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How do teenagers fit Judaism into their after-school activities? Spoiler: Many don’t.
This article was produced as part of JTA’s Teen Journalism Fellowship, a program that works with teens across the world to report on issues that impact their lives.
(JTA) — When youth group leader Evan Shrier first started organizing events for his peers at Temple Kol Tikvah in Woodland Hills, California, he was excited to take on the leadership role. Two years later, he struggles to keep the spark alive in his work now that so few young people show up after their b’nai mitzvah.
“I got to watch it grow and watch 20-30 people, mostly high schoolers and some 8th graders, coming to events, and now it just hasn’t really been the same,” Shrier, 17, said. “We still try to put on really fun events, but it doesn’t feel very rewarding when there’s one person besides the board that comes to them.”
Shrier is experiencing what many religious leaders witness every year: a drop off of synagogue participation after b’nei mitzvah. As teens grow older, some struggle with making time for religious activities because their focus is pulled by sports and extracurricular activities that build their college resumes.
“When I apply to college for kinesiology and to be on the track team they’re going to look at my sports medicine and running team” experience, says Shrier. “They’re not going to look as much at Kol Tikvah.” While he still makes time for Kol Tikvah, he says he needs to prioritize activities that get him merit scholarships for college.
A 2016 report commissioned by the San Francisco-based Jim Joseph Foundation found that Jewish teens feel torn on how to balance their secular and non-secular activities, and more often choose to prioritize the former.
Most surveyed said that they don’t consider Jewish activities as chosen free time. Instead, they look at them as a meaningful third category between school obligations and fun pastimes. The students — between 12-and-a-half and 17 years of age — said that having Jewish friends impacted their involvement in Jewish activities.
The report also found that encouraging “cognitive competence” among teens is a key factor for engagement in Jewish activities. “They’re seeing the world around them, they’re building their identity, they’re developing values,” stated Rabbi David Kessel, former BBYO chief program officer, in the report. “And if we help them do so in a sophisticated and engaging way by providing these content-rich experiences, they will come and they will resonate with it.”
Many organizations are working hard to provide such “content-rich experiences.” For example, BBYO provides leadership training, community service and Jewish education for teens. The Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism funds the social justice program L’Taken for high schoolers across the United States, where they learn how to lobby senators and representatives in Washington, D.C. Another organization, Moving Traditions, teaches the importance of personal wellbeing, justice and caring relationships through a Jewish lens. The emphasis on leadership and tikkun olam — social justice — in these organizations bridges teen’s Jewish and secular interests through meaningful and “[non-]boring Jewish content,” said Kessel.
Kessel and the 2016 Jim Joseph study also suggest that teens are more likely to engage in Jewish activities that are compelling and add value to their lives. Said Shrier: “I carry myself through life a lot differently with the values I see in Judaism and that I’ve created for myself through my connection with Judaism. There’s a lot of things I do now that I wouldn’t do if I hadn’t connected with the temple, and I’m really happy that I do them.”
However, teens are involved in other enriching, secular activities that compete with Jewish extracurriculars, causing the teens to grapple with how to spend their limited time.
Ava Naiditch, 16, of Los Angeles, ranks soccer as her most important extracurricular. As a Reform Jew, she resonates with the youth group culture at her temple and wants to stay involved in activities such as confirmation, but has a life-long commitment to her sport. She says she can’t stop soccer now to make more time for her Jewish activities because it would feel like quitting and abandoning years of dedication and hard work.
Academic pursuits also pull teens’ attention away from synagogue. Orli Adamski, 15, from New York City, serves on the editorial board for jGirls+ Magazine, a publication for teen journalists, and may pursue writing in college. The magazine offered her professional, resume-building experience, which was her primary goal in joining. “It being a Jewish magazine was just a bonus,” Adamski said.
However, for some teens, pulling away from synagogue does not mean they cut themselves off from their Jewish community.
Julien Deculus hasn’t been active in the synagogue where he got bar mitzvahed seven years ago, but the 20-year-old is still close to friends he made at the Los Angeles temple.
“The relationships I fostered at temple extended outside temple youth groups so I did not feel like I was losing connection to the Kol Tikvah family,” he said.
The relationships teens develop at temples connect them more with Judaism than synagogue itself in some cases.
“I do care about Judaism but I care more about the connection and the friendships that come along with it,” said Nathan Gaffin, 16, a junior from Waltham, Massachusetts. “I can confidently say that if I didn’t have a lot of friends at my temple, I would not go as much, although I still do feel Judaism is very important.”
Gaffin co-founded the Jewish Student Union at his high school, where only about 30 out of 1,800 students are Jewish. “It’s very important to have that small, safe space where we can say what we want without feeling threatened, we can have fun, and make connections with people that are similar to us,” he said. Gaffin’s club addresses topics like antisemitism in pop culture and at school along with intersectionality within Judaism. He also makes sure there is time for light-hearted activities and just hanging out.
Gaffin dedicates a lot of his time to his tennis team, while also working as an assistant Hebrew school teacher at his synagogue, and on the board of his temple chapter of United Synagogue Youth. During the tennis season, Gaffin misses a lot of his Hebrew school classes, but says “he doesn’t feel like he’s missing out on too much,” but wishes he could make time for both.
Naiditch regrets not staying involved in Jewish activities because, like Gaffin, they provided a “safe place” where she felt comfortable discussing the prejudice Jews face. Especially with the recent backlash regarding rapper Kanye West’s antisemitic tweets, talk amongst ignorant teens has spread antisemitism around her school. She realizes how uncomfortable she feels and misses the connection she had at her synagogue. Naiditch wants to join her temple’s confirmation class, even though it conflicts with her Youth and Government meetings.
Making the time to engage in Jewish activities isn’t a big concern for Charlotte Saada. “If it weren’t for my parents’ connection to Judaism, I wouldn’t be as connected as I am,” says the 16-year-old from Los Angeles, whose family attends a Conservative synagogue.
She takes part in her family’s religious activities, like weekly Shabbat, but acknowledges that once she moves out and becomes more independent, she will likely not maintain her family’s traditions because she’s “too lazy” and would rather spend her time building her crocheting business.
Time management is a challenge for all young people, but Shrier, the youth group leader, won’t trade in his Jewish connection. “Even though I don’t have the time, I love the temple and the little time that I have to give I want to give,” he said.
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Israel to Sue New York Times Over Article Alleging Widespread Rape of Palestinian Prisoners
The New York Times building in New York City. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Israel on Thursday announced that it plans to sue The New York Times, after the newspaper published a column earlier this week alleging widespread sexual abuse and rape against Palestinians in Israeli prisons.
“Following the publication by Nicholas Kristof in The New York Times of one of the most hideous and distorted lies ever published against the State of Israel in the modern press, which also received the backing of the newspaper, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar have instructed the initiation of a defamation lawsuit against The New York Times,” the Israeli Foreign Ministry posted on social media.
On his personal X account, Netanyahu wrote that he has instructed his legal advisers “to consider the harshest legal action against The New York Times and Nicholas Kristof,” the columnist who authored the article, which was published on Monday.
“They defamed the soldiers of Israel and perpetuated a blood libel about rape, trying to create a false symmetry between the genocidal terrorists of Hamas and Israel’s valiant soldiers,” Netanyahu stated. “Under my leadership, Israel will not be silent. We will fight these lies in the court of public opinion and in the court of law. Truth will prevail.”
Israel’s Foreign Ministry has accused the Times of deliberately timing the column to “undermine” Tuesday’s publication of an extensive Israeli report detailing how Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists used sexual violence as a weapon of war against both those attacked in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and the hostages kidnapped and held captive in Gaza.
The Civil Commission on Oct. 7th Crimes by Hamas Against Women and Children, an Israeli NGO established to document the atrocities, drew on substantial evidence to expose the Palestinian terrorists’ use of mass rape, torture, and other forms of sexual violence, explaining the atrocities were not incidental but “systematic, deliberate, and embedded in the attack itself.”
The commission approached the Times months ago regarding its then-forthcoming report, but the publication “said it was not interested,” according to the Israeli Foreign Ministry.
“This comprehensive and well-documented report was published this morning by CNN and other international outlets. Aware of the report and its release date, the night before its release the NYT ran a shameful attack on Israel, belittling Hamas’ sexual crimes. That tells you everything about the NYT’s agenda,” the ministry added.
“Built on unverified claims and Hamas-linked sources like EMHRM [Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor]. No evidence. No verified complaints. A politically driven smear campaign by a biased paper designed to support efforts to blacklist Israel,” the ministry further said of the column, which it described as “Hamas propaganda, a distortion of the truth and the facts all serving an anti-Israel agenda.”
“This disgusting shameful piece must be removed immediately,” the ministry added.
Kirstof’s article described “brutal sexual abuse [of Palestinian prisoners] at the hands of Israel’s prison guards, soldiers, settlers, and interrogators.” The journalist quoted Palestinians who said they had been regularly stripped naked in prison, forcibly penetrated with various objects, and even raped by specially trained dogs — a claim that multiple dog trainers have said on the record this week is not possible.
Beyond the fierce denials of Israeli officials, several experts and commentators have noted that many of the “14 men and women” interviewed by Kristoff have ties to Hamas or anti-Israel activism, calling the report into question. Media watchdog groups have questioned the integrity of the sourcing and whether the Times lowered its rigid editorial standards to publish the article.
On Wednesday night, the Times issued a statement defending Kristof’s column. A spokesperson for the publication said the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist “draws together on-the-record accounts and cites several analyses documenting the practice of sexual violence and abuse conducted by various parts of Israel’s security forces and settlers.”
“The accounts of the 14 men and women he interviewed were corroborated with other witnesses, whenever possible, and with people the victims confided in – that includes family members and lawyers,” the spokesperson added. “Details were extensively fact-checked, with accounts further cross-referenced with news reporting, independent research from human-rights groups, surveys, and in one case, with UN testimony. Independent experts were consulted on the assertions in the piece throughout reporting and fact-checking.”
The Times had issued a separate statement on Tuesday that also voiced support for Kristof and the accuracy of his article. The publication additionally claimed it “never passed” on the Israeli commission report and “wasn’t told about its completion or the timing of its release.”
“Once the report was made public, we covered its findings. The commission’s work also had no bearing on Nicholas Kristof’s opinion column or its publication timing,” said a Times spokesperson.
Kristof’s column has been criticized by the Embassy of Israel to the United States and Ambassador Yechiel Leiter, former US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley, Jewish organizations, and fellow journalists. CNN commentator Scott Jennings described the piece as “journalistic atrocity” in a post on X. “If everyone at the NYT who is responsible for this is not fired, then the publication will lose whatever shred of credibility it has left,” he added.
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Alex Soros commits $30 million to organizations fighting antisemitism — and its weaponization
The Open Society Foundations, founded by Jewish financier and philanthropist George Soros and now led by his son Alex, announced that it would give $30 million to organizations fighting antisemitism and Islamophobia.
“As the son of a Holocaust survivor and a Jew, I am acutely aware of the dangers of antisemitism,” Alex Soros said in a video announcing the campaign Wednesday.
The grants, which will be rolled out over the next three years, represent a major infusion of cash for organizations approaching antisemitism with a more progressive framework than establishment Jewish groups.
Many of those receiving funding — including Bend the Arc, the Nexus Project and New Jewish Narrative — have focused much of their efforts on countering what they see as efforts to restrict legitimate speech criticizing Israel under the guise of countering antisemitism. That work also involves attempts to recalibrate how incidents get counted.
Open Society said in a press release that it is committed to “distinguishing antisemitism from legitimate criticism of Israeli government policies that violate international human rights and humanitarian law.”
The Nexus Project, for example, was significantly expanded in 2024 after creating an alternative to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism, which classifies much criticism of Israel as antisemitic and continues to be promoted by the country’s largest Jewish groups.
Several of the organizations being funded as part of the new $30 million commitment had received one-off Open Society grants in the past, including Nexus and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs.
Kevin Rachlin, Washington director for Nexus, said its new funding from Soros will be directed toward the launch of an antisemitism research center, led by a former senior analyst from the Anti-Defamation League who has sought to show how the ADL’s “messaging doesn’t always match with what their data shows.”
While the ADL continues to produce the most detailed accounting of antisemitic incidents in the U.S., it has changed its methodology in recent years to count certain political expressions of anti-Zionism as forms of antisemitism. For example, Aryeh Tuchman, director of the Nexus research center, said in a recent interview that 20% of the 600 campus incidents tallied by the ADL in its count released earlier this month referred to students using slogans like “from the river to the sea.”
“When the audit puts contested incidents like that in the same report as a neo-Nazi putting a swastika on a synagogue and it’s just presented in a topline number — that number can perhaps distort our understanding of what is actually happening,” said Tuchman, who until recently helped oversee the ADL’s annual audit.
But even with the new dollars, organizations that contend anti-Zionism is a form of antisemitism, and that have accordingly sought to crack down on campus protests against Israel, retain a large funding advantage. Annual budgets for the ADL and the American Jewish Committee, for example, each exceed $100 million.
Soros grants come with ‘baggage’
The Soros grants also come with some controversy attached. Open Society has long funded Israeli and Palestinian human rights groups as well as pro-Palestinian organizations in the United States, including Al-Haq, B’Tselem and Breaking the Silence.
It has also supported Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, a major source for the recent New York Times column that alleged Israeli prison guards have used dogs to rape Palestinian prisoners — a report condemend as a “blood libel” by the Israeli government.
George Soros and Open Society have also been the subject of many far-right conspiracy theories, some of which have relied on antisemitic claims — including that Soros was supposedly taking over the world on behalf of, variously, socialists, Jews or “globalists.” George Soros, a Holocaust survivor born in Hungary in 1930, invested heavily in projects promoting democracy behind the former Iron Curtain, making him a target for oligarchs as they consolidated power.
“Obviously, for any funding, there’s baggage,” said Rachlin. “There are those who are going to hate Soros.”
The decision to funnel the $30 million to not only combating antisemitism but also fighting anti-Muslim hate emphasized what the foundation sees as the need for Jewish and Muslim organizations to work together. “We’ve seen this alarming intensification of antisemitism over the past few years, and at the same time the explosion of anti-Muslim hate,” said Sean Savett, a spokesperson for Open Society. “It just feels like we’ve gone back 10 or 15 years in this country.”
Alex Soros is married to Huma Abdein, a longtime advisor to Hillary Clinton, who is Muslim, which he referenced in his announcement video. “Discrimination and hate aren’t abstract concepts to me or my family,” he said.
The Jewish Council for Public Affairs, another one of the grantees, helped organize a statement from the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, a major coalition of legacy civil rights groups, following the firebombing attack in Boulder, Colorado, last spring, and has partnered with the Muslim Public Affairs Council.
“Post-Oct. 7, we’re seeing extreme voices on both ends of the political spectrum exploit the conflict to pit our communities against each other,” said Amy Spitalnick, CEO of JCPA.
Open Society is also funding the Jewish Social Justice Roundtable, a coalition of nearly 70 mostly progressive Jewish organizations that executive director Abby Levine said had recently focused more specifically on addressing antisemitism.
The post Alex Soros commits $30 million to organizations fighting antisemitism — and its weaponization appeared first on The Forward.
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Here Are Some Positive Local Developments in Support of Israel You Haven’t Heard About
Tennessee State Capitol Building in Nashville. Photo: Andre Porter/Wikimedia Commons.
On April 27, 2026, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee (R) signed legislation requiring state agencies to use the geographic name “Judea and Samaria” instead of “West Bank” in official state materials. Known as the “Recognizing Judea and Samaria Act,” the law asserts that these terms are historically and Biblically accurate.
Just the week before, the members of the Arizona House passed a nonbinding resolution saying the same thing, after the Arizona Senate approved the legislation in February.
These pro-Israel bills earned little press in the Jewish community and even less in the general media outside of Tennessee and Arizona. Americans of all faiths who support Israel should applaud the lawmakers in both Arizona and Tennessee for their leadership and commitment to historical truth. At a time of increasing misinformation and the targeting of Israel, this bill sends a clear message about the significance of recognizing the Jewish people’s deep ties — dating back to Biblical times — to the Land of Israel.
The city of Hebron is in Judea and is the ancient resting place of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, and Jacob and Leah. There are so many other links and ties proving the deep and continuous Jewish presence in the land, and these bills acknowledge that.
What’s more, this is a defeat for anti-Israel radicals in Tennessee who fought against the bill. The New York Times reported about those efforts: “The day of lobbying this month in the State Capitol in Nashville, coordinated by the American Muslim Advisory Council, attracted more than 100 Muslim students and community leaders.”
One year ago, Arkansas state legislators passed their “Recognizing Judea and Samaria Act,” following a 2023 Arkansas General Assembly resolution urging the use of the term “Judea and Samaria” instead of “the West Bank” in official state language.
While it can be argued that Arkansas, Tennessee, and Arizona are right leaning states, they often have Democratic or moderate trends and representatives. For example, from December 2020 through the beginning of 2023 neither of Arizona’s two senators were Republican. While Arizona Republicans control the state legislature, the margin is far from wide with just a handful of seats separating the parties.
Given the unprecedented levels of anti-Israel activity in both parties and the fact that anti-Zionists radicals are winning the anti-Israel legislation fight in far too many parts of the country, the question of how these seemingly symbolic wins matter is a legitimate one to ask.
Tip O’Neill, the Speaker of the House from 1977 to 1987, is remembered for coining the saying that “all politics is local.” From Jimmy Carter to Barack Obama, how many politicians serve early in their careers in their state legislatures? What’s more, these efforts force anti-Israel activists to play defense and occupy their time with things other than BDS, as was the case in Tennessee.
These are the kinds of innovative, accessible, and positive initiatives that the pro-Israel community should pursue much more frequently. Our confidence has been shaken by the harsh criticism of Israel from far too many on Capitol Hill, and these local efforts have been missing from our playbook for much longer than may have been reasonable. If only a handful more states enact such legislation, it will still be well worth it. Correcting false narratives and fighting for a cause you believe in is always worth it.
Moshe Phillips is national chairman of Americans For A Safe Israel, AFSI, (www.AFSI.org), a leading pro-Israel advocacy and education organization.