Last year at this time, the Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA) reported upon a “surge” of higher levels among Jews seeking more engagement with fellow Jews and participation in Jewish communal life. At that time, JFNA research showed that about one third of the Jewish community “continued to engage at higher levels than before…through community, learning and personal relationships.”
Community experts concluded that the surge “appeared to be linked to the emotional impact” of Israel’s war against Hamas and “significant concern about antisemitism. 79% of Jews surveyed said they were deeply concerned about antisemitism.”
There is no reason, one year later, to believe that the concern about antisemitism has diminished. Indeed, Canadian experience suggests that the manifestations today of antisemitism are more concerning than even just one year ago. The recent release by B’nai Brith Canada of its annual survey of antisemitism in Canada would confirm that.
It is in this context of persistent, lingering disquiet over antisemitism, that Audra Berg, CEO of the Jewish Federation of Broward County in Florida, offered her suggestions on how to maintain community strength and cohesion. Her op-ed, “Holding a Jewish community together, consistently and over time”, appeared on the eJewishPhilanthropy website.
Berg wrote that “Jewish life feels both fragile and fiercely alive.” In this one line, Berg succinctly captured the dichotomy: the surge in antisemitism has evoked a surge in Jewish communal involvement.
She identified four principles “about deepening and growing community” that will imminently be applied in her community in an initiative called, Ignite Broward. The lessons for community leaders that she imparts are not new. They relate to: acknowledging and recognizing the seeking members of the community; personal safety; identity; and the need for inter-communal alliances. Even though Broward County is home to one of the largest Jewish communities in North America, her ideas are relevant here as well.
I draw readers’ attention to her comment on identity. She does not talk about the impact of Jewish education. Rather, she talks about participating along with others, in other words, experiencing the kinship of Jewish peoplehood that stems from the sense of shared experience.
Berg described conversation among a group of teens who were “what being Jewish meant to them, right now.
“Some hesitated. Some spoke quickly. Some admitted they weren’t sure what they believed, or where they fit. But they stayed in the conversation. And as they talked — about Israel, about social media, about what they were hearing from friends at school — something shifted. Not in what they knew, but in how they saw themselves: not as observers of Jewish life, but as participants in it.
“What mattered, in that moment, was not what they were taught, but that they were in it together — speaking, listening and seeing themselves reflected in one another.”
GAJE would use other language to arrive at the same conclusion as Berg’s about the forming of identity, namely…
Being immersed in the profound, life-enhancing depth of Judaism – appropriately and intensively – over time, across the important formative stages of a youngster’s life, specifically teaches that we are all in this together. Indeed, from our very beginning, at least ever since receiving the Torah at Sinai, we have always known that we are in this together. We have always been and will be that we are part of one another. That is peoplehood.
•••
If you wish to contribute to GAJE’s lawsuit to achieve fairness in educational funding, please click here. Charitable receipts for donations for income tax purposes will be issued by Mizrachi Canada. Your donations will be used for the sole purpose of helping to underwrite the costs of the lawsuit. For further information, please contact Israel Mida at: imida1818@gmail.com Thank you, in advance, for considering doing so.
•••
Shabbat shalom
Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education
May 29, 2026
Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education 