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On the day before Donald J Trump’s inauguration, life on 13th Avenue in Borough Park is awash in a grey, Sunday rush. Mothers in thick black coats speak into flip-phones while pushing strollers with small children through the cold. Bearded young men rush to Yeshivas as they roll their suitcases on the sidewalk. Haredim on the street appear more perturbed by the dark clouds above interrupting their shopping plans than the incoming presidential administration.

In the world of 13th Avenue, Haredim seem sealed away from the fads of modern culture. Instead of radio news about TikTok bans, the Judaica store blasts Hebrew religious music. Even chatter about the ceasefire in Israel-Gaza is hushed as patrons stream out of kosher supermarkets, plastic bags in hand. Passing by boutiques for modest clothing and stores selling Orthodox-themed toy sets, it is easy to forget you are walking through a neighborhood in modern New York City, let alone one of the city’s most loyal voting strongholds for Trump.

In the 2024 presidential election, New York’s Haredi community, including residents in Borough Park, overwhelmingly voted for Trump, and at a significantly stronger rate than in the 2020 election. 

According to NYC Election Atlas, a project out of the City University of New York that tracks voting data, residents in the three neighborhoods with the highest concentration of Haredi Jews in New York City — Borough Park, South Williamsburg and Crown Heights — voted for Trump in stronger numbers in 2024 than in 2020, with support for Trump spreading to previously purple and blue election districts.

In south Crown Heights, in election districts around Kingston Avenue, where many Haredim who follow the Chabad Lubavitch movement live, five election districts cast the majority of their votes for Trump: up from only two in 2020. In South Williamsburg, a bastion of Satmar Hasidism, the majority of voters in every election district voted Republican.

And back on 13th Avenue, where Hasidic Jews of different movements intersect on their way to work, school and the neighborhood store, Trump earned over 90% of votes in every district along that street, voters turning out for Trump at a higher rate in 2024 than in 2020. 

New York’s Haredim considered a range of factors as they approached the ballot box last year: concerns of safety and heightened fears of antisemitism amidst the Israel-Hamas war that statistics alone cannot capture. Shtetl spoke to 18 Haredi adults — working, shopping and socializing on the streets of Brooklyn — during the six weeks leading up to inauguration. In their own words, New York’s Haredim shared what informed their vote in the 2024 election, and what they are now hoping to see from Trump's second term in office.

“I want my kids to be safe.”

“Watching the decline of safety in this country was a huge concern,” said Crown Heights resident Rivka Gremont. “As a mom, I want my children to be able to walk around, and I want to know that they're going to be healthy, happy, and safe. That's just a primary need for every person,” she said.

Gremont is a rebbetzin, or the wife of a rabbi, and she is a follower of the Chabad-Lubavitcher movement: a movement of Hasidic Judaism whose headquarters are based in Crown Heights. She noted that the Chabad-Lubavitcher Rebbe had advocated for increased prayer time in public schools during his life, something she hopes to see the Trump administration replicate by implementing a “moment of silence” in public schools. 

“There is separation of church and state, and we must respect that,” Gremont said. “But it doesn't mean that we let go of a moral society.” She pointed to the Noahide Laws, the seven laws that traditional Jews believe are applicable to the entire world. While Judaism does not proselytize, Gremont said she believes all schools should teach these basic moral principles, which she believed modern society was abandoning. 

“We just believe that every person should live their highest, most moral life,” she said.

“My top priority? It’s probably less crime, better economy,” said Shimon, a rabbinical student in Williamsburg. “I liked Trump from 2016 already, but I was below 18 and couldn’t vote,” said Fekete, who is now in his early 20s.

Shimon, who did not wish to disclose his last name or face on the record, said he considered voting for Trump as a natural extension of his religious beliefs as an Orthodox Jew. “I’m religious, so usually the conservatives are more aligned with conservative beliefs, so it’s automatic,” he said. “Their policy is more focused on economic issues than social issues,” he added. He also referenced Ronald Reagan’s ‘Peace Through Strength’ approach to foreign policy as one that he admired. 

“Trump will have Israel’s back”

Shtetl spoke to most Haredi voters several weeks before Wednesday’s ceasefire-hostage release deal, back when an end to the Israel-Hamas war seemed like mere theory. Yet all of the Haredi people Shtetl spoke to, including those in neighborhoods where anti-Zionist denominations dominate, said they hoped Trump would prioritize the security of the Jewish state over a ceasefire in Gaza or a two-state solution.

“I want to see a closer relationship, a better relationship,” said Shmuel Rosenstein, 37, a special education teacher in Crown Heights. “If we're being honest, I liked the way that President Biden started off, but as the months went by, I felt that the support was weakening. There was a withholding of weapons,” he said, referring to Biden’s threats in May 2024 to withhold weapons if Israel invaded Rafah. “And I didn't think it was a strong enough show of support for Israel."

Malki Kahn, a Haredi woman and mother of seven children in Borough Park, said that she hopes Trump will bring stability to the Middle East. “He'll bring in stability through inspiring fear for people who want to harm the Jewish community,” she said. “I think he has a very strong hand in the world at large,” Kahn said. “He’s not as much of a politician.”

Despite some Haredi denominations being ideologically anti-Zionist, such as the Satmar movement in Williamsburg, almost all the Haredi people we interviewed said they hoped that Trump will usher in a stronger relationship between the U.S. and Israel. 

Mark Trencher, founder of the Nishma Research group, has conducted research on Haredi people who are non-Zionist nevertheless espousing pro-Israel political views. In a 2024 survey of Orthodox Jewish American adults, only 28% of Haredim said they felt “strongly pro-Zionistic,” whereas 83% of Haredim said they felt a “very strong emotional connection” to the state of Israel.

Trencher said that when he followed up with some respondents, he noticed there was a “disconnect” between many Haredi people’s understanding of what “Zionism” means and the emotional connection they feel to Jewish people living in Israel-Palestine.

“So maybe they were thinking, I’m not really connected to Israel as a nation, but they are connected to the people,” Trencher explained over Zoom. “The brothers and sisters who are dying and fighting, and there are Hasidic people in Israel as well.”

What’s left of the Haredi “Left”

Not every Haredi person we spoke to voted for Trump or were looking forward to his administration. In fact, a small minority in the Haredi community disagreed with Trump’s character and chose not to vote in the 2024 election, or they voted for third party candidates. 

A retired Hasidic man, Mordecai Mandelbaum, said he approached Shtetl on the streets of Borough Park because he understood he was participating in a project about Trump, and he wanted to dispel the idea that the Haredi community was a monolith.

“Trump matched every value [of mine], just the opposite,” remarked Mandelbaum, who did not vote in 2024. He mentioned Trump's reaction to the 2020 election as the main reason he found him dangerous. “He doesn't care about democracy. He's ready to overthrow the election because it's good for him,” he said, referring to the dispute over the 2020 election results, which culminated in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Mandelbaum conceded that Trump would be good for relations between the United States and Israel, which he considered “very, very important” to him, but he was critical about whether Trump’s intentions were genuine, at one point even comparing him to Hitler. “With a guy like that, you never know what’s going to be tomorrow,” Mandelbaum said. “Whatever he does, it’s good for him.”

Crown Heights resident Bassya, 68, is a registered Democrat, even though most of her family voted for Trump. She wrote in a third party candidate in the 2024 election.

Bassya, who did not want to include her last name or her face on the record, said that her two most important issues as a voter were support for Israel and keeping a “woke agenda” outside of public schools. Though she sent her kids to yeshivas, she feels strongly about how the government spends her tax dollars. “I don't feel that Trump is ideologically, truly a supporter of Israel,” she said. “I just don’t support him as a person.”

At the same time, Bassya said she viewed Harris as too soft when it came to Israel, and too forgiving in her approach to allowing leftist ideas to enter American education curricula. “I also don't think that Harris gave me any sense of confidence, either, in her competence,” she said.

Trencher explained that people critical of Trump like Mandelbaum and Bassya are minorities in the Haredi community, and they are actually overrepresented in surveys and research projects. Haredim with left-leaning ideas are disproportionately exposed to media from outside the Jewish world, Trencher explained, and therefore more willing to speak with reporters and take surveys.

“Which means that if we get 93 percent saying they're going to vote for Trump, the actual number might be 95 or 96 percent,” he said. Strict adherence to Jewish law creates an overall culture of rejecting progressivism in Haredi society that pushes them to vote Republican, Trencher explained; the exception being that Haredim often vote Democrat in local elections. 

“Haredi Jews are very pragmatic,” Trencher said. For example, in local elections, Trencher explained that Haredim will vote for whichever candidate has the most hands-off approach to the Yeshiva system, regardless of party.

Haredi women — the stories off-camera

When reporting this project, Haredi women often refused to speak or requested to speak off-camera. Several women asked to share their views anonymously, as they were well-known in their communities and did not want to go on the record. 

Jessica Roda, a professor of Jewish Studies who recently wrote a book on Orthodox women in North America, explained that this is related to a culture of modesty in Haredi society. Many Haredi women subscribe to the concept of “tsnius,” Roda explains in her book, a culture of modesty which encompasses both dress and body language, as well as interaction with the media. Women in Haredi communities do not want to draw outsized attention to themselves. On top of that, Haredi women generally view politics as men’s affairs.

“This is not their business,” Roda told Shtetl on Zoom. “They will just follow a little bit. They will hear what their husband, what the men are saying,” she said. 

She went on to explain that Haredi women are likely to nevertheless privately vote for Trump, as there is a large emphasis on the traditional family model in Haredi society that Trump embodies. 

“If you take the magazines of the women, it’s all about the children and consolidating the family and the mothers,” Roda said. “So all that the Democrats are defending, like the LGBTQ or the trans, it’s like ‘Oh my God! You don’t touch that.’”

Grabbing a bagel in Brooklyn

In addition to concerns of safety and antisemitism, a few Haredim mentioned the economy as a primary factor driving them to vote for Trump in 2024. 

“Everything goes up,” said Michael Stoessel, 53, a diamond cutter and a part-time worker at Williamsburg Bagels. “You see how much the cost of gas before, and how it is now?” he said. “The dollar is nothing.”

“Haredi incomes are not low,” said Trencher, who found a median Haredi family income in America in one survey to be $135,000. 

“But they have huge families and live in expensive areas, so the vast majority are living paycheck to paycheck,” Trencher said. And statistics about poverty can be misleading. “The poverty line is not aimed at assessing the finances of families with six or seven children,” Trencher explained.

Stoessel went on to share that he hoped from Trump “the best for the Jewish people, against terror” when it came to Israel, and also for him to take a tougher stance on illegal immigration. “You want to come here? It’s a legal process, that’s it!” Stoessel said. “Why do you have to come in no legal?” But above all else, Stoessel shared the number one thing he hoped to see from the incoming Trump administration:

“Change,” Stoessel said. “Because the last years was no good, not with illegal immigrants, not with the prices and not with the terror in the whole world.” Stoessel paused. Another employee reached over to process a customer’s bagel order on the cashier. “So let’s hope for a change,” Stoessel said.