Rabbi Eli C. Freedman, Senior Rabbi Jill L. Maderer, and Cantor Bradley Hyman lead a service marking Erev Rosh Hashanah at Rodeph Shalom in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US, Sept. 6, 2021. REUTERS/Rachel Wisniewski

A few weeks ago, driving through West Philadelphia with my son, I pointed out the streets where my grandparents once lived and the places where an older generation of our family once belonged.

We ended up talking about my long-shuttered synagogue, Beth T’filah in Overbrook Park. It was a few-hundred-family, postwar shul — modest in scale, but central to the rhythms of Jewish life that shaped my childhood. Later that evening, wanting to show him what that world looked like, I searched online for old photographs.

What I found stunned and troubled me.

Despite being a student of history — Philadelphia history, specifically — I was unprepared for what appeared on my screen. Image after image of synagogues I had never even heard of: scattered throughout Strawberry Mansion, Logan, West Philadelphia, and Wynnefield Heights.

These weren’t simple storefront shuls. They were grand structures with limestone façades, soaring sanctuaries, and stained-glass windows that radiated pride. Community centers that once throbbed with life. Physical evidence of a Jewish world far deeper and more vibrant than I had ever understood; stories of families and countless lives lived mere miles from where I grew up, yet entirely unknown to me.

My son leaned over my shoulder, studying the images with urgent curiosity. “This was all here? We had this many synagogues?” he asked, scrolling through sanctuaries the size of concert halls.

He knows American Jewish life as something smaller, more cautious, more scattered. These images showed him — and reminded me — that we once built with astonishing boldness. That we were visible, rooted, unafraid.

Most of these buildings no longer house Jewish life. Many are churches now; others stand abandoned or have disappeared entirely. Hidden City Philadelphia’s haunting photographs of the last synagogues of Strawberry Mansion capture this painful truth: magnificent sanctuaries built for bustling communities now sit silent, their pasts forgotten by most who walk by.

This is not just Philadelphia’s story. The same pattern of memory and erasure appears in Detroit, St. Louis, Newark, Cleveland, Chicago, and dozens of other cities. Entire Jewish neighborhoods — once dense, spirited, and civically intertwined — have faded from view.

What They Built, and Why

It is worth remembering how and why these communities emerged. In the mid-20th century, Jewish families, many first- or second-generation Americans, moved to new neighborhoods seeking opportunity, safety, and stability. Veterans returned from war and built small businesses. Women organized sisterhoods and ran charity circles. Men’s clubs held debates, breakfasts, and social events. Hebrew schools, JCCs, Zionist youth groups, choirs, lecture series, and summer camps created the thick connective tissue of Jewish life. These weren’t simply clusters of Jewish families; they were ecosystems of belonging.

At the center of each ecosystem stood the synagogue – not just as a place to pray, but as a civic anchor: a social hub, a public square, a home for both the sacred and the ordinary. People went there for weekday minyanim and Hebrew school pickups, for community meetings and interfaith dialogues, for holiday carnivals and debates about Israel, for fundraisers and grief support. For everything. The synagogue was where American Jewish life displayed its fullness.

Our grandparents and their peers understood something we risk forgetting: Jewish life must be built. It does not survive on good intentions. It does not thrive on nostalgia. They had little money, limited political power, and uncertain futures; yet they erected schools before they had enough students, synagogues before they had enough members to fill the pews, and community centers before they knew how they would pay the heating bill. They assumed a Jewish future and constructed toward it.

The Danger of Our Caution

Today we are more cautious. We consolidate, close, downsize, and strategize. We measure risk before we imagine possibility. We worry about demographics and budgets and “market realities.” In an age of rising antisemitism, cultural erasure, and digital amnesia, the instinct to retreat has never been stronger or more dangerous.

When Jewish visibility shrinks, when communal footprints recede, when institutions atrophy, the void does not stay empty. Others fill it, often with hostility.

I understand the fear. Antisemitism is not theoretical, it’s spray-painted on our synagogues, screamed at our students, legislated in international forums. Jewish communities are smaller than they were. Intermarriage rates are high. Affiliation is down. These are facts, not talking points.

But here’s what else is true: dispersion makes us more vulnerable, not less. When Jews scatter, when we become invisible, when our institutions disappear, we don’t become safer – we become isolated targets. The antisemite doesn’t stop hating because the synagogue closed; he simply faces less organized resistance. A community that cannot gather cannot defend itself. A community without institutions cannot transmit its values, protect its members, or advocate for its interests.

Jewish survival has never been secured by retreat. It has always been secured by presence — visible, confident, communal presence. By building synagogues and schools and youth groups and cultural institutions. By creating Jewish spaces where identity is transmitted, where belonging is felt, where children grow up understanding that they are part of something larger and older and enduring. This is not recklessness. This is how minorities survive in hostile environments: through solidarity, visibility, and the infrastructure of mutual support.

What We Owe the Future

Driving through Philadelphia, I tried to convey this to my son: Jewish life is not something you simply inherit. It must be constructed, sustained, reinforced.

Our grandparents did not build out of sentimentality. They built out of responsibility, conviction, and love. They believed that their children and grandchildren would need places to pray, learn, gather, argue, celebrate, and mourn. They built because they believed Jewish life mattered in America and deserved permanence.

We need that mindset again; not as a wistful tribute to a vanished past, but as a practical and moral imperative. At a moment when antisemitism is resurgent and Jewish visibility is contested, we cannot afford minimalism. We should be founding more schools, not fewer. More synagogues, not fewer. More youth programs, more minyanim, more cultural centers, more visible Jewish infrastructure.

I know the objections. I’ve heard them all, often from people I respect.

“Those synagogues emptied out — why repeat the same mistakes?” We’re not talking about blind replication. We’re talking about recovering the audacity to build while learning from both successes and failures. The mid-century model had flaws — exclusivity, rigidity, the costs of suburbanization itself. But the alternative we’ve chosen — building little to nothing, consolidating endlessly — guarantees decline. You can’t iterate on what you refuse to create.

“Young Jews want something different — they’re not joiners, they want authenticity and flexibility.” Every generation believes it has invented a new kind of Judaism. Yes, forms must evolve. But the underlying need for physical Jewish space where real relationships form, where children absorb identity through presence and participation, where community becomes tangible — that need hasn’t changed. Digital community kept us connected during COVID, but you cannot transmit Jewish identity through a screen. You cannot raise Jewish children on Zoom.

“We can’t afford it — demographics are against us, costs are too high.” Our grandparents were poorer. They faced quotas, discrimination, and far more virulent antisemitism. They built anyway. Resource constraints are real, but they’re often cover for lack of will. And the math works in reverse: not building costs more. Every shuttered Hebrew school is a generation we fail to educate. Every consolidated synagogue is a neighborhood we abandon. Managed decline is still decline, just slower and more expensive.

“Consolidation is smart stewardship — better one strong institution than several struggling ones.” There’s a difference between strategic consolidation and institutional surrender dressed up as prudence. Yes, merge when it genuinely strengthens. But we’ve spent two decades consolidating, and Jewish life hasn’t gotten stronger — it’s gotten smaller, more distant, more fragile. At some point, “stewardship” becomes a euphemism for retreat.

The isolation crisis is real. American institutions of all kinds are weakening. Loneliness is epidemic. These are not reasons to build less — they are reasons to build more.

And it is happening. Despite the challenges, Jewish communities across North America are building. The Stanley I. Chera Sephardic Academy in Manhattan has grown from 20 preschool students in 2011 to 240 students through sixth grade in 2025, adding campuses and expanding rapidly.

New York Jewish day schools saw their largest single-year enrollment increase since 2020, growing by over 4,000 students in 2023-2024. Post-October 7, UJA-Federation of New York launched new subsidies responding to what they call “the surge” — a spike in demand for Jewish schools, camps, and synagogues. Eighteen synagogues across the United States are now operating or preparing Jewish after-school programs, serving nearly 300 students and growing. From Brooklyn to Los Angeles, independent minyanim continue to flourish, creating new models of engaged Jewish community for young adults.

These are not isolated examples — they represent a broader pattern of Jewish communities choosing to build rather than retreat.

The work begins with individual commitment and communal organization. Start by showing up. Attend that weekday minyan. Enroll your child in Hebrew school. Join the board of a struggling synagogue. Volunteer at the JCC. Donate to build, not just to maintain. Support new initiatives even when they feel risky. Push back against the reflex to consolidate and retreat. If your community lacks the institutions you want to see, gather a minyan of committed people and create them.

My son looked at those photographs with amazement, wondering how such a world could exist without him ever hearing about it. The truth is that the Jewish world he will inherit depends entirely on what we choose to build now.

Earlier generations left us institutions robust enough to carry us through a turbulent century. With far greater freedom and far more resources than they ever had, we have no excuse for shrinking our ambitions.

If they built so much with so little, then we — for our children and theirs — must do no less.

Samuel J. Abrams is a professor of politics at Sarah Lawrence College and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. 

Chinese Foreign Minister Wag Yi stands with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov and Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazeem Gharibabadi before a meeting regarding the Iranian nuclear issue at Diaoyutai State Guest House on March 14, 2025 in Beijing, China. Photo: Pool via REUTERS

Recently, a popular AI meme has begun circulating in Chinese online discourse in the Chicago area. The image features a stereotypical Jewish-looking man with a beard, a long nose, and a Star of David necklace, holding the K visa and standing next to a model of China.

While many laughed at the surreal sarcasm, others took it seriously and warned, “Watch out! They will come in masses and take over China!”

The meme’s spread reveals how casual humor has disguised deeper prejudice and how misinformation about China’s K-visa policy is feeding new antisemitic narratives among young Chinese students.

The antisemitism of China may seem like a tree without roots, since the Chinese people do not have a relatively long history of engaging with large Jewish populations.

The fact that Jews as foreigners explains the emergence and manifestations of the “International Jewish Conspiracy Theory,” which positions Jews as symbols of capitalism who will bring foreign capitalist influence into China and degrade China to a miserable state.

Clearly the origins of this modern Chinese antisemitism are influenced by Western culture, as can be seen every time voices in Chinese discourse accuse Jews as a collective of controlling the banks. This, coupled with stereotypes about Jews being global capitalists that have survived within China’s rich tradition of Communism — and the Chinese people’s concern about foreign influence — has been the main vehicle for Chinese antisemitism.

This fusion of foreign conspiracy and local economic fear doesn’t just misinform — it risks normalizing hatred among a generation that should know better.

The current rumor making the rounds centers on China’s so-called “K-visa,” a new policy intended to attract highly skilled young foreign professionals and scholars with advanced STEM degrees or professional experience.

The program is open to any applicant who meets China’s professional criteria, regardless of religion or ethnicity. But the lack of clear, accessible explanations in Chinese-language media has left a vacuum that rumors eagerly fill. These rumors are particularly antisemitic, pointing directly at Jews for implementing the K visa.

Online, however, interpretations of  this visa have been twisted into baseless conspiracy theories. The comment sections of various posts from WeChat and RedNotes are filled with outcries from Chinese students all around the world, claiming that the visa was “designed for Jews to penetrate, corrupt, and eventually control China” and that “Jews abroad are cheering over this victory,” evidence, they say, of a secret plan for mass immigration.

This opinion is fundamentally wrong. Not only is the conspiracy fundamentally irrational, but this kind of antisemitic scapegoating has been used to manipulate the public. There is a long history of Western and Middle Eastern leaders blaming their failures on the Jews instead of acting responsibly. If the K-Visa program does not strengthen the country as hoped, what benefit is there to waste time blaming the Jews instead of learning from the experience and improving the program?

Additionally, what exactly is the harm they imagine will occur if a small influx of Jewish scientists choose to bring their knowledge and energy to benefit the people of China? The last time China was introduced to Jewish innovation, we gained  the drip irrigation system, an innovative method of agricultural science that has helped feed China’s 1.4 billion people.

Unfortunately, merely debunking these myths is not enough to combat antisemitism in mainstream Chinese culture.

What is needed is dialogue and more opportunities for fact-based education. Firstly, UChicago and the local Chinese Students and Scholars Association chapters should organize and support events that facilitate cross-cultural conversations and host more intellectually and culturally diverse speaker events where scholars, religious figures, and students can openly discuss intersections of Jewish and Chinese culture and history.

My hope in writing this piece is not to condemn the Chinese overseas population, but to help my peers understand that antisemitism is not unique to the West; it comes in all shapes and forms, and from many cultures.

Many who share or believe antisemitic narratives do so without realizing the harm they perpetuate. As a Chinese person myself, I used to have very stereotypical views of the Jewish people, but my curiosity to learn more about Jewish life and culture led me to attend Shabbat dinners where I experienced first hand what it’s like to face hostility and aggression for no other reason than expressing someone’s identity. Only through awareness and self-reflection can we all refrain from falling into the traps of hatred.

Angella Tang is a UChicago Biology student and a CAMERA fellow passionate about fostering cross-cultural and interfaith understanding.

PLO leader leader Yasser Arafat. Photo: World Economic Forum.

When Hamas named its October 7 massacre the Al-Aqsa Flood, it framed its atrocities as an Islamic holy mission to liberate Jerusalem from the Jews. The message was clear: rape and kill Jews for the sake of Al-Aqsa and Jerusalem.

What is less understood is that the Palestinian Authority (PA) and its ruling Fatah movement have been preaching that same message — long before Hamas.

In honor of the anniversary of Yasser Arafat’s death, Fatah’s Information and Culture Commission posted a famous Arafat slogan: “Don’t call out for me, rather call out for Palestine and Jerusalem: With spirit, with blood, we will redeem you, Palestine. Millions of Martyrs are marching to Jerusalem!”

Two days later, also marking the anniversary of Arafat’s death, the PA Ministry of Education published photos of children — with one holding a sign with the identical Arafat slogan.

For all the diplomatic illusions of a “moderate” Fatah that should replace “extremist” Hamas, the truth is simple: both teach the same strategy — Martyrdom to destroy Israel and liberate Jerusalem. The Al-Aqsa Flood is Hamas’ battlefield expression of the same fundamental ideology that the PA constantly feeds its children in its classrooms, streets, and cultural events.

The cult of Martyrdom and violence against Israel long predated Hamas and was spearheaded by Yasser Arafat, as memorialized at this PA school in honor of the anniversary of his death:

Text on sign on left: “They want me dead, exiled, or imprisoned, and I tell them: Martyr, Martyr, Martyr” [an infamous quote from Yasser Arafat]

Text on sign on right: “I am the youngest soldier in Palestine”

The culture of Martyrdom and terror-glorification is still proudly upheld by both the PA and Hamas today, with the message remaining the same: dying for Jerusalem and killing Jews is the highest calling.

As long as Palestinian leaders continue to sanctify this death cult, both the PA and Hamas will be planning the next October 7 “Al-Aqsa Flood.”

Ephraim D. Tepler is a contributor to Palestinian Media Watch (PMW). Itamar Marcus is the Founder and Director of PMW, where a version of this article first appeared.