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For many Jewish teens, COVID broke the synagogue habit
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) — Jordy Levy, 18, remembers sitting at the table with his family, enjoying a relaxed Shabbat dinner at his Atlanta home during the pandemic. There was no hassle of getting dressed up, no schlep to synagogue, just hanging out and spending time with his family. In the background, a Facebook livestream of his congregation’s Friday night services played.
This is a scene that has become largely familiar over the course of the pandemic. COVID-19 forced many synagogues to close their doors and move their services and programs to virtual platforms. Many synagogues saw overall engagement grow as a result of this shift.
And yet for many Jewish teens, Levy’s experience was the exception. The technology, which in some ways made connecting with synagogues more convenient, caused a loss of connection among teens that has lingered even now that most congregations are back in person.
“I know a lot of kids just stopped going to synagogue outright because with COVID-19 they were so used to not going,” said Jill Mankosky, 18, a member of the Conservative Agudas Achim Congregation in Alexandria, Virginia. “This year when the High Holiday services were in person again, I noticed a lot of my classmates who would have been there previously pre-COVID-19 were just not there anymore.”
Congregations are now at a crossroads, determining which direction they want to move in next as the world slowly transitions away from the pandemic.
“Return back to normal is a bad way to phrase it because there is really no normal,” said Maya Kamenske, 16, a member of Agudas Achim.
Especially for Conservative congregations like Kamenske’s, the switch to online prayer was a significant one. In 2001, the Conservative movement’s Jewish law committee prohibited counting someone participating in an online manner towards the prayer quorum, or minyan needed for communal prayer. Virtual services initially breached this decision, although the ruling was soon amended to allow virtual Shabbat services during the pandemic.
Teens Jaqui Drobnis, left, and Max Gordon, right, lead a Tu Bishvat seder with a group of first graders at Agudas Achim Congregation in Alexandria, Virginia. (Courtesy of Chaya Silver)
Virtual services increased accessibility by making it simpler for people who would otherwise struggle to be at the congregation to still participate. For example, Jonah Golbus, 17, said that there were times when he was unable to find a ride to his synagogue, Rodef Sholom in San Rafael, California. Now, he does not have to worry about that. Virtual services allow people more flexibility for participation, and can be squeezed more easily into schedules.
“Having [online] High Holiday services as an option for those who [either] can’t or don’t feel up to coming in person is a really good addition that I’m glad we’ve kept,” said Mankosky. “I’m hoping it continues because, for example, when I’m in college, I can’t come back for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur services, but I’d still like to attend the services of [my] synagogue. Having an option to do them on Zoom from my dorm or something would be really helpful.”
Many synagogues saw a definite spike in participation and engagement of their members overall after implementing virtual services made participation simpler. This was not the case for teen programs, though. Many teens interviewed for this article reported that engagement dropped when it went digital.
Kira Rodriguez, a senior in high school and member of the Rodef Sholom congregation, tried to stay involved after Rodef Sholom went virtual, and attended a number of virtual activities for the first few months. Eventually, it just became too much.
“I was just so mentally exhausted from always being on Zoom,” said Rodriguez. “I couldn’t take another two hours of it [for the teen activities].”
Golbus, who struggled to find rides to Rodef Sholom, said that he was never really engaged on Zoom, so he did not attend any of the virtual programming during the pandemic. Now that he has friends who are in-person again, he has become more active in his congregation. Still, the events look different than they used to.
“It’s not as crowded as it used to be,” said Golbus. “There’s less people I know, so there’s less of an incentive on my end to go to these [activities].” He said that it is just less of a habit to go to temple now than it used to be before the pandemic, even if people are slowly reverting back to how it was.
The pandemic-related loss of in-person interactions damaged teens’ social connections within their congregations. While some teens returned to their congregations as they began to open back up, others never did.
Mankosky also blames the decline in participation to her and her peers starting high school and becoming increasingly busy. What is normally a period fraught with change for teens became, in many instances, even more challenging as COVID-19 took its toll. She is not alone in feeling more disconnected from her peers.
Teens from Congregation Rodef Sholom in San Rafael, California enjoyed a kayaking trip as a way to spend time together outdoors. (Courtesy of Rudy Brandt)
“I remember there was a really communal aspect to the congregation before. My religious school class [and I] were really really close. We often invited each other to our birthday parties outside of religious school, even though most of us didn’t even go to class together,“ said Jacob Bensen, 15, about Agudas Achim. ”It was almost like having a second family.” Now, he says, this has fallen to the wayside as the class has mostly lost touch since COVID-19. Most people haven’t put in the effort to reconnect since returning in-person.
Mila Einspruch, 16, had a different experience with Zoom during the pandemic. Prior to COVID-19, she said that she was on the track towards dropping all involvement with her congregation, Temple Sinai, in Oakland, California. With virtual school, Einspruch was unable to hang out with people as she had before. Her Reform congregation had a monthly Zoom club for eighth graders aimed at engaging and conversing. It was such an enjoyable experience that she became more involved in her congregation after it opened back up.
Yet even for those like Einspruch who returned, the community still feels different than it used to.
“Now, everything’s a little bit more fragmented,” said Einspruch. “The biggest thing that’s blocking people from coming [to temple] is just [that] those [social] connections are gone.”
Despite all of this, Rodriguez saw a spike in attendance following COVID-19 at her Reform congregation, Rodef Shalom, as there was a lot of initial excitement to be back in the building together. She said that faded within a couple of months as the initial novelty wore off. Now, there are odd gaps in ages between the teens. There are few freshmen and sophomores that show up, whereas the upperclassmen, like herself, are more likely to participate in activities. A few teens weighed in on why this is happening.
“It feels like there’s this gap of time where I would have started to get more involved after eighth grade into freshman year where there’s this transition of becoming older and going to those activities [beyond religious school], but then that’s when COVID-19 hit for me,” said Adina Golbus, 17, belongs to Rodef Sholom with her brother Jonah. “COVID-19 I think had a part in [me not going to as many activities] because it kind of prevented that transition period.”
All of the trips and activities planned to ease this transition were canceled, exacerbating the rate at which teens stopped being active members in their congregations. Einspruch had a similar experience with the lack of structure.
“Straight out of our bar and bat mitzvahs, there would have been some scaffolding and structure [to motivate teens] to join the teen program,” Einspruch said. COVID-19 dismantled that.
However, Rodriguez said that the number of middle schoolers, particularly seventh graders, has shot up. Einspruch saw the same at Temple Sinai. Neither could point to a reason for the engagement.
Rudy Brandt, the director of youth engagement at Congregation Rodef Sholom, said that the pandemic was particularly tough for teens, so her goal was to design a no-pressure model of youth engagement where teens were able to engage when and how they wanted. To do this, she offered activities across the spectrum, from Get Out the Vote efforts on Zoom to movie conversations to cooking. Much of this is still the case even in-person.
Rodriguez, who also belongs to the Rodef Sholom congregation, said that these programs were particularly successful with the younger teens, and could be a part of why there were so many of them. Despite this, the revamped programming has not seen the same effects with the older kids. In an attempt to communicate and connect more with teens, Brandt and her colleagues have grown their social media footprints.
“[It’s] just kind of meeting teens where they are, trying to put, you know, what’s happening in our spaces in their faces via social media,” Brandt said.
This greater presence has been somewhat successful at encouraging teens to participate in their various youth programs.
“There have been some events that I didn’t go to when I saw [the posts on social media] it was like, I kind of wish I went to that. Maybe I’ll go to the next one,” said Golbus.
Rodef Sholom is not the only congregation that has changed their youth programs to see more engagement. Chaya Silver, the youth director at Agudas Achim Congregation in Alexandria, Va., is currently working on developing a hybrid program for the religious school at her congregation, with the goal of making it more inclusive and flexible for students and their families.
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The post For many Jewish teens, COVID broke the synagogue habit appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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UK Jewish leaders demand answers after Muslim police group paper calls Zionism a form of hatred
(JTA) — British Jewish groups say they are alarmed about revelations that a fraternal society for Muslim police officers published a policy paper that described Zionism as a form of anti-Muslim hatred and called the Israeli army a “Zionist terrorist group.”
The Board of Deputies of British Jews called the paper posted by the National Association of Muslim Police “disturbing” in its presentation of Jewish identity, history and the nature of antisemitism.
“If this is being circulated among officers, it poses a direct challenge to the integrity of policing and it should be withdrawn immediately,” the group said.
NAMP has distanced itself from the report and, in a statement, rejected any allegation that the group “supports Hamas.”
The 39-page paper titled “From Past Prejudices to Present Policies: Confronting anti-Muslim hatred and Promoting Human Rights,” was written by NAMP’s then-vice president, Khaldoun Kabbani, and published in July 2025. It says “Zionism represents one of the manifestations of anti-Muslim hatred”; likens the war in Gaza to the Holocaust; and disputes facts about Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, including that Israeli children were killed.
The Spectator, a right-wing British newspaper, drew attention to the report in a piece published on Friday that said the report illuminated “the disturbing truth about the National Association of Muslim Police.” The group has a formal affiliation with 16 of 43 police departments in the U.K. and says it represents more than 20,000 officers.
Kabbani, a forensics officer, was briefly the chair of the Scottish Muslim Police Association but planned to move abroad after retiring earlier this year, according to a post by the group on LinkedIn.
The revelation of the NAMP report comes at a time of heightened tension over policing in the U.K., amid both a surge in anti-Jewish crimes and a renewed uproar over a December murder that has fueled allegations of “two-tier policing” that treats some victims differently from others. The Spectator referenced the victim, Henry Nowak, in the column about NAMP.
The NAMP report has spurred distress for many British Jews who are on edge amid a string of violent incidents targeting Jewish communities. The Campaign Against Antisemitism, a watchdog group, said its polling shows that 83% of British Jews do not think the police are doing enough to protect them — and that the report suggested their concerns were well founded.
“The people responsible for publishing this extremist screed on the official police.uk web domain are unfit to be police officers and must be immediately investigated by their respective forces’ professional standards departments and dismissed,” Steven Silverman, CAM’s director of investigations and enforcement, said in a statement.
“British Jews have long suffered two-tier policing that sees antisemitic crime go unpunished,” he said, adding that CAM would press the British government “ensure a clear message is being sent. This cannot pass with the document being quietly deleted.”
The report was removed from NAMP’s website over the weekend. The group distanced itself from the report in a statement published on Tuesday, saying that it had removed the report “immediately” after learning about its existence and emphasizing that the author was “no longer associated” with NAMP.
“We understand that the publication of this document has affected several communities, and we regret any concern, discomfort, or misunderstanding it may have caused,” the group said.
It added, “NAMP categorically does not ‘defend’ Hamas or any other proscribed organisation. We condemn all forms of terrorism and extremism.”
The document is “deeply troubling,” a spokesperson for the Jewish Leadership Council, which coordinates British Jewish groups, said in a statement.
“This document appears to falsely associate an ideology held by the majority of Jewish people as a threat to Muslims. It also engages in deeply troubling Holocaust inversion and denial of some of the worst atrocities carried out by Hamas on October 7th,” the spokesperson said. “At a time of rising antisemitism including violent attacks on British Jews, this document further threatens community cohesion and police forces should be clear in distancing themselves from it.”
The Board of Deputies of British Jews said it plans to speak with the “relevant” government and police departments to discover the paper’s provenance, how it’s being used and “how to ensure that the valued relationships of trust between British Jews and the police are not being undermined.”
The Metropolitan Police of London, the largest police department in the U.K. and a formal NAMP affiliate, declined to comment on the report. The department has recently stepped up policing in Jewish communities in an effort to stem antisemitic violence.
The post UK Jewish leaders demand answers after Muslim police group paper calls Zionism a form of hatred appeared first on The Forward.
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Jacob Reses, Vance’s Jewish chief of staff, to leave administration
(JTA) — Jacob Reses, the Jewish chief of staff to Vice President JD Vance, is leaving the administration at the end of the summer, a source confirmed to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on Thursday.
Reses, who’s been in his role since Vance and President Donald Trump took office in January 2025, is perhaps the closest Jewish official in Vance’s orbit. He has had a close relationship with the vice president since Vance’s 2022 Senate campaign in Ohio.
A source familiar with the matter confirmed NBC News’ initial report that Reses informed Vance of his decision months ago, after his wife became pregnant. Vance said in a statement on Thursday that he will “miss him dearly, but he won’t be far, and I plan to keep his counsel close until our paths cross again.” Reses’ plans for his next role are currently unknown.
Vance has recently drawn the ire of some Jewish Republicans who say that he has refused to confront antisemitism on the right, including from former Fox news host Tucker Carlson. (Carlson’s son is also a Vance staffer.) A New York Magazine profile published in March suggested that Reses was on board with Vance’s approach, and revealed that Reses used his private X account to amplify voices calling on Jews to embrace, rather than resist, the Christian nationalist current surging within the GOP.
Reses has been “by my side for my whole career in public life,” Vance said in a statement.
“I can’t imagine having been on this life-changing journey without him,” Vance said. “From day one of my time as a Senator-elect, I could not have asked for a more loyal and discerning advisor and friend as my chief of staff.”
The personal bond between the two men was on display in January, when Vance took part in Reses’ wedding to Rachel Altman at a synagogue in Rockville, Maryland, delivering a Jewish prayer under the chuppah. Chabad of Princeton University, Reses’ alma mater, posted a photo of the couple with the vice president, celebrating the occasion as an expression of Jewish pride.
https://www.instagram.com/p/DTrUKXEDOQE/?img_index=3
That closeness, and Reses’ reported alignment with Vance’s stance on right-wing antisemitism, have not spared Reses from becoming a target of antisemites. In one instance, a white-nationalist website ran an article about him headlined, “Another Nail in the Coffin — Jew Runs J. D. Vance.”
A Jewish Telegraphic Agency profile published in 2024, when Vance was selected as Trump’s running mate, traced Reses’ Jewish identity and his journey from a Democratic-leaning Jewish teenager in southern New Jersey, whose grandfather escaped the Holocaust in Lithuania, to one of the most influential conservatives in Washington. His trajectory included internships for Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, a political conversion at Princeton and stints at the Heritage Foundation and in the office of Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley.
On Thursday, Republican leaders and Trump administration officials sang Reses’ praises in statements shared with JTA.
“Jacob Reses has been an invaluable, loyal, and trusted hand to Vice President Vance and President Trump,” said Matt Brooks, CEO of the Republican Jewish Coalition. “As a proud Jewish American, whose own family story carries the weight of our people’s history, Jacob brought both conviction and clarity to one of the most consequential roles in Washington.” Brooks added that the RJC has “no doubt he will continue to play a critical role moving forward.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who’s seen as a possible challenger to Vance for the 2028 presidential nomination, said that Reses served Vance and the entire administration “with distinction,” and that he “understands the moment we’re in and he spent every day fighting to deliver results for the President.”
Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, said he was proud to have Reses “by my side in negotiating some of the toughest deals for the President.”
“Don’t let Jacob fool you — beneath his kind exterior he’s a killer,” Witkoff said. “It’s been a delight to get to know him through the Vice President, and our foreign adventures from Israel to Pakistan have been historic.”
He added, “We haven’t seen the last of him.”
The post Jacob Reses, Vance’s Jewish chief of staff, to leave administration appeared first on The Forward.
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Helen Mirren criticizes Israel at film festival after being called ‘evil Zionist’ in viral video
(JTA) — British actor Helen Mirren criticized Israel at a film festival in Italy, in her first public comments since security footage of a November incident where she was accused by a stranger of being an “evil Zionist b—h” went viral late last month.
“Evil forces are rising everywhere, even in a country like Israel,” Mirren said in an interview with journalists at the Taormina Film Fest in Sicily, according to reports in entertainment media. “How could you possibly repeat the actions of what was done to you as people to other people? Crimes against humanity, it’s called.”
The Academy Award-winning actor, who is 80, is being honored with a lifetime achievement award from the festival on Friday. Her many roles have included playing former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir in the 2023 biopic “Golda,” which she premiered in Jerusalem.
Mirren is not Jewish but has a long history of connection to Israel, dating back to 1967, when she traveled with a Jewish boyfriend to work for a month on a kibbutz in the country’s north.
She referenced that period in her comments at Taormina.
“I saw it from the inside and I saw some things that disturbed me from the inside in Israel at that time,” she said, according to Deadline. “I’m talking about six months after the Six Day War.”
Mirren has previously criticized the Israeli government. While promoting “Golda” in early 2023, she said she believed that Meir would be “utterly horrified” by Israel’s current leadership, which she referred to as a “dictatorship.”
But she also spoke favorably about Israel during the promotional events, which shortly preceded the Hamas attack that began the war in Gaza.
“I believe in Israel, in the existence of Israel, and I believe Israel has to go forward into the future, for the rest of eternity,” she told the country’s Channel 12 in August 2023. “I believe in Israel because of the Holocaust.”
During the November incident, the person who accosted Mirren and her husband Taylor Hackford appeared to reference those comments, saying, “She said Israel should last forever because of the Holocaust, and she was very happy that Palestinians’ houses were gone.”
Hackford responded, “F–ck off,” and Mirren did not say anything in the video.
At Taormina, the actor offered a more nuanced characterization of her beliefs while also praising Israel’s creative and intellectual communities.
“I grew up in Europe post-Second World War and the realization in my parents’ generation of what had happened in the Holocaust was so profound, so important,” Mirren said. “Therefore, the creation of Israel was a very important moment, although maybe it was done in completely the wrong way, in the wrong place, I don’t know. But something had to happen after the horror.”
According to Variety, she also said, “The evil is always lurking, waiting to take over, even in a place like Israel. I played Golda Meir and worked in a country that was the idealistic Israel, and I always thought it was a country that would never do wrong, but of course they were doing wrong, even then.”
About the viral video showing her being accosted, Mirren told journalists at the festival she believes she was “attacked by mistake by a man who was maybe a little over passionate or maybe mentally not quite stable.”
She added, “I don’t know whether he read things on the Internet or thought he read something which he hadn’t read, I don’t know.”
Though London’s Metropolitan Police initially said it was possible for an incident to be investigated as an antisemitic hate crime even if the victim is not Jewish, it will not be investigating further, as Mirren and Hackford have decided not to press charges.
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