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The Jewish ‘Bubble’ — and Why It Still Matters for Our Future
Muhlenberg College students leaving for a Birthright Israel trip.
Photo: Facebook via Hillel: Taglit-Birthright Israel.
One of the most revealing questions you can ask a Jewish college student today is not what they think about Israel or how they view campus politics. It is whether they ever lived inside a real Jewish world before arriving at school.
Dan Senor‘s three touchstones — Jewish day school, Jewish summer camp, and a meaningful trip to Israel — turn out to be less about nostalgia than about survival. As antisemitism continues to erupt across America’s elite campuses, the students who remain confident, anchored, and unafraid are almost always those who experienced these “Jewish bubbles” long before anyone tried to tell them what being Jewish should mean.
I saw this long before I became a professor embedded in the world of higher education.
In my essay “High School Should Be Upsetting,” I wrote about attending Akiba Hebrew Academy — a pluralistic Jewish day school outside of Philadelphia — where nothing was uniform and everything required thinking. Some classmates kept kosher; others grabbed pizza and burgers freely. Some welcomed Shabbat with reverence; others barely thought about it. These were not superficial differences. They forced us into the daily work of argument, interpretation, and meaning-making. We learned that Jewish identity can withstand disagreement — that disagreement is itself a generative part of Jewish life. That formation did not insulate me from the world. It prepared me for it.
It also gave me something deeper. As I argued recently in “The Lessons We Were Taught and the Ones Being Forgotten,” Jewish classrooms once fused the study of prophets with photographs of Auschwitz, maps of Israel, and the trembling voices of survivors.
We learned early that justice without memory collapses into performance, that Jewish survival is not just historical but moral, and that being a Jew means carrying responsibility, not merely sentiment. These lessons were not designed to make us comfortable. They were designed to make us serious. That seriousness — an identity rooted in obligation rather than performance — is exactly what steadies young Jews today when campus climates turn hostile or morally confused.
Senor’s intuition about the “bubble” is more than anecdotal. It is empirically true. Jewish day school graduates consistently exhibit higher levels of Jewish literacy, deeper ritual practice, and stronger communal commitment, according to decades of Avi Chai Foundation research.
Jewish summer camps extend that formation into adolescence; the Foundation for Jewish Camp has repeatedly shown that alumni maintain Jewish friendships at dramatically higher rates and build Jewish homes of their own with greater confidence and intention. These friendships become ballast — the quiet, steadying presence of peers who share memory and meaning.
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks captured the heart of this when he wrote, “Moses and Aaron epitomize the two great roles in Jewish continuity — horim and morim — parents and teachers. A parent hands on the Jewish heritage to their children; a teacher does likewise to their disciples.” That investment — of presence, attention, and seriousness — is exactly what day schools, camps, youth groups, and Israel programs offer when they are at their best. They do not simply transmit heritage; they cultivate character. They shape conscience. They give young Jews a framework sturdy enough to meet the world without losing themselves.
Israel trips add something irreplaceable: narrative consciousness. Research on Birthright and other immersive Israel programs shows that participants return with a firmer sense of peoplehood, greater historical awareness, and a deeper understanding that being Jewish is a source of responsibility rather than defensiveness. Students who have walked the streets of Jerusalem or listened to the wind on the Golan Heights are not easily undone by slogans or distortions. They have seen complexity — and beauty — for themselves.
These experiences form a pipeline. Day schools cultivate literacy. Camps cultivate community. Israel cultivates memory. Together, they produce adults who are not bewildered by the demands of identity but strengthened by them. When students have studied texts, lived in Jewish community, and seen Jewish history with their own eyes, they carry an inner architecture that does not collapse when external pressure rises.
That was the theme running through the 2025 Tikvah Jewish Leadership Conference, where Senor spoke to a standing-room crowd. Again and again, speakers returned to the same truth: Jewish continuity will not be secured through slogans or reactive outrage. It will be secured through communities and institutions that form Jews — thickly, relationally, substantively. The future belongs to those who build Jewish life with depth, not performance.
And yet we find ourselves in a moment when the very infrastructure that sustains Jewish identity is thinning. Too many families treat day school as a luxury, camp as optional, Israel trips as politically fraught, and synagogue life as intermittent. Young Jews arrive on campus with warm feelings but thin foundations — a Judaism made of nostalgia rather than knowledge. Then the pressure comes, from peers and professors alike, and the identity that once felt easy suddenly feels fragile.
The greatest threat to young Jews today is not a lack of passion. It is a lack of preparation. Jewish identity cannot be episodic. It cannot survive on aesthetic appreciation or occasional observance. It flourishes when it is lived — daily, joyfully, rigorously, and in the company of others. If we want Jewish students to stand tall under pressure, then we must give them foundations deep enough to bear the weight.
Senor’s questions are diagnostic. They reveal whether a young Jew has ever inhabited a Jewish world strong enough to carry them through a hostile one. They show whether a student possesses not just ancestry but anchoring, not just identity but backbone.
The “bubble” is not a retreat from reality. It is preparation for reality. It is where young Jews learn who they are before others attempt to define them. And at a moment when antisemitism is rising, institutions are wobbling, and confusion is spreading, we should not apologize for strengthening these bubbles. We should expand them — boldly.
If we want confident, resilient, morally serious Jewish adults, we must give them confident, resilient, morally serious Jewish childhoods. Identity does not appear out of thin air. It is formed — deliberately, lovingly, and over time.
The bubble, it turns out, is not the weakness our critics imagine.
It is the most important thing we still know how to build.
Samuel J. Abrams is a professor of politics at Sarah Lawrence College and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
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Denmark Unveils $18 Million Plan to Combat Rising Antisemitism Amid Surge in Attacks
People take part in an anti-Israel demonstration in Copenhagen, Denmark, Oct. 4, 2025. Photo: Ritzau Scanpix/Emil Nicolai Helms via REUTERS
Denmark’s government on Tuesday unveiled an $18 million, five-year plan to combat antisemitism through 2030, focusing on security, education, and research, as the country’s Jewish community continues to face a wave of targeted attacks and hostility.
“Following Hamas’s terrorist attack in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and the subsequent war in Gaza, there has been a flare-up in antisemitism in Denmark,” the Danish Justice Ministry said while announcing the new plan.
Building on Denmark’s first national plan to combat antisemitism from 2022, the new initiative will focus on boosting security for Jewish institutions, combating online hate, and introducing programs for children and young people.
As a new addition to the previous plan set to expire at the end of this year, the newly released program will appoint an Education Ministry coordinator to fight antisemitism in schools and establish an association to combat antisemitic hate crimes.
Other measures will include expanded educational programs, giving all upper secondary schools the opportunity to apply for study trips that teach students about the Holocaust and antisemitism.
“Jews in Denmark should neither feel persecuted, harassed, nor receive death threats,” Danish Justice Minister Peter Hummelgaard said in a statement.
“Fighting antisemitism must be done through education and prevention, as well as tough and firm consequences towards those who spread antisemitism and hatred against Jews,” he continued. “Jews in Denmark must be able to live and move freely and safely.”
The new plan also includes the creation of the Weinberger Institute, a research center focused on hate crimes, led by Jonathan Fischer, a former vice president of the Jewish Community of Denmark.
The government’s new initiatives come amid a startling rise in anti-Jewish hostility in the country, with attacks that include vandalism of businesses, murals, and memorials, as well as physical assaults and death threats targeting Jews and Israelis.
According to the Danish Jewish Community’s Department for Mapping and Registering Antisemitic Incidents, the country recorded 207 antisemitic incidents in 2024, up 71 percent from 121 the previous year and up sharply from just nine before the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks.
Over the last few years, the local Jewish community in Denmark has experienced a sharp rise in antisemitic bullying, violence, and death threats.
“Danish Jews are part of our common culture, history, and soul, and we as a society have a responsibility to surround our Jewish fellow citizens when antisemitism rears its ugly face,” Hummelgaard said.
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More Than 200 Celebrities Join Campaign Calling for Israel to Release Convicted Terrorist Marwan Barghouti
Marwan Barghouti gestures as Israeli police bring him into the District Court for his judgment hearing in Tel Aviv, May 20, 2004. Photo: Reuters / Pool / David Silverman.
Paul Simon, Sting, Benedict Cumberbatch, Tilda Swinton, and Margaret Atwood are among the more than 200 cultural figures who have backed a campaign calling for Israel to release Palestinian terrorist mastermind Marwan Barghouti, who is serving five life sentences plus an additional 40 years in prison for orchestrating deadly terrorist attacks during the Second Intifada.
The celebrities who support the campaign are recognizable in the music, film, music, literature, and sports industries. They include actors Ian McKellen, Mark Ruffalo, Cynthia Nixon, Simon Pegg, Susan Sarandon, Javier Bardem, Stephen Fry, Hannah Einbinder, and Ilana Glazer. Others who have joined the campaign include author Sally Rooney; broadcaster and former footballer Gary Lineker; and the musicians Annie Lennox, Brian Eno, Fontaines D.C, Massive Attack, and Mabel.
They are all urging the United Nations and governments around the world to pressure Israel to free Marwan, 66, who has so far spent 23 years in Israeli prison. They also condemn what they describe as Barghouti’s “violent mistreatment and denial of legal rights whilst imprisoned.”
According to Israeli officials, Barghouti co-founded Fatah’s al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, a US-designated terrorist group that carried out suicide bombings and shootings attacks during the Second Intifada from 2000-2005, and formerly was the head of Fatah’s Tanzim armed wing. Barghouti, who denied having such a leadership role, was arrested in 2002 and convicted for helping to plan terrorist attacks during the Second Intifada that killed five civilians. He has been nicknamed the “Palestinian Mandela” by his supporters.
“Everyone that believes in freedom and dignity for the Palestinian people should join in the call for his immediate release” said Scottish actor Brian Cox from “Succession.” French writer Annie Ernaux claimed Barghouti “embodies the possibility of peace which [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu refuses, determined as he is to continue with the expansion of settlements in the West Bank.”
The International Campaign to Free Marwan that was launched on Nov. 29 is spearheading the efforts, which they claim resemble the cultural movement that helped secure the freedom of Nelson Mandela and ended apartheid in South Africa. Others who are backing the campaign to secure Barghouti’s freedom include billionaire entrepreneur Richard Branson, journalist Peter Beinart, Israeli architect Eyal Weizman, author and speaker Gabor Maté, and activist and author Angela Davis.
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StandWithUs Legal Team Requests Florida Investigate Guinness World Records for Anti-Israel Policy
In 2019, students, faculty and parents from the San Diego Jewish Academy broke the Guinness World Record for most sandwiches made in under three minutes, all of which were donated to San Diego’s Alpha Project, an organization dedicated to helping the homeless achieve self-sufficiency. Photo: Courtesy.
StandWithUs, the international nonprofit organization that fights antisemitism and promotes education about Israel, has called on the state of Florida to investigate Guinness World Records (GWR) over its ban on applications from Israel and to ensure that public funds do not support companies engaged in such a “discriminatory policy” against the Jewish state.
StandWithUs Saidoff Law, which carries out legal action for the pro-Israel group, sent a letter on Thursday to members of the Florida State Board of Administration (SBA) following the revelation this week that GWR has enforced a policy since 2023 not to accept submission applications from Israel and the Palestinian territories. Saidoff Law formally requested that the board investigate GWR and its affiliate Guinness World Records North America regarding the “boycott policy” to see if they should be included on Florida’s official list of “Scrutinized Companies or Other Entities that Boycott Israel” in accordance with Florida law. Guinness World Records North America is registered in Florida as a foreign profit corporation.
Created in 2016, the list currently includes 109 companies or entities that participate in a boycott of Israel, including actions that limit commercial relations with Israel or Israeli-controlled territories. The SBA is prohibited from acquiring direct holdings of the companies on this list, which is updated and published every quarter following review and approval by SBA trustees. In late September, 91 new entities were added to the list.
StandWithUs Saidoff Law is urging the Florida State Board of Administration to review GWR’s actions to see if they can be added on the list. “We hope that prompt action from the SBA will reaffirm Florida’s strong commitment to opposing discriminatory boycotts and upholding the integrity of the state’s investment and contracting policies,” the letter stated. It was signed by StandWithUs Saidoff Law Director Yael Lerman and Assistant Director Gadi Dotz.
Guinness World Records recently rejected a submission application by an Israeli charity that is organizing an event where a record-breaking 2,000 kidney donors will gather in one place. GWR said that since November 2023, “we are not generally processing record applications from the Palestinian Territories [sic] or Israel, or where either is given as the attempt location, except those done in cooperation with a UN humanitarian aid relief agency.” The policy was enforced shortly after the start of the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip, which began with the Hamas-led massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
GWR said it is “monitoring the situation carefully” and its policy is subject to a monthly review. “We hope to be in a position to receive new inquiries soon,” it noted.
StandwithUs Saidoff Law wrote in its letter to Florida’s State Board of Administration that GWR’s “refusal to engage in commercial relations with entities in Israel and Israeli-controlled territories … appears to be intentional, discriminatory in that it singles out Israel and Israeli-controlled territories despite its political neutrality policy, and is not based on neutral business criteria. Also, it squarely falls within Florida’s definition of a boycott of Israel.”
According to Florida law, a boycott of Israel means “refusing to deal, terminating business activities, or taking other actions to limit commercial relations with Israel, or persons or entities doing business in Israel or in Israeli-controlled territories, in a discriminatory manner.”