poll last year<\/a>.<\/p>\nIn the Nov. 4 election, an\u00a0exit poll done for CNN and other media outlets found that 31% of Jewish voters backed\u00a0Mamdani. 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 \u2014 50% \u2014 among those ages 30 to 44. He did less well among older Jews,\u00a0earning 23% support\u00a0among those ages 45 to 59, and 20% support among those over 60.<\/p>\n
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\u00a0and 85,000 in Suffolk.<\/p>\n
There has been a well-documented rise in antisemitic incidents in recent years. A\u00a0record 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.<\/p>\n
Long Island\u00a0Jewish community’s response<\/p>\n
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\u00a0or nonexistent.<\/p>\n
Some rabbis contacted by Newsday said they did not want to comment on Mamdani because the topic was too sensitive.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
“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.”<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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\u00a0the war.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
![\"Rabbi](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/1764505985_984_image\"\/)
<\/p>\n
Rabbi Susie Moskowitz inside Temple Beth Torah in 2018. Credit: \/Howard Simmons<\/p>\n
“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.”<\/p>\n
“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.\u00a0That’s part of Zionism,” she said.<\/p>\n
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\u00a0is essential to their survival after 6 million Jewish people were killed during\u00a0the Holocaust. Palestinians claim some of the same land, also citing historical links. They, too,\u00a0want a safe haven. The opposing views have fueled\u00a0the Middle East conflict.<\/p>\n
Roth said Jewish people across the world\u00a0remain traumatized by the Oct. 7, 2023,\u00a0attack \u2014 the largest single-day\u00a0massacre of Jews since the Holocaust \u2014 and Israel was forced to take strong action.<\/p>\n
“Hamas is an organization that would not give Israel an inch,” he said. Israel has “to do anything they can to survive.”<\/p>\n
Moskowitz said she doesn\u2019t 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\u00a0the same way.<\/p>\n
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.”<\/p>\n
The Anti-Defamation League this month\u00a0launched 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.<\/p>\n
Islamic and progressive Jewish groups condemned the ADL’s move, with the Council on American-Islamic Relations\u00a0calling it “an act of hypocrisy and anti-Muslim bigotry, pure and simple.” J Street, a progressive Jewish organization, said:\u00a0“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.”<\/p>\n
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\u2019s platform of freezing\u00a0rents, providing\u00a0free public buses and opening government-run grocery stores.<\/p>\n
He’s “super excited” about the new mayor taking office Jan. 1, and thinks his\u00a0administration 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.”<\/p>\n
Roth disagreed.\u00a0Antisemitism is “only going to get worse” under Mamdani, he said. “I think he will exacerbate it.”<\/p>\n
\n\tBart 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 \u201cHUGO! The Hugo Chavez Story from Mud Hut to Perpetual Revolution.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Adam Tzach\u2019s father was born in Israel, he still has relatives there and he was horrified by the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":56256,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[5340,17584,4275,1445,8015,9,24,63,7675,134,136,135,8016,5944],"class_list":{"0":"post-56255","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-staten-island","8":"tag-campaigns","9":"tag-local-elections","10":"tag-local-politics","11":"tag-mamdani","12":"tag-nassau","13":"tag-new-york","14":"tag-new-york-city","15":"tag-nyc","16":"tag-religion","17":"tag-staten-island","18":"tag-staten-island-headlines","19":"tag-staten-island-news","20":"tag-suffolk","21":"tag-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56255","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=56255"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56255\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}