David Bernstein
American Jews in the Wake of the Mamdani Victory
Thursday, November 20th, 2025 - 7:00-8:30pm ET
Thursday, November 20th, 7:00-8:30pm EST
American Jews in the Wake of the Mamdani Victory
On October 7, 2023, Israel was blindsided by Hamas—not for lack of warnings, but because officials dismissed them under a prevailing conceptzia, or fixed assumptions about Hamas. The next day, many American Jews were similarly shocked as 31 Harvard student groups blamed Israel for the massacre, exposing our own conceptzia about antisemitism, progressive politics, and the Jewish–Israel relationship.
Now, with Zohran Mamdani elected mayor of New York City, the progressive left holds new power in a major Jewish center. His platform—rent freezes, radical affordability, and sharp criticism of Israel—raises urgent questions for Jewish identity, communal strategy, and how our assumptions must shift to confront today’s threats to Jewish life and Israel’s legitimacy.
A passionate advocate of the free expression of ideas and a supporter of Israel’s quest for peace and security, David Bernstein is the founder of the North American Values Institute (NAVI), formerly Jewish Institute for Liberal Values (JILV), which opposes radical ideology in K-12 education. He is author of Woke Antisemitism: How a Progressive Ideology Harms Jews. He is past President and CEO of Jewish Council for Public Affairs and former executive director of the David Project. He spent 13 years at the American Jewish Committee in senior roles. David is a Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP) and a Strategic Advisor for the Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM). He is a prolific speaker, podcaster and writer, having written hundreds of opinion pieces in the Jewish and general press.
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