NCSY Leader: Jewish teens fight anti-Semitism through identity construction

This is not what we do.

I lead NCSY and the Union of Jewish Students, which together reach more than 40,000 Jewish teens across North America, the vast majority of whom are in public high schools, living and learning alongside their peers who may have never met a Jewish person before. They face real hostility. Anti-Semitic Incidents in K-12 Schools rose. Since October 7, 2023, the environment for many Jewish students has become significantly more difficult.

Our response to all of this is not a workshop on how to respond. It is an investment in the identity of these young people.

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Law enforcement vehicles are parked outside Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, Michigan, March 13, 2026, after a person named Ayman Ghazali drove a car into the building. A 41-year-old man was killed March 12 after he rammed his pickup truck into a synagogue on the outskirts of Detroit, causing a fire and prompting a massive police response. (Jeff Kowalski/AFP via Getty Images)

We take teenagers Jewish Retreats and Sabbath Experiences Many of them feel, for the first time, the full weight and warmth of what it means to belong to this people. We connect them to Jewish history—not as a lesson in victimhood but as a legacy of survival, creativity, and purpose. We introduce them to the richness of Jewish education, the depth of Jewish values, and the joy—the real, unhurried joy—of the Jewish community.

Something happens to the teenager when this connection takes hold. They stand differently. Not defensively – confidently. They don’t need to win an argument with someone who hates them because they don’t know hate. They are identified with something much older and stronger.

I think about what “never again” really means to this generation. after HolocaustIt was a warning to the world, a demand from civilization not to allow such horror to be repeated. This request still stands. But for Jewish teens living in 2025, “Never Again” should mean something they can act on every day. The strongest action available to them is not confrontation. It is a continuation.

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People carry the Israeli and American flag in front of a large group of anti-Israel protesters march outside The Grove shopping center on Black Friday in Los Angeles, November 24, 2023. (David Swanson/AFP via Getty Images)

Living as a proud Jew – openly, joyfully and unapologetically – is the answer to every attempt to make the Jewish people shrink. The teenager who lights Shabbat candles on Friday night, who knows the blessings by heart, who danced with her friends at a Jewish teen event until midnight, who feels the thread that connects her to every Jewish generation before her – does not need to be taught how to respond to anti-Semitism.

She already knows who she is. And this knowledge is not something that a hateful tweet or a hostile classroom can take away from her.

Social media has amplified hate in ways that previous generations could not have imagined. A piece of anti-Israel propaganda can reach a Jewish child in suburban Ohio within minutes of being published. The scale is relentless.

But here’s what I noticed. Teenagers who are most firmly established in their Jewish identity are also the most resilient in that environment. They go beyond hate differently. Not because they don’t see it, but because it doesn’t destabilize them. Their sense of self is not up for debate.

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Anti-Israel demonstrators walk downtown during a protest against the recent Israeli raid on Lebanon and ongoing attacks in Gaza on August 3, 2024, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (Matthew Hatcher/AFP via Getty Images)

After October 7, I watched Jewish teens across our network do something that deeply affected me. They did not retreat into silence. They showed up – for each other, for their communities, and for their people. They were organized. They grieved together. They held on to their Jewish identity not despite the darkness of that moment but because of it.

Because they understood, on a level beyond argument or strategy, that being Jewish was not something to be set aside when it became costly. It was something that could be held tighter.

This is what we are building at NCSY and JSU. Not a generation of teenage debaters. A generation of young Jews is so confident in their worth, so rooted in their heritage and so connected to their community, that anti-Semitism — as vicious and loud as it has become — simply cannot get to the core of their identity.

The news will continue to cover hate. Someone has to cover the response.

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Forty thousand Jewish teenagers live there. Their response to anti-Semitism is not a counterargument. It’s the Sabbath table. It’s a Jewish summer trip. It’s the look on a 16-year-old’s face when they realize, perhaps for the first time, that being Jewish is not a burden they must carry — but a gift they must keep.

This is what Never Again looks like now. Not a warning. A way of life.