The turning point came during spring finals, when Abigail Fixel got back to her dorm room at Barnard College and found a small Palestinian flag slapped onto her door frame, where her mezuza should have been.
Then she found her mezuza, a symbol of Jewish faith, drowned in her sink.
For months since Oct. 7, Ms. Fixel had been trying to reconcile her liberal and Jewish identities. She didn’t grow up that observant, and a part of her almost wanted to join friends in the pro-Palestinian encampments. But she said that she could not bear the growing antisemitism she saw around her.
Staring at the wet mezuza, she decided to turn toward the one community she knew was truly hers: a Jewish one.
She canceled her summer plans to mobilize Democratic voters and packed her bags for Pennsylvania to be a camp counselor with BBYO, a leadership network for Jewish teenagers. There, she found friends, fascinating speakers and fun at the lake — all rooted in Jewish identity and community.
“I have never felt so connected,” Ms. Fixel said. “To be in a space for once where I could let my guard down and ask whatever questions I want because I was in a Jewish space, it was so inherently freeing.”
The toll of the past year since the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack on Israel has shaken the foundation of American Jewish life, in a way that is transforming a generation. Fear over the growing war in the Middle East is mounting, as are grief and anger over the still-captured hostages and the escalating loss of Palestinian life.
Antisemitism and hate crimes are spiking, felt not just in seemingly distant news stories, but also in Jewish families’ daily life and neighborhoods. Spaces that many long saw as a refuge, like college campuses and Democratic politics, have become fraught hotbeds.
Many Jews are experiencing a sense of vulnerability, a feeling they had largely only known from stories passed down about the Holocaust.
Their responses have varied, reflecting the wide spectrum of Jewish practice. Some have become more distant from their religion. Some have become more political.
But many Jews, including secular ones, have responded to the crisis of the past year by reaching into deep wells of their history and faith, searching for answers and support.
“There’s been a great not only trauma, but reawakening,” said Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch, senior rabbi of Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in New York City. “Those who are distanced are coming back.”
Across the country, rabbis report a rise in the number of new congregants. Longstanding members are engaging more in services and activities. Jewish schools and camps are welcoming an influx of new families. Philanthropists see a rise in giving not just for needs in Israel, but also for Jewish education and identity in America.
Since the Oct. 7 attack, more than four in 10 American Jews have either sought out or engaged more with Jewish life, according to the Jewish Federations of North America. About a third of Jews represent what the group calls “the surge” — those who were not previously engaged but are now showing up more.
“That tends to be one effect of antisemitism historically,” Rabbi Hirsch said. “For Jews, when we were attacked and oppressed and discriminated against, the reaction tended to be to look inward for comfort and conciliation.”
The Reform movement reports a significant uptick in interest in conversion, with 3,000 people taking its introduction to Judaism program. Hillel International, the largest Jewish campus organization, has seen its largest participation numbers ever, with a yearly increase of 17 percent. Sign-ups for volunteer experiences with Repair the World, a service organization, have doubled. Sefaria, the online home to thousands of years of Jewish texts, reports sustained engagement of 800,000 visitors a month, up 30 percent from last year.
The rise of antisemitism is forcing many Jews to realize that people marginalize and even hate them for who they are — while perhaps they themselves haven’t explored deeply who they are, said Rabbi Elan Babchuck, executive vice president of Clal, the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership.
The result is a sort of forced soul-searching in ways new to this generation.
“Maybe on Oct. 6, 2023, it was fine and funny if I said, ‘I am a Seinfeld Jew,’ ‘I’m a bagel-and-lox Jew,’” Rabbi Babchuck said. “Those are valid expressions of Jewish life in America.”
“They are now asking,” he said, “‘What goes beyond that? And why do I feel this abiding sense of pride in my Judaism, when I am not even sure how it manifests in my life?’”
In synagogue, almost every week, Rabbi Babchuck watches someone new come in, looking confused, wondering where to sit or what to read.
At the Village Temple in Manhattan, Rabbi Diana Fersko said that half of the students in her Talmud class this past year had never studied the text. One day, a student commented that a passage about a palace that was on fire seemed a lot like the modern world. The text, Rabbi Fersko noted, speaks to the balance between chaos and control.
“Once you engage in Jewish learning, it changes you,” she said. “We are a wisdom tradition, we are an ancient people with these tools of survival and community.”
At Temple Israel outside of Detroit, one mother recently approached Rabbi Arianna Gordon about a naming ceremony for her three young daughters, ages 5 and under.
Normally, for observant families, the ritual would have happened shortly after birth. But this family decided to participate after learning of the recent deaths of six hostages in Gaza, Rabbi Gordon said. The parents will name their daughters in honor of the hostages.
When their daughters are older, they will ask about the origins of their Hebrew names, Rabbi Gordon said. “To be able to talk about this moment in our history, and also who these people were, to keep their memory alive, feels really, really powerful,” she said.
Enrollment in Jewish day schools has risen, as families seek not just safety amid rising antisemitism, but also new connections, especially following the coronavirus pandemic.
At Wornick Jewish Day School, an elementary and middle school in Foster City, Calif., one mother said she had transferred her kindergarten-age son after his public school ignored her concerns about security. She found a much greater sense of belonging.
Families used to see the religious elements as a nice added feature, said Adam Eilath, the school’s leader. But now they see them as essential, especially as many of the students go on to public high school. “They have to know who they are and where they come from,” he said. “It really requires something more immersive.”
The idea of “peoplehood” was a core camp value this summer in Wisconsin, at the Olin-Sang-Ruby Union Institute, which is affiliated with the Union for Reform Judaism.
“That’s one of the most important things we do, is build peoplehood among peers, and between America and Israel,” said Beth Rodin, the camp director.
Camp leaders were apprehensive about how the war in Gaza would affect the dynamics. Counselors were arriving from heated college campus protests, some staff members were Israeli, and others had decided to take the summer off, especially those without a strong connection to Israel, Ms. Rodin said.
But first-time registrations were up about 25 percent. And rising high school seniors told counselors that their Jewish identity had catapulted in importance to their sense of self.
“They had all felt so alone, and didn’t realize their peers were feeling the same way in different schools,” Ms. Rodin said.
At Barnard, Ms. Fixel, now a junior, is taking Hebrew and leading a new chapter of Jewish on Campus, a group that seeks to revive pride in being Jewish and to end antisemitism at universities.
Hillel gave her a new mezuza. She attends its Sabbath dinners every Friday night.
Ms. Fixel thought back to growing up in Jacksonville, Fla., where there were not that many Jews. Now, she said, Jews all around her are realizing something she learned as a child:
“They are Jewish? They are part of your community,” she said.
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