When I landed in New York last week, I encountered a Jewish community unlike the one I had come to know on previous visits.
The most recent election left a majority of American Jews outside Donald Trump’s political camp. Many do not see the current president as reflecting their values or worldview. At the same time, Zohran Mamdani’s election as New York City’s next mayor has sparked a new sense of unease among large segments of the Jewish community.
For many New York Jews, Mamdani’s victory was not merely a personal political achievement. It represented the growing influence of a more militant and openly hostile strain of anti-Israel politics, one that often moves beyond legitimate criticism of Israeli government policy and instead treats support for Israel itself as grounds for condemnation. Mamdani’s sharp rhetoric toward Israel and its supporters is no longer confined to the political fringes. It is attracting votes, building coalitions, and winning elections. His refusal to participate in New York’s traditional Israel Day Parade, coupled with the success of candidates he endorsed in recent Democratic primaries, suggests that this is not the rise of one politician but the emergence of a broader political movement.
Ironically, the anxiety surrounding this trend has produced a rare sense of consensus.
During my visit, I met with members of families whose names adorn educational, cultural, and medical institutions in Israel and around the world. These are individuals who achieved the American dream and helped build the enduring bond between American Jewry and the State of Israel. I expected confidence. Instead, I encountered concern not economic concern, but something deeper. A profound uncertainty about their future as Jews in America.
American jews are feeling less safe in their communities
That concern is not limited to philanthropists or community leaders. On Shabbat, I prayed in two different synagogues. Outside each stood a police vehicle. Security officers, metal detectors, and screening procedures greeted worshippers at the entrance. Jews arriving to pray passed through a process more reminiscent of airport security than religious observance.
For a community raised on the promise of “the land of the free,” this is a deeply unsettling reality. Increasingly, American Jews feel that the freedoms they once took for granted can no longer be assumed.
And New York is hardly an isolated case.
In my regular conversations with Jewish communities around the world, I hear a common refrain. From North America to Europe and beyond, Jewish communities are grappling with rising antisemitism, hostility toward Israel, and growing insecurity.
In Montreal, a recent shooting in the heart of a neighborhood, resulting in the deaths of a police officer and a Jewish resident, further eroded feelings of safety. Even if investigators have not concluded that the Jewish community was the intended target, the fact that such violence occurred near synagogues and communal institutions reinforces a troubling perception: that no space feels unquestionably safe anymore.
In Britain, Jews face physical assaults, verbal abuse, threats, and harassment both online and in public spaces. In France, many report feeling compelled to conceal their Jewish identity and exercise caution in everyday life. In South Africa, anti-Israel activism increasingly spills over into Jewish communal life, placing schools, institutions, and families under social and political pressure.
Jewish communities across the world are experiencing old forms of hatred
Across continents, Jews are once again being asked to justify who they are, defend their connection to Israel, and think twice before displaying visible signs of their Jewish identity. The line separating criticism of Israeli policies from hostility toward Israel and, increasingly, hostility toward Jews themselves has become dangerously blurred.
During one conversation, a longtime American Jewish leader described the relationship between Israel and the Diaspora through a powerful family metaphor.
At first, he said, Israel was a newborn child. Diaspora Jews nurtured it. They donated, advocated, mobilized resources, and believed in a state that was still finding its footing. Later, Israel became an adolescent, independent, sometimes rebellious, not always receptive to advice. Yet victories such as the Six-Day War and the Entebbe rescue filled Diaspora Jews with pride.
Eventually, the relationship matured into one between adults. Israel and the Diaspora learned to support one another as partners.
But over time, a degree of distance emerged. Israel’s priorities did not always align with those of Jewish communities abroad. Geographic separation sometimes became emotional separation as well.
Then came October 7.
Many Jews who had drifted away from Jewish life suddenly discovered that the world still saw them as Jews. The wave of antisemitism on university campuses, in city streets, and across social media served as a painful reminder of an old reality that many had believed belonged to history.
From that moment, something changed.
A renewed sense of Jewish belonging began to emerge not only for the Jewish people but also for the State of Israel. Since then, the bond between Israel and Diaspora communities has grown stronger. Today, many Jews in the United States and elsewhere are seeking more than emotional solidarity with Israel. They want to know that they have a home.
The founders of Israel anticipated precisely this responsibility. In the Declaration of Independence, they pledged that the State of Israel would remain open to Jewish immigration and committed to cooperation with Jewish communities throughout the world.
The Declaration was never intended to be merely a historical document. It was a mission statement.
If Jews around the world increasingly feel vulnerable, isolated, or threatened, Israel must prepare accordingly. That preparation should extend beyond immigration policy. It requires a comprehensive national strategy to strengthen ties with Jewish communities worldwide, deepen mutual responsibility, and ensure that Israel remains accessible not only in principle, but in practice as a home for every Jew who seeks one.
The question is not whether Diaspora Jews need Israel.
The question is whether Israel fully understands how much they need it.
And equally important: whether Israel is prepared to fulfill the calling envisioned by its founders not only to serve as the state of its citizens, but to remain the enduring home of the Jewish people wherever they may live.