I saw this coming

Confessions of a former Hebrew School teacher and the Jewish progressive embrace of the Mamdani candidate

New York City future Mayor Zohran Mamdani and NYC Comptroller Brad Lander speak during the Jews For Racial and Economic Justice's Mazals Gala on September 10, 2025, in New York City. (Photo by John Lamparski/Getty Images via JTA)

I might get some pushback or defensiveness on this post that lays out my theory that there is a direct line between decades of complacency of Jewish parents not prioritizing a Jewish education for their children and the election of Zohran Mamdani, the most anti-Israel mayor to ever preside over New York City, the place with the biggest Jewish population in the world outside of Israel.

Maybe I’ll get some agreement.

Or, you may see yourself in this post, and you may get offended.

Either way is okay.

Please share your thoughts below—let’s start a meaningful conversation.

In Part One of this series, I will explain my theory based on my own experiences as a Jewish educator, from nursery school to high school, in the aughts and 2010’s.

I have focused not on Jewish day school education, but the trappings of the supplementary congregational schooling that most non-Orthodox Jews, including me, either attended and/or then sent their own children as affiliated Conservative or Reform Jews.

Offering a glimmer of hope, in Part Two, I will offer my picks of books, podcasts, and Substack reads on how to best catch up and reclaim all the knowledge of Jewish history that you and your children did not learn that brought us to this day.

I know that Jew hatred, now rearing its ugly head in its latest manifestation of antizionism is skyrocketing, and you may think it unfair or even see me as callous for blaming the victim here.

The world asks Jews to be “critical” of Israel to gain acceptance.

I am asking Jews to be “critical” of how we have or have not educated generations of Jewish children, how our Jewish education leaders were asleep at the wheel in the years before October 7th, and how our priorities shifted away from the urgency to teach them about Jewish history to regain our backbone and our story if we are going to live up to our legacy of a people who survive against all odds.

On a fall Sunday morning in the early 2000’s, as I walked from my car in the parking lot of a large suburban Reform temple somewhere in Western New York to the entrance of the religious school wing, a parent driving a minivan out of the carpool lane slowed and rolled her window down to ask me a question.

It was one of the first Sundays of a new year of Hebrew School. That year, I was charged with teaching fourth-grade Jewish holidays, laws, and customs.

The year was so fresh and new. I was so flattered and excited by the notion of a parent wanting to ask a question, to make a connection.

Would she ask me or tell me about how she used the information I sent home last week about how to make Shabbat as a family?

Did she have a question about last week’s lesson about Sukkot, which, during hours of my own unpaid time, I created a lesson that would be informative, interactive, and fun; where I stuck to the textbook but added some extra Hebrew vocabulary?

No.

“Hi Morah Stacy, how are you? Do you have the snack list available yet? I just have to get organized, and I need to know if snacks need to be nut free, thanks.”

Of course.

The snack sign-up list.

Because, like most middle to upper middle class Jewish parents of the GenX generation living in the safe bubble on vacation from history, Hebrew school was just one more activity to schedule into their kids’ overscheduled calendar. And yes, I include myself in this group.

In my nearly 12 years of teaching in a synagogue setting, working with kids from preschool to high school, questions and concerns from parents had less to do with Jewish education, Jewish identity, or what was being taught, and more to do with scheduling. Often, Hebrew School fell to the low rung of the schedule.

At one point, a Conservative synagogue invested in my teaching and sent me to the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City for a two-day training conference on a new curriculum designed for middle school students in supplementary congregational Jewish education.

JTS at the end of the conference provided me with a nifty briefcase loaded with binders of lessons on everything from the order and structure of Jewish prayer, teaching Jewish values through history, and the history of ancient and modern Zionism.

The lessons were interactive and well thought out. But the curriculum’s effectiveness heavily relied on consistent Hebrew school attendance and the commitment of congregant families. The lessons required teaching in an exact sequence. Much classwork entailed long-term collaborative and cumulative group projects.

Mind you, this was in the days before online remote learning.

And the questions from parents kept coming, not questions, exactly, more like validation for permission for their kid to miss more hours of religious school instruction.

“Jonathan has junior football the next six Sundays, but really wants to keep on top of his work. Can you provide us with work he can do at home?”

“I’ll be pulling Hannah out early the next five Wednesdays for dance class. Is that okay?”

“I know Zack has missed the last four Tuesday afternoons because of lacrosse, and I’m sorry, but he now will miss the next five Tuesday afternoons for ski club. Is that okay?”

At least, these were the parents who had the decency to tell me their kid would be out.

Exasperated and frustrated, I confided in my Hebrew school directors my concern about poor attendance and how I was supposed to accomplish teaching anything.

All I got was shrugs of resignation and pushback.

“You are way too passionate about this and are taking this too seriously. It’s only Hebrew School, after all.”

One year, I was scolded when I made it a goal to have 7th-grade students in a reform Temple know how to read and sing the Hatikvah and understand the meaning of the words of the Israeli national anthem before the year ended.

My director’s response: “Your passion for Israel is becoming a problem. It is not our goal to teach or encourage nationalism in our religious school.”

At another synagogue, during my last years of teaching before quitting out of complete frustration, I met with my director, telling her that we needed to prepare our students, especially the oldest ones and the few high schoolers who stuck it out through Hebrew High School as to what misinformation and distortions they may encounter when they reach the college campus.

They need to understand a basic history of the rebirth of the modern state of Israel and our ancient ties to the land of Israel, I’d argue. They need to know how to respond to the false claims that Israel is an apartheid state, committing genocide and stealing land. They need to know what BDS is all about before they get to college.

I said this to my director in 2014.

She said that our students are stressed out already, because of “regular school” and “regular school” homework. That we should just be glad they are coming into a Jewish building to be with Jewish peers, and we are to create a joyful, nurturing environment to nurture joyful Jews.

So, I stuck with the curriculum as best I could. I touched upon Israeli topics lightly. The kids loved learning about all the high-tech innovations coming out of Israel, but ultimately, I knew that would not be enough fodder to counter the lies they’d hear about Israel in college. We listened to Israeli pop music. I continued to help them decode and get a basic working knowledge of Hebrew enough to prepare for their becoming b’nei mitzvot.

I learned that religious school directors’ hands were mostly tied to the whims of the synagogue board, who insisted that the hours of religious school instruction needed to be cut to appease and please dwindling numbers of affiliated congregants who would either become members of synagogues that required less religious school instruction or would sever ties with their synagogues after their youngest left the bimah after their bnei mitzvah.

Jews who were middle-class to upper-middle-class Americans.

Jews who were comfortable, felt completely accepted, never faced discrimination in their wider societal circles, and believed the dark times of antisemitism were behind us, so why prioritize a Jewish education for their kids?

Why, my fellow GenXers thought, should we expose our kids to the torture of after-school Hebrew School like we had to suffer through in the 1970s and 1980s when we had to go not only on Sundays but two or more afternoons a week? Our kids have so much more homework now, they are so much more stressed out now, their coaches on travel soccer and lacrosse are demanding that they must be at every practice, they told their religious school directors.

So cut the hours they did.

The first lessons to be chopped away: Jewish History.

These are just anecdotes from my own lived experience.

Statistically, in a study released in April 2023 by the Jewish Education project, supplementary Hebrew school enrollment in the United States decreased by over 40% from 2006 to 2019, and the total number of Hebrew schools dropped by more than a quarter during the same period, according to EJewishPhilanthropy.

These drops run parallel with decreases in synagogue attendance and synagogue closures and the rise of so-called “Jews of no religion.” The percentage of Jews who identify as being of “no religion” rose from 7% in 2012 to 27% in 2020, according to Pew surveys.

At the same time, the new census found that supplementary schools – also known as Hebrew schools or Sunday schools – are still the most significant way that non-Orthodox American Jewish children receive their Jewish education.

The authors of the census found that the number of students enrolled in these supplementary schools dropped from 230,000 in the 2006-2007 school year down to 135,087 students in the 2019-2020 school year, a 41% decrease.

Couple this with more statistics about Jewish Americans and their connection with each other as a community, Jewish peoplehood, and with Israel.

In a 2020 Pew Study on Jewish American life, 85% of U.S. Jews say they feel at least “some” sense of belonging to the Jewish people, including roughly half who feel “a great deal” of belonging (48%). And eight-in-ten say they feel at least some responsibility to help fellow Jews in need around the world, including 28% who feel “a great deal” of responsibility. In general, Jews by religion are much more likely than Jews of no religion to share these feelings of connection. Looking at the opposite ends of the spectrum, nearly all Orthodox Jews (95%) express a great deal of belonging to the Jewish people, while just 13% of Jews of no religion feel the same way.

It is important to note that both of these studies were conducted before October 7th. In another 2024 Pew Study surveying Jewish Americans about they are experiencing the Israel Hamas war, younger Jews express less favorable attitudes toward the Israeli people and more favorable views of the Palestinian people. Younger Jews also hold somewhat more positive views of the Palestinian Authority.

But again, going back to an anecdotal standpoint and my observations, this same generation of Hebrew school kids who are now either of college age or young adults went through a time of great social isolation during the COVID pandemic to come out the other side to October 7th. Many, Jewish or not, felt lost and causeless. The plight of Gazans for many, including Jews, potentially filled this void.

Over the last two years, I have observed on social media and a few in my own social circles of some Gen Z and Millennial Jews having doubts with, or altogether severing any ties or association with Zionism and Israel.

On the Mothers Against College Antisemitism Facebook page, I read fretful comments from parents whose children joined the anti-Israel movement, who said they were going to wear keffiyehs at their college graduation.

So, when I said I saw “this” coming, the “this” is the election of Zohran Mamdani as a price we are paying for complacency and a weak, watered-down Jewish education that is devoid on lessons on who we were and where we came from.

The “this” is an article from the Free Press that delves into profiling Jewish parents whose adult children voted for Mamdani.

And now New York City elected an antizionist, Jew hating socialist to be its mayor. According to CNN exit polls, 33 percent of Jews who responded who voted in the NYC Mayoral election voted for Zohran Mamdani. The survey finds 63% of Jews voted for independent candidate Andrew Cuomo, and 3% for Republican Curtis Sliwa. The poll’s Jewish sample size is around 710 people. The margin of error and methodology are unclear.

“This” is Jewish complacency.

“This” is Jewish ignorance of Jewish history, and our relationship with socialism.

Hint: Socialism was never good for the Jews.

Of course, if you ask most Jews, they will tell you that it is essential that we never forget the victims or the lessons of the Holocaust.

But the forgetting we are doing now, which has brought us the rise of Democratic Socialists like Zohran Mamdani, have less to do with the Holocaust and more to do with Soviet-era styled antisemitism couched under the veil of antizionism.

Those who know their history should know that.

As evidenced by who is sitting now in Gracie Mansion, many do not.

But there is an antidote, to all this, which I will cover in my next post.

I am not expecting Gen Z or Millennial Jews to begin rushing back to affiliate with synagogue or attend regularly on Friday nights, Saturday mornings, or suddenly show up to help make daily evening or morning minyans.

But that would be nice.

Maybe younger generations will learn the hard way, that our vacation from history is over, and it is time they start learning from previous chapters of our history by picking up a book or plugging into a podcast.

It’s time, young Jews to learn your history.

In my next post, I’ll offer my top picks of where you should get it.