Jewish high school student leaders gathered for three days of fun and learning as part of the Jewish Student Union’s (JSU) annual Presidents Conference. The event brought together student club presidents from across the U.S. with the goal of preparing them to combat antisemitism not only at their current high schools, but also on their future college campuses.
“Jewish students have increasingly been feeling isolated, bullied, and threatened by students at their public high schools,” National Conference of Synagogue Youth (NCSY) International director Rabbi Micah Greenland told Fox News Digital. “And the fact that they have JSU spaces to gather in makes those clubs all the more important as community spaces of gathering. For Jewish students and their allies.”
Greenland said he expected students to leave the conference with the ability to “more effectively reach out to their peers” when they return home.
Rabbi Derek Gormin, who serves as a managing director at JSU, explained that the organization started at a high school in California and has since grown to more than 500 clubs since its inception. He also emphasized the importance of peer-to-peer interactions, something that JSU prioritized.
“Every club is run by teens. JSU has a staff internationally, but we can’t show up to a school and say we’d like to start a club,” Gormin told Fox News Digital. “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.”
The emphasis on “peer-to-peer power” was demonstrated in real time at the conference with Hillel Kornwasser, an activist and high school student from New Jersey, serving as one of the presenters.
“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 told Fox News Digital.
Despite still being a teenager, Kornwasser is already thinking about the world in which he wants to raise his future children. He underscored that he’s not the only person his age with these concerns, saying that many at the conference shared them as well.
“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. “In 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.”
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JSU’s conference also brought together Jewish educators from all walks of life, including activist Tessa Veksler, actor and content creator Noa Bess Solomon, author and activist Shai Davidai and Jerusalem Education Institute (JEI) founder and senior educator Charlotte Korchak.
On Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas launched its attacks in Israel, Veksler was a senior at University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB), where she served as student body president. She told Fox News Digital that, after the attacks in Israel, she was forced to bear the brunt of antisemitism 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,” she told Fox News Digital.
When she was in high school, Veksler was involved in JSU, making the conference a full-circle moment for her. She told Fox News Digital that she hoped her presence at the conference served as a reminder to students that they “have so much more to gain than to lose” when it comes to combatting antisemitism and speaking out for Israel. However, she acknowledged that concerns about doing so were valid.
“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,” Veksler 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 and pro-Israel students.”
In 2024, Veksler was allegedly harassed with antisemitic signs on campus, including ones that read “Tessa Veksler supports genocide” and “Zionists not welcome,” according to ABC News. UCSB Chancellor Henry T. Yang released a statement following the incidents, in which he provided the community with an update on the school’s “Principles of Community” memo, which was released on Oct. 26, 2023.
“We were distressed to learn of incidents over the weekend that included offensive social media messages and signage at the Multicultural Center entrance. Campus offices are reviewing these unauthorized and unofficial messages,” the statement signed by Yang read. “The signage has been removed and campus is conducting a bias incident review based on potential discrimination related to protected categories that include religion, citizenship, and national or ethnic origin. The posting of such messages is a violation of our principles of community and inclusion.”
“We strive to create opportunities for civil dialogue, free from bullying and discrimination, that allow all community members to have their voices heard, and to have a space in which to respectfully express their views,” the statement continued. “To ensure that we uphold our community values and principles, the campus is committed to thoroughly reviewing and addressing all reported bias incidents.”
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For Davidai, who became nationally known after speaking out about antisemitism at Columbia University, the key is to ensure that students are armed with facts and empathy. He said he was hoping to assure the JSU leaders that they would be able to speak up for themselves in college when faced with antisemitic and anti-Israel rhetoric.
During one of his student sessions running mock debates, Davidai told participants to keep in mind what he called “the three E’s,” advising them to “engage with empathy and evidence.”
“I think the most important lesson that they should get is that you cannot engage just with facts,” he told Fox News Digital. “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 also taught students that a person’s volume does not necessarily make their argument correct or worth engaging with. He said the lesson emerged from research for his book, “American Intellectual Antisemitism: The Anti-Jewish Movement Tearing Through Our Universities.”
Davidai said his research found that the people making the most noise on college campuses, including faculty, staff and students, represented “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 told Fox News Digital. “And 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.”
While Davidai focused on how students engage in tough conversations, Korchak emphasized the importance of students understanding what they were being asked to defend.
“They need to know their story,” Korchak told Fox News Digital. “They need to [know] how to explain to people what Jews are, why a Jewish state, why the land of Israel, right?”
Korchak explained that understanding history also meant knowing how to combat false arguments. She said that JEI worked to prepare students to combat false claims about Israel and challenge them with historically accurate arguments.
“When you know the history, and you know the contemporary situation, then it’s so easy to have a conversation because it’s not coming from a sound bite that you were taught or a one-liner, but it’s coming from deep knowledge,” she said.
However, the conference wasn’t solely focused on combating antisemitism. Solomon, an actor and content creator at Lost Tribe, was there to show students how to embrace joy and laughter.
“I always say that the key to surviving as a Jewish person is being able to laugh and have humor,” Solomon, who co-hosts the “What Are We” podcast, told Fox News Digital. “I think, it’s like, if you don’t laugh, you cry, and laughter is the best medicine.”
Solomon underscored her pride in being Jewish, saying she wants the students to walk away from their interactions with students embracing their Judaism and not feeling as though it’s all about politics.
“There’s nothing political about being Jewish,” Solomon said. “It’s your grandma’s — 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.”
Solomon’s message was reflected in the broader theme of the conference: Preparing Jewish students to confront antisemitism while ensuring that fear does not overshadow their connection to Judaism. JSU leaders said that they hope that when the students return to school, they will have the tools they need to combat antisemitism and the confidence to be openly and proudly Jewish.
Fox News Digital reached out to the University of California Santa Barbara for comment but did not immediately receive a response.