To Assimilate Or Not
When you’re not sure what you’re fighting for anymore but you’re pretty sure you’re not included either way.
Jews across America were stunned to learn last week that NYC chose a Muslim socialist who doesn’t like Israel over a noted lech with a running tab of 13 claims against him. Meanwhile, the rest of America was stunned to realize that Jews don’t actually control the media, weather, or Hollywood—and that maybe they don’t care about identity politics as much as they thought they did.
(Also, some were stunned to figure out this is a local mayoral race, not a presidential or gubernatorial one, so it’s mostly a dog and pony show).
Between the BDS bros and the billionaires, where’s a Jew supposed to go?
On one hand, I get it. Who needs to harangue on individualism when there’s class solidarity: an opportunity to afford ourselves a different set of principles also based on lies. This is the political platform everyone is enthusiastically signing up for, mainly because it underscores how bad our education and health care systems are from years of buying into yet another unchecked class system that obviously has not benefitted everyone.
If Jews hadn’t sounded the alarm on hate crimes that still go unanswered or his refusal to distance himself from the problematic blanket statements amplifying it (while rapping, no less!), everyone would have just noticed that he’s kind of just your run-of-the-mill hipster and otherwise pretty wholesome. After all, his mother is the Oscar- and BAFTA-nominated filmmaker behind “Mississippi Masala” and “Monsoon Wedding,” and his hot wife is an exceptionally talented multidisciplinary artist and frequent animator and illustrator for The New Yorker and Tate Modern. They’re a culturally dynastic couple with deep ties to American racial discourse and elite creative institutions—even though he’s vocally anti-classist (the paradox where most intellectuals suffer).
People really underestimate optics in a post-Vice world during an era where filters and AI dominate everything. If you’re not personally impacted by antisemitism, you’re probably not paying attention to it, or at least paying enough to recognize when it’s upsetting a bunch of Jews and hope that the ticket that finally frees Palestine (if only it was that easy).
It’s a lot easier to applaud someone for boldly trying something different and failing on delivering a bunch of things that no one even expects him to in hopes of dismantling the status quo. To be completely fair to him, Mamdani wasn’t (entirely) running on Jew hatred—though it helped.
Laughably and predictably, he is already being labeled a Zionist as a slur and flagellated by BDS leftists who believe any acknowledgment of Israel to exist is backing a watered down version of a genocidal colonialist project through Nazi inversion—many of whom are weighing in from air-conditioned podcast war rooms in occupied Los Angeles, as if anything we do in our city is any of their fucking business. And he hasn’t even won office yet!
Mamdani is really running on the collective hatred towards the unchecked billionaires who evade reasonable taxation, amplify class inequality, and supersede government power—the same issues Bernie and AOC have shouted from the rooftops while Democrats fail to act on them. Bernie, to his credit, has long prioritized economic populism over the rising antisemitism in his base (because that’s what makes you electable, even if it makes you expendable) and exactly how he pulled the vote from Hillary by ignoring all the sexism driving that, too. When I don’t think about myself, it turns out that everyone likes me a whole lot more (really no different from the average daily female experience).
Because some New York City Jews have generational wealth—the kind that funded the humanities and arts for decades—we are now collectively entangled in a problem no one wanted to pay attention to until the crisis in Israel. Obviously, not all of us are rich but our country has proven incapable about recognizing that Jewish people are not a monolith, so we’re all impacted by this unspoken caste system.
Simpletons have an easier time making a visual connection to a guy wearing payot using those helpful demarcations established by Hitler to wrangle some Hasid out of a few shekels as a target for their frustrations rather than trying to bum rush a golf course where there might be shot guns and pick up trucks filled with guys who know how to tie a noose and work with local police to get rid of a body. This is why I’ve been struggling about whether I can wear my Star of David necklace without fear of being cornered somewhere by people who feel triggered by ideological differences and emboldened by an administration that is willfully indifferent about it.
Personally, I’d love it if we could all stop looking at each other this way.
I think many Jews are still in denial that we can ever reclaim public favor among the majority of young people who simply do not recognize what any of this means to us or care. The only people taking classes on global Jewry are other Jews—to everyone else, it’s “Bible stuff.” Which is unfortunate because the Jewish lens has witnessed a lot of shit and has receipts to prove it.
Assimilation as a passive form of erasure is appealing because it eliminates any creeping reduction of church and state separation by getting rid of what they see as the aforementioned “Bible stuff.” I see it as hypocritical thought policing and selective weaponizing of identity that rubs me the wrong way.
That said, everyone has assured me that Israel is not actually going away even though they keep chanting it, so I guess if I really hate it, I can just apply for aliyah. It feels strange considering so many people are fleeing for safety, but it’s only fair that if my own community tokenizes me when it works in their favor that I should tokenize my “Zionist privilege” for front row seats at the apocalypse. There are worse places to die.
At the end of the day, I believe that I am a Jew. After having a handful of near-death experiences, it’s alwayas resulted in renewing my gratitude for life, instilling faith in a higher power, and wanting to be a better person—and that includes being born again a Jew each and every single time, even for all of its liabilities. I feel deep spiritual fulfillment reading Torah, even when I am only half-reading words I don’t understand. I don’t feel that way with other religious texts, even if I recognize and respect that is the feeling others get from those books. (The closest second was maybe Ba’hai, a peaceful non-hierarchical spiritual practice rooted in the idea of progressive revelation and community that I spent some time with when I was a teenager). I also never force this on anyone and appreciate the mutual respect there.
The left, indifferent to the struggles of the Jewish community, are not so different everyone turning a blind eye in a post-9/11 America when every brown person was subject to discriminatory and reductive Islamophobic policies shaping TSA and DHS. This has mostly allowed antisemitism to run rampant because defense of our people is seen as not being a team player in the collective fight against genocide.
Assimilation has always been key to Jewish survival, so Jews have a few options here:
Go back to assimilating and eating bacon cheeseburgers.
Go to Israel, where there are burgers but no cheese.
Learn Krav Maga and take your chances.
In the face of rising hostility and selective solidarity, many secular Jews may find themselves defaulting to the kind of covert survival our ancestors perfected by fitting in just enough to not get clocked. Historically, this meant changing your name or your nose; now it might mean keeping your Star of David tucked inside your shirt and avoiding the word “Zionist” altogether. I recognize the irony of a “have you thought about going back in the closet” argument during Pride weekend—but apparently some queers still haven’t.
Luckily, a lot of Jews are in tech, so they’re already poised to become the next generation of crypto Jews: anonymous, adaptable, and deeply aware of just how much visibility can cost you. Anti-Zionist Jews might notice the creeping feeling that they are only safe until they start being a little too Jewy or have to deal with a real-life encounter with antisemitism where none of their friends care—particularly without all the Big Jews to make them feel safe about it.
While it’s true this is only a primary (a mayoral primary, at that), it does indicate that New Yorkers are ushering in the socialist fantasy. What’s cool about socialism is that it makes an already expensive landscape even more expensive—but with the reward of all the social services that we should have been paying into with our tax dollars all along that will somehow still be shitty. That is why democratic socialiasm was not my first choice—but always happy to be proven wrong.
The good news is that if the rent is frozen and wages skyrocket to $30/hr, then everyone can afford $15 cups of coffee—something Gen Z is happy to do, with a sunnier outlook on what amounts to self-imposed povvo lines. I feel like alcoholism may have a comeback this year, which is never a good sign except for the alcohol industry. But maybe if we tax the liquor industry hard enough, it will make everyone just miserable enough to pay for all of this stuff.
While I personally think Zohran bit off more than he can chew, I do want to give him the benefit of the doubt to deliver on all the promises that were made and then some—even though I yet to meet a man that isn’t a future disappointment. And while he could very well be a Manchurian Candidate, I’m going to place faith that he’s not and will just disappoint us gently, like Brandon Johnson. At least his heart is in the right place, I guess.
Anyway, that said, if Mamdani wants to be a public servant, he can serve me my current wishlist to be considered for America’s Next DemSocialist Messiah:
Birth Control Baskets: So behind the baby baskets! Also, as someone who pays 3x the amount in taxes living in Manhattan, I want free birth control and abortion rights, too, seeing as we are among the last sanctuary cities holding out in a national crisis and will likely be pulling in a lot of medical tourism from desperate pregnant people soon who don’t want to become the next Adriana Smith. Why do city rats get free birth control and humans can’t? Please offer that as an option—better yet, a choice. (I didn’t like that this wasn’t on your campaign website).
Rent Freeze: Everyone tells me that DiBlasio did this, so I guess you can do it, too, and will be the first action item I expect. That said, I’ve also been told that DiBlasio used to go to the YMCA every single day in the middle of the afternoon to exercise and everyone hated him for this. Do yourself and all of us a favor by making sure to look at the rest of his administration and try not to do that.
Free Buses. The MTA—specifically the 1 line—was brutally impacted by the recent week’s heat wave. Are you replacing all that infrastructure now that it’s free? Also, don’t you have zero control over the MTA?! Aside from that one senator, how are you even promising any of this? There’s also that matter about the rise in unhinged behavior and violence on the subway. Again, all great ideas, can’t wait to see you deliver on them—still don’t understand how.
Increasing the Minimum Wage to $30/hr.: Sounds good, but how much does that make a cup of coffee now? Asking for the folks trying to pay their employees a living wage and keep their doors open—as well as myself, who doesn’t want to pay $15 for a cup of coffee. Are we just making the US dollar needlessly expensive now to compete with Sweden? Is this going to be setting the national standard or just enticing more people to become resentful or try to move here?
PR Management and Human Decency: What’s going on with the whole Jew hate stuff? Are you going to tell people to stop hate crime-ing us since you’re the DemSocialist Messiah? Will I have to listen to shitty podcasts made in Brooklyn to know what’s happening with your administration? (I would consider voting Republican out of spite if you do that). Also, be ready to get dunked on. Politicians are open game to be dunked on all the time—unless you’re the ayatollah. I still have the choice to show my hair in public, right? Since we’re bringing ruthless international politics into the NYC mayoral office where we hold individuals accountable for the actions of foreign governments, figure we should put that on the table to keep things level.
But really, I hope I am proven wrong. I don’t know if the Middle East will ever fix their shit anymore than anywhere else—but I’m tired of fighting.
At this point, I don’t know where I belong politically. I don’t feel safe among the far left, and I absolutely do not want to be embraced by the right. I want community, but don’t want to have to disown part of myself to be included—even if I know how to blend into the background. Maybe that makes me politically orphaned. Or just honest. But as I’ve said before: honesty is the new irony.