Raising Resilient Jewish Kids in an Age of Uncertainty

Last month, my phone lit up with a message no parent wants to see.

Reports of an armed gunman on my daughter’s college campus. Students were instructed to “run, hide, or fight.”

It turned out to be a false alarm. But my nervous system didn’t know that at first.

My heart pounded. My chest tightened. My mind went exactly where you’d expect it to go.

The physiological cascade was immediate: the same surge I felt on October 7th, and in many moments since, when opening a text, article, or social media post meant bracing for news of another antisemitic incident.

As a psychologist, I understood this response well. When something resembles a past threat, the nervous system can sound the alarm before the mind catches up.

As a mother, I just felt scared.

And almost immediately, I realized something else: this isn’t just about my nervous system anymore. It’s about what my children are learning from how I respond.

After I confirmed my daughter was safe, I noticed what I’ve noticed many times over the past two and a half years: my body was still buzzing. The threat had passed, but my system hadn’t recalibrated.

So, I did what I’ve learned to do since October 7th. I gave my body what it needed.

I drove into Manhattan for a last-minute Zumba class. I jumped. I danced. I let the music move the adrenaline out of my body. I stayed until my breathing slowed, my shoulders dropped, and my nervous system remembered that, in this moment, we were okay.

This has quietly become part of what it means, for me, to be Jewish right now: the ongoing practice of recalibration.

And I know I’m not alone.

For more than two years, many of us have been living in a kind of emotional in-between. Not an acute crisis every day, but not ordinary life either.

Psychologists call this ambiguous grief, a form of loss without clear edges or resolution.
There’s no single moment to sit shiva and begin to move forward. Instead, we carry the weight while packing lunches, answering emails, attending meetings, and lighting Shabbat candles.

We’ve shown up. We’ve organized. We’ve checked in on each other. We’ve donated, advocated, gathered, and kept going.

But underneath it all, our nervous systems have been working overtime.

Hypervigilance is exhausting. Even when the day looks “normal,” the body can remain braced, scanning for the next alert.

And now, slowly, something feels different.

As certain chapters reach a semblance of closure, as the intensity shifts, a quieter question is beginning to emerge:

What now?

Yarden Bibas said, “I survived captivity. Now I have to survive life.”

That distinction has been sitting with me. Because survival, as necessary as it is, is not the end of the story.

At some point, we are asked to live.

One of the things I love most about Judaism is that it never leaves us alone with grief. Shiva. Shloshim. The first year. Our tradition understands something deeply psychological: grief unfolds in phases. We don’t rush it. But we also don’t stay in its most acute stage forever.
In many ways, our collective experience has mirrored that arc. There was shock. There was mobilization. There was prolonged vigilance.

And now, we are entering something more complicated.

We are not abandoning grief. We are integrating it.

And for those of us raising children, that integration matters.

Because our children are growing up as Jews in a way many of us did not.

With more visibility. More hostility. More complexity. And fewer illusions of safety.

We cannot control that reality.

But we can shape how they meet it.

For a long time, we have been in survival mode. Survival is adaptive. It narrows focus, conserves energy, and protects what matters most. But survival is not meant to be a permanent posture.

In psychology, we call the next phase post-traumatic growth. Not because trauma is good. It isn’t. But because humans have an extraordinary capacity to metabolize hardship into clarity, deeper connection, and renewed purpose.

I’m seeing that now in our community.

People want to gather in joy again, unapologetically. They want to host. To travel. To celebrate milestones loudly. To express pride openly, not defensively. To create.

They want to dance.

That urge toward vitality isn’t frivolous. It’s a sign that the nervous system feels just safe enough to expand again.

And for our children, that expansion is everything.

Because resilience won’t come from pretending things are okay. It will come from what we model:

A quiet confidence in who they are.

Emotional language that makes space for fear without letting it take over.

A connection to history that grounds rather than overwhelms.

And the ability to move, physically and emotionally, out of fear and back into life.

When I stood in that Zumba class, sweaty, breathless, smiling, I realized something I want my children to know:

This, too, is Jewish resilience.

Not stoicism. Not pretending everything is fine.

But movement. Recalibration. Returning to joy without forgetting why it matters.

Jewish history is not a story of ease. But it is also not a story of permanent victimhood.

We are a people who grieve deeply and then rise. We tell the story. We tear the garment. We sit low. And then, when the time comes, we stand up and rebuild.

Resilience doesn’t mean we weren’t shaken. It means we tend to what was shaken so we can keep growing.

For some of us, that tending looks like therapy. Or long walks with friends. Or more intentional Shabbat dinners. Or choosing visible Jewish pride. Or simply allowing ourselves moments of uncomplicated joy.

Thriving is not naïve. It is continuity.

If this moment feels different, it may be because we are shifting, from bracing to building.

We are still aware. Still remembering. But we are also imagining forward. Laughing more freely. Planning longer-term. Celebrating without apology.

Our tradition gives us permission for this. We sit shiva, and then we get up. We step outside.

We re-enter life. Not unchanged but strengthened.

We cannot give our children a simpler world.

But we can help them build the inner one they will need to meet it.