For generations, the Harmonie Club has served as a haven for New York\u2019s Jewish elites. Founded in 1852, the club has since 1905 occupied an elegant eight-story building at 4 East 60th Street, a townhouse with lovely painted ceilings and a handsome Victorian facade designed by Stanford White. The names of its most illustrious members \u2014 the Bloomingdales, the Guggenheims, Alfred Ochs, founder of the New York Times Company \u2014 are intimately connected with the history and character of New York. Whatever persecution Jewish people faced elsewhere in the world, here was a place they could thrive.<\/p>\n
Just recently, however, its members have been feeling considerably less secure. Zohran Mamdani \u2014 a socialist, a Muslim and a fierce critic of Israel \u2014 is the city\u2019s likely next mayor. His emergence is eliciting palpable concern among the club\u2019s members. \u201cWe are being erased in our own city,\u201d says Sam Abrams, club member and prominent political scientist. At the Harmonie, as in various less illustrious Jewish institutions, the talk is of rising antisemitism and anti-Zionism, and an increased feeling that the city is turning against its Jewish communities. Elliot Cosgrove, rabbi at the generally liberal Park Avenue synagogue on the Upper East Side, sees Mamdani as a lethal threat. \u201cIf there\u2019s a celebration of Israel and 10,000 people show up, will they be safe under Mamdani?\u201d<\/p>\n
New York\u2019s Jews have suffered periods of exclusion, as they have elsewhere. Indeed, that\u2019s one reason why the Harmonie was founded in the first place: Jews were largely unwelcome at the immaculately WASPish Union Club. But never before has New York had a mayor who is so apparently anti-Zionist; who has accused Israel of \u201cgenocide\u201d and \u201capartheid\u201d; who has defended the phrase \u201cGlobalise the Intifada\u201d; and who has appeared to celebrate terrorists and their supporters. All this in a city that, for most of the 20th century, hosted the largest Jewish community in world history.<\/p>\n
Not that New York has always been welcoming to Jews. The first to arrive came in 1654, fleeing the Spanish Inquisition. They were a cause of consternation for Dutch colonial administrator of the time, Peter Stuyvesant, but the refugees had enough connections in Holland to force him into allowing them to stay. The first synagogue rose in 1682. The American Revolution brought full citizenship, while through the 19th century, New York welcomed thousands of largely German-speaking Jews: it\u2019s no accident that the Harmonie was originally called Gesellschaft Harmonie. By the American Civil War, the city was home to 150,000 Jews, yet the largest influx came around 1900, when over two million Jewish migrants, including my own grandparents, arrived from Eastern Europe.<\/p>\n
Having travelled the filth and stench of steerage class, these immigrants did much to shape the 20th century city. It is frankly hard to imagine a successful, prosperous New York without Jews \u2014 just as it is hard to imagine New York culture without Philip Roth, Norman Mailer and Saul Bellow; George Gershwin and Leonard Bernstein; Barbra Streisand and Stephen Sondheim; Stan Lee and Diane Arbus; Woody Allen and Mel Brooks; the Beastie Boys and Lou Reed; Fran Leibovitz and Lena Dunham. Jews are critical players in the philanthropic structures of the city, from the Metropolitan Opera to the Philharmonic to the New York Historical Society near Central Park. They have been prominent among the big donors to the city\u2019s great universities, notably NYU and Columbia.<\/p>\n
It was New York\u2019s Jews who, for better or worse, founded Goldman Sachs and the Lehman Brothers, and the modern mafia too. \u201cIn New York,\u201d suggests Yeshiva University historian Jeffrey Gurock, \u201cyou could feel like the whole world was Jewish.\u201d Even on the streets, the Jewish heritage persists: besides selling falafel and kebabs, the ubiquitous halal vendors also hawk knishes and kosher hot dogs. The essayist Milton Klonsky was only half joking when he called the Big Apple the \u201cGhetto of Eden\u201d.<\/p>\n
But New York\u2019s Jewish character has been waning for decades. In 1950, the city was home to 40% of America\u2019s Jews. Now, it represents well less than 15%. When I was growing up in the late Fifties, New York had some two million Jewish inhabitants; today the population is slightly less than half that. Much of that population headed to the suburbs through the Sixties and Seventies, an era of marked urban decline in New York as elsewhere.<\/p>\n
The million or so Jews who remain in New York are still a largely affluent community. Yet they inhabit a city with new cultural influences, from the Caribbean, Latin America, Asia \u2014 and the Middle East. The city\u2019s Muslim population has grown to roughly 750,000, and may soon match or exceed the Jewish population. All the while, New York\u2019s institutions have also become less culturally Jewish. Saudi Arabia and Qatar have poured money into Manhattan\u2019s universities, and its campuses have become flashpoints of anti-Zionism. The current holder of the Herbert Lehman chair at Columbia University, established in memory of the financier, a dedicated Zionist who served New York as both senator and governor, is none other than Mahmood Mamdani: Zohran\u2019s virulently anti-Zionist father.<\/p>\n
Nonetheless, New York\u2019s large Muslim population is not Mamdani\u2019s most critical constituency. His remarkable rise has come by appealing to well-educated, but often moderately paid, professionals. Like everyone else, New York\u2019s Jewish middle classes find the city too expensive. Many continue to leave, particularly young families. The ones who remain are hemmed in by costs that reduce their quality of life on a daily basis. There remains a large group of young people, usually long-term renters, often single and\/or childless, mostly concentrated in progressive enclaves, who want to stay \u2014 but look to Mamdani to help curb rising housing, food and transport costs.<\/p>\n
\u201cMamdani\u2019s remarkable rise has come by appealing to well-educated, but often moderately paid, professionals.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mamdani\u2019s promise to make New York more affordable appears to cut across any concerns voters might have about his anti-Zionism \u2014 some polls have him winning a third of the Jewish vote, though more recent surveys are less enthusiastic. Whatever the exact numbers, they imply a new version of the class divide that has long separated New York\u2019s Jewish populations. \u201cThere\u2019s more than one Jewish New York,\u201d says Rabbi Cosgrove. \u201cThings look different on the Upper East Side than in parts of Brooklyn or Washington Heights.\u201d Many families are divided, he laments. It\u2019s not just progressive activists who are backing Mamdani but in many cases the children of the sorts of moneyed families who might frequent the Harmonie Club.<\/p>\n
Indeed, New York\u2019s Jews are turning on each other. The most staunch defenders of Israel accuse Mamdani\u2019s Jewish supporters of being, like the old Jewish Bolsheviks, \u201cJews in Name Only\u201d \u2014 choosing progressive bona fides over the deepest traditions of the tribe. For many of Mamdani\u2019s champions, it suffices to call pro-Israelis \u201cZionists\u201d, which many consider slur enough.<\/p>\n
The frightening prospect for New York Jews is that antisemitism will become more commonplace, as it increasingly appears to be in Europe, reinforcing the notion that, as the Jewish political consultant Hank Sheinkopf put it, \u201cevery galut (place of exile) ends up in tragedy.\u201d In Europe, demography favours a growing and far larger Muslim population, as well as their allies in established progressive parties.<\/p>\n
As Muslim power, awkwardly allied with the secular Left, grows, an increasing number of Jews feel they can no longer count on protection from what were once considered friendly states. Some American Jews have noted the vicious antisemitic murders in Manchester \u2014 are they justified as part of the \u201cglobal intifada\u201d? \u2014 and conclude they can no longer count on the British sense of fair play. In the violence<\/a> that accompanied the football match between Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv in Amsterdam last year, Dutch police were notably lax in protecting both visiting football fans and Amsterdam\u2019s Jewish residents. Even Amsterdam\u2019s progressive, anti-Israel Green mayor, Femke Halsema, was forced to admit<\/a> that the attacks resembled Nazi pogroms.<\/p>\n Rather than restrict openly antisemitic acts, then, it\u2019s Jews who are now being restricted: witness the ban on Israeli soccer fans being enforced in Birmingham. When the keffiyeh crowd is out in force, it\u2019s a \u201cno-go zone\u201d for British Jews. Many New York Jews worry this is their future too, with community leaders fearing that Mamdani\u2019s election will accelerate Jewish flight from the city: both to surrounding suburbs and further afield. Florida remains one popular option here. But as Ira Sheskin, a University of Miami demographer explains, Jews are also heading to cities as varied as Dallas, Raleigh, Austin, Atlanta and Las Vegas. All these places now have among the fast-growing Jewish communities in the nation.<\/p>\n Of course, this will be a slow process. New York is not about to lose its Jewish character overnight. Nor will the city\u2019s economy collapse, at least immediately, if Mamdani is elected. Life goes on. Surging tourism and the Wall Street boom keep Manhattan as frenetic as ever.<\/p>\n But, for all this, the city has clearly changed, its inequalities all too evident in an economy where almost all job growth is in low-wage sectors like tourism. Indeed, low wages and high rents have proved a boon to Mamdani, whose gaggle of proposed rent freezes, higher minimum wages and free childcare offer succour to the over-extended. New York also continues to attract the largest pool of the world\u2019s ultra-rich, but Gothamites typically spend over 40% of their incomes on rent \u2014 the highest proportion of any large US city.<\/p>\n Yet if that explains the popularity of Mamdani\u2019s economic positions, his radical political views may help explain why a growing number of American Jews are taking their religion more seriously. These trends favour more conservative branches of the faith, with nearly two thirds of New York Jewish children now raised Orthodox. Chabad, the most prominent Jewish traditionalist movement, and based out of a handsome neo-gothic house in Brooklyn, is ubiquitous on campuses and storefronts. Rabbi Mottie Seligson, Chabad\u2019s public relations officer, points out that while temples are closing in much of the city, his movement continues to build new synagogues right across the five boroughs. For those younger Jews who eschew Mamdani\u2019s anti-Zionism, Seligson adds that Friday night Shabbat attracts over 1,000 participants.<\/p>\n Altogether, Seligson argues that attachment to Judaism must replace the \u201creligion of the Ivy League\u201d. Young Jews, if they embrace their identity, will increasingly send their kids to Jewish schools and organise such things as local volunteer patrols: which may yet become necessary given many police officers are threatening to quit should Mamdani win.<\/p>\n As for the traditionally liberal Jewish establishment, frequenting spots like the Harmonie Club? It will take more than one term of anti-Zionist radicalism to overcome centuries of achievement. The great Jewish real estate families \u2014 the Zeckendorf, Rudin and Tishman \u2014 have their vast fortunes invested in the city. For many Jewish New Yorkers, there is nothing like Gotham, not just for making money but living a fully-rounded life.<\/p>\n In the near term, meanwhile, New York\u2019s Jews may also turn to their own considerable resources, riding out the storm until reality impinges on Mamdani\u2019s socialist dreams. \u201cWhen you feel under attack, and you feel the city will no longer protect you, you need a sanctuary,\u201d says Sam Abrams. He\u2019s presumably thinking of places like the Harmonie \u2014 outposts of Jewish life over almost two centuries of upheaval, and which will surely endure long after Mamdani leaves the scene.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For generations, the Harmonie Club has served as a haven for New York\u2019s Jewish elites. 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