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Fighting food allergies becomes another ritual at synagogues, schools and camps
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.
(JTA) — No challah on Shabbat for those with celiac disease or wheat allergies. No cheesecake for Shavuot for those with dairy allergies. No mishloach manot gift packages on Purim for kids with severe allergies to the treats inside.
Synagogues and other Jewish organizations are seeing a rise in the number of children and teens who suffer from food allergies, and are adjusting to make sure that no one is endangered or feels left out – from nut-free policies to separate gluten-free kitchens.
For some, however, such accommodations aren’t enough to make them feel part of the mainstream.
“I try not to let it get the best of me, but in the back of my mind I’m like ‘wow, I really wish I could try what everyone else is trying,’” said Micah Pierandri, 17, from Tulsa, Oklahoma, who often feels disconnected from others during community events involving food.
More children and teens are being diagnosed with food allergies than ever. In 2007, only about 4% of children in the United States under 18 reported food allergies, but last year the number more than doubled. A 2020 review of hospital admissions data showed a global increase in hospitalizations for anaphylaxis, a severe and potentially life threatening allergic reaction. One study found that 37% of children in an Orthodox Jewish community had food allergies.
Food allergies can have a significant impact on a person’s mental health. Up to 40% of parents of children with allergies said that they would associate the word “isolating” with their child’s allergy, according to a study by Allergy UK. And while many synagogues are taking steps to become more allergy friendly, holidays and religious events involvinging food can be a struggle for many children and teens with food allergies.
“I’m that allergy kid that has to sit out or bring their own dessert or their own food to events,” said Pierandri.
Pierandri, who has an airborne allergy to peanuts and severe allergies to pecans, walnuts, soy and eggs, often brings her own food to synagogue events. This can make her feel separated from the rest of the Jewish community during the holidays, even if her food is similar to her peers.
Tu Bishvat and Yom Ha’atzmaut, Israeli Independence Day, are especially difficult to celebrate because of the foods that are involved. On Tu Bishvat, the springtime New Year of the Trees, it’s customary for people to eat nuts and try fruits that they haven’t tasted before. For Pierandri, who has oral allergy syndrome, eating most fruits could cause an allergic reaction. Many Israeli dishes contain sesame or nuts, and her mild sesame allergy and severe nut allergies mean that she struggles to find foods that are safe for her to eat on Yom Ha’atzmaut, forcing her to choose between bringing her own food or eating before she goes.
By listing the ingredients in all food dishes at events, Beth El Temple Center in Belmont, Massachusetts makes it easier for people with food allergies to be included. Around 10% of students at their religious school have allergies. Though the number hasn’t changed much over the past few years, it is high enough that all teachers are notified about students’ allergies, said Joan Perlman, its director of education.
“It’s important to accommodate people with food allergies because it aligns with our core value of being an inclusive community,” said Debbie Ezrin, executive director of Temple Beth Ami in Rockville, Maryland. To her, inclusivity means making sure that everyone feels like they belong. Their congregation is a nut-free facility and works to accommodate people with food allergies during any event involving food.
Josephine Schizer (left) at dinner with a friend. (Courtesy)
“While the synagogue adheres to traditional Jewish dietary laws, we always ask people to share their dietary needs and do our best to accommodate them,” said Rabbi Daniel Kaiman of Congregation B’nai Emunah, the synagogue that Pierandri attends.
She also feels like her food allergies have stunted her BBYO experience. “Part of me feels like it’s not really having food allergies, it’s more like people not being cautious,” Pierandri said. She’s been to multiple chapter and regional events where there have been peanuts even though people are aware that she has an airborne allergy.
“This is one of the areas where we really try to make sure that we’re accommodating our teens and I think it’s a small step we can take towards creating a supportive, inclusive, welcoming environment,” said Drew Fidler, director of BBYO’s Center for Adolescent Wellness.
Like many other organizations, BBYO has seen an increase in the number of teens with allergies over the past decade. All of BBYO’s conventions are peanut and tree nut-free in order to accommodate teens with nut allergies, and the organization also offers vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free and dairy-free meals by request.
“They just want to participate and feel normal and be a part of what’s going on,” she said about members who might feel excluded because of their allergies. At its international convention and summer programs, BBYO has a dedicated area for special meals so that teens with dietary restrictions are able to eat during meals.
Many Jewish summer camps are taking similar steps towards inclusion. “We always tell families that food should never be a reason that campers cannot be at camp or participate in Jewish life,” said Rabbi Ami Hersh, director of Ramah Day Camp in Nyack, New York.
Around 10% of the 800 campers that attend each session have food allergies, a larger percentage than in past years. The camp has a dietary specialist who works with each family to find alternative meals for campers. It’s important that the alternative meals closely mirror what the other campers are eating “so that no one’s feeling left out or excluded based on food needs,” Hersh said.
“I think that sometimes food needs and allergies are misunderstood as something that people are just being difficult about,” he said. “No one wakes up in the morning and says ‘I really wish I had a food allergy.’”
After noticing an increasing number of campers with celiac disease, NJY Camps, an organization that runs five Jewish summer camps in eastern Pennsylvania, opened a dedicated gluten-free kitchen in 2011.
Taking care of children with food allergies costs US families over $25 billion each year. When parents have to provide food for their children, it can be expensive and isolate the child even further. In a study by Dalhousie Medical School, all 56 gluten-free products tested were more expensive when compared to their regular counterparts.
At NJY Camps, the camp charges the same for the gluten-free meal plan as for the regular meal plan. “We don’t charge families extra despite the additional cost, it is simply a courtesy provided to those who need it,” said Carrie Youngs, director of Camp Nah-Jee-Wah, its camp for younger kids. Within the last five years, they’ve had as few as 30 and as many as 60 gluten-free campers register for each session.
The gluten-free kitchen has separate staff, equipment and serving area to avoid cross contamination. Like Ramah Day Camp, NJY Camps try to make the gluten-free meals match the regular meals being served that day so that campers with dietary restrictions won’t feel left out.
“Because we’re a kosher camp, some allergies are just a good fit,” she said. The camp doesn’t have to make accommodations for allergies like shellfish because shellfish aren’t kosher. Camp Nah-Jee-Wah is also completely peanut free in order to accommodate campers who have airborne peanut allergies.
Before arriving at camp, families are able to meet with an allergy liaison who ensures that all of their needs are met. “We just feel that accommodating campers and giving them the most incredible camp experience is important for their upbringing,” Youngs said.
Eating away from home can be scary for people with food allergies, especially when those allergies are life-threatening. “My house is the space where I feel most comfortable when it comes to food,” said Josephine Schizer, 21, a sophomore at Harvard University. She’s allergic to eggs, dairy, sesame seeds, chickpeas, kiwi, lentils and peas, but thanks to her school’s Hillel, she’s been able to eat safely while she’s away from home. She’s developed a relationship with the Hillel’s dining hall staff and made them aware of her food allergies. They’ll often make special meals for her so that she’s able to eat.
Her allergies don’t usually make eating a problem during Jewish holidays, but on Passover, a holiday that imposes additional dietary restrictions, she struggles to find nutritious meals because there are fewer options. “Many of the options that I could normally eat are out of the question during Passover because of the holiday or have egg in them because flour gets replaced with egg,” Schizer said. Nearly everyone in her family has allergies, making it easier for her to celebrate Jewish holidays at home.
“I think it’s harder when I’m in places that aren’t my own home,” she said. “It’s harder, but it’s still doable.”
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A retired judge needed four Torahs rescued from Indiana. So he called his rabbi. And his dentist.
Early on a Sunday morning in July a dentist pointed his black Toyota Sequoia south out of the Chicago suburbs, a rented box trailer swaying behind the hitch. In Champaign, Illinois, a rabbi who had spent the night at his mother’s house pulled onto the highway heading east. Their rendezvous: a century-old synagogue in Terre Haute, Indiana. Their mission: get the Torahs out.
Before the day was over, the operation would involve four Torah scrolls, a pair of towering brass menorahs, more than 100 boxes of books, one electric piano and — because even sacred missions deserve a victory lap — a round of golf.
The orders came from Arizona, where a 79-year-old retired judge, recovering from surgery, was running the operation by phone.
That would be Jerry Orbach, who splits his time between Scottsdale and Chicago and has made a second career of rescuing the remnants of shuls from across America. The walls of his Illinois shul, Northbrook Community Synagogue — where he serves as executive vice president — glow with stained glass he has salvaged from seven shuttered congregations across the Midwest.
So when Michael Brown, executive director of the Indiana Jewish Historical Society, called to say that the United Hebrew Congregation in Terre Haute had sold its building — and needed homes for nearly everything inside — Orbach knew exactly what to do, even if he couldn’t do it himself.
“We can’t get rid of Torahs,” he said. “We have to preserve them.”
He couldn’t make the trip. But he had a crew.
The crew
The whole operation was an in-house affair: all four men belong to Northbrook Community Synagogue. Orbach’s regulars are Dr. Michael Farr, 49, a dentist, and Farr’s best friend Jordan Ripstein, the shul’s gabbai and a violin maker who studied theoretical physics in college. The two have history. They once drove through the night to Kingston, New York, to rescue stained glass from a closing synagogue, smoking cigars and talking about life and music the whole way.
Last September, they hauled back 14 crates from the shuttered Beth Achim synagogue in Southfield, Michigan — towering 13-foot stained glass panels that now wait in the Northbrook basement for their next home.
But Ripstein was out of town. So Orbach turned to his bullpen and pulled out a rabbi.
Aaron Braun, 43, has led Northbrook Community Synagogue since it was founded in 2012 as a merger of three congregations — which makes him, in a sense, a professional preserver of shuls that might otherwise have disappeared. He is also long accustomed to his congregant’s obsession. “Everybody goes along with my meshugas,” Orbach said, using the Yiddish word for craziness. “I’m an old man, so they indulge me.”
Braun didn’t need convincing. “The chance to give Torahs a new home and see them brought back to life and used is one of the holiest endeavors we can pursue,” he said.
The extraction
The congregation they came to help is the oldest in Indiana still in continuous operation. This year, the United Hebrew Congregation celebrated 175 years in Terre Haute — a city whose Jewish community peaked at more than 1,000 people in the late 1940s, when Jewish families owned some 45 local businesses, including three of the four downtown department stores.
Today, the city’s Jewish population is estimated at just under 100. The Reform congregation, down to 45 member families, sold its building in mid-July. “We had to sell in order to continue operating,” said Scott Skillman, its immediate past president. The new owners have said they plan to use the building, known for its cavernous sanctuary and sweeping stained glass windows, as a wedding venue.
It is a familiar story across the state. Wendy Soltz, a Ball State University historian who led the Indiana Synagogue Mapping Project, has documented 66 purpose-built synagogues in Indiana dating back to 1865. Twenty-four have already been demolished.
The Terre Haute building held what the congregation couldn’t take to its smaller new locale. Nearly all of it was in the basement, down seven steps from a side door: four steps, a 90-degree turn, then three more. Farr worked a two-wheel dolly up and down that turn for more than two hours, stacking some 150 boxes of books in the trailer alongside two podiums and a pair of cast-brass menorahs, each more than six feet tall and about 150 pounds.
“We were a pretty sweaty mess,” Braun said.
When the crew opened the ark they found the four scrolls bare. In the tumult of moving out, the mantles had come off; someone had fashioned ropes of felt around them instead. “Not even gartelekh,” Braun said, referring to the sashes that traditionally bind a Torah.
The scrolls, the crew decided, would not ride in the trailer with the boxes. Braun laid them down across the back seat of his SUV and covered them with tallitot, the prayer shawls tucked around them so they couldn’t shift — “even, God forbid, in an accident,” he said. A Torah is the rare object Jews treat like a person: You stand when it passes. You kiss it as it goes by. If one is dropped, the whole congregation fasts. Braun drove north with four of them sleeping in his back seat.
Braun, examining what he could, was impressed by their condition: the calligraphy of at least three of the four looked to be in fairly good shape. The fourth scroll is a mystery: written in a slanted, old-fashioned hand, its lines ragged. “It’s not even full justified,” he said. “It’s wild.”
The getaway
The trailer was full. The Torahs were secure. And one more passenger had joined the convoy: a Yamaha Clavinova electric piano the Terre Haute congregation no longer needed, destined for Braun’s mother’s house in Champaign.
Which is how the getaway came to include a detour. The two men dropped off the piano, then headed to the golf course where Braun grew up playing and got in 18 holes.
“Dr. Farr played some of the best golf I’ve ever seen him play,” the rabbi said.
Farr, a beginner, doesn’t dispute it. “I had a good round. I definitely played better than I normally play,” he said. “Probably by virtue of the fact that we saved four Torahs that day.”
At some point a crop duster buzzed low over their cars — “a not unusual reality of downstate Illinois,” Braun said. Nobody flinched. It had been that kind of day.
Farr rolled back into the Northbrook parking lot around 10 p.m., where the synagogue’s president, Ben Resnick, was waiting in the dark to help unload. The boxes went into the social hall, stacked against the wall. The next morning, Farr was back at his dental practice — “the yank and pull,” as he calls it.
The social hall, though, is only a way station. The items aren’t necessarily staying at Northbrook; the congregation is a holding ground while Orbach hunts for their next home. He plans to call Nik Jakobs, the Jewish farmer building a synagogue in a two-acre cornfield in rural Illinois, about two hours west, to see if he wants any of the pieces for his sanctuary. He also will contact the Jewish Community Legacy Project, an Atlanta-based nonprofit that helps find homes for sacred objects from downsizing and closing congregations.
The sorting has already begun. Brown hopes any documents or photographs in the boxes will go to the Indiana Jewish Historical Society’s archives. A scribe is coming to examine the four scrolls and determine what repairs they need before they can be read from again.
Brown, who set the whole thing in motion with a phone call, sees it as “one of the few small happy threads from a sad story of Jewish decline in the crossroads of America.” He calls Orbach “an unsung Midwestern Jewish hero.”
Back in Terre Haute, the congregation is still holding services every Friday night, in space rented from a Unitarian church — a sanctuary with no crosses and, as it happens, a few Stars of David. “It’s not a closing,” Skillman said. “It’s just a shrinking of our footprint.”
And in Northbrook, four Torahs rest in the social hall. Orbach turns 80 in September. His crew is waiting for the next call.
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Conservative rabbis just told interfaith couples they don’t count — again
Acting improv students learn a fundamental tool called “Yes. . . And.” As you step into a scene, you take what you are given, you don’t ignore it, you don’t try to change it. YES, this is what I have to work with. Then comes the AND: here’s how I build on it.
The guidance issued last week from the Conservative movement’s Rabbinical Assembly’s Committee on Jewish Law and Standards giving guidance on supporting interfaith families got as far as “Yes,” but dropped the ball on “And.”
The committee’s statement, known as an Omnibus Teshuvah, recommended measures that opened the doors for interfaith families to be included in many life-cycle, religious and communal events — but declined to endorse a measure called for by many families: permitting Conservative rabbis to marry a Jew to someone who is not Jewish.
Let’s start with the “Yes!” The Conservative movement has definitively acknowledged and accepted the reality that many Jewish families are interfaith families. While this has been so for decades, the stated position since 1989 sent them a harsh and strongly disapproving message: “The Conservative movement has been committed to discouraging both the idea and the act of intermarriage.”
The Rabbinical Assembly emphasized its commitment to Jewish law, but included a statement that tolerance might “‘encourage others who are so inclined to intermarry’ without consequence.”
Those consequences were in effect tocut the interfaith couple and family out of Jewish communal life, creating bitterness, pain, and family rupture on the one side, and effectively ensuring that Judaism was diminished on the other.
In fact, one of the anecdotes I often share about why I chose to work with interfaith families and support their decisions is the time that I witnessed a Bat Mitzvah — who was raised in a Jewish home, kept kosher, had respect for Shabbat, and had attended Hebrew School her whole life — stood alone at the Bimah, because her only surviving parent had never converted to Judaism. Instead of being the proud and joyous moment it should have been, she was isolated from her father, the man who had raised her Jewishly and brought her to this milestone. My heart broke for both of them, and my shame of being even partially complicit moved me to examine and change my perspective. In the fullness of time, the RA has realized that creating tsuris at a time of joy is unacceptable. The new guidance explicitly says that that father can stand on the bimah. Mazel tov..
Deserving of equal praise, if not more, is the decision to allow grieving families with Jewish connections avenues to Jewish practices in mourning that provide comfort, strength and faith. This too is progress: A family death is not a time to wag one’s finger and metaphorically tell the mourner that they have to sleep in the bed that they made.
And representing the other end of the life cycle, a rabbi may now congratulate an interfaith family for the birth of a child. Being able to celebrate the advent of a baby into the household should always have been an open avenue of clergy communication, and that it is now is nothing but a positive change.
This turnaround is no small feat and deserves its recognition. The Rabbinical Assembly has identified and addressed many of the strictures and attitudes that previously diminished the enjoyment of a joyous event or added pain for a grief-stricken individual. An interfaith family is no longer subject to “consequences,” to use a term as stated in the 1989 decision — mostly.
All the life-cycle events that interfaith families have struggled with are at long last within the welcome embrace of the Conservative movement, save one: The wedding itself. The fig leaf in the forms of a misheberach (a blessing) by the rabbi either before or after the wedding and the blessing of the home the couple is creating does nothing but call attention to the movement’s disparagement of the creation of interfaith families. The movement is in effect saying: “We are repulsed by your decision to marry outside the strictures of our interpretation of Judaism, but we will not exact revenge upon you for doing so.” Small comfort.
Here is where the “and” can still come in — and where the Conservative movement itself has paved the way for it to happen.
The religious law prohibition against interfaith marriages derives from a verse in Deuteronomy 7:3 “You shall not intermarry with them: do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons.”
This biblical statement has evolved from meaning marriage with the seven nations proscribed in the Torah to general intermarriage.
However, as recently as the 19th century, the renowned scholar Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch noted that the prohibition was based on the presumption that the resulting family would be estranged from the Jewish community. That presumption was based on a self-fulfilling prophecy that an interfaith family would be shunned, and therefore not engage with their community.
The committee of the Rabbinical Assembly fulfills this prophecy as it concludes the new guidance with this hurtful assertion: “The role of Conservative/Masorti clergy on the wedding day remains limited, but that specific day is only one small aspect of the establishment and growth of a family.” Relegating a wedding to be a small aspect to the ‘establishment and growth of a family’ is patently untrue, as evidenced by the great importance society at large, and Jewish society in particular place on this event.
The RA, by sticking with the prohibition against interfaith marriage, is perpetuating the very estrangement that Rav Hirsch posits is the entire motivation for opposing interfaith marriage. Nevertheless, that very foundation, the estrangement from the community, is no longer a barrier unless we want it to be. The Omnibus Teshuvah maps out how an interfaith family can be welcomed into the community and how they can engage in almost every other Jewish life cycle event and communal engagement.
Why then, does the RA persist in condemning the act of interfaith marriage?
The movement itself already has the religious law tools they can use to find a way forward. The arguments the RA used to pave the way for LGTBQ individuals, couples and families to be integrated into Jewish society are equally valid here. The first principle they used was that of Dor dor V’doroshav, that every generation is obligated to interpret the Torah in their terms — in effect, that the accumulated knowledge and experience of Judaism over time has bearing on rabbinical decisions. In terms of interfaith marriage, the accumulated knowledge and experience is demonstrating that interfaith families retain a Jewish identity and desire to remain a part of the community. Intentional interfaith families show dedication and great consideration to incorporating Judaism into their lives, and that this is not a new phenomenon.
In a decision two decades ago embracing LGBTQ Jews, Rabbi Elliot Dorff and colleagues leaned on the concept of human dignity, kavod ha briot, quoting the Talmudic stricture: “So great is human dignity that it supersedes a negative commandment of the Torah.” They point out that living in humiliation violates this idea.
Perhaps most powerfully, we read that homosexual marriage is “understood to be a profound desire by gay and lesbian Jews to sanctify their lives and establish faithful families guided by the light of Torah.” Should that “profound desire” within an interfaith marriage not carry equal weight?
Today, by continuing to deny legitimacy to an interfaith marriage, the RA relegates the couple to a lesser status, belittling them for following their emotional guidance, and denying them their full humanity.
The RA has issued some remarkable guidance in this Omnibus Responsum. YES! The many parents and grandparents who will receive with gratitude the congratulations on the birth of their children, the families who will be allowed to be united at the bimah at a B’Mitzvah, the mourners who will find strength and comfort from clergy during their time of grief — they will all be positively affected by the new permissions and guidance. These are concessions, but important ones.
In spite of the limits of this guidance I hold out hope for the “AND” that is to come. Not just the recognition that interfaith marriages happen, but the inherent truth that they can be a joyful part of the Jewish experience and a positive force in their community.
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Justice Department pledges action on antisemitic hate crimes in New York as it recognizes Ari Halberstam murder as civil rights case
More than 30 years after Ari Halberstam was killed in one of New York’s deadliest antisemitic attacks, the U.S. Justice Department has formally acknowledged that if his murder had happened today, it would be investigated as a federal hate crime and civil rights violation.
At the same time, the Justice Department also pledged that it would be devoting resources to investigating and prosecuting hate crimes across New York as antisemitic attacks continue to climb in New York City.
NYPD statistics released this week show that in the first seven months of 2026, anti-Jewish incidents rose 8.5%, and 57% of the reported hate crimes in the city involved Jewish victims. In addition, anti-Jewish incidents increased 53% in July compared with the same month last year.
Halberstam was 16 when he was murdered in 1994 when Rashid Baz, a Lebanese-born cab driver, opened fire on a van carrying Lubavitcher yeshiva students across the Brooklyn Bridge. Baz was convicted of murder and sentenced to 141 years in prison, where he died in 2023.
Because the attack was not immediately recognized as an act of terrorism and later rejected as part of a conspiracy, Ari’s mother, Devorah Halberstam, for decades fought to have her son’s killing recognized as an antisemitic hate crime and a federal civil rights matter.
“There is no question that if the murder of your son, Ari Halberstam, had occurred today, we would investigate it and seek to prosecute it as a federal hate crime,” wrote former U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton in a letter dated July 23, one of his final acts before becoming director of national intelligence on Monday. The acknowledgment came weeks after Clayton met with Devorah Halberstam, who co-founded the Jewish Children’s Museum in Brooklyn. It expands on remarks Clayton delivered in June at an NYU Law School conference on combating hate crimes. “I have discussed these matters with my successor, Jamie McDonald, and we are fully aligned,” Clayton wrote.
A spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office did not immediately respond to questions about what specific steps the office is taking under McDonald’s leadership to address the recent increase in antisemitic hate crimes across the city.
Halberstam, who is credited with helping draft New York state’s first anti-terrorism laws and has spent decades facilitating the training of law enforcement officers on combating terrorism and hate crimes, said the letter gives her hope that the federal government remains committed to confronting antisemitic violence.
“With hatred on the rise nationally and internationally, I am deeply concerned about the safety of Jewish New Yorkers,” she said in a statement. “I will continue to fight to ensure that no other mother has to bury her child because of hatred, as I did.”
Earlier this year, Halberstam hosted Mayor Zohran Mamdani at the Jewish Children’s Museum in Brooklyn. Since taking office, Mamdani has come under scrutiny from Jewish leaders over his handling of antisemitism and anti-Israel protests. Some Israeli officials have accused the mayor of fueling antisemitism through his sharp criticism of Israel.
In a statement on Monday, Mamdani called the rise in antisemitic hate crimes “unacceptable” and pointed to an 800% increase in funding for the city’s Office for the Prevention of Hate Crimes. “The work to uproot antisemitism out of this city is one that will continue,” Mamdani said, “ until we see hate crimes come to an end in the city.”
JTA contributed to this report
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