Jewish high school student leaders from across the country spent three days together at the Jewish Student Union’s (JSU) annual Presidents Conference, training to confront antisemitism at their own schools and on the college campuses they will soon attend.
The conference drew club presidents representing JSU chapters nationwide, including students from New Jersey, California, Colorado and New York. JSU, which started at a single high school in California, has grown to more than 500 clubs run entirely by teenagers.
“Jewish students have increasingly been feeling isolated, bullied, and threatened by students at their public high schools,” said Rabbi Micah Greenland, international director of the National Conference of Synagogue Youth (NCSY). He said JSU clubs have become essential gathering spaces for Jewish students and their allies, and that he expects conference attendees to go home better equipped to “more effectively reach out to their peers.”
Rabbi Derek Gormin, a JSU managing director, said the organization’s strength is peer leadership. “Every club is run by teens,” Gormin said. “We can’t show up to a school and say we’d like to start a club. Student to student, peer to peer, there’s an unbelievable power that’s created when they work together, and that movement continues to grow from that peer-to-peer power.”
That dynamic played out directly at the conference, where Hillel Kornwasser, an activist and high school student from New Jersey, served as a presenter to peers his own age. “For me, it’s a little weird. I’m getting up in front of a room with some kids my age or kids a year older than me, but the reality is there’s no waiting till tomorrow for this fight,” Kornwasser said.
Kornwasser said he is already thinking about the world his own future children will inherit. “The world that we live in today, in America, in New York City, the western world as a whole, is not a world that I want my children to — my future children to — grow up in,” he said, describing a world “where they have to look behind their shoulder every single second with a yarmulke on or their Star of David out wondering if the next person is going to stab them in the back literally and figuratively for being Jewish.”
Lessons From the Front Lines
The conference brought in Jewish educators and activists who have already lived through what these teens are being warned about. Tessa Veksler, now an activist, was student body president at University of California Santa Barbara on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas attacked Israel. She said the aftermath brought a year of harassment at UCSB.
“I went through a year of harassment, consistently both in person and online, which culminated in a recall campaign to remove me from office because I was pro-Israel and Jewish,” Veksler said.
In 2024, Veksler was allegedly targeted with antisemitic signs on campus, including ones reading “Tessa Veksler supports genocide” and “Zionists not welcome,” according to ABC News. UCSB Chancellor Henry T. Yang issued a statement at the time saying the campus was “distressed to learn of incidents over the weekend that included offensive social media messages and signage,” that the signage had been removed, and that the campus was conducting a bias incident review. Fox News Digital reached out to UCSB for comment on this story but did not immediately receive a response.
Veksler, who was a JSU member in high school herself, told students they have “so much more to gain than to lose” by speaking out, while acknowledging the real risk involved. “The hardest thing about being a pro-Israel student on a college campus right now is feeling like there is a target on your back. I think that it’s never been scarier to be a Jewish student on a college campus,” she said. “We’re seeing students get attacked on college campuses. We’re seeing professors spewing hateful rhetoric in the classroom. It’s a scary time, but also an incredible time for Jewish students to step up.”
Training the Next Line of Defense
Author and activist Shai Davidai, who drew national attention speaking out against antisemitism at Columbia University, ran mock debate sessions built around what he called the “three E’s”: engage with empathy and evidence.
“I think the most important lesson that they should get is that you cannot engage just with facts,” Davidai said. “You have to appeal to people’s emotions, you have to acknowledge that they are humans, you have to show them a lot of empathy, and at the same time, whatever you do, the end decision needs to be based on evidence and fact.”
Davidai, author of “American Intellectual Antisemitism: The Anti-Jewish Movement Tearing Through Our Universities,” told students that volume isn’t the same as correctness. He said his research found that the loudest voices on campus, including among faculty and staff, actually represent “a minority opinion.”
“The problem is that they are very, very loud, they have a lot of power on campus, and they take control of the agenda,” he said. “What I’m trying to teach the students here is that they can stand up to them, that when someone is being loud, that just that doesn’t mean that they’re being right, and it doesn’t mean that they should go unopposed.”
Charlotte Korchak, founder and senior educator at the Jerusalem Education Institute, focused on arming students with historical grounding rather than talking points. “They need to know their story,” Korchak said. “They need to know how to explain to people what Jews are, why a Jewish state, why the land of Israel.” She said deep historical knowledge makes it far easier to counter false claims about Israel than relying on “a sound bite that you were taught or a one-liner.”
Joy as Resistance
Not every session was about combat. Actor and content creator Noa Bess Solomon, who co-hosts the “What Are We” podcast, told students that laughter and identity matter just as much as argument. “I always say that the key to surviving as a Jewish person is being able to laugh and have humor,” Solomon said. “If you don’t laugh, you cry, and laughter is the best medicine.”
Solomon said she wants students to leave proud of their heritage without reducing it to politics. “There’s nothing political about being Jewish,” she said. “It’s your bubbie’s matzo ball soup, it’s camp, it’s food, it’s tradition, and that’s exactly what I want to keep reminding these kids.”
JSU leaders said the goal is for students to return home carrying both the tools to confront antisemitism and the confidence to remain openly and proudly Jewish without being governed by fear.
