{"id":36809,"date":"2025-11-12T05:41:25","date_gmt":"2025-11-12T05:41:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/36809\/"},"modified":"2025-11-12T05:41:25","modified_gmt":"2025-11-12T05:41:25","slug":"the-faithless-progressive-rabbis-of-new-york","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/36809\/","title":{"rendered":"The faithless progressive rabbis of New York"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Focus delivers deeper coverage of the political, cultural, and ideological issues shaping America. Published daily by senior writers and experts, these in-depth pieces go beyond the headlines to give readers the full picture. You can find our full list of In Focus pieces\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

When Zohran Mamdani\u2019s<\/a> campaign ad hit social media<\/a> in the final stretch of his race for New York<\/a> mayor, it seemed at first like a parody. Four women beam into the camera, one after another, greeting each other with an identical line: \u201cHi, Rabbi!\u201d None of them are rabbis in the traditional sense. No one wears religious garb. What they share is a politics, a certain brand of progressive Jewish<\/a> identity that confuses moral certainty with moral authority.<\/p>\n

And one of the \u201cwomen\u201d isn\u2019t even a woman at all. The group includes Abby Stein, a transgender activist and outspoken anti-Israel campaigner who was once\u00a0ejected\u00a0from the Biden White House after interrupting an event. Stein, like former progressive education activist Naftuli Moster, grew up in the Hasidic world of Borough Park. But where Moster\u2019s journey led him toward a renewed respect for tradition and the excesses of the Left, Stein\u2019s led toward the progressive faith that now dominates New York\u2019s Jewish political establishment.<\/p>\n

The ad was meant to be charming: a showcase of \u201cJewish faith leaders\u201d standing with a candidate who once called Zionism a \u201cracist ideology.\u201d Instead, it became a small cultural Rorschach test. For many observant Jews, it captured everything wrong with the city\u2019s progressive Jewish establishment, a secular priesthood that portrays Judaism as a virtue signal while pouring money and manpower behind politicians hostile to Jews who actually keep the faith.<\/p>\n

ANTI-ISRAEL SOCIALIST CANDIDATES TRY TO RIDE MAMDANI\u2019S WAVE TO POLITICAL OFFICE<\/a><\/p>\n

Groups such as Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, T\u2019ruah, and IfNotNow have turned this act into an art form. Their leaders speak fluent intersectional jargon, using terms such as \u201cliberation,\u201d \u201cdecolonization,\u201d and \u201csolidarity,\u201d but their operations run like any well-funded political machine. They draw from the same constellation of left-wing foundations, municipal \u201ccultural inclusion\u201d grants, and donor networks that funnel millions into progressive campaigns each cycle.<\/p>\n

These organizations wield Judaism as branding. They lend moral cover to the city\u2019s leftmost candidates, often those who support Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions; demonize Israel; and target Orthodox communities as political punching bags. Their true influence lies not in synagogue pews but in Slack channels and activist coalitions, where they anoint those who speak \u201cfor the Jews.\u201d<\/p>\n

Several years ago, during a previous election cycle, JFREJ launched a 501(c)(4) organization, The Jewish Vote, specifically for this purpose. It\u2019s a closed loop: Activists support progressive politicians, who then reciprocate with grants and increased visibility. Together they form what can only be described as \u201cthe NGO-industrial complex of Jewish guilt.\u201d That complex has been remarkably effective at turning Jewish communal infrastructure into an engine of progressive power and at marginalizing those whom they claim to represent.<\/p>\n

Few people know that dynamic better than Moster, a man who once stood at its center. He founded Young Advocates for Fair Education to push for better secular education in New York\u2019s ultra-Orthodox yeshivas. In its early days, YAFFED was a darling of the progressive press. The\u00a0New York Times\u00a0and\u00a0Washington Post\u00a0wrote admiring profiles \u2014 secular Jewish philanthropies wrote checks. Moster spoke the language of reform and equality, and the left embraced him as a hero battling religious backwardness.<\/p>\n

But over time, something shifted. \u201cI thought I was fighting for education,\u201d he recalls, \u201cbut I started realizing the people around me were fighting for something else, against religion itself.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a conversation with the\u00a0Washington Examiner, he describes the slow unease that crept in. The more he worked with progressive allies, the clearer it became that their hostility wasn\u2019t limited to Haredi yeshivas\u2019 lack of secular education. \u201cThey didn\u2019t just want math and English in schools,\u201d he says. \u201cThey wanted to dismantle the whole religious system; the community, the family, the values, everything.\u201d<\/p>\n

The breaking point came from an unexpected place: the transgender movement. \u201cI\u2019d been skeptical,\u201d Moster says, \u201cbut I kept quiet. Then I realized that the same people telling me my religious upbringing oppressed me were now telling me I had to affirm something I didn\u2019t believe. The dogma was the same, just a new religion.\u201d<\/p>\n

At first, though, dissent didn\u2019t bring exile. \u201cWhen I raised concerns quietly,\u201d he explains, \u201cpeople in my own circles often agreed. They\u2019d whisper that they didn\u2019t really believe a trans woman is literally a woman, but they\u2019d say it\u2019s dangerous to admit that. Everyone was just playing along.\u201d<\/p>\n

The shift wasn\u2019t immediate. Early on, Moster noticed small signals, polite distancing, and fewer calls from groups such as JFREJ as he began diverging from the party line on issues such as bail reform and gender ideology. Only later, as he spoke more publicly, did the denunciations begin. \u201cThat\u2019s when the accusations started \u2014 that I was \u2018anti-trans,\u2019 that talking about this was dangerous because people could commit suicide,\u201d he says. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t disagreement anymore; it was moral condemnation.\u201d<\/p>\n

For someone who had once been praised for his courage, the sudden coldness was revealing. \u201cThat\u2019s when it hit me,\u201d he says. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t about education or equality. It was about control.\u201d<\/p>\n

The realization echoed something he\u2019d once seen as the dark side of his own community \u2014 the demand for ideological purity, enforced by shame. But he no longer sees the comparison as equal. \u201cIn the beginning, I thought both sides were similar kinds of closed worlds,\u201d he says. \u201cNow I see the difference. The Hasidic community, for all its flaws, is trying to preserve something: family, stability, meaning. The far-left world is trying to destroy everything that keeps society grounded.\u201d<\/p>\n

That recognition changed how he viewed the people he once fought against. \u201cI started to see the beauty and logic of it,\u201d he says. \u201cThey\u2019re holding down the fort. Even if I disagree with aspects of their education system, they\u2019re protecting values the rest of society is throwing away.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moster\u2019s disillusionment deepened<\/a> as he revisited his own work with YAFFED. \u201cI realized they had used me as a battering ram against religious Jews,\u201d he says flatly. \u201cI thought we were allies. They thought I was a weapon.\u201d<\/p>\n

He started noticing patterns: the same activists who once amplified his campaigns were now backing candidates who vilified yeshiva parents and smeared Orthodox Jews as leeches on the public purse. The \u201cjustice\u201d movement he\u2019d trusted had become, in his words, \u201ca secular crusade against faith.\u201d<\/p>\n

When he began speaking quietly with conservatives, people he\u2019d been taught to despise, he found something surprising: curiosity instead of condemnation. \u201cThey asked me what I believed,\u201d he says. \u201cThe Left told me what I had to believe.\u201d It wasn\u2019t a dramatic conversion, but a gradual realization that ideological conformity had replaced honest debate.<\/p>\n

Moster\u2019s story isn\u2019t unique. The Left has a knack for radicalizing its own moderates. Its insistence on total conformity drives out those who might have been sympathetic collaborators. Each purge shrinks the circle until only the most zealous remain.<\/p>\n

For secular Jewish progressives, that zeal takes a specific form: moral ownership of Judaism itself. Those who keep kosher or oppose BDS are branded \u201cbad Jews,\u201d while activists who campaign against Israel or defend Hamas sympathizers, you know, the \u201cTikkun Olam\u201d Jews, are feted as prophetic voices. The irony is biblical. The self-described champions of tolerance now cast out their own, wielding \u201cJewish values\u201d as a cudgel against living Jewish communities.<\/p>\n

Moster\u2019s defection exposes the machinery behind this hypocrisy. It\u2019s not a grassroots movement of conscience but a professionalized network of nonprofit organizations, consultants, and donors, an economy built on Jewish identity detached from Jewish belief. The danger lies not only in their political agenda but in their ability to masquerade as the authentic voice of American Judaism while delegitimizing everyone who actually practices it.<\/p>\n

Nowhere is that more visible than in New York politics. The same ecosystem that celebrates Mamdani, a man who boycotts Israel, also channels public and private dollars to organizations that sue yeshivas, lobby against synagogue zoning, and campaign to defund security grants for Jewish schools. These groups insist they\u2019re fighting for equality. But equality, in their hands, means erasing distinctions between sacred and secular, between a people and a political program. Their endgame is not inclusion but replacement: progressive ideology as the new religion, its activists as the new rabbinate.<\/p>\n

Today, Moster speaks with the calm of someone who has crossed a desert and found water. He hasn\u2019t become a spokesman for Orthodoxy or conservative values, but he has regained respect for the community he once sought to reform. \u201cThey\u2019re not perfect,\u201d he says, \u201cbut they\u2019re preserving what\u2019s left of a moral order.\u201d He now identifies as Modern Orthodox, a balance between tradition and engagement with the wider world \u2014 a position that once seemed impossible to him but now feels like clarity.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s learned to recognize fanaticism wearing the mask of liberation. \u201cI used to think the Left wanted to fix the system,\u201d he says. \u201cNow I see they want to destroy it, because faith, any faith, threatens their power.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a lesson more and more disillusioned progressives are learning, often painfully: that the movement preaching empathy can turn ruthless when its moral monopoly is challenged.<\/p>\n

ZOHRAN MAMDANI\u2019S UNIMPRESSIVE WIN<\/a><\/p>\n

Which brings us back to that viral video \u2014 four figures, four smiles, and one refrain: \u201cHi, Rabbi.\u201d One of them, Stein, stands as the embodiment of what that movement has become \u2014 a self-anointed clergy of the secular Left. It\u2019s a scene almost too perfect in its symbolism. The self-appointed rabbis of the Left greet each other in a circle of self-affirmation, convinced they embody the future of Judaism. Outside their frame stand the actual believers \u2014 invisible, inconvenient, unfashionable.<\/p>\n

Moster once stood inside that circle. He knows now that true faith doesn\u2019t need validation from politics, and that liberation isn\u2019t found in trading one orthodoxy for another. The ad\u2019s cheery slogan was meant to project unity. Instead, it revealed a movement so hollow it must invent its own clergy. The rest of us would do well to remember: When everyone is a rabbi, no one is.<\/p>\n

Editor\u2019s note: An earlier version of this post incorrectly stated that Abby Stein interrupted an event in the Trump White House. It was in the Biden White House.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In Focus delivers deeper coverage of the political, cultural, and ideological issues shaping America. Published daily by senior…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":36810,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[21539,7702,9,24,11,10,299,7675,82],"class_list":["post-36809","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-cultural-issues","tag-judaism","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-opinion","tag-religion","tag-zohran-mamdani"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36809","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36809"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36809\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}