Adam Tzach’s father was born in Israel, he still has relatives there and he was horrified by the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7, 2023, that left 1,200 people dead. That morning, he texted relatives to say he was praying for them while he also worried about friends in the Israeli military.
But the Jewish Hewlett resident thinks Israel’s response to the attack went too far, killing tens of thousands of people, including many children, and turning much of Gaza into rubble.
Tzach, 23, volunteered in Zohran Mamdani’s campaign for New York City mayor and is reflective of the nearly one-third of Jewish voters — many of them young — who supported him, according to exit polls.
“The amount of people who are being killed, especially on one side, after Oct. 7 has just been, to me, almost insane,” said Tzach, who like Mamdani belongs to the Democratic Socialists of America. “We’ve just seen too much destruction” in Gaza, he said. Tzach said he appreciates that “Mamdani is not afraid” of the issue and is willing to take a stand.
WHAT NEWSDAY FOUNDThe election of New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani has exposed a generational divide among Jewish people in New York City and on Long Island.Mamdani took about one-third of the Jewish vote in the election, most of them young progressives, according to polls and experts.Some Jewish people on Long Island support Mamdani’s criticism of Israel’s conduct during the war in Gaza, while others say he misrepresents Israel’s actions and is a threat to the Jewish community.
Zohran Mamdani crosses the Brooklyn Bridge with supporters on the Monday before Election Day. Credit: Ed Quinn
Mamdani’s election has exposed a generational divide in the Jewish community. While many younger Jewish people outraged by Gaza and other Israeli actions support him, many older Jews are unnerved by his election and what his mayoralty might mean for them. They are worried about his lack of support for Israel as a Jewish state — he says he wants a state with “equal rights” for all — and fear he will stoke antisemitism at a time when it’s already spiking.
Sy Roth, 78, of Mount Sinai, said he has numerous concerns about Mamdani, especially because his grandson lives in Manhattan. “I fear for him,” Roth said.
Mamdani is “definitely not a supporter of Israel,” Roth said. “I don’t think he’s going to be taking a great deal of interest in some criminal activity that might be directed specifically at Jewish people.”
While Roth has heard Mamdani criticize the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, he said he hasn’t heard him condemn Hamas much. “He seems to be rather one-sided,” Roth said.
Since his election, Mamdani has repeatedly tried to reassure the Jewish community, pledging to fight antisemitism as mayor.
Hours after his victory, when antisemitic graffiti was scrawled on a Brooklyn Jewish day school, Mamdani quickly condemned it.
“As Mayor, I will always stand steadfast with our Jewish neighbors to root the scourge of antisemitism out of our city,” he posted on X.
Mamdani and Israel
Mamdani, who will be New York’s first Muslim mayor, has openly criticized Israel’s offensive in Gaza, adding his voice to those who have called it a genocide. The United Nations commission reached the same conclusion in September, though Israel denies it.
In Gaza, at least 69,000 people have been killed, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry, whose figures do not distinguish between combatants and civilians. Widespread hunger from an Israeli blockade of food also afflicted many people in Gaza, according to international human rights groups and the U.N.
In addition to the 1,200 people who were killed, 250 Israelis were taken hostage two years ago during the Hamas-led attack that provoked the war, according to the Israeli government. Mamdani has called that attack a “horrific war crime.”
He has pledged to order the NYPD to arrest Netanyahu if he comes to New York, calling him a “war criminal.” The International Criminal Court has issued a warrant for Netanyahu’s arrest, though some legal experts say they question whether a mayor would have the legal right to enforce such an international warrant.
Mamdani has referred to Israel as an apartheid state. He has supported the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, which calls for an economic, cultural and academic boycott of Israel because of its treatment of Palestinians, including the Israeli occupation of areas such as the West Bank. He refused to condemn the term “globalize the intifada,” which many Jews see as a call for antisemitic violence, although in July he told a group of business leaders he would “discourage” use of the term.
In late November, Mamdani condemned protesters outside an event at a Manhattan synagogue who were chanting “globalize the intifada” and “death to the IDF,” referring to the Israeli military. But he also said the event, which promoted Jewish immigration to Israel, violated international law by encouraging illegal settlements there.
Roth said Mamdani’s positions have prompted Jews he knows to consider moving out of New York City when he takes office.
“I think there’s not going to be a mass immigration, but I think there will be a number of Jewish people who will be leaving the city for fear of their safety,” Roth said.
Tzach and Roth are emblematic of the generational divide that has emerged over Israel’s war in Gaza and, now, Mamdani’s election.
About 52% of Jewish Americans under 35 said the way Israel has carried out the war has been acceptable, while 68% of Jewish Americans aged 50 and older said it was acceptable, according to a Pew Research Center poll last year.
In the Nov. 4 election, an exit poll done for CNN and other media outlets found that 31% of Jewish voters backed Mamdani. Experts said most of them were young progressives. Among Jews ages 18 to 29, Mamdani took 44% of the vote, according to SSRS, a Pennsylvania-based firm that did the poll. He took even more — 50% — among those ages 30 to 44. He did less well among older Jews, earning 23% support among those ages 45 to 59, and 20% support among those over 60.
New York City is home to the largest Jewish population in the world outside of Israel, totaling 960,000 people, according to the UJA-Federation of New York. In Nassau, there are 220,000 Jews and 85,000 in Suffolk.
There has been a well-documented rise in antisemitic incidents in recent years. A record 976 occurred in New York City in 2024, according to the Anti-Defamation League. The trend has continued in 2025, including assaults, verbal harassment, anti-Jewish graffiti, and school bomb threats, the ADL said.
Long Island Jewish community’s response
Jewish leaders on Long Island said they have not encountered much support for Mamdani. Several rabbis interviewed by Newsday said their synagogues were strongly pro-Israel and that pro-Mamdani supporters were a tiny faction or nonexistent.
Some rabbis contacted by Newsday said they did not want to comment on Mamdani because the topic was too sensitive.
Tzach said he is a lone voice in his own family and to a degree, in the Jewish community at large in the Five Towns area.
“I think kids in the city, younger people in the city, are more supportive of Mamdani and his policies and his views as compared to Long Island,” Tzach said. He added: “I don’t think anybody in my family is on the same page as me.”
He has a close relationship with his father, even though the two have opposite views on Mamdani, he said. The night of Mamdani’s victory, Tzach’s father was beside himself with worry.
Some Jewish leaders said a portion of their congregations, while fiercely loyal to Israel and its existence as a state, also fault the government of Israel’s conduct of the war.
Rabbi Susie Moskowitz of Temple Beth Torah in Melville said she gently tried to broach the sensitive topic during her Yom Kippur sermon in October, amid a minefield of emotions among congregants.
Rabbi Susie Moskowitz inside Temple Beth Torah in 2018. Credit: /Howard Simmons
“I think it is very prevalent today to have these different relationships,” she said in an interview. “I think Israel as a Jewish state is essential for Jewish survival. But I also think Israel needs to be a moral beacon in the world.”
“I feel it is our obligation as supportive Jews to call out Israel when we think Israel’s not doing the right thing. And we can still love Israel and be strong Zionists. That’s part of Zionism,” she said.
Zionism is the national movement and ideology that led to the creation of a Jewish state and homeland in Israel in 1948, based on Judaism’s historical claim to that land. Many Jews see the state of Israel as a safe haven that is essential to their survival after 6 million Jewish people were killed during the Holocaust. Palestinians claim some of the same land, also citing historical links. They, too, want a safe haven. The opposing views have fueled the Middle East conflict.
Roth said Jewish people across the world remain traumatized by the Oct. 7, 2023, attack — the largest single-day massacre of Jews since the Holocaust — and Israel was forced to take strong action.
“Hamas is an organization that would not give Israel an inch,” he said. Israel has “to do anything they can to survive.”
Moskowitz said she doesn’t think the divisions in the Jewish community always break down along generational lines. Some older congregants also had criticisms of the war in Gaza, she said, adding that in Israel itself, some people feel the same way.
Mamdani, she added, as “mayor of New York has a lot of power, and I think he can do a lot of good. But I also think his anti-Zionist … feelings could be very dangerous. We have to work with him to help him understand that that’s not the way to govern New York City.”
The Anti-Defamation League this month launched a “Mamdani Monitor” to track his executive appointments and policies for potential harm to the Jewish community. It cited Mamdani’s “long, disturbing record on issues of deep concern to the Jewish community.” The group also set up a citywide tip line for people to report antisemitic incidents.
Islamic and progressive Jewish groups condemned the ADL’s move, with the Council on American-Islamic Relations calling it “an act of hypocrisy and anti-Muslim bigotry, pure and simple.” J Street, a progressive Jewish organization, said: “The fear-mongering we have seen from some Jewish institutions and leaders surrounding Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani is harmful, overblown, and risks needlessly deepening divisions in the city and in our community.”
Tzach, who works in New York City, said Mamdani’s position on Gaza was not the only or even main reason he knocked on doors in Queens, asking people to vote for him. He said he liked Mamdani’s platform of freezing rents, providing free public buses and opening government-run grocery stores.
He’s “super excited” about the new mayor taking office Jan. 1, and thinks his administration will be fine for Jewish residents. “I think he’s going to be like any other mayor,” Tzach said. “I’m Jewish. I walk around the city. Nobody has a problem.”
Roth disagreed. Antisemitism is “only going to get worse” under Mamdani, he said. “I think he will exacerbate it.”
Bart Jones has covered religion, immigration and major breaking news at Newsday since 2000. A former foreign correspondent for The Associated Press in Venezuela, he is the author of “HUGO! The Hugo Chavez Story from Mud Hut to Perpetual Revolution.”