(JTA) — This article was produced as part of JTA’s Teen Journalism Fellowship, a program that works with Jewish teens around the world to report on issues that affect their lives. Author Drew Kaplan is a student at Denver Jewish Day School.

Denver Jewish Day School’s principal never thought he would spend so much time looking at school furniture catalogs. 

Jeremy Golubcow-Teglasi needed to turn a former workspace into a classroom for a middle school math class and occasional Hebrew classes. Between this and needing to increase the capacity in a few other rooms, he was in the market for new desks, chairs, and tables to serve the 37 new students who have joined DJDS over the past two years. 

Enrollment in DJDS’ upper division, which is middle and high school, is 19% higher than it was two years ago. 

“Space has suddenly become a real constraint,” said Golubcow-Teglasi, who leads the upper school. “When you put 70 more people in a building that normally houses 120, you have to get creative about space.” Currently, the upper division has 189 students, an all-time high.

He and others describe the growth as a reflection of the rise in antisemitism and increase in Jewish identity following the war in Israel, causing many families to seek a larger Jewish community for their children. As a result, enrollment in Jewish schools like DJDS has increased since Oct. 7, following a similar nationwide trend. Now Jewish schools across the country are having to suddenly adapt to surges in enrollment, causing schools like DJDS—where this reporter has been a student for the past 12 years—to hire more teachers, buy more furniture, and adapt their class offerings.

Across the country, more than half of surveyed U.S. schools have seen an increase in students or families considering enrollment since Oct. 7, according to Prizmah, a network of Jewish day schools and yeshivas.

Additionally, 60% of the 72 schools it surveyed last school year, “identified new students who enrolled in Jewish day schools this school year as a result of the change in climate post Oct. 7,” according to a “Trends Update” released in February.

Donna Klein High School in Palm Beach County, Florida, saw an increase of 177 students the year following Oct. 7. Of those students, 35 families said they made the switch due to antisemitism or anti-Zionism.

Similar to Donna Klein, 80% of families joined DJDS since the 2023-24 school year, citing Jewish Identity & Environment as influencing their decision to transfer. Additionally 67% cited school-wide community as a reason, 61% cited Physical Safety, and 53% cited social-emotional safety. These same reasons, according to Golubcow-Teglasi, also contributed to the higher retention rates seen at DJDS. 

Few families cited antisemitism explicitly as a factor for transferring to DJDS, according to Golubcow-Teglasi, who said it was sometimes mentioned as a factor, but he was never entirely sold that Oct. 7 alone is driving DJDS’s enrollment growth. “But I think it’s a reasonable hypothesis.” 

Enrollment has increased in two distinct “surges,” Golubcow-Teglasi said. The first was after the Covid-19 pandemic, and the subsequent school year, when families were drawn to a small, largely in-person school. But that accelerated pattern of enrollment flattened out until the second “surge” hit following the Oct. 7 attacks. 

The school year after the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel, 21 new students joined the Upper Division. Annabelle Dennis and Hailey Lutz were among the new transfers. 

Dennis, a junior, transferred from a private Catholic school. “I really wanted a smaller school and community,” she said, “the kids were questionable — really just antisemitic.” 

Dennis struggled as many students came up to her and made hateful comments. “People have asked me why I don’t have horns, and people have told me I killed their Lord and Savior, and they can never forgive me,” she said.

The school’s administration “could have done a better job,” Dennis said. She said that regarding most cases of antisemitism, the administration looked the other way, “sometimes it was handled, but most of the time, they did not handle anything.”

Lutz, a senior at DJDS, transferred the school year after Oct. 7 because she was tired of her schoolmates constantly bringing up the situation in Israel and Gaza. As one of the only Jews at her school, she looked to transfer to a school where she could be herself. 

Students at her school “had a lot of questions on what was going on, especially with all the misinformation being spread on social media,” she said. “People weren’t necessarily antisemitic or anti-Jewish, but they were asking questions. She said she felt as if classmates were trying to get her to say that Israel was committing a genocide in Gaza or agree with other assertions that Lutz described as “propaganda or misinformation.”

Holden Demain spent his first semester of 11th grade away from DJDS, the school he’s attended since Kindergarten, attending school in Washington, D.C. as part of the U.S. Senate Page Program.

After returning to DJDS in the middle of the 2024-2025 school year, Demain noticed the changes at the school.

“The hallways are damn crowded, which is great,” Demain said. “There is so much more opportunity to create different kinds of clubs.”

Demain leads one such club, Zemirot, where students sing traditional Jewish songs. This year at DJDS, there is also a new baking club, a Hacky Sack club, and a financial literacy club.

Similar to Golubcow-Teglasi, Demain does not fully attribute the surge in enrollment to Oct. 7; he also credits the population growth in Denver and students switching from other Jewish schools in the area.

“I think it’s been really good. There are a bunch of new opportunities, like you can make new friends that you never would have met before,” said Kaitlin Schatz, a junior entering her fifth year at DJDS. Schatz explains how it has been fun to see new students with different backgrounds. 

But at the same time, more students being in the building means that there are space constraints. “We do not have enough gym space,” Golubcow-Teglasi said, to allow both high schoolers and middle schoolers to use the gym during lunch.  There has been so much demand for the Advanced Placement United States History class this year that it is being offered in two different periods, whereas before it ran every other year. Last year, AP European History was also offered in two different periods for the first time.

Jerry Rotenberg, an upper-division Judaics teacher and student council advisor, said that teacher workload has definitely increased. “There’s more work to do — more tests and assignments to grade, and preparations take longer,” Rotenberg noted that it isn’t necessarily an added stress, just more on his plate.

Meanwhile, during particularly busy periods, some classes meet in the hallways. 

“It’s probably the worst place to have a class,” said Hannah Gruenwald, a senior who is taking her yearbook editor class in the DJDS lobby. It makes sense that the two-student class would be put in this situation, Gruenwald says, “but it isn’t conducive to learning. Having a table would be nice.” 

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(JTA) — The new U.S. ambassador to Poland, Thomas Rose, has ignited debate after delivering a speech in Warsaw calling the idea of Polish complicity a “grotesque falsehood” on par with antisemitic conspiracy theories.

Meanwhile, Polish government officials criticized a post by Israel’s Holocaust memorial about the Holocaust in Poland, in a sign of renewed pressure over public characterizations of Poland’s role in the Holocaust.

Speaking last week at the annual convention of the International Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists, Rose denounced what he said was “the slander that Poland somehow bears responsibility for the crimes committed by others.”

The idea of Polish complicity, which the Polish government rejects, had “poisoned relations between Jews and Poles, between Israel and Poland and between the United States and Poland for decades,” said Rose, the Jewish former publisher of the Jerusalem Post who was confirmed to the ambassadorship on Oct. 7.

“For decades, Poland has suffered a grave historic injustice, the persistent belief that Poland shares guilt for the barbaric crimes committed against it. It’s a grotesque falsehood and the equivalent of a blood libel against the Polish people and Polish nation,” he said, using a term that typically refers to an antisemitic lie that has spurred violence against Jews. “No nation fought longer or suffered more, which is why applying a debtor-creditor relationship between Poland and the world for a genocide perpetrated by others on its soil against its people is historically false, and I believe morally scandalous.”

Rose was repeating ideas that he had laid out during his confirmation hearing over the summer — which themselves marked a departure from the stance the State Department took during the first Trump administration.

In 2018, then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson issued a rare rebuke of the Polish government’s decision to criminalize — and potentially punish with prison time — expressions of blame against Poland for crimes that the government maintained had been exclusively carried out by Germans.

The State Department did not respond to a request for comment about whether Rose’s speech in Warsaw reflects an official U.S. position.

While hundreds of Poles are recognized as “Righteous Among the Nations” for their roles in protecting Jews during the Holocaust, there is a wide consensus — including from Polish institutions in the past — that many other Poles participated in the mass slaughter that claimed 3 million Polish Jews, nearly 90% of those who had lived there before the war. Poles also killed Jews returning to their village after the war, in an incident seen as a symbol of Polish complicity.

Earlier this year, Polish voters elected a right-wing Holocaust revisionist historian as president. Karol Nowricki comes from the Law and Justice Party, which promotes historical narratives about Polish victimhood and resistance to the Nazis, while delegitimizing research on Polish antisemitism or Poles who killed Jews.

While the prime minister does not come from the Law and Justice Party, it holds a crucial role in governance in Poland, seen as a bulwark for U.S. interests in the region against Russia.

Rose said he hoped his speech leads to further discussion of how Poland has been maligned in Holocaust history. Sharing his speech on X, he wrote, “Yesterday evening, I began a conversation that—I hope—will contribute to correcting a very unfair historical narrative about Poland.”

On Sunday, a second dustup took place, as Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial and museum posted on X about the yellow stars that Polish Jews were forced to wear.

“Poland was the first country where Jews were forced to wear a distinctive badge in order to isolate them from the surrounding population,” Yad Vashem tweeted.

Radosław Sikorski, Poland’s minister of foreign affairs, responded with a request for a correction: “Please specify that it was ‚German-occupied’ Poland, @yadvashem,” he wrote.

Polish officials from across the ideological spectrum shared in the criticism. “Poland didn’t exist at that time, after it was raided by Germany and Russia. Its territory was partitioned and incorporated to the Third Reich and the USSR,” a left-wing lawmaker, Anna-Maria Żukowska, said in a tweet that tagged the Israeli embassy.

Both Yad Vashem and its chairman, Dani Dayan, Yad Vashem’s chairman, soon responded acknowledging the concerns. “Yad Vashem presents the historical realities of Nazism and WWII, including countries under German occupation, control or influence. Poland was indeed under German occupation,” Dayan wrote. “This is clearly reflected in our material. Any other interpretation misreads our commitment to accuracy.”

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NARVON, PA – A thick, rolling gobble fills the barn in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania as several hundred turkeys stand shoulder to shoulder, shifting in waves like a loud, feathered mob.

They don’t know it, but they’re part of a gamble — one that could reshape the kosher poultry business in America. The question is: Will enough people want a Thanksgiving turkey, at a price between $140 and $400, that tastes like bubbe’s did?

Supermarket poultry has become a fixture of the Jewish kitchen — easy to find, easy to cook, easy to forget. As organic and ethically raised meats gain traction across the country, many kosher families are still left with factory-farmed options that claim tradition but taste like compromise.

This flock belongs to Chosen Farms, a kosher heritage poultry startup run by Yadidya and Miriam Greenberg, a husband-and-wife team who split their work between two states: turkeys here in Lancaster County with help from an Amish farmer, and chickens on 30 acres in Pemberton, New Jersey.

Once the turkeys reach market weight, they begin a Thanksgiving relay — first to a kosher processor in upstate New York, then to Pemberton to be frozen and packed. Labels come off the printer like boarding passes, rattling out destinations: California. Colorado. Florida. Nevada. New York. Orders pile up like suitcases in an airport the day before the holiday.

These are heritage birds — the kind that existed before industrial farming redesigned poultry around speed and uniformity. They come from older bloodlines that could walk, flap their wings and develop muscle over time. Today’s supermarket birds are bred to grow fat fast, their skin stretched thin over rapidly expanding bodies. They arrive like something delivered by algorithm. Heritage birds arrive with history.

The turkeys live twice as long as their grocery store counterparts. They keep the genetics, and much of the flavor, of the past. If you want your chicken soup to taste like your bubbe’s version, you start with one of these.

As a teenager, Miriam volunteered on farms in Maryland and later trained as a classical chef in New York. She speaks about modern poultry with the bluntness of someone who has tasted too much of it. “They neutered all the flavors. It just tastes like mush,” she said.

Heritage birds, she insists, give you something more flavorful. “It’s like tasting butter after a lifetime of margarine.”

Heritage breeds and Hanukkah goose

Miriam isn’t the only one making the case for flavor. Gidon van Emden, CEO of Kol Foods, which specializes in kosher grass-fed beef, lamb and pasture-raised chicken, has seen growing curiosity about heritage breeds in the kosher market. Consumers tell him the difference is noticeable immediately.

Van Emden believes the kosher market is hungry — not just for cleaner food, but for food that feels intentional. “If you mistreat the animal — bad feed, bad genetics — it’ll taste more watery,” he said.

He and Yadidya go back years. Greenberg taught him how to be a shochet, a butcher. Now, Kol Foods and Chosen Farms are among the few companies trying to expand what kosher poultry can be.

Yadidya bought the Pemberton property in 2022, and soon after married Miriam. The pasture is in the same swath of South Jersey where Holocaust survivors resettled and rebuilt their lives running chicken farms.

These day, in the kitchen, Yadidya boxes frozen turkeys — lining cardboard with insulated wrap, dropping in ice packs and sealing each shipment with a strip of tape. Their sukkah from last month’s holiday still stands in the yard, a reminder that the Jewish calendar doesn’t always make room for farm schedules. Their two-year-old brown herding dog, Peanut Butter, zigzagged between the chickens, nipping at their heels.

Chosen Farms sold its first batch of kosher heritage turkeys last year. It was a modest 20 birds. This year, they tripled that to 60. There’s no marketing budget, no social media campaign. Orders came in online by word of mouth, passed between butchers, rabbis, chefs and families looking for something better than the standard frozen brick with a pop-up timer.

Not all of their orders are for November. Yadidya pried open a freezer and revealed rows of heritage geese. The traditional Ashkenazi “Hanukkah goose” was once a staple dish in Eastern Europe, especially for Jews who couldn’t afford beef. Its rendered fat, known as schmaltz, became the secret weapon for frying latkes.

“We’re one of the only places in the country raising and selling kosher geese,” Yadidya said. Goose requires specialized equipment to pluck, and at $30 a pound, it’s not exactly an impulse buy. But Greenberg said demand returns every winter, a culinary echo of an older Jewish kitchen.

Farm life, Jewish life

Living on a farm doesn’t mean leaving Jewish life behind. The Greenbergs chose Pemberton precisely because it keeps them connected. They’re 30 minutes from Cherry Hill and Lakewood, both home to large Orthodox communities and kosher restaurants. There’s a mikvah nearby, and a daily minyan within a 20-minute drive. “There are farmers who move two hours away from Jewish life and then struggle,” he said. “I didn’t want that life. We paid more to be close.”

Friends drive in to spend Shabbat with them. In the summer, Jewish camping groups pitch tents by the trees. “We’re far enough to have space,” Yadidya said, “but close enough to still feel part of something.”

Chosen Farms isn’t an anomaly. It’s part of a small but growing movement of Jews choosing to make their living in agriculture. The Jewish Farmers Network, which began in 2017, now counts 1,800 farmers across 46 states. Some run educational farms for school trips, but others simply farm. No workshops. No signage. Just soil, livestock and spreadsheets.

“When Jewish people enter agriculture, it often feels like they’re departing from Judaism,” said Shani Mink, the group’s co-founder and executive director. “But we try to show that it can actually be a deeper encounter with it — because at its core, Judaism is agrarian.”

The Greenbergs’ farm still feels young — part vision, part construction site. They’re hoping to add heritage ducks next year, starting with the Silver Appleyard breed, which currently has no kosher supplier. A small curbside farm stand is in the works, where they could sell eggs, meat and Miriam’s sourdough bread.

The Greenbergs, as is their tradition, are hosting Thanksgiving on the farm with visiting family and friends. The turkeys will be their own, of course. Peanut Butter will make his rounds.

In a few days, ovens will preheat. Football games will hum in the background. Parade balloons will float past Macy’s like oversized guests. And somewhere between the gobbling and the grace after meals, one Jewish farm will find out whether a taste from the past still belongs to the future.

The post This Jewish family is betting the farm on Thanksgiving turkeys like bubbe cooked appeared first on The Forward.