(JTA) — Standing before thousands of teens packed into the BBYO International Convention Saturday night in Philadelphia, Leo Coen and Raquel Rogoff unveiled the culmination of days of collaboration with their peers: a resolution meant to shape not just the next year of Jewish advocacy, but who gets to define it.

“People often say that we are the future of the Jewish people, but BBYO has never waited its turn,” said Coen as his voice echoed through the cavernous event hall. “This resolution claims our seat at the table, and through our ideas, our work and our commitment to leading with purpose.”

Tucked away in conference rooms around downtown Philadelphia throughout the week, Coen and Rogoff deliberated with over three dozen teens from more than 15 countries to draft the 2026 Jewish Youth Assembly (JYA) Resolution, an initiative of the World Jewish Congress.

“Our voices will be heard, our ideas will inform policy and our generation will help guide the Jewish future,” said Rogoff, 16, of Cape Town, South Africa. “We stand together, confident, committed and ready. We are not the future of the Jewish people, we are its present, and together, we are forever resilient.”

Amid chanting crowds, buzzing hallways and closed-door deliberations that stretched on for days, BBYO’s Jewish teens were asserting more than enthusiasm. They were pressing for influence, calling on Jewish leaders to take seriously the forces shaping their daily lives — the normalization of online antisemitism, political polarization and a quiet but persistent mental health strain — and to let their realities guide communal priorities. More than slogans, they were asking for a role in shaping the decisions that define Jewish life.

The resolution, which will be sent off to the WJC’s network of global Jewish leaders, featured a litany of recommendations, ranging from improving interfaith dialogue to calling for increased moderation on social media.

“Our communities are navigating rising antisemitism, social division, mental health challenges, and an online environment where misinformation spreads faster than truth,” the opening paragraph of the resolution read. “We reject a future in which Jewish identity fades through assimilation, is misunderstood by others, or is defined solely through crisis.”

The resolution also included seven recommendations on countering antisemitism and misinformation on social media and artificial intelligence platforms.

This year, the teens were presented with the topic “Strengthening Jewish Resilience in a Time of Global Uncertainty,” but many came into the exercise with their own priorities already front of mind.

Going into the week, which drew roughly 3,400 Jewish teens from 52 countries within BBYO’s network, Coen, a 16-year-old BBYO delegate from London, said that he wanted to discuss the “issue of Jews trusting the extremist right-wing.”

“I think the Jews just back figures that support their values, which isn’t necessarily wrong, but I think Jews are blindly following people, especially in Europe right now, who just say that they like Israel,” said Coen, who attends the prestigious Jewish school JFS in London.

Jesse Vaytsman, 16, from Cleveland, Ohio, said that he came into the week with JYA most concerned about “polarization” and a lack of unity within the Jewish community.

“There are instances where we see people criticize something that we care about, you know, Israel, and then we decide that, okay, they don’t care about Israel, they’re not Jewish,” said Vaytsman, who is the teen president of Ohio for Israel. “We’re struggling to see the idea that we’re not all so different.”

While the teens were given autonomy to insert their ideas into the resolution, representatives from the WJC also offered their own input into the draft.

During the teens’ deliberations on Thursday, Yfat Barak-Cheney, the WJC’s director of technology and human rights, vetoed the teen’s suggestion to recommend “community notes” on social media platforms, a new feature she said had been “a disaster.” Barak-Cheney also advised that the teens not use the word “demand” on resolution prompts that make requests of outside groups.

Michal Yeshurun, the digital advocacy and NextGen communication manager for the WJC, said the WJC representatives had tried to “steer the ship,” but that the final say on the resolution’s contents were on the teens.

BBYO, originally the B’nai B’rith Youth Organization, is an expansive, pluralistic  Jewish teen movement that reaches roughly 70,000 Jewish teens across 750 communities in 65 countries. It is likely the largest Jewish youth movement not affiliated with one of the Jewish denominations.

At last week’s convention, a flagship BBYO event dubbed “the IC,” the teens’ feverish energy was palpable across a packed slate of programming and panels. Ahead of the opening ceremony, where teens later rushed the barrier for a performance by the cast of “Hamilton,” they ran through the convention center’s hall chanting and wearing costumes representing their regions.

But amid the sea of teens mingling throughout the Marriott, the resolution was not the only way young people at the conference sought to assert influence over the direction of Jewish life.

As their peers shuttled between programming and chatted in corners of the sprawling Marriott, the international co-presidents of BBYO, Mercedes Benzaquen, 18, and Logan Reich, 19, were meeting with Jewish institutions to offer a proposition: invite teens into their boardrooms.

The initiative, titled “Seat for the Future,” calls on national Jewish organizations, including the Anti-Defamation League and Jewish Federations of North America, to install teens on their boards.

Thus far, Reich and Benzaquen, who themselves have served on BBYO’s board of directors, said there had been no official commitments to their offer.

“We deserve a seat at the table, because we know that we’re bringing something unique, and we are bringing a voice of a generation that is currently not heard all the time in these spaces,” said Reich, of Asheville, North Carolina.

Reich and Benzaquen, who have spent the past year visiting over 150 BBYO chapters around the world, said that they had seen a “disconnect” between Jewish organizations and what Jewish youth are looking for from leadership. For Reich, the inclusion of Jewish youth within larger organizations had often felt “tokenized.”

“There’s usually not a youth voice or a teen voice, but it’s more people trying to imagine what they want, and so there is this disconnect, because sometimes it feels like it’s two separate things,” said Benzaquen, of Barcelona, Spain.

Perhaps the most recent example of that disconnect on display was the Blue Square Alliance’s Super Bowl ad last week, which drew widespread criticism for its portrayal of antisemitism faced by Jewish teens today.

While Reich said he did not hear much discussion about the ad during the conference, the topic of antisemitism and efforts to combat it loomed large over the convention.

“I know this is a moment sometimes that can feel dark. Understand, you are not victims. You are the ones with the power to make a change in your community,” said Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro at the convention’s opening ceremony.

During his travels over the past year, Reich said that the proliferation of antisemitism on social media had been a frequent topic of discussion.

“I remember when the Myron Gaines and Nick Fuentes stuff blew up when they went to that club, and that was shared, that’s very present in my mind,” said Reich, referring to a video of right-wing influencers singing Ye’s song “Heil Hitler” at a Miami nightclub last month.

Reich said that, while it is often difficult to bear witness to the antisemitic rhetoric online, he said his peers “also feel a responsibility as teen leaders to know what is happening.”

“Kanye West has more Instagram followers than there are Jews in the world,” said Reich. “It’s not a thing that we will change. None of us will, alone, have that reach or influence on a global scale. We also live day to day as proud Jews, and we know that if we continue to be educated and understanding of what the world’s sentiments are, then we can continue to shape and build bridges despite that.”

Rogoff said that she had come into the JYA deliberations hoping to focus on countering the spread of antisemitism on social media, a trend she said had been pervasive in her own experience on platforms.

“It’s very, very common, whether it’s adverts or a trend that’s starting to just be antisemitic or something, I think it’s very common, and it shows up a lot, which is obviously not great,” said Rogoff.

During Friday’s deliberations, the teens told Barak-Cheney that the platforms where they had encountered the most antisemitism were TikTok and Instagram, with many lamenting the prevalence of antisemitic comments on Jewish or Israel-related posts.

“I feel like something that has been happening is Nazi ideologies, like, coming back, and it’s being endorsed by public people like Kanye West and celebrities,” said JYA delegate Amy Hornstein, 17, of Buenos Aires, Argentina. “On social media it’s become a normal thing, and it shouldn’t be.”

Sophia Gleizer, a 17-year-old JYA delegate from Buenos Aires, said that she had been most concerned about addressing a mental health crisis she observed within the Jewish community, one she attributed to a growing sense of isolation.

“We definitely see a decline in trust, we just shutter ourselves more, we’re more reserved,” said Gleizer. “We don’t go to community events as much, and that can definitely take a hit, because when you’re not within your community, we tend to just close ourselves in our own minds.”

Gleizer said that she hoped Jewish leaders would take from the resolution a renewed urgency to start “engaging more active events” to renew connectivity within the Jewish community.

“Fighting antisemitism is definitely the biggest part of it all, but at the same time, it’s just like I mentioned, it’s culture, it’s us liberating ourselves and choosing the world that we want to live with,” said Gleizer.

The BBYO International Convention came amid a wider debate within the Jewish community over whether to invest in efforts to combat antisemitism or focus on strengthening Jewish life.

Earlier this month, Bret Stephens, the right-leaning Jewish New York Times columnist, argued during his 92NY’s annual “The State of World Jewry” speech that funds allocated to groups like the Anti-Defamation League should instead go towards bolstering Jewish education and communal infrastructure.

The convention’s opening ceremony on Thursday night also featured an address from Dan Senor, a columnist and host of the podcast “Call Me Back,” who echoed arguments from his own “State of World Jewry” speech last year that rising antisemitism had created the opportunity for a “Jewish renaissance.” Like Stephens, he urged more investment in Jewish education and identity-building.

“I speak a lot about why we should be focused on the fight against those who discriminate against us and harass us and even do violence against us, but that should never come at the cost of building a robust, strong Jewish identity, and you all embody that,” Senor told the crowd. “You are unapologetic, you are together in terms of a community, you are engaged in Jewish life, and you really give us hope and a real sense of vision of what a renaissance of Jewish life and Diaspora could be.”

For Matt Grossman, the CEO of BBYO, the conversation about where best to focus Jewish communal efforts had been exclusive to the adult realm.

“There’s been a lot of Jewish leaders who’ve been talking about those things, and there’s absolutely zero Jewish teens talking about those things,” said Grossman. “I don’t think they look at it as binary. I don’t think, you know, it’s antisemitism or joy, or the way to fight antisemitism is this or that, I think they look at it as how do they live full lives in the world they live in? How do they use their Jewish faith to inspire change, to build community?”

For Reich, the question was not what initiative to focus on, but who was taking part in the conversation.

“There’s so many things going on in the Jewish community, either things that are happening against us or things that we’re building for us, and if there’s one constant theme in all of that, it’s that we want a seat at the table in building these decisions and continuing to shape what Jewish life looks like,” said Reich.

The post At the BBYO International Convention, Jewish teens demand a seat at the table appeared first on The Forward.

(JTA) — An abandoned synagogue in Pennsylvania’s coal region, which until the early 2000s had served Jewish residents of Mahanoy City for more than 80 years, collapsed late Thursday night, officials and neighbors told the local media.

Emergency crews responded to reports of falling walls and scattered debris at the former Beth Israel Synagogue, a brick building whose cornerstone was laid in 1923.

No injuries were reported, according to Skook News, a news site serving Schuylkill County. Crews began demolishing what was left of the building and carted away the debris.

“It’s sad to see the buildings go, I lived in Mahanoy City or I worked here my whole life, and one by one these historic buildings seem to be going,” Paul Coombe, president and historian of the Mahanoy Area Historical Society, told television station WFMZ.

According to local histories, Mahanoy City’s first organized Jewish congregation dated to 1888. Jewish merchants and families had settled in the area — about an hour and a half northeast of Harrisburg — at the turn of the century, opening shops and businesses serving the booming coal economy.

“When we talk about the Jewish communities and the Rust Belt, the Jews didn’t come to be part of that particular industry or that particular labor. They came to support it,” said Alanna Cooper, chair of Jewish Studies at Case-Western University and an authority on synagogues past their prime. “They understood that it was important for that economic niche to be there in order to support the people who were working the mines or doing the industrial labor.”

At its peak, the Jewish population in the borough rose to around 50 families, who established the synagogue and, in the 1930s, a Jewish cemetery. Like many small-town Jewish communities in the Rust Belt, the congregation at Beth Israel dwindled as the industry and local economy declined in the decades after World War II.

The synagogue ceased formal religious services in 2003, and its doors were locked and the building boarded up, according to Rabbi Akiva Males, a Harrisburg rabbi who wrote about his interest in Beth Israel’s history in a 2012 article. In the process of closing the house of worship, congregation leaders sold its Torah scrolls and offered ritual items to functioning synagogues outside the region.

In 2015, author Ted Merwin reported in the New York Jewish Week that Beth Israel’s stained-glass windows had ended up at Eitz Chayim of Dogwood Park, an Orthodox synagogue on Long Island’s South Shore, under unclear circumstances. Eitz Chayim leaders said they had been given permission to take away the windows by unnamed local leaders.

The same article reported that descendants of Beth Israel families were seeking the return of the windows or payment in “fair market value,” which they hoped to use towards maintaining the cemetery. The case ended up in state court in 2017, although there is no record of how it was resolved.

Merwin said this week that how the eight windows ended up on Long Island remains a mystery, but perhaps one with a satisfying ending.

“The windows are beautiful,” said Merwin. “What is the legacy of these communities that faded out and are forgotten? At least this is some sort of a lasting legacy.”

Cooper, who is writing a book on preserving and disposing of the assets of fading congregations, said any synagogue’s demise touches on Jewish feelings of historical loss.

“American Jews crave community, and we’re losing it now because of our mobility and digital technology,” she said. “The disappearance of community is not just a Jewish story, but it resonates with people. What does it mean to be in a tight-knit community where all of the members were aunts and uncles to all of the kids? That’s kind of getting lost.”

The post A defunct synagogue, reminder of a once-proud community, collapses in Pennsylvania’s coal region appeared first on The Forward.

The Estaiada Bridge in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

It’s not New York, Cincinnati, or Philadelphia. The oldest and first Jewish community in the Americas was established in Brazil, where Sephardic Jews founded the first synagogue in Recife in 1636. This is the fascinating story of the Jews of Brazil.

Following a century of successful discovery and colonization, the Portuguese monarchy told Pedro Alvares Cabral in the year 1500 to take his ships as far west as he could to see if he could find an alternate route to India. Accompanying Cabral on this trip as the interpreter was a Jew, Gaspar da Gama.

Gaspar was “discovered” by famed explorer Vasco da Gama in India, where Vasco da Gama was shocked to find a white man serving as an advisor to one of the local rulers. Vasco da Gama decided that he could use someone who spoke the Eastern languages, so he decided to take this man back with him to Lisbon. He had the Jew convert to Catholicism and adopt the name of Gaspar da Gama in deference to the explorer.

When Cabral traveled to the West, he thought it would be helpful to have Gaspar with him to converse with the natives. After crossing the Atlantic Ocean, they arrived at the land that would eventually be known as Brazil. The first man to set foot on this new land was Gaspar. Unfortunately, his knowledge of Indian dialects was of no value in trying to talk to the Brazilians, and it was then that the Portuguese settlement in Brazil began.

After discovering Brazil, the Portuguese settlers moved westward, hoping to discover gold and silver and extend their landmass. They were known as the Bandeirantes because they carried a bandeira (flag) with them. Based on their names, records suggest that many of them were conversos, hidden Jews. One of the most important Bandeirantes was Fernando de Noronha, a Portuguese converso with many contacts in the Lisbon court. He convinced the crown to lease him the land, and that in exchange, he would give them a wood named Pau Brazil that provided a dye and other precious items he would find. The wood that he sent gave the land the name Brazil.

Historians suggest that his leasing scheme was an effort to help Portuguese Jews by creating a place for them to live away from the growing threats of the Catholic Church and the Inquisition. This was crucial because after they were expelled from Spain in 1492 by the infamous Alhambra Decree, many Jewish Spaniards moved to nearby Portugal where they were far more tolerant of Jews.

But this haven came to an end in 1497 when Portugal expelled its Jews. At this point, some Jews moved to the Netherlands, and others tried to move to the far-flung colonies, hoping to get as far as possible from the centralized government and its Inquisition. Thus, many New Christians or conversos settled in Brazil, where they would benefit from Fernando de Noronha’s settlement.

Dutch Brazil 1624-1654

In 1600, the Dutch’s East Indies Company that imported spices and exotic products from the Far East was highly successful. So the Dutch decided to create a West Indies Company that would import natural resources from New York, the Caribbean Islands, and Brazil, a major producer of sugar.

The Dutch defeated the Portuguese in Northeastern Brazil and began to establish a Dutch settlement there, called New Holland. The Dutch allowed religious freedom in New Holland. As a result, many Portuguese conversos who lived in the Portuguese-controlled areas of Brazil moved to there to become full-fledged Jews once again. Two hundred Dutch Jews were also part of the original Dutch settlement. The Jews established a variety of businesses in New Holland and were particularly involved in the development of Brazil’s sugar industry.

The Street of the Jews in Brazil. Photo: provided.

Most of these Jewish merchants lived on the Rua dos Judeus — Street of the Jews. It was on this street that the first synagogue in the Western Hemisphere was built in 1636. It was called Kahal Tzur Israel, the Rock of Israel.

Synagogue records show a well-organized Jewish community with high participation, including a Talmud Torah school, a tzedakah fund, and an overseeing executive committee. In 1642, Rabbi Isaac Aboab da Fonseca, a well-known Amsterdam rabbi, and Moses Raphael d’Aguilar came to Brazil as spiritual leaders to assist the congregations of Kahal Zur in Recife and Magen Abraham in Mauricia.

For years, the Dutch settlement prospered, but then the West Indies Company began to lose interest in the colony, as the profits were less than other areas under its control. The Portuguese successfully drove the Dutch out of Brazil in 1654, following a nine-year war.

In the Treaty of Guararapes, the Portuguese promised to respect the religious freedom of those who chose to remain in Brazil under Portuguese control. However, in the coming years, the Portuguese went back on their word and accused the Jews of heresy and persecuted them.

At that point, 150 Jewish families chose to return to Amsterdam, but others moved to Dutch-controlled areas of the Western Hemisphere. Twenty-three of these Dutch Jews traveled to New Amsterdam, today’s New York. Peter Stuyvesant was the governor of New Amsterdam and did not like Jews. He asked permission from the West Indies Company to expel them, not realizing that a percentage of the shareholders were in fact Jews. He received a response from Amsterdam telling him to treat “our shareholders” with consideration.

The Inquisition in Brazil

Despite the Jews’ hope that distance would protect them from the long arm of the Inquisition, Portuguese persecution followed them to the New World. In 1647, Isaac de Castro was arrested for teaching Judaism in Portuguese-controlled Brazil. He was deported to Portugal, where the Inquisition sentenced him to death and burned him at the stake. Recognizing the danger, Jews hid their Jewish identities, immigrated to Dutch-controlled areas, or moved to the interior of Brazil where there was less oversight.

Historians have recently come across populations in Brazil’s interior that have seemingly Jewish practices. These groups can’t explain why but they light candles on Friday, read only the “Old Testament,” do not eat pork or shellfish, and refrain from eating bread during Easter.

One of the most famous cases regarding the Inquisition in Brazil was that of Antonio José da Silva. Da Silva was a law student living in Rio de Janeiro, and he also wrote several successful plays. He was denounced to the Inquisition and arrested and sent to Portugal. He refused to recant and was burned at the stake on October 19, 1739. His courage inspired Jewish and non-Jewish Brazilians and in 1996 his story was made into a Brazilian film called O Judeu — The Jew.

The End of Official Persecution and the Moroccan Community

In 1773, a Portuguese royal decree abolished persecution against Jews. As a result, Jews gradually settled in Brazil, although nearly all of the original Brazilian conversos had assimilated by then.

In 1822, after Brazil gained its official independence from Portugal, Moroccan Jews began moving to Brazil. In 1824, they founded a synagogue in Belem (northern Brazil) called Porta do Cebu (Gate of Heaven). By World War I, the Sephardic community of Belem, composed primarily of Moroccans, had approximately 800 members. In the 1950s, an additional wave of Jewish immigration brought more than 3,500 Moroccan Jews to Brazil.

Porta do Cebu (Gate of Heaven) in Belem, Brazil. Photo: provided.

Ashkenazi European Jews began arriving in Brazil around 1850. Brazil was not the preferred destination of European Jews seeking a new life in South America. Jewish and non-Jewish Europeans tended to prefer the more cosmopolitan Argentina. At the beginning of the 20th century, Argentina had one of the highest standards of living in the world. It is possible that the immigrants who chose Brazil did so because the fare was far less than traveling by boat to Buenos Aires, which was 1,500 miles to the south.

Almost 30,000 Western European Jews, mainly from Germany, came to Brazil in the 1920s to escape European antisemitism. By 1929, they had established communities to the extent that there were 27 Jewish schools.

Rise of Antisemitism in Brazil

In the 1930s, Brazilian intellectuals began slandering the Jews, portraying them as non-European, impoverished communists, greedy capitalists, and detrimental to progress. The Nazi Party also encouraged antisemitism among the German diaspora, though they were far more successful in nearby Argentina.

In 1938, Brazil began an active assimilation effort and closed Yiddish newspapers and the Jewish organizations, both secular and religious. A wave of antisemitism followed, including several printings of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. With the outbreak of World War II, Brazil adopted an immigration policy that banned any more Jewish refugees from entering the country.

Yet, the Brazilian ambassador to France, Ambassador Luis Martins de Souza Dantas, saw things differently and heroically chose to ignore the Brazil ban on Jewish immigration. Seeing what would happen to the Jews should they remain in France, he granted immigration visas to hundreds of French Jews, saving their lives from the Holocaust.

After the Holocaust, Brazil adopted a new, more democratic constitution, and antisemitism decreased. Jewish immigration strengthened the community with increasing numbers, and by the 1960s, Brazilian Jewry was thriving. In the 1966 parliamentary elections, six Jews representing various parties were elected to the federal legislature. In addition, Jews served in state legislatures and municipal councils.

Horacio Lafer was the Jewish Minister of Finance in the 1950s and 1960s. He was instrumental in arranging for thousands of displaced Jews from Syria, Lebanon, and other Middle Eastern countries to be able to settle in Brazil.

Modern-Day Brazilian Jewish Community

Today, Brazil has the ninth largest Jewish community in the world, and the second-largest Jewish population in Latin America after Argentina. The Jewish population totals about 130,000. About 70,000 Jews live in Sao Paulo, which is the commercial and industrial heart of Brazil, and another 30,000 live in Rio.

The remaining 30,000 Jews are distributed throughout the other towns in the country. In fact, there is a saying in Brazil that “if a town doesn’t have a Jewish merchant, it doesn’t deserve to be called a town.”

Sao Paulo Jews are particularly proud of their support of the Hospital Israelita Albert Einstein, considered by many the best hospital in all of South America. It was the first hospital outside of the United States to be accredited by the Joint Commission.

In present-day Brazil, the Jewish community lives in peace and stability and is able to practice their religion freely. In contrast to the antisemitism that marred its history, today the greatest threat to Brazilian Jewry is intermarriage and assimilation.

At the same time, due to the efforts of many individuals, Jewish schools, adult education classes, and kosher establishments have begun to flourish.

Incredibly the Kahal Zur synagogue in Recife, the first shul ever built in the Americas, was reopened in 2002, 347 years after it was closed by Portuguese colonial rule.

The Kahal Zur synagogue in Recife, the first shul ever built in the Americas. Photo: provided.

The synagogue had not been used since the mid-17th century when the Portuguese defeated the Dutch at Recife and expelled the estimated 1,500 Jews and banned Judaism. The synagogue is now open once again thanks to the generosity of the Safra banking family.

After World War II, Binyomin Citron was a builder and communal leader in Sao Paulo. In the early 1950s, he met with the leading American sage, Rabbi Aharon Kotler, and proudly told him about a beautiful building that he had built for use as a yeshiva, describing how he was going to produce strong educated Jews just like a great American yeshiva.

With great insight, Rabbi Kotler responded to him, “Buildings don’t create strong educated Jews, people do. If you have the right rabbis as teachers, you can produce great strong educated Jews. We will send you the best rabbi in the system to help build Torah in Brazil.” Rabbi Kotler sent Reb Zelig Privalsky to Brazil, where he and many others helped create a Jewish future for thousands of Brazilian Jews — a future for the oldest Jewish community in the Western Hemisphere.

Rabbi Menachem Levine is the CEO of JDBY-YTT, the largest Jewish school in the Midwest. He served as Rabbi of Congregation Am Echad in San Jose, CA, from 2007 to 2020. He is a popular speaker and writes for numerous publications on Torah, Jewish History, and Contemporary Jewish Topics. Rabbi Levine’s personal website is https://thinktorah.org

A version of this article was originally published at Aish.