Batya Ungar-Sargon: The Left Abandoned Its Jews

Over the past several years, American Jews have watched as prejudice against their community has risen precipitously. In 2025, a string of violence events began to unfold: In April, someone tried to set fire to Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro’s home. In May, two young Israeli embassy staffers, Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim, were gunned down by a self-identified leftist who said he “did it for Palestine.” The next month, a Molotov cocktail was thrown at a free-the-hostages rally in Colorado, leaving 12 injured and one 82-year-old killed. Meanwhile, across the country, protests calling to “globalize the intifada” and destroy the state of Israel have persisted and spread.

While Jew hatred spans the political spectrum, each of these instances came from the radical left, where antisemitic sentiments have spread in the wake of October 7. Which raises a once unthinkable question: For over a century, American Jews were among the Democratic Party’s most devoted supporters—helping build the labor movement, marching alongside black Americans for civil rights, and showing up for virtually every progressive cause in between. But now, is the left still a place where Jews belong?

That is the question that Batya Ungar-Sargon takes on in her new book, The Jews and the Left. A Free Press contributor, host of Batya! on NewsNation, and author of Bad News and Second Class, she sits down with me to talk about the history of Jewish allegiance to the Democratic Party—and how that may be changing.

We discuss the Jewish-American story from its origins in the 1600s; what people get wrong about the Founders’ relationship with Jews; why Jews become ardent Democrats; the left’s response to October 7—and how that signaled a crack in the relationship; how antisemitism on the left compares to its counterpart on the right; how we should think about figures like Graham Platner, J.D. Vance, and Zohran Mamdani; and why, through it all, Batya remains bullish on America.