One week after Donald Trump’s decisive victory over Vice President Kamala Harris — and Republicans winning control of both the Senate and the House — about 200 people packed the Upper East Side’s Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun on Tuesday evening to hear New York Times columnist Bret Stephens and Nathan Diament, executive director of the Orthodox Union Advocacy Center, analyze what the administration transition— a sharp change in Washington— might mean for American Jews and Israel. The event, hosted by the OU, was moderated by Jewish Insider Editor-in-Chief Josh Kraushaar. 

With antisemitism on the rise globally and Israel continuing to fight in a multifront war against Iran and its proxies, Stephens said it’s “too early” to know how a Trump administration will act on these fronts. “The great question is whether the guy [Republicans] remember is the guy they’re going to get for the next four years,” Stephens said. But Americans are beginning to get “hints of an answer,” Stephens added, referring to Trump’s Cabinet picks, which the president-elect began rolling out earlier this week. Israeli officials have expressed enthusiasm about Trump’s expected incoming national security team, including Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) as secretary of state and Reps. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) and Mike Waltz (R-FL) for ambassador to the U.N. and national security advisor, respectively. (Trump’s most recent selection was made on Tuesday evening as the panel was underway, Pete Hegseth, a Fox News host and Army veteran, to serve as his secretary of defense.)   

Stephens said that Waltz in particular is a “good pick” but also expressed doubt about some of the cabinet. “Above all my biggest reservation is Ukraine, which I think the Trump administration has a profound blindspot on,” he said. Stephens compared the situation in the U.S. to the 1930s. “The bad guys are uniting and they are uniting against us and we are pretending that the people who are fighting for their freedoms in far flung corners of the world are not us,” Stephens said. “We’re pretending that Ukraine’s fight is Ukraine’s alone, that Israel’s fight is just Israel’s fight, same with Taiwan. But we are moving in the same direction as we were before the second World War. I’d like to see a president surrounded by fairly sober leaders who understand just how big the stakes are today.” 

Diament told the crowd of New Yorkers that their senator, Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who after last week’s election will lose his title as Senate majority leader (and his often referred to position as the highest-ranking Jewish elected official in America), “has delivered major pieces of legislation and policy for the state of Israel and for the American Jewish community that earned him that title.” 

Schumer has faced criticism from Jewish leaders for his reluctance to bring the Antisemitism Awareness Act of 2023 to the Senate floor. But Diament said he is “optimistic” that during the lame duck session, until Trump’s inauguration in January, “bills to combat antisemitism will get passed and that Senator Schumer will make that happen.”  

In the aftermath of the election there remains contention about the degree to which — if any — Jewish voters, who overwhelmingly vote for Democratic candidates, have begun to shift toward the Republican Party. But it’s clear that American Jewish politics are at a turning point. 

Pre-election and exit polling in Pennsylvania of Jews across denominations conducted by the OU found that Harris received 40% and Trump 41%, which Diament called “shocking historically in terms of the Jewish vote.” 

“Jewish voters showed consistently that Harris was receiving lower levels of support in the American Jewish community than the Democratic nominee would typically receive,” Diament said. “This was a very unique election for American Jews in terms of Oct. 7 and also what happened here in the U.S., the surge of antisemitism.” Two-thirds of respondents to the OU polls said that Israel was a major factor in their vote.  

While the economy ranked among the most important issues for U.S. voters, personal security was a “super charged” issue in this election for the Jewish electorate specifically, Diament said. “That’s why by-and-large we saw such a shift.” 

Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly attributed the quotes about Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) to Bret Stephens instead of to Nathan Diament.