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Jewish teens balance pride and safety when navigating public spaces
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) — After wearing his yarmulke all day at his Orthodox yeshiva on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, Zac Jacobs takes it off before boarding the 6 train home.
“I think it helps mitigate any potential danger that I could be in,” Jacobs, 17, said. “You never know what could happen; the trains are mostly safe, but it takes one person to push you into the tracks.” Besides, he said, he knows that God is above him.
With the 2022 increase in transit crime and with a rise in antisemitic hate crimes, many young Jews in New York City are scared to display their heritage in public settings.
The violence hit close to home for Jacobs last November, when a man threw rocks at his school, Ramaz, damaging a window. It was the anniversary of Kristallnacht, the “night of broken glass” when, in 1938, the Nazis orchestrated attacks on synagogues and Jewish businesses.
For some teens, showing their Jewishness publicly can make them feel self-conscious.
Sima Epstein,16, is always wary of whether people can see the star of David necklace she wears.
“I probably wouldn’t hide it [my Judaism] in a situation or a conversation, but I wouldn’t let it come up” outside of school, said the junior at Yeshivat Frisch,an Orthodox day school in Paramus, New Jersey. “I would avoid discussing religious topics all together.”
Removing their yarmulke in public can be a tough call for a Jewish teen: Halachah, or Jewish law, requires that males wear a head-covering in public. And while the Torah permits Jews to protect themselves when there is a possibility of harm, not all rabbis would agree that riding the subway presents the kind of danger that would allow someone to hide their Jewishness.
“If we are so concerned about appearing Jewish on the subway, what does that say about our ability to live in New York?” says Rabbi Aviad Bodner, a spiritual advisor at Ramaz. As an Orthodox rabbi and mentor, he often deals with students who have concerns about showing their identity in public. “I’m very troubled by the recent uptick [in antisemitism], and it is something we should all be considering when we make decisions.”
Instead of a yarmulke, Bodner wears a fedora-style hat everywhere he goes, so being visibly Jewish is not a concern for him, but he understands and empathizes with students worried for their safety. However, this doesn’t stop him from studying Jewish texts on his morning commute.
He distinguishes between Jewish teens who are not wearing their kippot for safety reasons, and those who do not want to be viewed as “different” by the general public.
“All teens desire to fit in, and sometimes showing off their cultural heritage is not the way to be seen as popular, especially on college campuses, with antisemitism rising,” says Bodner. Day school students in particular are more likely to encounter antisemitic attitudes or anti-Israel hostility at college than they are in their parochial schools.
For Oren Leitner, 16, the issue is personal. A junior at the Torah Academy of Bergen County in Teaneck, New Jersey, Leitner was verbally attacked on the subway as an elementary school student. He was with his older brother and both wore kippot. “He started talking/screaming about how Christianity is the right religion and how we should not be Jewish,” Leitner said. “I was really young at the time, and I did not understand what was going on and was very scared.”
This and other antisemitic instances shaped his Jewish identity. Although in all other areas of his life, he wears his kippah proudly, on the subway he covers it up with a hood.
How Jewish he can look and act in public is a concern for Leitner as he considers applying to college. “It is a risk I would be willing to take if I end up going to one [that is not Jewishly affiliated]. But it is a factor my family and I will have to take into account,” he said.
Emy Khodorkovsky takes the opposite approach. He fights antisemitism by never hiding his Jewishness. “The only way we can combat Jew hatred is by being proud of our heritage,” the 16-year-old said. He understands why some of his friends decide not to display their Judaism openly. He also used to remove his yarmulke on the subway but not since the Ramaz junior became active in his school’s Israel advocacy club and recently attended the Anti-Defamation League’s “Never Is Now” summit on antisemitism.
“I was worried, like other people are, about getting attacked, but then I realized that we can not shy away from showing our beliefs just because others do not like it,” he said. He thinks about his parents who escaped antisemitism in the former Soviet Union for a better life for their children.
Khodorkovsky has never experienced aggression on the subway, and is unruffled by the curious looks he gets when he carries his lulav and etrog on Sukkot or his tefillin bag to school. “New York is a big place, and there are stranger things to look at than a kid carrying a palm tree,” says Khodorkovsky.
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Mistrial Declared in Case of Students Charged After Stanford Anti-Israel Protests
FILE PHOTO: A student attends an event at a protest encampment in support of Palestinians at Stanford University during the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in Stanford, California U.S., April 26, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Carlos Barria/File Photo
A judge declared a mistrial on Friday in a case of five current and former Stanford University students related to the 2024 pro-Palestinian protests when demonstrators barricaded themselves inside the school president’s office.
Twelve protesters were initially charged last year with felony vandalism, according to prosecutors who said at least one suspect entered the building by breaking a window. Police arrested 13 people on June 5, 2024, in relation to the incident and the university said the building underwent “extensive” damage.
The case was tried in Santa Clara County Superior Court against five defendants charged with felony vandalism and felony conspiracy to trespass. The rest previously accepted plea deals or diversion programs.
The jury was deadlocked. It voted nine to three to convict on the felony charge of vandalism and eight to four to convict on the felony charge to trespass. Jurors failed to reach a verdict after deliberations.
The charges were among the most serious against participants in the 2024 pro-Palestinian protest movement on US colleges in which demonstrators demanded an end to Israel’s war in Gaza and Washington’s support for its ally along with a divestment of funds by their universities from companies supporting Israel.
Prosecutors in the case said the defendants engaged in unlawful property destruction.
“This case is about a group of people who destroyed someone else’s property and caused hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage. That is against the law,” Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen said in a statement, adding he sought a new trial.
Anthony Brass, a lawyer for one of the protesters, told the New York Times his side was not defending lawlessness but “the concept of transparency and ethical investment.”
“This is a win for these young people of conscience and a win for free speech,” Brass said, adding “humanitarian activism has no place in a criminal courtroom.”
Protesters had renamed the building “Dr. Adnan’s Office” after Adnan Al-Bursh, a Palestinian doctor who died in an Israeli prison after months of detention.
Over 3,000 were arrested during the 2024 US pro-Palestinian protest movement, according to media tallies. Some students faced suspension, expulsion and degree revocation.
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Exclusive: FM Gideon Sa’ar to Represent Israel at 1st Board of Peace Meeting in Washington on Thursday
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar speaks next to High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice-President of the European Commission Kaja Kallas, and EU commissioner for the Mediterranean Dubravka Suica as they hold a press conference on the day of an EU-Israel Association Council with European Union foreign ministers in Brussels, Belgium, Feb. 24, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Yves Herman
i24 News – Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar will represent the country at the inaugural meeting of the Gaza Board of Peace in Washington on Thursday, i24NEWS learned on Saturday.
The arrangement was agreed upon following a request from Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who will not be able to attend.
Netanyahu pushed his Washington visit forward by a week, meeting with US President Donald Trump this week to discuss the Iran situation.
A U.N. Security Council resolution, adopted in mid-November, authorized the Board of Peace and countries working with it to establish an international stabilization force in Gaza and build on the ceasefire agreed in October under a Trump plan.
Under Trump’s Gaza plan, the board was meant to supervise Gaza’s temporary governance. Trump thereafter said the board, with him as chair, would be expanded to tackle global conflicts.
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Two Men Jailed in UK for Islamic State-Inspired Plot to Kill Hundreds of Jews
Weapons seized from the home of Walid Saadaoui, 38, who along with Amar Hussein, 52, has been found guilty at Preston Crown Court of plotting to kill hundreds in an Islamic State-inspired gun rampage against the Jewish community, in Britain, in this handout picture obtained by Reuters on December 23, 2025. They are due to be sentenced on Friday. Photo: Greater Manchester Police/Handout via REUTERS
Two men were jailed on Friday for plotting to kill hundreds in an Islamic State-inspired attack on the Jewish community in England, a plan prosecutors said could have been deadlier than December’s mass shooting at Sydney’s Bondi Beach.
Walid Saadaoui, 38, and Amar Hussein, 52, were both convicted after a trial at Preston Crown Court, which began a week after an unrelated deadly attack on a synagogue in the city of Manchester, in northwest England.
Prosecutors said the pair were Islamist extremists who wanted to use automatic firearms to kill as many Jews as they could in an attack in Manchester.
They were found guilty little more than a week after a mass shooting at a Jewish Hanukkah celebration on Bondi Beach in which 15 people were killed.
Prosecutor Harpreet Sandhu said on Friday that, had Saadaoui and Hussein carried out their plan, it “could have been very much more serious” than the attacks in Australia and Manchester.
Judge Mark Wall sentenced Saadaoui to a minimum term of 37 years and Hussein to a minimum term of 26 years, saying: “You were very close to being ready to carry out this plan.”
Hussein refused to attend his sentencing, having refused to attend most of his trial, which Wall said reflected Hussein’s cowardice, describing him as “brave enough to plan to threaten an unarmed group with an AK-47 but not sufficiently courageous to face up to what he did.”
POTENTIALLY ONE OF DEADLIEST ATTACKS ON UK SOIL
Saadaoui had arranged for two assault rifles, an automatic pistol and almost 200 rounds of ammunition to be smuggled into Britain through the port of Dover when he was arrested in May 2024, Sandhu told jurors at the trial.
He added that Saadaoui planned to obtain two more rifles and another pistol, and to collect at least 900 rounds of ammunition.
“This would likely have been one of the deadliest terrorist attacks ever carried out on British soil,” Wall said.
Unbeknown to Saadaoui, however, a man known as “Farouk,” from whom he was trying to get the weapons, was an undercover operative who helped foil the plot.
Walid Saadaoui’s brother Bilel Saadaoui, 37, was found guilty of failing to disclose information about acts of terrorism. He was sentenced to six years in jail.