I was a Bernie supporter. This year, I’m voting Trump. Here’s why liberal Jews like me made the switch
Only one party — and one candidate — has shown me that they truly care about the terrifying spike in left-wing antisemitism
Former President Donald Trump campaigns in Allentown, Pennsylvania on Oct. 29. Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
At age 9, I purchased a Hebrew-language Barack Obama yard sign, and convinced my father to place it on our front lawn. By 12, I was knocking on doors and making phone calls for then-Senate candidate Cory Booker. As a bar mitzvah present, I was gifted an “I am a Democrat” license plate.
At the 2016 Democratic National Convention, I was a student advocating for Bernie Sanders’ candidacy; I argued vehemently that “the model for Jewish Democrats should be Bernie Sanders, for transparency and integrity.” On my 18th birthday, I spent the morning registering to vote as a Democrat. In 2020, I volunteered for Rep. Jamaal Bowman’s progressive campaign, and hosted debate watch parties for other Democratic candidates nationwide.
This year, I’m voting for former President Donald Trump. I have spoken with dozens of lifelong liberal Jews who are doing the same. We are making this switch because we are experiencing the worst rise of antisemitism in modern American history; many of us have been personally touched by this spike in hatred. For me, after attending both the Democratic and Republican National Conventions, it became clear that only one party — and one candidate — is taking this terrifying development seriously.
Anyone who knows me personally will vouch that for most of my life, I have been relentlessly mocked for my liberal values and left-leaning politics. I took a knee for Black Lives Matter and marched at the Supreme Court when Roe v. Wade was overturned.
In the last year, it is not my progressivism that has brought me mockery, but my proud Jewish identity. As a student at Harvard after Oct. 7, I was challenged by a Harvard employee to debate whether Jews orchestrated 9/11. An Israeli student was asked to leave a class due to her nationality. Another Israeli was assaulted at the business school, and a Jewish undergraduate student was spat on while wearing a kippah.
I thought my ideological allies in the progressive movement would stand up to object. They didn’t. Instead, I was shocked to see them argue that sexual violence had not taken place on Oct. 7 — it had — or even that the attack itself was a form of legitimate resistance.
I was far from alone in experiencing extraordinary pain, on campus, because I am a Jew and a Zionist. Across the country, Jewish students have had their noses broken, been denied entry to classes, and been told to go back to Poland; they have woken up to drawn swastikas and vandalized mezuzahs outside their dorms.
But I — like dozens of my peers who have entrusted me with their stories — didn’t give up. I believed I could be a Zionist and a progressive. Not wanting to vote for a Republican, I committed myself to changing the Democratic party from within.
I attended and spoke at the Republican National Convention in July. But I deliberately did not endorse Trump. Instead, I spoke on national media publicly — and to Democratic political operatives, privately — to request that I, or other progressive Jewish students, be given a similar speaking slot at the Democratic National Convention. The rise of left-wing antisemitism on campus had become a major national story; making space for a dedicated discussion of it at the DNC would have been the right thing to do.
But our offers to speak weren’t accepted. Still, I attended the Democratic National Convention with an open mind.
Although protesters outside the DNC harassed Chicago police officers, expressed support for Hamas and threatened to beat up Jewish counterprotesters, President Joe Biden not only refused to condemn their behavior but instead argued, “those protesters out in the street, they have a point.”
It was not the first time I had been disappointed, in the past 13 months, by Democratic leaders’ failure to acknowledge the severity of the problem of growing left-wing antisemitism. It wouldn’t be the last.
Representatives from Jewish Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s office told a group of Jewish students, of which I was a part, that the bipartisan Antisemitism Awareness Act, which would alleviate the concerns of many Jewish students, would be given a vote in the Senate before the presidential election. It didn’t happen.
It will be difficult for me to forget the shame of watching Rep. Jerry Nadler fall asleep during a congressional hearing, as I and other Jewish students gave testimony about our experiences of antisemitism.
During a different hearing, Rep. Bobby Scott used our congressional testimony to criticize Republicans for focusing too much on antisemitism. Tellingly, the majority of Democrats on that committee — like my former congressman, Jamaal Bowman — did not show up. Instead, I watched Democratic elected officials I had previously looked up to, like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rep. Ayanna Pressley, come to our college campuses to show solidarity with the encampments, protesters from which were following and intimidating me and my Zionist peers on our way to class.
Republican officials, including Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, Rep. Elise Stefanik, and Rep. Burgess Owens, have repeatedly sought to speak with Jewish students directly to discuss practical policy solutions to our concerns.
Far fewer Democrats have offered to do the same.
For months, I tried to keep a bipartisan outlook, and not publicly criticize the party that I had hoped would stand up to the antisemitic bigots in their tent.
I endorsed Trump, and began to campaign with and for him, only once it became clear those aspirations were illusionary.
Less than a week before the election, Vice President Kamala Harris has still refused to offer any comprehensive plan to tackle the issue of campus antisemitism. In contrast, the Trump campaign has repeatedly invited me and other Jewish students to sit in the front row as the former president has clearly articulated policies that would help to alleviate our community’s concerns.
These include the immediate passing of the Antisemitism Awareness Act; the withholding of federal funds from college campuses that fail to take sufficient action against antisemitism; and, if such failures persist at those institutions, the revocation of tax-exempt status and even accreditation. These common-sense policies have either never been endorsed by Harris, or never even mentioned.
Yes, I also have concerns about antisemitism on the right. I have consistently registered objections to Tucker Carlson’s appearances with the campaign, including by walking out of the RNC when he was given a speaking slot. I criticized the campaign when a surrogate was set to appear with Candace Owens. My vote for Trump is not a vote to enable right-wing antisemitism; it is an affirmation of my commitment to fighting antisemitism, whether it comes from the left or the right.
I did not support Trump in 2016 or 2020. I did not support him 6 months ago. But American Jewish students like me deserve to walk our campuses in safety. Harris’ campaign has insisted that Trump will endanger Jews. Yet Jews are already in danger, and she has done nothing to help us.
I agree with Harris on one thing: It is time to move forward. Therefore, I will be voting to turn the page from this disastrous administration, and supporting Trump.
I encourage Jewish Americans concerned about antisemitism to do the same.
A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.
If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
