Is the Golden Age Over?
A Special Article by Elliott Abrams – Long-time JPPI Board Member and former Deputy U.S. National Security Adviser
What is one to make of a country whose president blesses not only Israel but the IDF after striking at Israel’s most dangerous enemy, but days later nominates as the Democratic candidate for mayor of its largest city a Muslim with a long history of extremist rhetoric and action against Israel – and who gets tens of thousands of votes from Jews? Is the relationship between Israel and the United States stronger than ever, or do the B-2 strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities simply reflect the views of Donald Trump? Are American Jews as proud and embracing of Israel as ever, or does the Mamdani phenomenon reflect ruptures in the community and growing risks in the society at large?
As to the latter question, whether the “golden age” for American Jews is over is a question now being seriously debated in the American Jewish community. Were the six or seven decades after World War II the high point for the acceptance and influence of American Jews in U.S. society and for bipartisan support of Israel, as well as the period of least antisemitism?
In many Western democracies, antisemitism is now visible and worrying: Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, and France are the best (meaning the worst) examples. The United States seemed immune from the spread of the same disease, but is it beginning to succumb? And are the days of broad support for Israel a thing of the past?
Some dispassion and perspective are needed here. In the first couple of decades after the Second World War there was plenty of antisemitism in the United States of the social variety: clubs, hotels, whole neighborhoods still excluded Jews into the 1960s. But it did indeed diminish, and Jews – on Wall Street, in Hollywood, in every administration since Kennedy, and indeed all over the country – saw barriers fall. The view of Israel as a burden, indeed an albatross, for U.S. policy in the Middle East also lasted for at least two decades after the Second World War, beginning to reverse only after the smashing Israeli victory in the 1967 Six-Day War. If there was a golden age, it was probably in the half-century after 1967.
Is it over now? Comparing the United States to the other large Diaspora communities, one difference is immediately obvious. In France, Muslims outnumber Jews by about 13 to 1. In the UK, it is closer to 15 to 1. In Australia, 8 to 1. In Canada, 5 to 1. In the United States, Jews may outnumber Muslims by 2 to 1 (7 million to 3.5 million); even more generous estimates of the Muslim population (4 or 4.4 million) show that the Jewish community is significantly larger. This matters because all these Diaspora communities are in democracies whose politics – and whose policy toward Israel – will ultimately reflect what voters want. Moreover, the reluctance to confront antisemitic behavior and even violence toward Jews will be greater when governments fear an electoral backlash from large blocks of Muslim voters.
Perhaps even more important, the United States has a very different tradition when it comes to the respect for and treatment of Jews. The famous 1790 letter from George Washington to the Jews of Newport, Rhode Island was astonishing for that age and set a new tone:
“It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if it were the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights, for, happily, the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens in giving it on all occasions their effectual support….May the children of the stock of Abraham who dwell in this land continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other inhabitants – while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid.”
But today, many Jews are afraid. From the 2018 Pittsburgh and 2019 California synagogue attacks to the May 2025 murders in Washington, DC, 18 Jews have been killed in 7 years. Others have been assaulted or, in Colorado in June, burned by attackers. In the United States today, there are no police cars or armed guards outside churches, but there are security measures at every synagogue on Shabbat and on holy days, and at every significant community gathering. Jews in New York City wonder whether, should the first Muslim ever to be the Democratic candidate become the first Muslim mayor, they can count on him to fight antisemitism – or will see him use his office to continue trying to “globalize the intifada.”
On the political right, where voices such as that of Tucker Carlson are influential, and on the left, where a significant minority of Democratic elected officials are now vociferously anti-Israel and solicitous of violent demonstrations, antisemitism is newly visible. There is a sewer of antisemitic right-wing websites and podcasts that did not exist ten years ago, not only making old claims about sinister Jewish power but arguing that Christianity has no roots in or relationship with Judaism.
And there is more: most of America’s elite campuses have shown themselves after the October 7 massacres to be riddled with antisemitic students, professors, and administrators – to a degree that has shocked most U.S. Jews. Most of the reigning institutions of American culture, not just the elite universities but most of the media, the museums, much of Hollywood, the majority of famous actors and painters and writers, are bitterly anti-Israel now and indifferent to antisemitism.
Are those the views of the average American? No, but they have an influential place now that they did not 50 years ago. Back then, intellectual figures like William F. Buckley Jr. expelled from the conservative movement well-known individuals like Patrick Buchanan for the sin of antisemitism. Today, President Trump welcomes Carlson and many others like him – some of them openly antisemitic – into his “MAGA” movement. And back then, the Ivy League was between one-quarter and one-third Jewish, while admissions policies over more recent decades have reduced that to ten percent or lower. One need not attribute that decline entirely to antisemitism to understand that it means a narrowing of the place of American Jews in America’s future elites.
And yet: when those same right-wing antisemites and haters of Israel warned President Trump against striking Iran, he ignored their admonitions and even mocked them. Moreover, opinion polls showed strong support among Republicans and among Trump voters for the strike. The picture is less encouraging on the Democratic side, where support for Israel has broadly declined (and Trump’s support for that country makes it even harder for that country to win friends among younger Democrats).
The increase in antisemitism on the far left and far right, and the decline of support for Israel among younger Americans and especially younger Democrats, have been occurring during decades where the strength of the American Jewish community has in many ways also been declining. The intermarriage rate among non-Orthodox Jews is now over 70%, and the statistics clearly demonstrate that many children of such marriages are raised without a strong Jewish identity. Among intermarried American Jews, only 28% are raising their children as Jews by religion (compared to 93% of the children of in-married Jews). Only 68% of those raised as Jews or by at least one Jewish parent now identify as Jewish, meaning that nearly one-third have been lost to the community. Measuring the health of the community another way, there are in the United States 2.4 million children being raised in a home with one or two Jewish parents. Of them, 1.2 million are being raised exclusively as Jews – half. That portends further fraying of the community in the future. (All these numbers come from the Pew survey “Jewish Americans in 2020.”)
Unsurprisingly, when Jewish identity weakens so does closeness to Israel. Only half (48%) of American Jews under age 30 said in 2020 that they were very or somewhat attached to Israel. Taglit/Birthright has sent over 700,000 young American Jews to Israel, but even with that boost only 45% of Americans Jews have ever visited there even once. Only one-third of American Jews under age 30 said in 2020 that caring about Israel is, in their view, essential to being a Jew.
The triangular relationship between the United States, the American Jewish community, and the State of Israel is, then, obviously under great stress. Among the 97 or 98% of Americans who are not Jewish, support for Israel is in decline. In poll after poll, younger Americans are less supportive of Israel than their parents and grandparents; young Democrats much less so than theirs; young Evangelicals less so than theirs – and sad to say, young Jews also less than theirs. Once an issue of bipartisanship, especially in the Reagan, Clinton, and Bush years, today support for Israel is a matter of hot and divisive debate. The great support for Israel that President Trump has shown is wonderful, but it is also personal and may not be part of the administrations that follow his.
What is to be done? The struggle against antisemitism is both a necessity and a trap. Every time a law (such as those prohibiting violence or face masks in a demonstration or vandalism against a synagogue) is broken, it is essential that the perpetrators be arrested, tried, and punished. Either enforcement of the laws will stop such actions, or they will become more frequent – so Jews must demand proper and energetic policing. It is essential that university regulations that forbid antisemitic speech, and forbid demonstrations that prevent students from moving about freely and accessing the campus fully, result in the expulsion of students – and faculty – who break the rules. It is now obvious that on many campuses, administrators (especially in DEI offices, but also higher up in academic bureaucracies) did nothing to protect Jews and punish antisemitic acts. Jews should join the federal and state governments in demanding that all this change.
Jews should also engage in the American political system, assisting their friends against their enemies. AIPAC’s 2021 decision to create political action committees that support pro-Israel candidates directly was a necessary step. American Jews have friends and enemies, and the rewards and punishments are critical to protecting what is still a minority of under 3% of the U.S. population.
But Jews cannot cure antisemitism. The central task of American Jewry should not be fighting antisemitic acts themselves, nor trying to change the hearts and minds of antisemites, nor even engaging in politics – as important as all those are. The central task must be the strengthening of our own community, by strengthening the Jewish identity of our children, their knowledge of Jewish history, tradition, and religion, and their ties to Israel. Much is done in the American Jewish community to achieve these goals, but it is far from enough. A Times of Israel story on the top dozen philanthropic donors in the U.S. reported that “One thing that stands out about these Jewish philanthropists is that almost none focus giving on the Jewish community.” In the aftermath of the October 7 Hamas attacks, the “Jewish Future Promise” campaign is trying to sign up Jews to pledge that at least 50% of their giving will be to Jewish and Israel-related causes. This is a badly needed initiative. Jews in the United States have more to worry about today than symphonies.
No rocket science is required here. There’s plenty of data showing that more and better Jewish education, time in the immersive experience of Jewish summer camping, and time in Israel (from short visits to internships, summer and gap year programs, or junior years abroad during college) are powerful generators of strong Jewish identity and commitment. The fate of the American Jewish community lies not in the minds of antisemites, but in the hands of American Jews.
And what of the fate of Israel, at least the part affected by the policies of the United States? Here the rise of left- and right-wing antisemitism suggests growing challenges, as does the spread of a semi-isolationist approach to America and the world. Trump himself – as he proved yet again by attacking the Iranian nuclear weapons program – is no isolationist, but many of his supporters are. His administration is full of people from the isolationist NGOs and think tanks funded by Charles Koch and George Soros, and strategists who believe the only serious problem the United States faces in the 21st century is China (such that allocating resources to the Middle East is wasting them). Moreover, the president himself and many around him have adopted an entirely transactional approach to American foreign policy, where neither allies nor ideals are much valued. All that counts is what the other country can do for the United States in material, mostly financial and commercial, terms.
This in itself is worrying, but watching Democrats who used to be considered centrists – Senators Van Hollen, Kaine, and Booker, for example – attack Israel means that distancing from the Jewish state is now common among political elites, especially in the Democratic Party.
Will attacks on “Zionism,” unfair assaults on Israel, and fear of antisemitism result in a steady and unending weakening of support among American Jews? I do not believe it. Even Jews with weak Jewish identity and connections to the community recognize the dangerous spread of antisemitism and recognize unfair treatment of Israel when they see it. The efforts to turn the word “Zionist” into a sort of curse since October 7, 2023 may well have strengthened the sense among American Jews that support for Zionism is essential to Jewishness. And the kind of antisemitism that has been so visible on too many campuses is a reminder to Jews that the weakness of their own or their children’s Jewish identity will hardly protect them from demonstrators, administrators, or faculty who target all Jews and any support for Israel.
That is not the problem. The dangers are rather that any significant change over time in American demography will leave the Jewish community smaller and less influential in American politics – and that American Christians may come to devalue their own religious debt to Judaism and their support for the Jewish state, adopting instead a modern form of Marcionism that seeks to break the theological and historical connection between the two faiths.
These are, of course, longer-term problems; none are developments of one year, one presidency, or one decade. But all suggest that the Jewish community in the United States must do far more than posting guards outside synagogues. Those are needed, but more essential are actions that guard the identity of our children. Sadly, a vast expansion of aggressive antisemitism can perhaps serve that purpose, but I do not believe that will happen in the United States. Steady erosion of American Jewish identity and U.S. ties to Israel are far more likely than any dramatic rupture.
So, to return to the initial question, is the golden age over? Perhaps the period when antisemitism was in effect non-existent and when both political parties strongly supported Israel is indeed over. But that was also a period when Jewish identity eroded, intermarriage exploded, significant losses in the Jewish community occurred, and the most prestigious universities and cultural institutions slowly became hotbeds of antisemitic and anti-Israel activity. Not so golden, then. The coming years will be more contentious for American Jews, over U.S. relations with Israel and over their own place in American society. What seemed for a while natural and wholly accepted will now require a fight. The good news is that Jews have many allies in this fight, and it can be won. “American exceptionalism” still exists and leads to opportunities for Jews and Israel that barely exist in many other countries. But exceptionalism has limits, and gradations, and enemies. What American Jews took for granted for a generation will now require new thinking, new efforts, and good friends.
