While Jews the world over have been experiencing a reawakening, this particular article is focused on American Jewry.
After her bat mitzvah, Gracie Greenberg, who recently concluded her freshman year at Pace University, figured she’d had enough of Judaism.
“My feeling was: I’m done! No more Judaism for me,” recalls the Long Island, New York, native.
But about a month into her first semester studying musical theater, everything changed.
“October 7 was a real wake-up call,” she says, recalling her horror at the brazen attack in Israel and the rise in antisemitism that followed—particularly on college campuses like hers. “Being Jewish was part of my identity I hadn’t given much thought to. Why was everyone targeting me?”
As Greenberg was struggling to make sense of the hatred that suddenly surrounded her, she heard about a free dinner at Meor, a national outreach organization with a branch at nearby New York University (NYU). What she found there was overwhelming.
“I discovered a strong community of Jews that included all types,” she says—which she’d never experienced before. That dinner set her on a journey to explore Judaism more deeply.
Greenberg never expected that she would travel with Meor to both Poland and Israel in her freshman year of college, but those trips helped her clarify who she is and what’s important to her. It’s been transformative, she says, to discover the role of spirituality and the value of personal responsibility in Judaism.
“I decided I want to marry Jewish,” she says. “I’ve started talking to G-d once a day, and I’ve been taking on small mitzvot. I’ve learned that it’s what I’m doing for Hashem that really matters.”
October 7 shocked the Jewish world, and the outpouring of anti-Israel and anti-Jewish rhetoric that followed—both on social media and in real life—has sparked a religious awakening among Jews across the US. As counterintuitive as it may seem, the most common Jewish reaction to rising antisemitism has not been laying low and hiding one’s identity, but rather an increase in Torah learning and mitzvah observance and a stronger connection to the Jewish community.
American Jews are reaching out—because what they’re actually looking for is “authenticity and connection.” Courtesy of Aish.com
In fact, a recent survey of American Jews by the Jewish Federations of North America noted the “explosion in Jewish belonging and participation,” referring to it as “The Surge.” According to the survey, “Of the 83 percent of Jews who were ‘only somewhat,’ ‘not very’ or ‘not at all engaged’ prior to October 7, a whopping 40 percent are now showing up in larger numbers in Jewish life. This group—equal to 30 percent of all Jewish adults and nearly double the proportion of Jews who identify as ‘deeply engaged’—represents the greatest opportunity for broadening and deepening Jewish life” (https://ejewishphilanthropy.com/what-you-need-to-know-about-the-surge-of-interest-in-jewish-life/).
Jewish education is benefiting as well: 39 percent of Jewish parents indicated they may reevaluate or reconsider educational or summer programs for their children, and 38 percent of parents with kids in a secular private school are considering making the move to Jewish day schools. Among Jews who are not members of synagogues—which according to Pew estimates is 64 percent of US Jews—37 percent say they’d be open to joining one now.
Courtesy of Aish.com
“October 7 lit a fire for Jews around the world,” says Rabbi Mark Wildes, founder of the Manhattan Jewish Experience (MJE). “We’re seeing this real need to learn more about Judaism to make sense of it.”
While Rabbi Wildes has seen a bump in attendance at MJE programs since October 7—MJE’s mission is to engage less affiliated Jews in their twenties and thirties in New York—he believes it’s not the numbers that are noteworthy but the eagerness of the participants.
“It’s not hundreds of people coming,” he says. “But there’s a certain urgency among those who are coming. They have a need to support Israel, when they previously had, at most, a tenuous connection.”
Rising antisemitism, he says, has “exposed a raw nerve among assimilated American Jews. They are suddenly asking, ‘What do I believe in that’s worth defending?’”
Since October 7, he says, “we went from ‘why be Jewish?’ to ‘how to be Jewish.’”
This sentiment is echoed across college campuses, as previously unengaged Jewish students struggle to cope with hostility and even outright violence from pro-Palestinian encampments—and schools unwilling to take a stand to protect their Jewish students. Like Greenberg, Jewish students have been targeted and marginalized, and they feel entirely unequipped to respond to anti-Jewish and anti-Israel accusations.
“October 7 lit a fire for Jews around the world,” says Rabbi Mark Wildes (right), founder of the Manhattan Jewish Experience (MJE). “We’re seeing this real need to learn more about Judaism to make sense of it.” Courtesy of MJE
“Every two or three weeks I meet a student who tells me he’s trying to be shomer Shabbos,” says Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan, co-director, along with his wife Sharona, of OU-JLIC at University of California-LA (UCLA). “We’re seeing young men who are deciding to wear a kippah for the first time on campus.”
The primary mission of OU-JLIC is to support Orthodox day school graduates on secular college campuses. “We’re not here to reach out to unaffiliated Jews,” says Rabbi Kaplan. “But we’re seeing so many students who might have been loosely connected before—people who were on the outskirts of the Orthodox community—who are interested in more.”
“Someone said to me the other day, ‘There’s got to be more to Judaism than bagels and lox if they hate us so much,’” says Rabbi Aaron Eisemann, director of Meor at NYU. “These students want to understand what Judaism is really about.”
While he and his team used to spend significant time recruiting kids for programs, those efforts are no longer necessary. “The encampments recruit them for us,” notes Rabbi Eisemann, who has been working in campus outreach for nearly twenty years. Not only are more kids showing up, but there has been a significant growth in the level of content he and his staff are sharing.
“That’s really more telling,” he says. “In the past, the average liberal arts college student questioned the need for Judaism at all; we spent a lot of time on basics. But the campus protests have answered that question for them. The level of learning we’re doing now is so much higher.”
“It Cuts Deep within the Soul of American Jewry”
“There’s no way we could ever have gotten Jews to wake up like this,” says Steve Eisenberg, a successful investment banker turned outreach activist. “It took 1,200 murdered Jews to do this; if we had a billion-dollar budget for outreach, we could not have done this.
“Jews who never did Seders, did Seders this year. Jews who never did Shabbat are trying Shabbat,” says Eisenberg, who serves as the director and co-founder of Jewish International Connection (JIC), a program that “enhances Jewish connection around the world through events and helps strengthen Jewish identity.” “I can’t tell you that the changes are dramatic, but it’s made a large percentage of the Jewish population in America feel more Jewish and identify as Jews. It cuts deep within the soul of the Jewish people in America.”
In the days and weeks immediately following October 7, there was a marked increase in participation in both the Community Kollel of Greater Las Vegas’s outreach programs and its regular minyanim and shiurim. Courtesy of Rabbi Nachum Meth
“I heard of three Jewish twenty-year-olds who broke up with non-Jewish girlfriends,” he says. “Why? Because, all of a sudden, their non-Jewish girlfriends were siding with Hamas. The men thought: you are really siding with people who raped and pillaged and murdered babies and burned them alive? Who are you? Another guy told me three people in his family have decided to marry Jews now. These are Jews who before October 7 couldn’t care less about intermarrying.”
Since October 7, he says, “we went from ‘why be Jewish?’ to ‘how to be Jewish.’”
Hungry for Connection
For your typical unaffiliated college student, “a rabbi was completely unrelatable,” says Rabbi Eisemann. That was before October 7. “But when you can’t go to class because people are yelling at you, the same rabbi is now a safe haven.” Rabbi Eisemann posits that right now young people, especially, are ready for authentic Torah learning because barriers have fallen away.
Grant Ghaemi is a perfect example. A senior at NYU last fall, he found himself very upset after October 7. “I was disgusted, and I confronted people about their [social media] postings . . . and I lost friends over it,” he recalls.
His own reaction surprised him. “There was clearly something about what happened on October 7 that changed me,” he says. Before, he had prided himself on not letting political views get in the way of relationships.
A few weeks later, he met Rabbi Eisemann in front of the NYU library. “With a big smile,” says Ghaemi, “he stretched out his hand and asked, ‘Are you a Jew?’ Up until then, when someone asked me that, I’d say no or keep walking. But this time I thought to myself, if there’s ever a time to embrace this, the time is now. So I shook his hand and said, ‘Yes I am.’”
Ghaemi grew up in a “very secular household” in New Jersey; his father was raised in a Muslim family in Tehran. “As a kid, my family celebrated Chanukah, a version of Rosh Hashanah, and Yom Kippur when my mother remembered,” he says. “And also Christmas and Easter and Eid.”
In his last semester at NYU, Ghaemi committed to learning at Meor at least once a week, and he attended his first Shabbaton in Passaic, New Jersey.
He admits he “felt terribly out of place” at first when he arrived at his hosts’ home. “I had preconceptions about Orthodox Jews,” he says. “I didn’t know any Hebrew. I didn’t even know what Shabbat was.” However, he was quickly blown away by the warm welcome he received—“from literal strangers.”
“I was shocked to find an entire community that viewed me as part of their extended family,” he says. Ghaemi ended up becoming a regular on Shabbatons, and even brought his mom along to get a taste of Shabbat, too. After graduating in the spring, he began working remotely so he could participate in a six-week Meor fellowship in Lakewood, New Jersey.
Seeking Authenticity
This “reawakening” spans all demographics and geography.
Rabbi Josh Broide, director of the Center for Jewish Engagement (CJE), a division of the Jewish Federation of South Palm Beach County, and outreach rabbi at Boca Raton Synagogue in Florida, says he ran an Israel-oriented program soon after October 7 and expected a dozen people. More than 100 showed up. Even months after October 7, program attendance remains significantly higher than in the past. “Of course you’d get people [at previous programs], but nothing in the numbers like this,” he says. “And the people who would show up were the people you’d expect to show up. But now we are getting people we would never expect to show up.”
High school senior Noah Simon (first on the right) has found a supportive community in the JSU club at his public school in Plano, Texas. Following October 7, Noah began wearing tzitzit and a kippah to his public school every day. Seen here, Noah at the JSU Presidents Conference this past November.
Moreover, since the Hamas attack, after any Israel-centered talk or presentation, he has come to expect a long line of people waiting to speak to him. “They say things like, ‘Rabbi, I’m so happy to be here. What else can I do to get involved?’ ‘Rabbi, Israel is the most important thing on my mind.’ I’ve been working in the Jewish community for thirty years. I’ve never seen anything like this.”
This scenario is playing out all over the outreach world. “We’ve had triple the number of people engaging with us,” says Rabbi Tzvi Broker, one of the humans behind the Live chat feature on Aish.com. For about ten hours a day, six days a week, he or a member of his team mans the chat. Since October 7, the platform has seen more than 5,000 people reaching out each month.
Loren (not her real name) is intermarried and living in New Hampshire, and she recently reached out via the live chat. “Decades after my attempt to raise my three children Jewish, I am finally taking the time to focus on my faith,” she wrote. “I’m blown away by the utter courage, strength and historical greatness of the State of Israel and the Jewish people. October 7, for some strange reason, was shocking and paralyzing for me. Since then I have joined the nearby Chabad and latched on to a few more resources for learning.” Rabbi Broker had a lengthy online conversation with her about how to actualize her newfound passion. She hopes to visit Israel soon.
“A few things have become clear over the past several months,” says Rabbi Broker. “Every Jewish heart was torn on October 7. And the fact that the non-Jewish response didn’t validate that feeling at all made people feel very, very alone. All of a sudden, they felt out of place in their own lives. They needed to talk to us.”
He adds that if people just wanted to know more about Judaism, they could find ample information online. But Jewish people are reaching out—because what they’re actually looking for is “authenticity and connection.”
“There are Jews in Jewish communities right now who are hungry. They want to connect,” says Rabbi Broide.
For teens who are looking to connect with Jewish peers, NCSY runs JSU clubs in public and private (non-Jewish) high schools across the US and Canada. JSU has also seen a huge uptick in the number of teens reaching out to open clubs at their schools this year, says Devora Simon, national director of JSU.
I’ve been working in the Jewish community for thirty years. I’ve never seen anything like this.
“In the past, we received about one online request per month to start a JSU club,” she says. “This year alone we received 120 requests—ninety of them have resulted in the creation of active clubs. Along with the requests, she says, “about 98 percent of the time, the teens write some version of, ‘Since October 7, I’ve experienced antisemitism and I want to learn more about my heritage.’ Or, ‘I want to come closer to the Jewish community.’”
JSU reached approximately 18,500 Jewish teens last year, 4,000 more teens than the previous year. And not only did more teens show up, Simon adds, but “teens are more engaged than ever, with average attendance per club higher than ever.”
Courtesy of Aish.com
Simon recognizes that the increase in numbers may reflect teens’ interest in connecting with other Jews, but she feels that the sense of belonging is a significant factor. “Community has always drawn people,” she says. “The social aspect is especially critical.”
At the same time, she notes that JSU programs across the country saw a 20 percent increase in the number of teens attending programs outside of school. “We call these ‘higher-level programs.’ They are more content and educational oriented,” she explains. For example, a steady group of teens in Baltimore attend a weekly Mesillat Yesharim chaburah at 7 am, waking up early to make the class before heading to their nearby public high school. “That’s a serious commitment,” she notes.
One teen who finds a supportive community in JSU is Noah Simon. With about fifty Jewish students out of 1,500 in his public school in Plano, Texas, a suburb of Dallas, Noah enjoys the sense of community JSU provides. Meeting during lunch period every other week, the JSU club in his school provides him with “a Jewish environment” and a place where he “can talk with like-minded people and make friends.”
Since October 7, Noah has been wearing tzitzit and a kippah to school. The senior, who serves as co-president of the JSU at his school, was growing religiously even before the Hamas attack. But October 7 empowered Noah, a soft-spoken sensitive young man, even more, and he began keeping kosher. “I started to not go out for lunch with friends,” he says. “I have definitely grown a lot.”
An Orthodox Awakening
Following October 7, this “awakening” was evident among Orthodox Jews as well. While less affiliated Jews may have been connecting with the Jewish community for the first time, Orthodox Jews were pouring into shuls, tefillah gatherings, Tehillim groups and other programs across the country.
“October 7 was traumatic for all of us,” says Rabbi Nachum Meth, executive director and rosh kollel at the Community Kollel of Greater Las Vegas, which serves as a hub for dynamic programs for Jews of all ages, backgrounds and levels of observance. “People felt motivated to go somewhere and do something.” As a result, there was a marked increase in participation in both the Kollel’s outreach programs and its regular minyanim and shiurim. “There were definitely more frum people coming to shul on Shabbos,” he says. “However, as the acuteness of the situation waned, participation dropped back to normal. That’s simply human nature.”
Will It Last?
The big question on the minds of outreach professionals and informal educators is whether the post–October 7 religious awakening will have staying power or not. And it might be too soon to know.
Rabbi Kaplan is hopeful that “people who have made real changes in their lives will stick with them.” However, he points out that sometimes, though signs of outward growth may not all be sustained, people’s experiences now can still have a long-term effect. “For example, maybe these students will make a commitment to send their kids to Jewish schools when the time comes,” he notes.
Overall, however, he believes that this moment in time will have a deep and lasting impact on the Jewish community. “People who are taking on more religious observance have been welcomed with open arms,” he says. “That experience will stick with them for life.”
Although Ghaemi doesn’t know where his journey will take him now that he has graduated college and is working full-time, “the amount I’ve learned about my values and grown as a person has been remarkable,” he says. “Judaism has taught me to seek to be better every day and has given me concrete ways to do that. Until I met Orthodox Jews, I had never known the concept of devotion and sacrifice for higher ideals. I’ve seen the beauty of Shabbos, and families coming together to connect. I want to take that into my life.”
“I can’t say what the future will hold,” says college student Gracie Greenberg, in terms of her religious observance. “Right now, I’m lighting Shabbos candles and saying Kiddush. I would like to continue doing those things, and I plan to keep learning and growing.”
For Jews like Ghaemi and Greenberg, there’s no going back to their pre–October 7 selves.
Rachel Schwartzberg is a writer and editor who lives with her family in Memphis, Tennessee.