Far Rockaway, New York City

Far Rockaway, Queens could well be the “farthest” neighborhood from the rest of New York City, both literally and metaphorically. It sits at the very edge of the map, the easternmost stop on the subway, pressed up against the Nassau County line. In the Sixties, anyone passing through the Mott Avenue station had to pay a double fare — a bit of transit trivia relayed to me by Rabbi Yaakov Rubin, otherwise known as the Rebbe of Far Rockaway, when I visited him earlier this week.

The Rebbe’s stately house sits in a precinct that voted 97% for Andrew Cuomo in last week’s mayoral election. Zohran Mamdani came in third with 1%, behind Curtis Sliwa. So politically speaking, there could hardly be a more outlier jurisdiction in all of New York City. “You said 97%?” the Rebbe asked me, when I mentioned the lopsided Cuomo result. “I’m surprised it wasn’t 99%.”

This near-homogenous vote against Mamdani in Orthodox Jewish enclaves stands out for how dramatically it diverges from districts which lie directly adjacent. Barely a stone’s throw away from the Rebbe residence, another precinct in Far Rockaway voted 61% for Mamdani. Then there is a slice of Williamsburg, Brooklyn where the Democratic candidate received only 2% of the vote. But if you walk just a few blocks north, technically in the same neighborhood, Mamdani won with an 83% landslide.

More than anything else, this disparity owes to the unique insularity of the various Hasidic sects, which often strive to vote as a unified bloc so as to maximize their collective political leverage. Their special aversion to Mamdani only heightened this tendency in 2025.

I asked the Rebbe if this dynamic reflected any communal tensions. “It used to be very tensional,” remarked the Rebbe. “But somehow I think that calmed down a little bit.” For this, he partly credited outgoing Mayor Eric Adams, whose impassioned overtures to Jewish constituencies he’d been pleasantly surprised by.

One manifestation of this Adams-subsidized harmony could be seen at Yeshiva Darchei Torah, a glimmering educational complex that employs five private security guards — the costs of which are reimbursed by government funding. In 2024, the bill amounted to $469,132, making it the largest such expenditure for any private school in New York City.

As bustles of children spilled out into the street for their carpools, an administrative rabbi overseeing the chaos evinced little interest in any political developments. “Me, elections?” he said. “I don’t know anything about elections. It’s the end of the day, we’re trying to get everyone home.”

Indeed, for all the histrionics claiming that Mamdani was about to unleash terror on the Jews, the Hasidic residents of Far Rockaway seemed conspicuously nonchalant — not altogether different from the mellow resignation that seems to have settled in with other demographics. “The truth is, at the end of the day, God appoints him,” an Orthodox electrician and former IDF soldier, Michael Guberman, told me. “Just like he appointed Joe Biden, just like he appointed Trump, just like he appointed Xi and Putin and all these other clowns.” Guberman had conferred with the Rebbe’s son about the vote last week, and opted reluctantly for Cuomo, whom he otherwise described as “garbage”.

Somewhat counterintuitively, the Rebbe does not vote himself — in this or any election. When followers sought his counsel about the recent mayoral race, he would always give the same shrugging answer: “I don’t know enough, in the political world, that I should be able to take the responsibility upon myself… that I should be able to say, I know this candidate is better than that one.” His wife does vote, he noted, most enthusiastically for Donald Trump.

But I had to ask: in light of what some Orthodox Jews had maintained were the exceptionally dire circumstances of this particular election, with Mamdani seen as flirting with slogans such as “Globalize the Intifada” and vehemently denouncing Israel, why didn’t the Rebbe feel compelled to do at least some cursory research?

“I don’t have internet,” he said. As for the newly-elected mayor, would he ever accept a visit from Mamdani? “Why not? I’ll speak to him.”

Shalom Cohen, manager of the meat department at the Rockaway Kosher supermarket, recounted conversations he’s had over the past week with customers. “A lot of them say, move to Florida. Or they say, go to Israel — it’s time to go to Israel.” Did he personally plan to leave? “I would love to go to Israel regardless. But we’ll see what happens.” In other words, no imminent plans for any mass exodus — yet.

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Michael Tracey is a journalist in Jersey City, NJ. He can be found on Substack at Michael Tracey. 

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