NEW YORK — Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove, a prominent US Jewish leader in New York City, said Monday that Jewish support for New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani was unsurprising, while calling for a more expansive view of Zionism in the Jewish community.

Cosgrove, the rabbi of Park Avenue Synagogue, is a leading voice in the US Conservative community and a firm supporter of Israel.

Cosgrove, speaking at the biennial national assembly of the American Zionist Movement in Manhattan, said that Israeli policies toward the Palestinians, the rightward drift of the Israeli government, and intolerance in the American Jewish community toward differing political views have contributed to disaffection among liberal Jews.

“I may be constitutionally incapable of walking away from Israel, but others have and will continue to do so, before October 7th and all the more since. There’s a limit to the self-flagellating exercise of supporting a state that neither recognizes you nor represents your values,” Cosgrove said.

For Jews who grew up after the Holocaust, Israel’s claim to the land in the interest of survival was obvious, and Arab attacks on Israel sidelined concerns about Palestinian rights, Cosgrove said, adding that this has changed due to settlement expansion and the military rule of the West Bank, sometimes coupled with ignorance about the history of the conflict.

He added that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the only prime minister many American Jews are familiar with due to his long tenure, is “beholden to extremist parties” whose policies go against the values of liberal US Jews.

“In the eyes of American Jews, the West Bank’s settlements and illiberal policies they represent pose a threat to Israel’s founding promise, democracy,” he said. “For a progressive American Jew, if the project of Israel is to provide a homeland and security to a historically vulnerable Jewish minority, then how can the state not respond to the needs of the vulnerable minority in its midst?”

“You may not like the fact that 30 percent of New York Jews voted for Mamdani, but you........

© The Times of Israel