Why Jewish teens aren’t ready to take a stand against biased reporting
Like most weeks, last week the Jews were in the news.
While adults in the Jewish community rightfully and forcefully responded to articles in The New York Times by Nicholas Kristof and workshop carefully worded statements responding to Zohran Mamdani’s assertion that the Nakba should be commemorated on May 15, Jewish teenagers around the world were encountering these stories first not through communal institutions, but through their phones — on TikTok, Instagram, group chats, and algorithm-driven feeds.
And they were asking very different questions.
- What is the Nakba, and why have I never heard about it before?
- Should I post anything about Israel in Eurovision if it means I could lose followers or even friends?
- Are the horrific allegations I’m seeing about dogs anatomically even possible?
For many young Jews, conversations are not beginning in classrooms, synagogues, or youth groups. They begin online, in environments that are emotionally charged, deeply polarized, and profoundly lacking in nuance. This reality demands something different from Jewish education.
Too often, the Jewish community assumes that the role of education is to reinforce communal consensus. When controversy erupts, the instinct is immediate and understandable: condemn what must be condemned, defend what must be defended, and protect young people from harmful narratives. But for education to be effective we cannot simply tell students what to think. Instead, it is our task as educators to help them learn how to think – critically, thoughtfully, morally, and with enough confidence to navigate a complicated world.
Students deserve the opportunity to understand the issues at stake. They deserve the chance to ask uncomfortable questions, encounter competing narratives, wrestle with complexity, and ultimately develop their own informed opinions – even when those opinions may differ from our own.
This does not mean educators must abandon values or moral clarity. We can and must speak openly about antisemitism, historical distortion, incitement, and the emotional pain many Jews experience in this moment. We should teach deep Jewish connection, commitment to Israel, and responsibility to the Jewish people. But if our educational strategy relies solely on telling young people what they are allowed to believe, we will fail.
That approach has never worked particularly well with teenagers. It works even less effectively in an age where every student carries access to infinite information — and misinformation — in their pocket.
Young Jews today are sophisticated consumers of media. They know when difficult subjects are being avoided. They know when adults are simplifying reality. And when students feel that educators have hidden difficult truths, ignored legitimate questions, or presented only one acceptable perspective, trust erodes quickly. That erosion of trust is far more dangerous than disagreement.
The goal of Jewish education — and within it, Israel education — cannot be ideological uniformity. The goal must be to prepare young Jews to enter an increasingly fractured world with intellectual confidence, emotional resilience, historical grounding, and moral seriousness.
We must ensure that young people never encounter these issues for the first time in antagonistic environments. We must create spaces where difficult conversations can happen before social media does the teaching for us. And above all, we must ensure that students never feel they were lied to, manipulated, or shielded from complexity by the very institutions entrusted with their education.
The future of Jewish education will depend on whether we are willing to trust young Jews enough to let them wrestle honestly with the world as is.
