People ask me all the time how we prepare Jewish teens to deal with anti-Semitism, especially after targeted incidents like the one that just happened in Michigan. They expect me to talk about debate tactics or how to respond to anti-Zionist talking points online.
That’s not what we do.
I lead NCSY and the Jewish Student Union, which together reach more than 40,000 Jewish teens across North America, the vast majority of whom live in public high schools and learn alongside peers who may have never met a Jewish person. They face real hostility. Anti-Semitic incidents in primary schools have increased dramatically. Since October 7, 2023, the environment has become significantly more difficult for many Jewish students.
Our response to all this is not a workshop on how to fight back. It is an investment in who these young people are.
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Law enforcement vehicles are parked outside Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, Michigan on March 13, 2026, after a person identified as Ayman Ghazali drove a vehicle into the building. A 41-year-old man was killed on March 12 after ramming his pickup truck into a synagogue on the outskirts of Detroit, sparking a fire and prompting a massive police response. (Jeff Kowalsky/AFP via Getty Images)
We take teens on Jewish retreats and Shabbat experiences where 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 learning, the depth of Jewish values, and the joy – real, unhurried joy – of the Jewish community.
And something happens to a teenager when that connection takes hold. They stand differently. Not defensive – confident. They don’t have to win an argument with someone who hates them because the hate doesn’t define them. They are defined by something much older and much stronger.
I think about what ‘Never Again’ really means for this generation. After the Holocaust, it was a warning to the world, a demand that civilization not allow such horrors to repeat themselves. That requirement still stands. But for Jewish teens living in 2025, “Never Again” should mean something they can do something about every day. And the most powerful act available to them is not confrontation. It’s a continuation.
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People hold an Israeli and American flag in front of a large group of anti-Israel protesters marching 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 its own answer to every attempt to shrink the Jewish people. The teenager who lights Shabbat candles on Friday evenings, who knows the blessings by heart, who has danced with friends until midnight at a Jewish teen event, who feels the thread that connects her to every Jewish generation before her – she does not need to be taught how to respond to anti-Semitism.
She already knows who she is. And that knowledge isn’t something a hateful tweet or a hostile class can take away from her.
Social media has amplified hatred in ways that would have been unthinkable to previous generations. A piece of anti-Israel propaganda can reach a Jewish child in suburban Ohio within minutes of being posted. The volume is relentless.
But this is what I observed. The teens who are most rooted in their Jewish identity are also the most resilient in that environment. Otherwise they scroll past the hate. 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 march through the city center during a protest against the recent Israeli attack on Lebanon and the ongoing offensives in Gaza on August 3, 2024 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (Matthew Hatcher/AFP via Getty Images)
After October 7, I saw Jewish teenagers in our network do something that deeply moved me. They did not retreat into silence. They showed up – for each other, for their communities, for their people. They organized. They mourned together. They held on to their Jewish identity, not despite the darkness of that moment, but because of the darkness.
Because they understood, on a level beyond argument or strategy, that being Jewish was not something to be put aside when it became expensive. It was something to hold on tighter.
That’s what we’re building at NCSY and JSU. Not a generation of teenage debaters. A generation of Jewish youth so secure in their worth, so rooted in their heritage, and so connected to their community, that anti-Semitism – no matter how vicious and loud it has become – simply cannot reach the core of who they are.
The news will continue to cover up the hate. Someone has to cover up the answer.
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Forty thousand Jewish teenagers live with it. Their answer to anti-Semitism is not a counterargument. It is a Shabbat table. It’s a Jewish summer trip. It’s the look on a 16-year-old’s face when he or she realizes, perhaps for the first time, that being Jewish is not a burden to bear—it’s a gift they can keep.
This is what ‘Never Again’ looks like now. No warning. A way of life.
