Since that dark morning in October, the ground has shifted beneath us. The chants in Western capitals, the applause for atrocity, the professors and neighbors who turned overnight into apologists for murder—October 7 did not change the world; it revealed it. For a brief moment, the masks slipped. The message was unmistakable: the Jew who believes geography or goodwill can protect him has learned nothing from history.
Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove’s sermon at Park Avenue Synagogue may go down as the last sermon of American Judaism.
He spoke with moral clarity, warning that mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani “poses a danger to the security of the New York Jewish community.” He was right—but he spoke into a void. His words echoed through a city that has forgotten how to hear, a community that has forgotten how to fight, and an establishment that confuses eloquence with action. It is not 1933 Berlin, but it is 2025 New York—the Weimar of American Jewry—where comfort has replaced conviction and institutions now exist mainly to preserve themselves. The city’s Jewish leadership, once muscular and cohesive, has become a theater of concern: statements, panels, donor dinners, and little else. Anti-Zionism is fashionable, and moral clarity has become impolite.
That void Cosgrove spoke into is not simply apathy—it is fear. Even now, too many Jewish leaders hesitate to condemn Mamdani with the same courage they reserve for internal feuds. They weigh the cost of being unpopular in polite society against the risk of being unsafe in their own. A generation that once marched for Jewish dignity now whispers its dissent, terrified of being called illiberal by people who cheer for its enemies. This is moral paralysis disguised as civility—the etiquette of decline.
Even our guardians falter. The Anti-Defamation League, still headquartered in this city, issued a careful rebuke of Mamdani—but only after silence and calculation. It now embodies the very caution it was created to counter: an instinct to appease rather than alarm, to measure words instead of mobilize will. Once the embodiment of Jewish defense, it has become a mirror of the city’s elite—a bureaucracy fluent in outrage but timid in action. Its hesitation captures the mood of New York’s Jewish class: powerful in status, powerless in spirit.
The rabbinate fares no better. Too many of our rabbis have mastered the politics of applause—virtue without victory. They hold symposiums on courage but deliver none. Cosgrove’s sermon will be retweeted by colleagues and discussed over smoked salmon; then the city will move on. The influencer class, the federations, the nonprofit professionals—all perform empathy while avoiding consequence. No precinct plans, no protection teams, no coherent strategy. Just choreography. Our ancestors would not recognize this softness. The first generation of American Jews arrived with nothing but grit; they built unions, organized defense leagues, and sent their sons to fight fascism. They forged dignity through danger—some with words, some with work, some with fists, and some with fire. They understood that safety could not be begged for, that power, even when imperfect, was safer than respectability without courage. Their grandchildren inherited that legacy and turned it into programming—a resilience brand without the labor that gives it meaning. Civilizations rarely die from violence; they die from vocabulary.
Critics will call this alarmist. It is not. It is recognition.
The lesson of Weimar is not that hatred kills but that democracies rot when clarity becomes impolite. Our institutions now fear controversy more than catastrophe. They hire consultants to manage optics instead of strategists to manage survival. And yet the hypocrisy runs deeper. Multiculturalism, once the promise of tolerance, has hardened into the civic religion of cowardice—where every culture is sacred except the one that defends itself. It preaches inclusion while partnering with those who chant for Jewish exclusion. A pluralism that welcomes calls to “globalize the intifada” is not pluralism at all; it is moral theater.
Meanwhile, the influencers have replaced the rabbis. They preach to algorithms, not congregations. They sell “Jewish joy” as a digital balm for fear and call it activism. Followers are not fighters; hashtags do not stop hate. The internet has become the sanctuary of a people afraid to act in the streets. What we are watching is the quiet end of normal Jewish life in America—not by catastrophe, but by complacency. The ADL fumbles, the rabbis sermonize, the federations fundraise, and the faithful scroll. Cosgrove’s sermon, noble as it was, changed nothing because the world he spoke to no longer exists. He did not deliver a sermon; he delivered a eulogy for a civic religion that mistook dialogue for defense, philanthropy for power, and inclusion for survival. It marked the moment when American Judaism stopped believing in its own capacity to defend itself. His was the final benediction over a community that had confused assimilation for achievement and civic acceptance for covenant.
If the Jewish community wishes to live, it must begin again—not with statements or symposia, but with the hard work of Hebraization. To Hebraicize is to re-forge Jewish life in the grammar of power: to speak, think, and act as a people who own their destiny. It means rebuilding courage through language, culture, and discipline. Hebraization is Zionism lived daily—self-defense, self-respect, self-governance. It is the antidote to the soft Diaspora Judaism that waits for permission to be strong. To Hebraicize New York Jewry is to raise a generation that prays in Hebrew, fights in Hebrew, and votes in Hebrew conscience; to replace fear with formation—Hebrew schools that teach grit, synagogues that train guardians, federations that fund strategy rather than status. It is to end the age of pleading and begin the age of presence.
Zionism is not nostalgia for a homeland; it is the modern operating system of Jewish survival—discipline, unity, and sovereignty applied wherever Jews live. Without it, Jewish life becomes philanthropy without philosophy, identity without infrastructure. To Hebraicize is not a romantic slogan—it is the civilizational repair of a people who have mistaken acceptance for security. The next mayor of New York will not merely manage sanitation or zoning; he will define the moral climate of a city that remains the Diaspora’s beating heart. If that climate turns hostile, no interfaith brunch will ventilate it. Cosgrove has sounded the final note of the old world. The rest of us must write the first verse of the new—a Hebrew future that refuses to fade politely into history. October 7 was not only Israel’s reckoning; it was ours. This is how it ends: not with hatred, but with hesitation. And this is how it begins again—with the courage to Hebraicize.
Adam Scott Bellos is the founder and CEO of The Israel Innovation Fund, and the driving force behind transformative projects like Wine on the Vine, Project Maccabee, and Herzl AI. He is also the author of the highly anticipated book Never Again Is Not Enough: Why Hebraization Is the Only Way to Save the Diaspora, which compellingly argues for bold solutions to ensure the future of the Jewish community.