Ariel Kohane, a supporter of Donald Trump, holds a Trump kippah in front of Trump Tower in midtown Manhattan, Nov. 6, 2024. (Luke Tress)
(New York Jewish Week) — Ariel Kohane, an Orthodox Jewish supporter of Donald Trump, was at the Metropolitan Republican Club on the Upper East Side watching Fox News when the network announced that Trump had won the presidency.
The room “erupted into the wildest cheers” he said, with attendees jumping up and down, clapping and giving each other hugs and high-fives.
“I felt the greatest moment of unbridled joy and happiness as well as relief and thankfulness to God and to Trump and to all the people who voted for him, especially in the swing states,” Kohane said on Wednesday.
Kohane is among the minority of Jews — and the majority of Orthodox voters — who supported Trump. While some Jews in the city gathered to mourn on Wednesday after Trump’s victory, the once and future president’s supporters celebrated at home, at Republican events and on the streets.
After leaving the Metropolitan Republican Club, Kohane and some friends hit up two NYC Republican landmarks: the Fox News studio in Midtown, then to Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue. He got home around 5 a.m., he said. He returned to Trump Tower on Wednesday afternoon to meet with friends, wearing a red kippah bearing Trump’s name and a backpack with an “I Voted” sticker on it.
The exception to widespread Jewish support for Kamala Harris was in Orthodox communities, where Trump appeared to win the vast majority of voters, according to both anecdotal reports ahead of the election and preliminary polling data. In New York City, the Brooklyn neighborhoods of Williamsburg, Crown Heights, Borough Park and Midwood, all of which are predominantly Orthodox, posted deep-red results on Tuesday.
That support drove a surprisingly good result for the former president among Jews statewide: While exit polls show that Harris beat Trump at least two-to-one among American Jews overall, her margin in New York was far slimmer: 54% to 46%.
Orthodox Jews have trended Republican for decades, a combination of the party’s robust support for Israel and conservative social policies. Trump in particular has gained admirers among haredi Orthodox Jews. His photo has graced the covers of the community’s magazines and, during the campaign, he visited the gravesite of the Chabad Hasidic movement’s late leader on the one-year anniversary of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack. Politicians from both parties often visit the gravesite.
Support for Trump has become such a norm in Orthodox communities that multiple people who attended morning services on Wednesday said online that they joked about the congregation skipping Tachanun, a daily penitential prayer, in celebration of his win. Other posts from Orthodox Jews gently urged Trump supporters not to gloat over those who voted for Harris.
“If you voted for Trump, then you shouldn’t be a big shot to other people, ‘cause it’s not right,” a rabbi’s daughter in New Jersey says in an Instagram video. “But if you voted for Kamala Harris, don’t be so sad, ‘cause Hashem runs the world.”
Trump’s Orthodox supporters in New York cited domestic, foreign and Jewish issues as their reasons for supporting him, including the economy, immigration, his hardline stance toward Iran, his support for Israel and Republican policies toward antisemitism.
Republicans have led the congressional inquiry into antisemitism on college campuses, several Trump supporters noted, while they felt Democratic leaders made overtures to anti-Israel activists. Several criticized New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, who is Jewish, for reportedly telling Columbia University administrators to wait out Republican pressure over anti-Israel protests. Schumer’s office has denied the claim.
Ayton Eller, an Orthodox Jewish Trump supporter, said he had encountered aggressive anti-Israel protesters outside Columbia, linking the demonstrations to the Democrats.
“I think the Democratic party, it was their followers doing all that,” Eller said in a phone interview. “It’s just still mind-boggling that that could happen in New York.”
Eller is a longtime Trump supporter who did cold-calling for the candidate’s 2016 campaign from Trump Tower. On Sunday, ahead of the election, he drove his Tesla Model S, adorned with flags supporting the Republican candidate, in a “Jews for Trump” caravan from Brooklyn into Midtown Manhattan.
He called Trump’s election win “a great victory.”
“We see what happened when there’s a Democratic president. There was chaos in the Middle East, we had Oct. 7 in Israel, and then war in Israel, and there was war in Ukraine,” he said. “There was no world peace like under President Trump.”
He faulted Harris for her ties to hardline left-wing politicians in the so-called “Squad” of progressives who are harshly critical of Israel, and for not attending Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s appearance in Congress this year.
“It was a slap in the face after what happened to Israel,” Eller said, referring to the Oct. 7 attack. “How can any Jew vote for her?”
Nathaniel Gavronsky, a Republican political activist who lives on the Upper East Side, said outside Trump Tower on Wednesday that he wasn’t surprised by Trump’s victory because he believes Harris was a weak candidate. He was one of a crowd of revelers: Tourists lined the sidewalk outside the building to pose in front of the tower’s gilded entrance and massive American flag, and Trump supporters wearing red MAGA hats took group selfies in the lobby. A Trump store sold merchandise such as chocolate bars that look like gold bullion and Trump-branded water bottles.
Gavronsky, who described himself as traditionally Jewish but not Orthodox, said he was politically non-partisan until around 2012, when Democrats, he said, went too far to the left, especially when it comes to the party’s focus on racial issues. He took to Trump and was at Trump Tower for the 2015 candidacy launch, he said while standing in front of the escalator Trump famously descended before announcing he would run.
Gavronsky criticized liberal New York Jews, saying they “think The New York Times is the Torah,” and for, he said, supporting peace agreements with extremists.
“You cannot appease someone who wants to gouge your eyeballs out,” he said of anti-Israel protesters who chant “From the river to the sea,” which many Israel supporters view as a call to eliminate the country.
“A lot of Jews in New York have this belief that the Democrats are on their side but that’s not the case,” he said. Among his priorities for Trump’s first term was deporting anti-Israel protesters who do not have U.S. citizenship.
Several Jews were among a small number of activists who gathered Wednesday evening outside the New York Public Library to counter-protest against an anti-Trump event. Trump’s opponents stood on the library’s steps with a banner saying “NO DICTATORS in the USA,” and carried a sign that said “Every day we will fight his hate,” with Trump’s face crossed out by a red X.
One of the Trump supporters, Israeli-American Ronen Levy, unfurled a banner nearby that said, “F— Harris.”
Levy said he decided to stage the protest “because they hate our country. They hate democracy.” Some of Trump’s opponents confronted him, leading to a verbal altercation. Activists from both sides recognized each other from previous demonstrations.
“It’s a free country, we have the right to protest, we have a right to disagree, we have a right to hold our signs. You don’t have a right to come to me,” Levy said.
Eliezer Offenbacher, another of Trump’s supporters, sought to deescalate, telling Levy, “Don’t start a fight.”
Offenbacher said he was a “lapsed Democrat” who is liberal on social issues, but said he was won over by Trump’s first presidency. He switched his party affiliation last year.
“I never liked the guy. I’ll be honest with you. On ‘The Apprentice,’ I thought he was horrible. ‘You’re fired’ and all that,” Offenbacher said.
“But when he became president, I thought he did a great job on almost everything,” Offenbacher said, citing Trump’s response to the COVID pandemic, handling of the economy and support for the working class.
Offenbacher, an Orthodox Brooklyn resident, said he used to attend a dialogue group with Palestinians in Bay Ridge and enjoyed speaking with them, and that he mourned the loss of life on both sides in the Gaza war. He faulted liberals for their criticism of Israel, though, and said he hoped Trump’s opposition to Iran would end the conflict.
“All these people here who are yapping about Gaza, what would they do if their homes were being shelled every night?” he said. “I’m very much hoping that last night’s events will turn the whole chapter on its face.
“I’m hoping the next four years lay a groundwork for a normal America that I always loved and believed in,” he said. “The world is in a big, horrible place without America the way it was, without the right values.”
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