel’s injustice against Palestinians, I was going out on a bit of a limb compared to the general population by publishing a piece for Rolling Stone detailing the anguish of realizing that tacit support for the Israeli government’s violence was tantamount to active support. I shared a plea to change the narrative in order to save lives. It was met with some intense derision (see above), but also a ton of support from people who felt the same but were too afraid to say so. In 2021, those voices were whispers. Today, they roar. And the knowledge that anti-Zionist Jews are legion strengthens my resolve, and diminishes the power of voices against peace.

“To my beautiful Jewish friends in America. We love you. You are not alone,” fail-daughter Meghan McCain wrote on X Tuesday night. “We are just as freaked out as you are and see with clear eyes exactly what is happening.”

“Welcome to the United Socialist Republic of New York City,” former advertising exec and full-time yapper Donny Deutsch said in a video on Threads Wednesday. “It’s reprehensible. The candidates that won last night are socialists. There is a major thread of anti-Israel underneath these candidates, even though one of them is Jewish,” referring to Lander.

These sentiments are representative of a political reality that has become deeply unpopular. As Israel continues to prevent the US making peace with Iran by relentlessly attacking Southern Lebanon and killing more than 4,100 people, as the price tag for our country’s military and monetary support for Netanyahu’s vengeance continues to increase, and as the ties that bind the improbable alliance between far-right Jews and white nationalist evangelical Christians continue to weaken, progressive American Jews are done being told that our safety can only be ensured by a politics of fear. 

The accusations of us being self-hating Jews will no doubt persist, but it was easier to wake up this morning and not believe them.