The Missing Years

An open letter to Jewish parents of teenagers.

This fall I read more than 2,000 posts by Jewish parents.

They came from two online groups I belong to: a large national group of Jewish parents focused on campus antisemitism, and a large Jewish parenting group for families of older teens and young adults. I sorted every post by topic and noted which ones drew the longest, most anguished threads.

I have spent fifteen years working with Jewish teenagers. I wanted to know whether what I see in them matches what their parents are thinking about. It doesn’t. And that gap is the most important problem in Jewish parenting that almost no one is discussing.

Here is what parents are worried about.

Safety, first. They trade reports of encampments, vandalism, professors who teach that Israel should not exist, and commencement speeches turned into rallies. They organize letter campaigns and track lawsuits.

Above all, they worry about picking the right college. The most common question in the larger group was some version of “How is Jewish life at this school?” It was asked about roughly 150 campuses. Is there a Hillel? Is Chabad active? How did the administration handle the protests?

These are reasonable worries. But they begin in junior year of high school, when the college list is built. They peak senior spring, when deposits are due.

Here is what is missing.

In the parenting group, I sorted every post from a recent ten-week stretch. About one in seven was about admissions: test scores, tutors, essay coaches. Posts about shaping a high schooler’s Jewish identity came to roughly two in a hundred. And that’s counting generously: I included logistics posts — packing lists, flights, registration glitches — on the assumption that those teens were headed to programs that would strengthen their identity.

Jewish identity shows up at two moments. At 17, as a filter on the college list: “a decent Jewish presence.” And in the twenties, as a social network: where can my daughter meet Jewish friends in a new city?

The years in between, 13 to 17, are nearly empty. Those are precisely the years when a young person decides who they are.

One post captured it better than any statistic. A mother wrote that her son, freshly bar mitzvahed, was done with Hebrew school. She suggested a popular, purely social Jewish youth group; he said no. She was fine with his choice, she wrote, but didn’t want him to lose his Jewish identity. What should she do?

The question tells the story. For many families, the bar mitzvah has become a graduation. Jewish education is something you complete at 13, like a vaccine schedule, before moving on to what “counts”: grades, sports, the résumé.

The cost of those empty years shows up later.

In both groups, parents asked whether their children should leave Judaism off their college applications. One senior who had written her essay about Israel feared it would be held against her. Another parent asked how to “position” a near-perfect applicant’s identity. A third wondered whether her daughter should even take a Jewish history elective in high school, for fear it would show up on her transcript: “…we are scared some vile antisemite in admissions will reject her just because she took that class.” A Jewish teenager’s identity is now treated as a liability to manage, not a strength to stand on.

Then come the harder posts. A high school senior suddenly playing down being Jewish around new friends. A college graduate with no interest in ever visiting Israel. Young adults so hostile to Israel that their mother doesn’t know where to begin. These threads ran past a hundred comments, full of parents saying the same thing: me too.

None of this started in college. A child who reaches 18 without knowing why being Jewish matters, without the words to answer a classmate, and without Jewish friends of their own was vulnerable all along. Campus is simply where it shows.

Underneath it all is a quiet assumption: someone else will handle it. The rabbi until 13. Hillel at 18. Birthright at 22.

I deeply respect Hillel and Chabad professionals; several answered parents’ questions in these groups with real generosity. But Hillel can only host a student who walks through its door. It cannot give an 18-year-old the reason to walk in. By the time a freshman is choosing between Shabbat dinner and everything else college offers, the decision has largely been made.

This month, Michigan’s Hillel said it would end formal ties with student groups engaged in Israel advocacy. Whatever you think of that decision, it makes the point: no campus institution can be counted on to do this work for your child.

I have seen what a prepared student looks like. For years, UC Berkeley has offered a student-led course for credit called “Palestine: A Settler Colonial Analysis,” which teaches Zionism as colonialism and asks what “decolonization” might mean. Campaigns to shut it down went nowhere. So Avi, a Club Z graduate, did something better. Four years in our program, four national conferences and an Israel trip had given him the knowledge to answer it. He put together a course of his own. For four springs now, Berkeley students have earned credit in “Israeli Military History,” reading Herzl, Jabotinsky and primary sources, and tracing Israel’s history from the ancient time to today. Avi didn’t wait for the administration to protect him. He knew the material well enough to teach it.

I grew up in the Soviet Union, where the state understood something many American Jewish families have forgotten. Identity is not inherited. It is formed, deliberately, in adolescence, by whoever bothers to shape it. The Soviets bothered. Today TikTok, a charismatic classmate and a first-year seminar are all bothering. The question is whether we will.

So here is my ask to every parent of a 13-, 14- or 15-year-old: treat your child’s Jewish identity as seriously as you will soon treat the college list. You would not wait until senior year to think about math. Don’t wait to think about this.

1. Don’t let the bar mitzvah be the finish line. Decide now what comes next, and make it as non-negotiable as piano, soccer, or SAT prep.

2. Give them Jewish friends, not just Jewish programs. Teenagers stay where their people are. 

3. Give them knowledge, not just feelings. Pride without facts collapses at the first hostile question. Teach them their people’s history, and Israel’s, well enough to answer a classmate or a professor.

4. Get them to Israel before 18. Let them form their own relationship with the country before someone else describes it to them.

5. Let them write it on the application. A college that would hold your child’s Jewishness against them tells you everything about that college and nothing about your child.

Right now our energy goes into vetting campuses, rating Hillels and writing to university presidents. Some of that is necessary. But we can’t Jew-proof the campus. We must campus-proof our kids. And that kind of preparation is not a one-time workshop. It is years in the making.

The question is not only which campus will be safe for our children. It is who our children will be when they arrive.

Masha Merkulova is the founder and CEO of Club Z, a national nonprofit that builds Jewish identity and Zionist grounding in teens.