Imagine New York without Jews

Thinking the once unthinkable

“Start spreading the news… New York has no Jews…”

Oops. My bad. “New York New York,’ as most of us know, begins

“Start spreading the news… I’m leaving today
I want to be a part of it, New York, New York.”

My bobble notwithstanding, I wonder if Fred Ebb and John Kander (both Jews, are you surprised?) who composed that near classic about the city recorded by Ol’ Blue Eyes and Liza Minnelli, among others, would want to be part of it today or even want to listen to their own song.

My guess is they wouldn’t want to listen to it for fear of being more depressed than they already are.

Most of my New York Jewish friends I spoke with today—I was born in NYC but no longer live there—are thinking about leaving. Some are already making plans to move to Miami or Tel Aviv. Some ask me about Nashville. One man wondered about Buenos Aires. Argentina’s libertarian president Milei is known to be welcoming to Jews.

Others are waiting to see if Zohran Mamdani—the 33-year old Muslim woke socialist who hates Israel as much as the Ayatollah, never did much of anything in his life and just won the Democratic mayoral primary in the city over the tired and corrupt Andrew Cuomo—actually wins the general in November.

Maybe there is hope the also corrupt current mayor Eric Adams can make it over the hump as an independent with Wall Street help or financial wizard Bill Ackman pulls an as yet unknown rabbit out of his silken hat. But right now it doesn’t look so good.

Why is this so important? Call me chauvinistic, but in this case it’s rooted in fact. As much as any group, the Jews made New York City the global powerhouse that it was and now just barely is.

Yes, other groups made immense contributions, but pound for pound New York deserved the moniker “Hymietown”—offensive as it was— given it by Jesse Jackson in 1984.

Who can deny the Jews contribution to theatre, literature, all the arts, sciences, medicine, politics, construction (Robert Moses hand his hand in most of the city’s iconic parks, highways and bridges), academia, finance and, yes, food in NYC?

This was done for the benefit of all citizens of the city, not just Jews. Besides “There’s No Business Like Show Business,” “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” and hundreds over other hits, Irving Berlin, dubbed by Walter Cronkite and many others the greatest of all American composers, also wrote the two holiday anthems of New York’s and America’s Christian world, “White Christmas” and “Easter Parade”. (The refugee from the pogroms of Russia also married a Catholic heiress in one the great scandals of the early 20th Century.)

Chauvinist though I might be, I am not close to saying all Jews are good. Tons are bad, like all groups. I despise George Soros and wish he weren’t one of us, as just one of many examples. I could go on, but you get the point. (Okay, Adam Schiff, but he’s not a New Yorker. I could add Chuck Schumer, but President Trump has already done it for me).

But imagining New York without its Jews is imagining a completely different city and one few people would ultimately want to live in, maybe not even AOC. I write this not just because I think Mamdani’s ideas are cuckoo—although they are; state-run grocery stores smack of the Soviet Union at its worst. (Trust me. I have been there. I suspect the 33-year old Mamdani never has.) Defunding the police or replacing them with social workers has already proven so dumb I don’t even want to discuss it.

But even more because New York without Jews is simply not New York. It’s Columbia University on steroids.

So let’s hope and pray this doesn’t happen, but if it does, all is not lost. I recently had breakfast at Zak the Baker in Miami. The smoked salmon was fine and the babka was out of this world.