In New York City—the beating heart of the American Jewish experience—the unthinkable has happened. A metropolis that once stood as a beacon of Jewish resilience and political sophistication has now delivered its crown to a man whose public record is defined by open hostility toward Israel and the Jewish people. Zohran Mamdani’s rise to power as mayor is not simply a political event—it is a moral indictment. It represents not only the failure of liberal politics but, more profoundly, the catastrophic dereliction of duty by the very Jewish institutions created to prevent such a moment.

This is not merely the worst of times; it is a reckoning. For decades, the Jewish establishment in New York—once vigilant defenders of Jewish security and Zionist conviction—has allowed itself to be co-opted by the same ideological forces that now dominate City Hall. The organizations that once spoke with courage and clarity against antisemitism have become bureaucratic echo chambers, obsessed with fashionable progressive causes and paralyzed by their own moral confusion.

The great tragedy is that none of this was unforeseeable. Mamdani’s contempt for Israel was never hidden; his statements supporting Hamas-aligned rhetoric and his repeated refusal to condemn calls to “globalize the intifada” were well-documented. Yet, as his movement gained traction, New York’s major Jewish organizations—the Agudath Israel of America, the UJA-Federation of New York, the American Jewish Committee, the Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA), the American Jewish Congress, AIPAC, Hillel International, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), the Union for Reform Judaism (URJ), the Orthodox Union (OU) and the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism—stood in silence, issuing platitudes instead of taking principled stands.

These institutions, flush with endowments and prestige, were designed to confront precisely this sort of menace. Their leaders were entrusted with the moral guardianship of a city that holds the largest Jewish population outside of Israel. Yet, faced with the ascendancy of a man who has repeatedly endorsed the very ideology that threatens Jewish life and the State of Israel, they blinked. They equivocated. They failed.

Where was the UJA-Federation, that vast philanthropic empire that claims to represent the interests of 1.5 million New York Jews? Where were the spokesmen of the American Jewish Committee or the JFNA, with their Washington offices and their polished mission statements about “fighting hate”? Where was AIPAC, once the most formidable defender of Israel’s legitimacy in the public square?

Their silence was not neutrality—it was complicity. While Mamdani’s anti-Israel allies mobilized digital armies, held rallies, and flooded social media with venomous propaganda, these Jewish institutions were busy curating interfaith luncheons, writing checks to diversity initiatives, and debating gender-neutral Hebrew in their seminar halls.

In truth, these organizations long ago traded vigilance for access. They became addicted to proximity to political power, even when that power turned hostile. They chose invitations to city receptions over confrontation with injustice. They conflated diplomacy with cowardice.

And nowhere has this betrayal been more profound than in the failure of the Anti-Defamation League. Once revered as the vigilant sentinel against antisemitism, the ADL under Jonathan Greenblatt has become the very caricature of institutional rot. Instead of confronting the virulent anti-Zionism spreading through universities, city councils, and activist groups, the ADL has spent years waging partisan crusades against conservative figures—most notably President Donald Trump—while downplaying or outright ignoring antisemitism emanating from the left.

Fox News Digital and other independent outlets have long highlighted the hypocrisy: the ADL, obsessed with political optics, publishes reports implying that antisemitism is a uniquely right-wing phenomenon, even as progressive mobs chant “from the river to the sea” on American campuses and Jewish students are hounded out of classrooms.

Greenblatt’s tenure, handpicked by Barack Obama, was never about defending Jews—it was about remaking Jewish consciousness into a mirror of the left’s ideological agenda. Diversity. Inclusion. Intersectionality. These became the new Torah of the establishment, and under their banner, Jewish strength was redefined as submission.

After October 7, 2023—the day Hamas perpetrated the most barbaric massacre of Jews since the Holocaust—Israelis spoke of the Konseptsiya, the fatally naïve worldview that blinded their leaders to danger. Today, American Jewry has its own Konseptsiya: the belief that progressive alliances would protect them, that inclusion in the “coalition of the oppressed” would immunize them from antisemitic hatred.

It is this illusion that gave rise to Mamdani’s triumph. For years, progressive Jewish leaders refused to acknowledge that their own ideological allies were sowing the seeds of antisemitism. They rationalized the boycotts, the campus disruptions, the chants for Israel’s destruction. They told themselves it was all about “criticism of policy.” And now, the same movement they indulged has seized the helm of their own city.

The irony is almost too bitter to bear: while these organizations issued statement after statement condemning Trump’s immigration policies or celebrating “equity initiatives,” they ignored the growing radicalization of local politics. They were too timid to expose the Democratic Socialists of America’s infiltration of city institutions. They failed to educate their communities about the Red-Green Alliance—the unholy convergence of Marxist revolutionaries and Islamist ideologues united by their hatred of Israel, capitalism, and the West.

The Jewish establishment did not simply misread the political moment. It betrayed the very covenant of Jewish survival—to see danger clearly and act decisively in the face of it.

To their everlasting shame, these organizations will undoubtedly continue issuing press releases about “dialogue” and “bridge-building,” as if polite conversation could neutralize a movement that chants for Jewish blood. They will organize panels, form committees, and commission studies while the city’s Jewish students are threatened on campuses and its synagogues face daily vandalism.

This is not moral leadership; it is managerial paralysis. It is the cowardice of comfort, the decadence of a generation that inherited security and mistook it for permanence.

The same federations and committees that once marshaled millions to rescue Soviet Jewry or airlift Ethiopian Jews to Israel now can scarcely summon the courage to name their enemy. They live in the shadow of their former greatness, mistaking bureaucracy for activism and branding for purpose.

The ADL, in particular, deserves pointed condemnation. Rather than exposing the metastasizing antisemitism festering in academia, media, and politics, it chose to attack the one administration that moved the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, recognized Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights, and brokered historic peace accords between Israel and Arab nations.

While Hamas operatives plotted and campus radicals lionized their atrocities, the ADL wasted its energies “fact-checking” conservative politicians and policing social media posts. It failed not just in its mission, but in its very reason for existence.

In effect, the ADL and its peers have become the mirror image of what they were founded to fight. They are no longer watchdogs against hate; they are collaborators in its normalization.

Yet amid this institutional collapse, a new Jewish spirit has begun to stir. Across New York, ordinary Jews—untethered from the establishment’s moral fog—are rediscovering what it means to stand upright, proud, and unafraid.

Thousands have begun to organize independently, forging new networks of advocacy and solidarity. More than 850 rabbis publicly condemned Mamdani’s campaign. Young professionals have created grassroots initiatives to combat antisemitic propaganda online and defend Israel’s legitimacy in hostile academic spaces.

This rebirth of Jewish activism is a sign that all is not lost. Indeed, it may be the only silver lining in this dark chapter. The complacency of the old guard has forced a new generation to awaken, to reclaim the language of Jewish dignity that their leaders abandoned.

But if this awakening is to endure, it must be accompanied by a ruthless accountability. The major Jewish institutions that failed must not be allowed to continue unchallenged. Their donors must demand reform or withdraw their support. Their boards must be replaced by those who understand that survival, not social acceptance, is the true measure of Jewish ethics.

New York’s Jews are facing a new reality—a city governed by an avowed socialist who regards Zionism as colonialism and Israel as a moral stain. But the greater threat lies not in City Hall, but in the complacent hearts of those who should have stopped it.

To the UJA-Federation, the AJC, the JFNA, AIPAC, the ADL, and all their counterparts: history will remember your silence. It will remember that while antisemitism surged and anti-Israel radicals seized power, you chose appeasement over courage.

The time for illusions is over. A new Jewish leadership must rise—one that speaks without fear, acts without apology, and refuses to let another Mamdani emerge unchallenged.

The lesson of this moment is as old as our people: when Jews forget who they are, others will remind them.

This time, let that reminder ignite—not our shame—but our renewal.