New York State OUT of Mind
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I’m leaving today . . .
Oh, sorry for the lyrical misdirection, but this version of the Frank Sinatra standard has the crooner fleeing New York! Hold onto those “vagabond shoes,” after all. Don’t jettison those “little-town blues,” just yet. New York might become the “city that doesn’t sleep” for more redoubtable reasons. A day may come when we might actually not “wake up” at all!
Not a valentine, but a requiem for what was once the world’s cosmopolitan wonderland.
Not a valentine, but a requiem for what was once the world’s cosmopolitan wonderland.
After this past week’s mayoral election that saw an avowed socialist and proud anti-Zionist take City Hall as if he and his cohorts had stormed the Bastille, a new vision for a more progressive New York City is upon us.
Zohran Mamdani has big plans for the Big Apple—rent freezes, new affordable housing, free buses, lax law enforcement and newfangled police strategies that feature mental health professionals packing Prozac, city-owned grocery stores, “Gifted & Talented” schools open to all regardless of merit, and strengthened sanctuary protections for undocumented immigrants.
“New York, New York, It’s a Helluva Town.”
Many are worried, especially those who survived New York from 1964-77—when the city, governed by successive progressive mayors who had similar grandiose plans for a New York that fancied itself as socialist Sweden, nearly went bankrupt.
There were transit, teacher, and sanitation strikes. Commuters were forced to walk across bridges; kids stayed home from school; uncollected garbage piled up on streets. A heyday for the rodent class.
There were repeated electricity blackouts and riots in Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant. In the summer of 1977, a serial killer was on the loose while the New York Yankees—those Bronx Bombers—played in the World Series. Meanwhile the borough itself was set aflame.
New York City never fully recovered until 1996—before many of Mamdani’s youthful neo-Bolsheviks were even born. That means they know even less about the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989. Getting free stuff from a government that has usurped the means of production and regulates housing sounds enticing, but such grand utopian schemes have never worked in human history.
Ironically, the city so often identified as the financial capital of the world—hub to Wall Street and its New York Stock Exchange, and home for robber-baron princes like Cornelius Vanderbilt, John Jacob Astor, J.P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller and even Donald Trump—is now in the hands of a 34-year-old mayor who has never run anything in his life.
Mamdani’s first career, as a rapper, ended in failure. That means that Jay-Z, who presides over a financial empire that has little in common with communism, would have made a far better choice to run New York City.
Michael Bloomberg was given the keys to New York City for three successful terms not because of his charisma, oratory or smile. Voters surmised that he knew how to make managerial decisions and understood a few things about municipal finance.
Mamdani is in way over his head.
If looming bankruptcy, social unrest and violent crime are part of Mamdani’s prescription for a more progressive New York, people will leave—not just the wealthy looking for safer tax havens, but everyone if they discover that the New York City of 2026 is as unlivable as it was in 1976.
One million New Yorkers left the city back then—including my parents.
Remember this bit of dialogue from “Annie Hall”: “What’s so great about New York? I mean, it’s a dying city.” The film was released in 1977.
If mass migration is in New York’s future, it might prove to be especially true of Jewish New Yorkers. Rising crime is what ultimately produced the first wave of “white flight.” But Jews were only among the casualties of those crimes, and not its principal targets.
With campus riots and raucous street protests over the past two years as indicators, this mayor might chuckle at the thought of Zionists chased around by hordes screaming, “Globalize the Intifada”— a sentimental slogan of Mamdani’s campaign.
Will he at least call in crime-fighting social workers to rescue besieged Jews? How did one in three Jewish New Yorkers cast their ballots for a Muslim who believes Israel to be a genocidal state that has no right to exist? New York City is home to 1.3 million Jews, the second largest Jewish population outside of Tel Aviv.
Well, a recent Washington Post poll revealed that 61 percent of Jews believed that Israel had committed war crimes in Gaza, and 40 percent believed Israel committed genocide. Only 56 percent said they were emotionally attached to Israel; even fewer, 36 percent, among those aged 18 to 34.
The progressive movement has demonstrated an enormous appetite for anti-white, anti-American, antisemitic, anti-police animus. Tearing down monuments and desecrating synagogues is calisthenics for this crew. The prospect of “white flight” (especially for the worst kind of settler-colonialists, the Jews), might not even be a cause for concern. It might be an occasion to celebrate.
But when taxpayers, especially wealthy ones, flee, the tax base erodes. Who is going to be around to pay for all this free stuff? Unless nihilism itself is the endgame, and not the possibilities for a more sustainable New York.
Fearmongering? Islamophobia? Hardly. There is a legitimate reason to actually fear Islamists—most especially if one is Jewish. Just ask the people of Paris, London, Berlin, Stockholm, Brussels, Barcelona, Madrid, Milan and Genoa. Far too many Muslims are never shy in letting the West and their liberalism, and Jews and their very existence, know how much they are despised.
Not everyone is house hunting on Zillow, just yet. We still have toilet paper and bread, after all. Mamdani hasn’t yet taken office. Muggers are still in training. But expect New Yorkers to stock up before shelves to the city grocery stores go bare. Others are signing up for Krav Maga.
Good luck, New York City, should your Jews all decamp for yet another round of refugee status. Jews have been indispensable to New York City’s growth and stature as the cosmopolitan capital of the world. New York without Jews is most certainly not New York—even if Mamdani’s jolly antisemites would prefer it that way.
Good luck, New York City, should your Jews all decamp for yet another round of refugee status. Jews have been indispensable to New York City’s growth and stature as the cosmopolitan capital of the world.
Jews make places more interesting. Mamdani may not realize, or care. We learned during the campaign that he had never heard of Billy Joel’s “New York State of Mind.” It wasn’t clear whether he even knew who Billy Joel was. Doubtless he prefers Jay-Z’s “Empire State of Mind.”
Joel is not only Jewish, but a child of a Holocaust survivor. And Sinatra’s “Theme from New York, New York,” which may become a swan song, was written by John Kander and Fred Ebb, both children of Jewish immigrants. (Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America” is another story, altogether.)
Wherever Jews have been—whether in the West or Middle East—they have enriched its culture, made it more prosperous, and set the pace for innovation and creation.
Be careful what you wish for, Mamdani voters. And if you’re among the Jews who longed for a Muslim who celebrated October 7 to represent your interests, watch how friendless you may soon become.
Thane Rosenbaum is a novelist, essayist, law professor and Distinguished University Professor at Touro University, where he directs the Forum on Life, Culture & Society. He is the legal analyst for CBS News Radio. His most recent book is titled, “Beyond Proportionality: Israel’s Just War in Gaza.”
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