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The Conservative movement youth group was already struggling. Then came COVID.
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) — Weeks before United Synagogue Youth’s International Convention in December 2021, Alexa Johnson picked out some of the exciting seminars she wanted to attend. It would be her first big USY event and the current high school sophomore was excited to visit Washington, D.C. from her home in Los Angeles.
But then the Omicron variant hit and the event was canceled. She was disappointed but figured she would go the following year. Then she learned that there would be no 2022 convention and she started questioning her affiliation with the national organization. Why should she stay affiliated with the Conservative movement youth group if they failed to provide her with engaging programming?
“I just feel there really hasn’t been enough programming as a whole,” said Johnson, who was looking forward to meeting other Conservative Jewish teens like her. Overall the programming dissatisfaction from her and other members of the 35-person chapter at Pasadena Jewish Temple and Center started after the pandemic. “We just feel like it’s really hard to get people involved because there isn’t much programming at a regional or international level that people want to go to or look fun to them,” said Johnson.
United Synagogue Youth serves almost 8,250 Jewish youth from 3rd to 12th grade as the primary Conservative youth group since its founding in 1951. Through local, regional and international events, generations of Jews have participated in USY, but for some, this may be the end of the road for their involvement.
For decades now, Conservative Judaism has seen their numbers fall as members flock to other denominations like Reform and the United States becomes increasingly less religious. In the 1950s and 1960s, Conservative Judaism — which, despite its name, is a centrist movement between more liberal Reform and the traditionalist Orthodoxy — was the largest Jewish denomination. Now, only 15% of American Jews identify as Conservative, according to the Pew Research Center.
With Conservative numbers on the decline, United Synagogue Youth is struggling to stay on its feet. Julie Marder, the interim senior director of teen engagement, was open about the organization’s membership struggles. “Coming out of the pandemic, numbers just weren’t where they used to be,” Marder said. “They were lower than we can continue to sustain.”
While the membership decline predated the pandemic, COVID undid a lot of their work to gain back members.
Stacey Glazer, associate director of synagogue support, who also oversees the southwest region of USY, said that the southwest region was successfully building up their membership pre-pandemic, but once COVID hit, the region’s progress was erased.
A staff shortage also led to reduced international and regional programming across the organization. As of publication, there were seven events listed for the 15 regions.
The challenges the staff face turn into frustration and disappointment for the teenage members.
Dan Lehavi, a high school senior who serves on the USY board of his Los Angeles synagogue and on the Far West Regional General Board, witnesses the changes firsthand. He said in 2018 and 2019, his region filled a banquet hall for the annual regional convention, but coming back after the pandemic, the group could fit into a much smaller room. “They did their best to make it a memorable weekend as possible, but it just doesn’t have the same energy when there are so few people,” said Lehavi.
As someone who has grown up with USY, Lehavi is disappointed by the decline in attendance and engagement. “It’s just really sad,” Lehavi said. “Generally, I think that USY has been an invaluable resource for the Conservative movement as a whole. I hope that the future of the Conservative movement is a lot brighter than the present.”
Despite serving a large Jewish community spanning across southern California, Hawaii, Arizona, Nevada, and more, the region did not organize many region-wide events. During the last school year, Far West offered five events, including a regional dance that was canceled due to low registration. This year, Far West is currently only offering one regional event, in partnership with the Southwestern region. The region hopes to announce another region-wide event later in the year.
“It has just made our chapter not feel like a USY chapter,” said Samuel Svonkin, a member of Far West USY from Los Angeles. “I don’t feel like we have any connection to USY itself.” Svonkin said that regional programming lacks a pull for his fellow members and the association with USY doesn’t attract teens.
Svonkin has been a member of USY since he was 13. He grew up with teens at his synagogue going to USY events and making friends and great memories. Now, he feels like his generation is being ignored. “I feel like they’re not focusing on what their youth want. And they’re instead trying to make something that works well for them. I think they’re struggling as a result of their own incompetence of looking at what teens actually want,” he said.
USY staff acknowledge that there are fewer events overall but say they are working to improve the teen experience. Glazer, associate director of synagogue support, who also oversees the southwest region of USY, suggests that Svonkin reach out to a local staff person. “If we don’t, we don’t hear from the teens —which, at the end of the day, this is who we’re here to serve — then it’s hard to know what they want,” she said.
In previous years, USY’s Marder said, there was no need to heavily advertise regional and international events; teens would just attend with their synagogues naturally. But now, “We can’t just build a regional convention and assume that people are going to come because we created it. We need to take a step back and start doing more local programming and support the chapters and help them build. Then we can build the bigger programs,” said Marder. Attracting more attendees is not an easy fix, but Marder and the rest of USY are working to build the best programs that they can create.
As they continue to regroup, USY is working towards supporting congregations in teen engagement and rebuilding the pipeline to USY. “That means redesigning and rethinking how we are running our regional and international programs to build up to the large programs that we once had,” Marder said. “We want to do it with excellence. To not just throw a program out there to throw out a program. That we are creati
This year, in place of an international convention, USY offered three different summits: a Heschel Summit at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City, a Civil Rights Journey based in Alabama and Georgia, and a Teen Climate Activism Retreat set in Maryland. Stacey Glazer wants USY’s events like these summits to focus on what young Jewish teens are interested in, whether that is religion or social justice.
Teens from Pinwheel USY, the Pacific Northwest Region of the Conservative movement youth group, attend an event in July 2022. (Via Facebook)
In addition to these three retreats, USY planned on hosting a Teen Leadership Summit in Denver, but the event was canceled. Glazer did not have an answer as to why the summit was canceled.
Focusing on what teens are interested in proved to be successful for USY. Last December, the official Instagram account reported that the Civil Rights Journey only had seven spots left, four days before the registration deadline. Moreover, over 1,200 teens participated in regional or international programming, according to an Instagram post summarizing some of USY’s successes in the second half of 2022.
On top of rethinking the way USY creates programs, last year, USY also cut membership fees for its individual members, a cost that was absorbed by the synagogue. Synagogues now pay just one fee to have all of its members be associated with the national organization. “I think we had some pretty good success with [cutting fees] this year,” Marder said. USY would not provide specifics to JTA but did say the organization is not losing money because of the pay structure change.
At the end of United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism’s fiscal year in 2022, the parent organization of USY reported that they collected a little over $6.3 million in membership dues, around a $45,000 increase from 2021. But that is still a drop from 2019, when United Synagogue collected over $7 million dollars in membership fees. Despite a recent increase in collected membership fees, the organization did see a stark decline in membership fees between 2019 and 2022, according to published figures.
Nevertheless, Glazer provided statistics that show membership growing. In March of 2018, USY recorded 5,138 members from 3rd grade to 12th grade. In June of 2020, USY recorded 4,408 members across those same demographics. From 2020 to their members now, they recorded an increase of about 3800 members as they now record having over 8,200 members.
Membership numbers are on the rise, but USY is having struggles with staff shortages, a large cause of reduced programming. Marder said that of the 12 regional staff members, only eight work full-time. With 15 active regions, supporting each region equally is a challenge. For regional overnight events this year, many nearby regions combined their events so more attention from staff and youth leaders could be put into the events.
Rather than hiring more staff, Stacey Glazer said that the organization wanted to work with the staff they have and “maybe come up with a new structure where we’re using each of our employees to the best benefit to USY as a whole,” said Glazer. She also said that the lack of staff is not because of financial pressures, but because they are working on restructuring the ways they function as a staff. And Glazer acknowledged that they will eventually need to hire more staff.
Additionally, Marder said that there are fewer full-time chapter directors at synagogues. During the pandemic, when Jewish organizations like synagogues were cutting staff, youth departments were heavily affected. Marder said that synagogues with chapter directors task them with other youth-related jobs as well.
The time USY is taking to rebuild may be causing the Far West region to struggle, but not all regions are dragging behind. Sigal Judd, a teen member of the Central Region — which encompasses parts of Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, Michigan, Western Pennsylvania and West Virginia — was excited about the current status and future of her region. “We have really grown in the past few years and have had many more events to keep the people coming,” said Judd.
For Jewish teenagers who do not attend Jewish high schools, finding connections with other Jewish youth can be hard. Judd is grateful for the relationships USY gives her. “I am lucky to have these friendships from [Central Region USY] and a pen pal from the Far West region. I love being a part of the Jewish community through USY and growing my Jewish identity surrounded by kids like me,” she said.
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Boston-area Jewish day school to close after 25 years, saying its model is ‘no longer sustainable’
(JTA) — For two decades, MetroWest Jewish Day School eked out an existence in the suburbs of Boston, providing what parents say was a warm and nurturing Jewish education to just dozens of children.
Now, the school says it simply cannot go on. MetroWest will shutter at the end of the academic year, officials announced last week.
“Despite extensive and sustained efforts by our Board, school leadership, faculty, staff, and committed community members to identify a viable path forward, we have concluded that our model of highly individualized Jewish day school education is no longer sustainable in the Metrowest area of Boston,” wrote board chair Steven Finn and head of school Brian Cohen wrote. “This decision was made with great care and reflection.”
Located in Framingham, Massachusetts, MetroWest Jewish Day opened in 2003 and enrolls students in pre-K through eighth grade. In its closure announcement, the school said it has served more than 300 students from over 30 towns in the greater Boston area over 25 years. According to social media posts, graduating eighth grade classes are typically between five and 10 students.
Currently, there are only about 20 students enrolled across all grades, school officials said. The school’s website shows 15 faculty and staff members.
“It’s a well-respected school,” Cohen told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “But in the end, if there’s not a demand for the product, the quality of the product doesn’t necessarily matter, because you don’t have customers wishing to participate.”
The closure follows a spate of recent closures of small Conservative or pluralistic Jewish day schools across the country, including in New Jersey, New York City and Arizona. Many of the schools had seen enrollment dwindle sharply. (Orthodox schools are faring better.)
Prizmah, the nonprofit network supporting Jewish schools, said it believed interest in day school enrollment had risen in the wake of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, as families gained new appreciation for Jewish community. But Cohen said there had been no “surge” at MetroWest, which already suffered during the Covid era.
“A lot of schools have substantially lower enrollment now than they did at the same time 10 or 20 years ago,” Cohen added. “We just are the one that is in the most critical condition right now.”
Now, MetroWest’s families must find other schools for next year. The school says founders Steven and Renée Finn “have generously committed to providing tuition scholarship support for current students who continue their Jewish day school education through eighth grade.”
Where the students might land is an open question. The Boston area is home to 13 other day schools, according to Combined Jewish Philanthropies, the city’s Jewish federation. (A “diasporic” day school that does not support Israel as a Jewish state is also in development; its founder has declined to speak with JTA but has said she believes there is adequate demand for such a school.)
MetroWest is about 15 miles from its most similar alternative, another pluralistic primary school called Jewish Community Day School of Boston. Commuting in the city’s notorious traffic could take up to an hour.
“The end of the MetroWest Jewish Day School leaves a huge hole for the local community,” said Paul Bernstein, CEO of Prizmah. “Steven and Renee Finn, working with Brian Cohen and so many others, created a wonderful school and built a proud 25-year legacy for the students and families whose lives it enriched.”
For now, the school is being mourned by the families that used it. Aviva Fellman, a rabbi at Congregation Beth Israel in Worcester, Massachusetts, is a parent of four. Her children attended MetroWest for eight years, commuting about 60 miles roundtrip.
Last year, after her oldest daughter graduated the family opted to put all of the children in schools closer to their home.
“They are still close to the friends that they made there, and we are grateful to the school for the education and social-emotional support that they received as they are all thriving and able to self-advocate and stay on top of their schooling through these changes,” Fellman said. “We also continue to be impressed with how each of our children are critical thinkers, enthusiastic learners, kind to others, and feel strongly and proudly Jewish and we thank the school for supporting and being part of all of that.”
The post Boston-area Jewish day school to close after 25 years, saying its model is ‘no longer sustainable’ appeared first on The Forward.
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France issues arrest warrants against 2 right-wing French-Israeli activists for ‘complicity in genocide’
(JTA) — France has issued arrest warrants for two French-Israeli activists for “complicity in genocide,” a charge that stemmed from the pair allegedly blocking humanitarian aid from entering the Gaza Strip.
The arrest warrants were issued in July against Nili Kupfer-Naouri, the president of the organization Israel Is Forever, and Rachel Touitou, an activist with the organization Tsav 9, a right-wing Israeli group that was sanctioned by the United States in June 2024 for destroying humanitarian aid for Gaza.
The two have been charged with “complicity in genocide” and “public and direct incitement to genocide,” the French newspaper Le Monde reported on Monday. They are accused of trying to block humanitarian aid trucks from entering Gaza between January and November 2024 and in May 2025.
An array of activists, including military reservists and family members of some hostages, sought to block the aid trucks from entering Gaza on the theory that helping Gazans would alleviate pressure on Hamas.
In an interview with i24News, Kupfer-Naouri said, “I blocked trucks that were supplying Hamas. If I had to do it again, I would do it again.” (Israel accused Hamas of stealing aid shipments to Gaza during the conflict.)
The warrants are notable because they represent a success by advocacy organizations seeking to hold Israelis responsible for what they say are war crimes. The warrants stemmed from a complaint made last year by the Palestinian Center for Human Rights and the groups Al-Mezan and Al-Haq, which were all sanctioned by the United States in September for having “directly engaged in efforts by the International Criminal Court to investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute Israeli nationals, without Israel’s consent.”
In a joint statement with the French Jewish Union for Peace, which joined the complaint, the groups called the arrest warrant against Kupfer-Naouri “a historic step forward in the fight against impunity.”
The warrants call for Kupfer-Naouri and Touitou, who were both born in France and live in Israel, to appear before an investigating judge, but not for their detention, according to the French news agency AFP.
Touitou condemned the arrest warrant in a post on X Monday.
“If peacefully demonstrating with an Israeli flag against a terrorist organization seizing humanitarian aid, diverting it, and reselling it at exorbitant prices to Gazans is a crime—then there’s no need to look down on the Mullahs, France is just like Iran!,” she wrote. “I will always fight to defend the truth, my people, and my country 🇮🇱.”
In an interview posted on X last month, Kupfer-Naouri called the investigation an “antisemitic delusion,” adding, “I will no longer be able to set foot in France because I have no intention of going to French jails, neither in police custody, nor anything else.”
Kupfer-Naouri said the investigation could set a “very dangerous precedent” for French-Israeli soldiers in the Israeli military who return home to France.
Some Israeli soldiers traveling abroad have faced war crime inquiries for their actions in Gaza. Over the summer, some Canadian IDF soldiers also reported that they feared returning home after the Royal Canadian Mounted Police announced it had opened an investigation into crimes committed by Canadians during the war in Gaza.
The post France issues arrest warrants against 2 right-wing French-Israeli activists for ‘complicity in genocide’ appeared first on The Forward.
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Islamic State Terrorist Attack on Niger Airport Potentially More Deadly Than Government Revealed
Members of the Nigerien army walk near the motorcycles seized from the attackers, following an attack on Niamey International Airport, in Niamey, Niger, Jan. 29, 2026, in this screengrab from a video. Photo: ORTN/Reuters TV/Handout via REUTERSISIS
Islamic State’s attack on the airport in Niger‘s capital Niamey last week may have been more severe than the Nigerien government claimed, according to recent reports and a video released by a media outlet affiliated with the terrorist group.
More than 30 members of the Islamic State branch in the Sahel region targeted the Diori Hamani International Airport and Air Base 101 shortly after midnight on Thursday using guns, drones, and explosives. The jihadist group on Friday took credit for the assault in a short statement released online through its propaganda outlet, Amaq News Agency.
US forces had previously used the air base in Niamey — located six miles from the presidential palace — for maintaining drones until withdrawing in 2024 following the previous year’s coup d’état orchestrated by former Presidential Guard commander General Abdourahamane Tchiani, who now serves as the landlocked country’s 11th president.
Niger’s military and Russia’s Africa Corps mercenary group, which was also stationed at the base, said they combated the attack. Niger has so far reported four of its troops suffered injuries and there was little damage. The government said it killed 20 attackers and captured 11, at least one of whom was a French national, leading Nigerien authorities to blame France and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) for the attack.
“We remind the sponsors of those mercenaries, who are Emmanuel Macron [president of France], Patrice Talon [president of Benin], and Alassane Ouattara [president of the Ivory Coast], we have sufficiently heard them bark, and they should now in turn be prepared to hear us roar,” Tchiani said in a statement on national television.
While the government’s reason for ignoring Islamic State was not immediately clear, Niger has previously blamed its neighbors and former colonial ruler France for internal instability.
However, following its initial claim of responsibility, Islamic State published a 90-secoind video of the attack through Amaq News Agency, depicting far more damage than what Nigerien authorities claimed.
The video showed that some attackers came in on motorcycles and attacked aircraft hangars in Air Base 101, burning and shooting the planes. The video also presented a burning helicopter, and an additional statement from the terrorist group claimed the torching of a drone.
Local reports and accounts circulated on social media aligned with Islamic State’s account of greater damage, describing hits on civilian aircraft and a destroyed ammunition depot.
The base is a key military hub in the region, reportedly hosting a contested stockpile of uranium and the headquarters for the Niger-Burkina Faso-Mali Joint Force.
Caleb Weiss, an analyst who focuses on the spread of the Islamic State in Central Africa, reported in the Foundation for Defense of Democracy’s Long War Journal that unconfirmed social media reports reveal “a much higher death toll for both local Nigerien security forces and men from Russia’s Africa Corps who were also stationed at the airbase” — specifically, at least 24 Nigerien soldiers and three Russian mercenaries.
At the same time as the Niger attack, Islamic State’s West Africa Province perpetrated a similar strike in Nigeria’s Sabon Gari army base in Borno, leaving at least nine dead and more wounded.
The assaults came amid a surge of Islamic State terrorist activity across Africa, including the Sahel region, which stretches from the Horn of Africa to the Atlantic Ocean, just under the Sahara Desert. The Islamic State regional affiliate there has killed more than 120 people in the Tillabéri territory in September and also kidnapped an American in October.
“From Somalia to Nigeria, the problem set is connected. So, we’re trying to take it apart and then provide partners with the information they need,” the deputy commander of US Africa Command (AFRICOM), Lt. General John Brennan, said in January.
Terrorism in western Africa has exploded in recent years following three coups which have led their military leaders to create a confederacy aligned with Russia. Niger has joined with Burkina Faso and Mali to create the Association of Sahel States (AES), as an alternative to the ECOWAS. Reports have emerged of alleged atrocities committed by Russian mercenaries in Mali.
A November report from the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point revealed that Africa had become the global hot spot for terrorist killings. Analysts explained that “where once the global terror threat was concentrated in the Middle East and North Africa, today it is centered in the Sahel, specifically in the tri-border region between Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger.”
The data showed that 86 percent of deaths caused by terrorism happened in 10 countries with 7 in Africa and 5 in the Sahel.