Over the past few years, I’ve felt something subtle shifting in Jewish communal life. 

We’ve started treating institutions like people. We look to camps, synagogues, schools and federations to speak the way a trusted individual might. To reassure us. To take a position. To tell us where they stand. And when they don’t, we react as if they’ve let us down personally.

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Right after Oct. 7, 2023, that expectation felt natural. There was a brief period when many of us were unusually aligned. Institutions spoke clearly, communities rallied and donors showed up. For a moment, it felt like everyone wanted the same thing from the same places, but that moment didn’t last.

What we’re living in now is different. Jewish engagement is still strong, but it’s no longer as united as it was during that brief time. People are carrying very different experiences, politics, fears and assumptions, and they’re still looking to trusted institutions to make sense of it all.

As a Jewish camp operator, I’ve felt this shift in real time. Increasingly, parents and stakeholders will ask “Where does camp stand on X?” — X being any number of social or global issues. It’s usually asked in the same tone someone uses over coffee with a friend. Not what does camp teach, or how does camp support kids navigating this issue, but where does camp stand, as if camp were a single voice with a single point of view. Then our campers and staff arrive, carrying viewpoints shaped by school life, social media, antisemitism, Israel and their own identities, all of it following them into bunks and staff meetings.

Jewish camp participation remains strong. Foundation for Jewish Camp’s most recent census showed nearly 200,000 young people at Jewish camps in summer 2025, the highest number on record, and with tens of millions of dollars in financial aid distributed to make that possible. Families are choosing Jewish spaces, but they’re also arriving with expectations that didn’t used to be as pronounced. They want institutions to tell them what they believe, and that’s where things get complicated.

When a person takes a stance, we understand it reflects one life and one perspective. Institutions, on the other hand, are more like containers. They’re built to hold many people at once, including people who don’t agree with each other and don’t experience the world the same way.

A camp doesn’t have a single voice. It has a board and a leadership team, school- and college-aged staff, parents with very different worldviews and campers who are still figuring out what they think about almost everything. When we judge an institution as if it were a person, we collapse all of that complexity into something it was never designed to be.

That pressure has intensified because the world that young Jewish people are coming from is genuinely intense. Last year’s Anti-Defamation League and Hillel International survey found that 83% of Jewish college students had experienced or witnessed antisemitism since the Oct. 7 attacks, and 41% have felt pressure to hide their Jewish identity.

Those students become our staff and community members. They walk into Jewish institutions already carrying a lot, and often hoping the institution will help carry it with them. So when someone asks, “Where does our organization stand?” they’re not just asking out of curiosity; they’re asking for grounding in a world that feels increasingly unstable. At a time where political systems, social norms and even long-trusted institutions feel unpredictable, it makes sense that people turn to Jewish organizations for steadiness.

That’s where an important distinction comes in: the difference between taking a stance and being mission-anchored. Taking a stance is reactive. It answers a specific moment and says, This is what we think about this. It’s immediate, often public and sometimes polarizing. It works fine for individuals, but it’s harder for institutions that serve broad communities.

Being mission-anchored is different. It doesn’t offer a verdict on every issue. Instead, it says: This is what we’re here to do consistently, over time and across disagreement. It focuses on purpose rather than position. At camp, being mission-anchored means being clear about the kind of place camp is: a place where people belong, where Jewish life is lived proudly and vibrantly, where safety matters and where questions are allowed and not everyone has to land with the same opinion.

Right now, many Jewish institutions are being judged by how clearly they perform unity, even though unity no longer exists in the same way. The real work happening behind the scenes is quieter and trickier: supporting staff who are navigating their own emotions, translating between communities that don’t speak the same language anymore and making decisions that will inevitably disappoint someone.

That work isn’t flashy. It doesn’t always present as bold leadership. But it’s what keeps institutions intact and communities connected. If we want Jewish institutions that last, we may need to adjust what we’re asking of them: less expectation that they sound like a single person with a perfect answer, and more trust that they can be steady places for real people living through complicated times.

The unity moment of Oct. 7, 2023 reminded us how much our institutions matter. What comes after, the quieter work of anchoring and staying coherent when consensus is gone, may matter even more.

Sam Aboudara is the interim CEO of NJY Camps, one of the largest Jewish camp complexes in North America. He has dedicated his career to Jewish communal service as an educator, camp director and executive.