Is New York still for Jews? Since October 7 and the rise of Mamdani and the “Habibi City” movement, as New York Magazine put it in their viral issue this week, it seems like the quick answer is no.
And indeed, Jews are leaving New York. Though there are no official stats (it is still not common practice in the US to keep lists of Jews), what we do know is that the number of Florida’s new residents from New York grew by over 500,000 in the last 12 months, according to the US census.
It’s not an exodus, but it’s happening.
And can you blame people for wanting to move to greener pastures (or humid marshlands) to live among their own and significantly lower their tax payments?
An American friend of mine, whom I met in London, where we both live, texted me the following sentence from said promised swampland just last week:
“Miami is the most Jewish city and oasis with zero Jew hate… It has been an antidote to the nonstop hate we have in the UK.”
Yes, he actually texted me that.
Even if Jews aren’t moving, they are seriously thinking about it – at least the non-vehemently antizionist majority. This means that the place they helped make so great, New York, is seeming to many like it is no longer for them.
But I, a European Jew living in London, am writing to tell you that this is not true.
It is simply not what I saw when I was there recently. I saw a city brimming with loud, confident and overt Jewish life. A (large) temple on every other block with minimal security (in comparison to London’s fortress-synagogues), face after face on the street that looked like my cousins, and shops with “Happy Passover” signs in the windows. In London, shop windows I have seen display posters in the shape of Israel, coloured entirely red, with bold writing in Arabic scrawled across them.
I don’t mean to downplay the problems for Jews in New York; they are there.
Antisemitism is no longer taboo: intimidation masquerading as “protests”, the degradation of education at all levels… the list goes on.
I don’t need to tell you that these political problems are not easily solved. Even if every Jew in New York voted against the Democratic Socialists of America (and it is difficult to imagine all Jews agreeing on anything), the dial would not move much. Jews are, despite often having larger-than-life personalities, still a minority, even in Jew York.
When I hear about antisemitism taking hold in New York, I have two reactions.
First, I share the sense of betrayal with my fellow Jews over there. Even three years after October 7, I still feel that jab when I see a “Zionism = Nazism” banner on the Instagram story of a long-lost acquaintance from art school who moved to New York to pursue their dream of being free to attend Pride-themed, pro-Palestine block parties in Brooklyn.
Don’t they know they are stomping to the beat of a Troye Sivan hit – yes, Jewish Troye Sivan – on hallowed Jewish ground?
The second reaction is letting out a long, audible sigh: are there really no new ideas? Is the biggest tragedy of our times that, politically, humanity has lost the ability to innovate?
Can we please just move on from the Jews?
In Europe this is clear. We have been almost completely erased after many successful attempts to eradicate us, both literally and culturally. You will only find our impact on European civilisation if you know where to look.
But in New York it is not like that. The Jewishness is unavoidable. It’s everywhere you look.
I couldn’t take this visibility for granted when I was there. I was so moved.
I was trotting merrily down Lexington on my way to try the matzo ball soup at Pastrami Queen. I was staying near Yorkville with an old friend who currently lives there. After she had gone to the office, I had spent almost an hour deciding which Jewish deli would be on my daily lunchtime pilgrimage, overwhelmed by the sheer amount of choice.
As I crossed the street to get some coffee from a place that looked vaguely European (the only bad thing about New York is the coffee), a glint of sun blinded me momentarily. It had reflected into my eyes from a row of parked Hatzolah ambulances on the other side of the road.
They were just there, out in the open, shimmering on a glorious spring day.
The British equivalent of these had been incinerated just weeks prior, in an act of violent antisemitic intimidation.
I was overcome with a feeling of pride.
The next time I was struck by this feeling, I was at the museums.
At the Frick Collection, it felt like Europe on steroids – in a good way. Almost exact replicas, room by room, of the galleries I have visited all over my own continent, but bigger, better and shinier.
I noted the many Jewish names on the walls, of course.
I was feeling invigorated, starting to catch New York’s magnetic optimism by that point. An optimism which is also very Jewish, in its unwavering determination to believe in miracles. It is even in the very shape of the city, which literally reaches for the sky.
I was filled with a sense of awe as I headed to my next stop, the park in full cherry blossom bloom to my left.
By the time I crossed into the Beaux-Arts foyer of the Neue Galerie, my guard was completely down. Making my way up the curve of the staircase, again, I felt I was seeing a buffed reflection of my own experience.
From my mother’s side, my family hails from this lost world of Austro-Hungarian glamour recreated so accurately at the Neue Galerie. My own grandmother was a chic woman of mysterious allure who, until the end of her days, was haunted by the horrors of the Holocaust and the later Soviet invasion of Budapest.
I stopped in front of Berlin Street Scene by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner: aliens in fur-lined coats and protruding hats, swishing elegantly by on a winter eve. I read the placard. I hadn’t known it had been restituted. What a joy!
This made me think of another work by Kirchner in my hometown, in Madrid: Fränzi in Front of a Carved Chair at the Thyssen-Bornemisza. Why is the provenance of that painting, especially around the 1930s and 1940s, not on the wall? Could the answer have something to do with what happens when you type into Google search “Nazi connection” after the Thyssen-Bornemisza family name?
I made my way through the somehow familiar rooms.
Turning a corner, she was suddenly there. Adele Bloch-Bauer in Gustav Klimt’s hand. Having only seen reproductions before, I was stunned to see her Jewish beauty in the flesh. So exquisite.
Of course, she too was restituted by the force of American litigation and diplomacy. A rescued Jewish treasure, looking back at me in New York.
“Could all of this be partly mine?” I thought.
“Could a part of me belong to the greatest city in the world?”
I shed a tear.
Could this have been what Vienna felt like to Jews before the 1930s, or Alexandria before 414, or Toledo before 1492?
Following this arc of history, it is easy to believe that Jewish existence in the diaspora always ends in despair.
But in New York, most days, Jewish life outweighs the pain. I saw a queue of tourists from all over the world winding around the block for pastrami and corned beef sandwiches at Katz’s, Trader Joe’s own version of Bamba readily available on the shelves, and half of the Upper West Side gone for Passover.
The fact that the world’s most consequential city is so Jewish is a lucky historical accident – a miracle – one that I know you won’t let go without a (figurative) fight. There is too much at stake for global Jewry if we don’t remind people that we, just like everyone else, have a right to be in the middle of it all.
Working at the Jewish Chronicle, the world’s oldest Jewish newspaper still in print, I have a front-row seat to ever-increasing Jew-hatred in the UK, and the wider region. I recently interviewed the star of The Producers here in London, Andy Nyman, and in our conversation he admitted that he wasn’t sure non-Jewish audiences understood just how “Jewish the show is… I think they think it’s just ‘New York-y’.”
And although this may be somewhat sad, it is also not. Because this is how synonymous the two words are. New York is the capital of world Jewry (sorry, Tel Aviv, but your day will come).
As Jews, we are alert to political decay because it so easily turns against us. Right now, this decay is a global phenomenon. And, of course, in New York and in America, it is visible too. But the difference between America and the rest of the world is that the decay has not yet turned into rot. And, in my opinion, it is unlikely to.
New York is very far from Fidel’s Havana or, from my vantage point, Sadiq Khan’s London. It is too American, too capitalist and too free for that to happen.
In America, you still have freedom of speech, a highly competent democracy, an elastic economy, unparalleled positivity and people who care. And a constitution into which Jews are almost enshrined, admired by the Founding Fathers as the original Israelites. These are things we are leaving behind in Europe, or never really had.
In America, the state religion is freedom, and New York is the apple of the eye of everyone who values it.
So, I’m writing to you from London to say this: to my fellow Jews of the far East (Coast), we are with you. What you and your forebears built, not only for yourselves but for all of us, is far too precious to surrender.
Michelle Wolodarsky is the JC's Social Media Editor
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