That’s the reason that I gotta get out of here; I’m so alone. Don’t you know that I gotta get out of here, ’Cause New York’s not my home. – Jim Croce, ‘New York’s Not My Home’
I love New York. Though I moved to Chicago as a baby, I was born there, a third-generation New Yorker.
So every time I fill out a variety of forms, I’m reminded of my original hometown. And hometowns are special; they connect you to a dot on the planet, and they instill a special pride in you.
And New York is certainly special.
My dad, a huge sports fan, had an 11th Commandment: “Once a Yankee, always a Yankee” (of course, his passion for the pinstripes was intensified by the memory of once sitting as a 15-year-old in the Yankee dugout in 1927, between Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth, two of Yankee history’s greatest giants – not to be confused with the New York Giants baseball team, which fled the city in 1957 to the other coast, to become the San Francisco Giants; but I digress).
New York has everything: Times Square, Broadway, the Empire State Building, Central Park, Wall Street (the second most crooked street in the world, as the joke goes), the MOMA and fabulous museums of every type, the Statue of Liberty, and Ellis Island.
New York’s uniqueness flows from its ethnic diversity; no less than 40% of its 8.5 million residents are foreign-born, with over 200 languages spoken citywide. This metropolitan mosaic is a rainbow of different music, menus, crafts, and cultures.
Which brings us to the Jewish element, a particular source of pride for all of us. Our huddled masses came in droves to the Big Apple, beginning in 1654, seeking new opportunities and freedom of religion in our own protected space.
We grew steadily until we were 30% of New York’s population in 1920. We ranged from secular to hassidic, trained and untrained, planted anew in a rich soil that would allow our entrepreneurial energies to blossom as never before. New York became the world’s largest Jewish community outside of Israel, comprising a full quarter of American Jewry.
Our fortunes flowered in what we believed had become “the New Jerusalem,” but the bloom, perhaps, has come off the rose.
Last year, my wife Susie and I had the pleasure of participating in the annual Israel Day Parade. Our son and his children ride annually with the Chai Bikers, pro-Israel motorcyclists who proudly fly the blue and white. It’s absolutely amazing to see tens of thousands of people – Jewish and non-Jewish – lining Fifth Avenue and robustly cheering the State of Israel.
After all the boycotts, encampments, and anti-Israel (read: antisemitic) protests thrown at us, it’s a pleasure to see the Jewish State applauded.
Mamdani boycotts Israel Day parade
But this year’s parade has been rained upon by Mayor Zohran Mamdani, the first New York mayor in 61 years to boycott the event. This is just one more open-handed slap in the face of his Jewish constituents, to go along with his scrapping the agency that prohibited city offices from boycotting Israel, and his refusal to adopt the IHRA definition of antisemitism, which equated anti-Zionism with antisemitism.
While Mamdani chose to march in the annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade, the Lunar New Year Parade, and the all-important “Woke Women’s Wacka-Doodle Weaver’s Parade,” he unabashedly refused to participate in a march themed, “Proud Americans, Proud Zionists.”
Though this is clearly just another way of Mamdani telling New York, “We don’t want you Israel-loving Jews in our city,” that’s not what really worries me. I’m much more concerned about the ugly Jew vs Jew phenomenon that this controversy has revealed.
Shockingly, one out of every three Jews in New York voted for Mamdani, and numerous Jews have joined his team, despite his continuous defamation of Israel and the meteoric rise of anti-Jewish hate crimes in the city.
This reflects the frightful – and growing – number of American Jews who have joined the mobs that openly seek to eradicate Israel by “Globalizing the Intifada,” making sure Israeli-supporting Jews do not feel safe anywhere on the planet.
While the majority of Jews still continue to support Israel – as evidenced by the parade’s huge turnout – there is an ever-growing number of Jews who have chosen to side with the Israel-haters.
And I’m not talking just about the fringe looneys – the Neturei Karta pseudo-Jews wearing hassidic costumes; the self-hating Bernie (“Boynie”) Sanders-types looking to shed their Brooklynese for a chic New England accent; or Jewishly illiterate Jews who don’t know an Alef from a Bet and couldn’t find Palestine on a map to save their lives (or souls).
No, I’m talking about rank-and-file Jews – even some Israelis – who have a solid Jewish education and who should know better. The leaders of Jewish Voice for Peace, American Council for Judaism, Not In Our Name, etc., have been highlighted by numerous groups that believe letting Jews “wave their anti-Zionist banner” gives them instant credibility.
On every campus, Jewish students are the ones screaming the loudest against Israel, and harassing their fellow Jews who dare to buck the trend and defend our right to a safe and secure Jewish state.
This, then, is the scenario that most infuriates – and endangers – both Judaism and Israel: the inability to “close ranks” in the light of worldwide attempts to eradicate us. The avid, energetic frenzy of fellow Jews eager to jump on the bandwagon of Israel-hate is what should really scare us.
For while we shall always defend ourselves against threats from the outside – we’ve done it for millennia – it is the attacks from inside our own body politic that are truly dangerous. This trend must be stopped if we are to win the battle.
The Jews and the Chinese are the two civilizations that have existed the longest in history, approximately 4,000 years. Many people are mystified as to why the Chinese population has grown exponentially, now numbering well over a billion, while the Jewish population is just a tiny fraction of that number.
Two reasons, of course, are the various attempts to eradicate us over the centuries, and the assimilation that results from living in non-Jewish environments. But certainly another factor is that rather than growing together, as a global community bound by spiritual, moral, ethical, and ideological commonality, we grew apart, and so inevitably cast our lot with others.
I don’t know the antidote for the Jew vs Jew epidemic that continues to stunt our growth in the Diaspora, and the pervasive disunity eating away at us right here at home. All I know is that this is the existential challenge we face, and the crisis we must all work to ultimately overcome.
The writer is the director of the Jewish Outreach Center of Ra’anana.
rabbistewart@gmail.com