The Jewish golden age in New York is over.

The question now is how the Jews ought to deal with the fact that an open antisemite will soon rule America’s leading, if declining, city with its million-strong Jewish population.

A pro-Israel protest in New York City (photo: Raman Shaunia/Unsplash)

Please consider supporting our mission to help everyone better understand and become smarter about the Jewish world. A gift of any amount helps keep our platform free of advertising and accessible to all.

---

This is a guest essay by Benjamin Kerstein, adapted from the new book, “Self Defense: A Jewish Manifesto,” available on Amazon.

You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.

---

I do not care for delusions, and we should have none.

It is all-important, then, to acknowledge the fact that Zohran Mamdani will be the mayor of New York City for the next four years, starting January 1, 2026. There were too many votes in cheap populist demagoguery and hating the Jews to stop him.

So, the question now is how the Jews ought to deal with the fact that an open antisemite will soon rule America’s leading, if declining, city with its million-strong Jewish population.

There would seem to be four options:

1) Quiescence

Historically, Diaspora Jews’ default option has been to keep quiet, avoid trouble, and hope for the best. This strategy has been somewhat viable in the short term, but it always fails in the long term, with devastating consequences. Despite this, it has been learned over centuries and will likely be the initial reaction to Mamdani’s election.

Indeed, it has already been effectively adopted by America’s decadent and depraved Jewish leadership. These so-called “leaders” have said little if anything against Mamdani, for obvious reasons: They are prisoners of their own privilege and their useless loyalties to the Democratic Party and progressive politics.

Even in the medium term, quiescence will not work. It is all but inevitable that Mamdani and his minions will enable and incite violence against Jews of a much more extreme variety than we have yet seen, including outright pogroms. Those who commit such crimes will be protected by Mamdani and his administration, facing few if any consequences. The result, of course, will be further escalation.

In the face of this, a strategy of quiescence is not only bound to fail. It will also be a shameful submission to racist violence, oppression, and violation. This is the worst of all possible options.

Jews are targeted in hate crimes far more than any other group in New York City, accounting for 62 percent of all bias incidents reported to police last month. The incidents range from harassment to vandalism and physical assaults.

2) Flight

Flight is also a well-worn Jewish survival strategy: When things become intolerable, get out.

Jews are already leaving systemically antisemitic northern U.S. cities for less racist southern municipalities. Under a Mamdani regime, this trend could accelerate, leading to the disappearance of a significant portion of the New York Jewish community.

Mamdani and his minions would no doubt rejoice in this, regarding it as “the chickens coming home to roost.” It would also remove a possible source of powerful political opposition. It would, however, be a historical tragedy and, on Mamdani’s part, a historical crime.

The New York Jewish community is, after all, several centuries old. To New York Jews, Mamdani just got here yesterday, and in persecuting them, he is invading their centuries-old home. It is their city, not his.

Given this, Jews should not give Mamdani the satisfaction of seeing them decamp elsewhere. They ought to stay and engage in the long but promising struggle against him and his neo-antisemitic movement.

3) Organize

This struggle will require extensive organization and activism. What form this might take is not currently known. However, New York Jews have a good model in the form of the movement undertaken by British Jews to oppose the former neo-antisemitic head of the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn.

Coordinating non-violent action both in the streets and through official channels, British Jews slowly wore down Corbyn’s authority, punctured his carefully crafted image of compassion and care, exposed the crypto-racism behind his façade of anti-racism, and contributed mightily to his ultimate landslide defeat.

Such a struggle will require the extensive and coordinated organization between individuals and groups that American Jews excel at on behalf of others but rarely undertake on behalf of themselves.

This, in turn, will require a change in mentality. New York Jews will have to accept that they are no longer a comfortable and prosperous community, but an embattled minority under existential threat that can no longer afford quiescence.

It remains to be seen if this change can and will happen.

4) Resist

Finally, there is the “nuclear option.” If Mamdani’s tyranny will not yield to non-violent tactics and the neo-antisemites succeed in committing and getting away with increasingly violent atrocities, then New York Jews will have to look to their own physical self-defense.

This will involve organizing not just for opposition but active resistance. New York Jews will have to form aggressive self-defense organizations, exercise their Second Amendment rights to arm themselves for self-defense, and prepare for potentially violent confrontations with Mamdani’s street minions within the bounds of law and morality.

This will require an even greater change in mentality than non-violent organization. The change, however, will be the simple recognition of a reality widely accepted among non-Jews. It was put concisely by the writer James Burnham when he said, “In real social life, only power can control power.”

So, if they are to survive “real social life,” the Jews must have power. If Mamdani gives them no option other than the acquisition of power by active resistance, so be it. Under such circumstances, resistance will be nothing more than the logical outcome.

There is no doubt that New York’s Jewish community is about to face an ordeal of the most grievous kind. It will be a long, sometimes twilight struggle that, if they steel themselves for the task, they can and will win. But victory will require a sea change in the mentality of New York Jews and a new understanding of their place in the city’s social, cultural, and political hierarchy.

We should hope that this change takes place and yet another millennial crime is prevented. It must be prevented before the new Hamans seize not only municipal but potentially national power. This is the great task before New York’s Jews, who, whether they know it or not, are about to become the vanguard of the struggle.

---