Two Jewish Moral Worlds: What the Mamdani Election Reveals

American Enterprise Institure ^ | November 2025 | Samuel J. Abrams

[CondoleezzaProtege]

Applied to Jewish life, this model illuminates the Mamdani divide. The younger, Park Slope cohort embodies the individualizing moral style. Their Judaism is ethical universalism — a faith of empathy, repair, and inclusion. To them, Jewish history teaches solidarity with the marginalized, not tribal defense. Their political commitments — tenant rights, climate action, anti-racism, and Palestinian solidarity — feel like moral extensions of their Jewish conscience.

Supporting Mamdani, in this light, is not an act of betrayal but an act of consistency.

The Upper East Side cohort, by contrast, lives in the binding moral register. Their Judaism centers on loyalty to the Jewish people, reverence for institutions, and defense of Israel as a sacred trust. When a candidate denounces Israel as genocidal, they hear not critique but violation. The vote for Cuomo was not a calculation of interests; it was an affirmation of covenant.

Survey data confirm that these moral worlds align with generational and institutional divides. Pew Research Center’s 2024 survey found that only 45 percent of Jews under 35 hold a favorable view of Israel’s government, compared with 64 percent among those over 50.

Yet nearly 90 percent across all ages still view the Israeli people positively, suggesting alienation not from Israel itself but from its political expression.

Pew’s 2021 study showed that 58 percent of American Jews feel emotionally attached to Israel, though that attachment rises to 82 percent among the Orthodox and drops below 60 percent among Reform and unaffiliated Jews. Twenty-two percent now believe the United States is too supportive of Israel — twice the share in 2013 — and that sentiment is concentrated among younger and unaffiliated Jews…

[CondoleezzaProtege]

That is why the Mamdani election felt seismic to the Jewish community and New York City more generally. It revealed, not created, the split between what might be called the “individualizing Jew” and the “binding Jew” — one who sees Judaism as a moral compass for humanity, the other who sees it as the covenantal anchor of a people.

[Olog-hai]

Pew Research Center’s 2024 survey found …

Unsurprising that the RINO AEI would fall to argumentum ad verecundiam by citing left-wing polls.

[Organic Panic]

“Jewish history teaches solidarity with the marginalized, not tribal defense. Their political commitments — tenant rights, climate action, anti-racism, and Palestinian solidarity — feel like moral extensions of their Jewish conscience”

WOW. Just wow. How does one respond to such nonsense?

[Retain Mike]

"The Mamdani election dramatized the challenge. It showed that American Jews are not divided between left and right so much as between two moral imaginations."

Support by Jews for Mamdani identifies a group lacking moral imagination.

[cgbg]

For starters you can point out that the “marginalized” leftists control every major university, every Hollywood studio, most major newspaper and magazines, most broadcast networks, most think tanks, the boards of directors and executives of most large corporations and one of the two major political parties.

They are the power in most institutions.

[Opinionated Blowhard]

The Mamdani election dramatized the challenge. It showed that American Jews are not divided between left and right so much as between two moral imaginations.

That's all well and good until Jews in New York City start getting attacked and beaten on the streets for having clothing, hairstyles or other indicators of being Jewish. And then the Mamdani Administration denies there is an issue does nothing when they plea to him to stop it.

[odawg]

Mamdani is set to install upon New York City all the governing principles and concepts that drove him and his family out of their native country, whichever shit hole it is, and millions of Arabs out of the Middle East and into Western countries.

[mac_truck]

Link to the survey which was conducted in February 2024.

https://pewrsr.ch/4cUfUWz

[Flavious_Maximus]

These are the George Soros type of Jew. They even rationalize the NAZI concentration camps. To these young “Jews”, Auschwitz was just a hostel for the displaced individuals.

[Jonty30]

Any Christian or Jew that chooses socialism has chosen the world above their faith. They are the reason that Islam has taken over Europe and poses a threat to America.

[CondoleezzaProtege]

There is a difference between ethnic tribalism and true “faith.” Tale as old as time and Bible…

It is true that Christians and Jews both can fall prey to the temptation for socialism.

But it’s also true that NYers didn’t have the best set of options for mayor. A lot of Mamdani voters were in fact, also Trump voters.

People regardless of faith are sick of the establishment.