For many Jews, a year of rising antisemitism and Israel’s ongoing war with Hamas in Gaza culminated this Election Day, when they could let political leaders know how they felt about the hate and the nation’s handling of the international conflict.

While Jewish voters are by no means a monolith, in Baltimore City and county, home to one of the country’s largest Jewish populations, many traditionally vote for Democrats. This year, however, like other voters around the country, more broke for the Republicans and former President Donald Trump.

Both Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, courted Jewish voters, who make up about 2.4% of the U.S. population and tens to hundreds of thousands of people in swing states. They tried to court Jewish voters with campaign promises to defend Israel and ward off antisemitism.

Harris’ campaign, for instance, played up her role in passing billions in security funding for Israel, while President-elect Trump’s fully supported Israel’s “war on terror” and vowed to stomp out campus protestors, The Washington Post reported.

“We have been watching very carefully what candidates were saying about Israel and about antisemitism, whether they were making statements about anti-war or not, whether they were condemning antisemitism,” said Rabbi Velvel Belinsky, who leads Pikesville’s American Russian Institute for Enrichment of Life synagogue and community center.

The conflict in Gaza was sparked on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas militants crossed into Israel, killed more than 1,000 Israelis and took 250 Israelis as hostages. It was the deadliest attack on Israel since it was founded nearly 80 years ago.

Israel responded swiftly, bombing and sending to troops in Gaza in an ongoing effort to free hostages and stamp out Hamas, which Palestinian authorities estimate has killed more than 40,000 Gazans. Protests against Israel popped up in some cities and on college campuses, and some included antisemitic messaging.

“I want Israel to survive,” said Moshe Goldstein, a local rabbi who voted for Trump.

Despite Harris’ assertions that she will fight for Israel’s right to defend itself, Goldstein said Harris and President Joe Biden have a “far-left, anti-Israel agenda.” Trump, he said, has “a proven record as a friend of Israel.”

But Brett Levinson, a Jewish eye doctor in the Baltimore area, said proudly, “I voted for the vice president, and I voted for freedom.”

Levinson scoffed at the idea that Trump would do anything to protect Israel or stem the rising tide of antisemitism in the United States. That’s because Trump and some of his followers have flirted with anti-Jewish rhetoric.

Harris appears to have threaded the needle with many Jewish voters even though she did not win the election. An exit poll from liberal, pro-Israel Jewish group J Street and GBAO Strategies shows about 71% of Jewish voters opted for Harris while 26% voted for Trump. A Fox News-Associated Press exit poll found 66% of Jews voted for Harris while 32% voted for Trump.

Jewish women were second only to Black women in their support for Harris. Almost 90% of Jewish women voted for the Democrat, motivated by the reproductive freedom Jewish women have fought for since the 1960s, according to the J Street/GBAO Strategies exit poll. Unlike some religions, Jewish law does not dictate that a fetus is a human in the womb — only after birth. According to My Jewish Learning, 83% of American Jews support abortion rights.

Both the J Street and Fox-AP polls signaled a modest turn to the right compared with the 2020 presidential election. That year, an exit poll released by J Street showed 77% of Jewish voters selected President Joe Biden, while 21% chose Trump. AP survey results after the 2020 presidential race showed 69% of Jews voted for Biden, while 30% voted for Trump.

This shift is in line with national data indicating that portions of the country, including the Baltimore area, shifted right, though they still leaned Democratic.

Harris may have sown confusion among some Jewish voters as she attempted to woo Muslim voters who sided with Palestinians in the Israel-Gaza conflict by calling for more humanitarian aid for Palestinians and an end to the war, said Sam Markstein, the national political director at the Republican Jewish Coalition.

Harris, who many voters tied to Biden, also turned off some Muslim voters because of the president’s position as a self-described Zionist who has pushed for military assistance to Israel. Some believed she would not stray from Biden’s path, prompting many Muslim voters in heavily Arab American cities and towns like Dearborn, Michigan, to skip the election or vote against her.

Trump also tried to pursue votes from both Jewish and Muslim voters. A month before Election Day, the Trump campaign opened an office in Hamtramck, Michigan, a small city of 28,000 people where about 40% are of Middle Eastern or North African descent. But Trump’s relationship with Israel and stance against antisemitism by proxy have appeared more solid than Harris’, Markstein said.

For all the headlines about the Israel-Gaza war, Jewish voters also had other concerns when they voted, said Howard Libit, the executive director of the Baltimore Jewish Council, a local advocacy group.

“Jews, like everybody else who lives in this country, are obviously also concerned about the economic situation, about international wars, about safety and about personal rights,” Libit said.

Trump’s stances on other issues could have alienated some Jewish voters and lessened the rightward shift, Libit said. For instance, Trump has called for the mass deportations of undocumented immigrants under his incoming administration, following years of record numbers of illegal border crossings. Harris, meanwhile, said she would limit deportations and advocate for a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.

“There are many Jewish voters who still think about how Jews came to this country as immigrants,” Libit said.

Waves of hundreds of thousands of Jewish people have emigrated to the United States since the 17th century. Notably, about 200,000 European Jewish refugees came to the country in the late 1930s and 1940s to flee Nazi persecution, though some were turned back and perished at the hands of the Nazis.

“And so,” Libit said, “they still place a great value on immigration and on respecting new Americans.”