Good Thursday morning!

In today’s Your Daily Phil, we have an exclusive on a new strategic plan on teen mental health, and feature op-eds by professors Ira Sheskin and Arnold Dashefsky on Jewish demographics, and by Footsteps’ Lani Santo on inclusive communities. Also in this newsletter: Dalia Lister, Gregory S. Weiner, Judith Alperin and British Home Secretary Grant Shapps. We’ll start with the screening last night of an HBO documentary on the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting. 

Near the end of a new documentary on the shooting at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life-Or L’Simcha synagogue four years ago, two of the survivors are walking down the street when they hear a loud bang. A look of shock briefly crosses their faces, then one informs the other that it was just a motorcycle backfiring. They continue walking.

Moments like those fill “A Tree of Life,” the new film from director Trish Adlesic that will premiere on Wednesday, Oct. 26 at 9 p.m. on HBO. At the heart of the film are the testimonies of survivors, as well as those of the relatives of the attack’s 11 victims, about the attack itself and its wrenching aftermath.

“I had to go, I had to live, I knew she wasn’t going to survive,” Andrea Wedner, who survived the attack, says in the film regarding her mother Rose Mallinger, who was killed beside her. Later in the film, another survivor, Dan Leger, describes how he “moved in the direction of the gunfire” in order to try to help people. As he was being taken to the hospital, he said, he thought he was in the hands of the chevra kadisha, the Jewish burial society.

Speaking alongside the film’s subjects at a screening last night at the Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan, Adlesic described how she was trained in trauma-informed care before making the film. She also lived in Pittsburgh for three years while filming and conducting interviews, and showed cuts of the film to its subjects to make sure they felt depicted fairly.

“I worked with one of the survivors, initially, on which questions to ask so that they weren’t triggering and they were questions that were comfortable for the participant,” she said. “I strongly felt that those that lived it should tell it… I stayed in Pittsburgh full-time, and when they felt comfortable, I was there to respond.”

The film covers a dense amount of material from the day of the attack and the four years that have followed, giving an overview of modern antisemitism in America, background on Pittsburgh and Squirrel Hill, the attacker’s motivations and the reaction to the shooting locally and nationally. A short segment of the film shows a Pittsburgh-area gun shop located in a restored former synagogue, where racks of rifles stand in front of Jewish-themed stained-glass windows.

But the audience’s most powerful reactions were reserved for the interviews with the survivors and relatives, who paid tribute to those they lost and projected their own resilience.

“It really is a call to action, but the action, as I said in the film, is making peace happen,” said Audrey Glickman, a survivor of the attack, at last night’s event. “We have to talk to each other, we have to stop being divided and start living together and working toward the good of all.”

EXCLUSIVE

Moving Traditions’ new strategic plan aims to build teens’ confidence while addressing contentious topics

JORDAN CASSWAY/MOVING TRADITIONS

How do you teach teenagers to feel comfortable with who they are at a time when norms of identity are shifting? And how do you help them maintain that sense of self as they project their passions onto an unfamiliar and sometimes hostile wider world? Those questions lie at the center of a new strategic plan from Moving Traditions, which guides Jewish preteens and teens through discussions surrounding adolescence, gender and discrimination, reports eJewishPhilanthropy’s Ben Sales.

Sense of self: “If we want to authentically engage young people today with Judaism, there’s a very small group of things that they’re feeling connected to,” Moving Traditions CEO Shuli Karkowsky, who took the post earlier this year, told eJP. “Finding their own sense of self and well-being and identity is a really good way to connect people back to Judaism… The other thing is giving them the tools to be leaders in the causes they care about.”

Sensitive questions: Reaching more teens, and promoting the group’s emphasis on teen mental health and identity across the Jewish community, are the centerpieces of the strategic plan, which is being published today, and which eJP obtained ahead of its release. But beyond building the teens’ confidence, the organization will also work with the adolescents and their parents and teachers to address a series of sensitive topics — from teens’ gender and racial identities to discussing Israel in progressive spaces.

A growing emphasis: The strategic plan comes at a time when teen mental health is commanding increasing national attention and resources. It has also become a focus of the Jewish community. BeWell, a $2.75 million program launched this year by the Jewish Federations of North America, brings local Jewish agencies to address the issue. Mental health programs and funding for campers and staff have also grown at Jewish camps, in addition to local Jewish programs helping teens with mental illness.

Read the full story here.

SECOND OPINION

23 and us: The problem of counting American Jews in 2022

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“The headline of this piece could easily be, ‘According to the recently released volume of the American Jewish Year Book, the Jewish population of the U.S. stands at 23.’ That’s because 1654 is the last time we had an accurate count of American Jews, when 23 Brazilian Jews first landed on these shores. We agree with our friend and colleague Professor Sergio DellaPergola that, for the most part, in generations past, being Jewish was a binary designation: you either were Jewish or were not Jewish,” write Ira M. Sheskin and Arnold Dashefsky, co-editors of the American Jewish Year Book, in an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy.

Multiple identities: “Such is no longer the case. Today, many people have multiple identities. These multiple identities arise for two main reasons. First, a significant number of American Jews have only one Jewish parent. Second, being Jewish can represent both being a member of a religious group and or being a member of an ethnic or cultural group.”

Numbers game: “The question that is raised is whether the 7.5 million American Jewish population estimate from the Pew study is correct. Does it only count people who ‘should’ be counted as Jews? By the way, the Pew study excluded people of Jewish background who do not consider themselves Jewish in any way and [those in] the Jewish Affinity group who describe themselves as Jewish or partially Jewish but did not have a Jewish parent and were not raised Jewish. Professor DellaPergola opines that Pew included too many people who are really not Jewish and suggests a U.S. Jewish population of only 6 million. This is despite the fact that all respondents to the Pew survey answered a question affirmatively about being either religiously or ethnically Jewish. This is also despite the fact that the vast, vast majority of the Pew respondents are exhibiting Jewish behaviors, even if only minimally.”

Read the full piece here.

DEFINING COMMUNITY

May we do better

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“For many, this time of year is a time to reflect on how we can do better, prompted by the changing seasons, heading back to school or rooted in ritual connection to the holidays. We take an accounting of how we live our lives, and consider the ways we want to change for the upcoming year. We look at ourselves and our relationships – and reflect on how we can be a better friend, partner, family member or leader,” writes Lani Santo, CEO of New York City-based Footsteps, which provides services for those who have left Haredi communities, in an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy.

Disappointment: “This particular year, the time of reflection finds me overwhelmed with disappointment and even devastation at segments of the Jewish community… No matter what community you align yourself with, it is painful to see Jews tossing young people aside who by no choice of their own exist on the communal margins.”

The power to create change: “There are many ways to react to this misalignment of values and community. Some people may feel that they want to throw up their hands and retreat or bury the hopeless feelings because they feel like it’s not appropriate nor their responsibility… I would argue that we must each believe in our power to create change.”

Footsteps: “I have the privilege of working at Footsteps, where we have spent 20 years lighting up paths that at first seemed impossible to navigate. Our mission is to support those who make the decision to leave their communities and live as their authentic selves. They come to us with a myriad of needs: unstable or unsafe housing, limited education and skills to navigate the world, and some are threatened with the loss of their children. We create a supportive, loving community for those who have been cast out or who have never felt accepted by those around them.”

Read the full piece here.

Worthy Reads

Friday Night Fun: In Jewish Insider, Jenni Frazer interviews Dalia Lister, the host of ‘Not Your Mum’s Friday Night Dinner,’ a social event for millennial and Gen Z Jews in London. “During her adolescence, she told JI, she was never allowed to go to parties with her non-Jewish school friends on Friday nights. But once out in the world of work, she discovered different options: “religious events, in synagogues, which I do go to, and charity events. ‘But some people don’t feel comfortable in a shul, or perhaps haven’t grown up going to shul,’ Lister added. ‘On the other hand, there are charity events that I’ve also gone to, and they’re also great, and I support many of them and am an ambassador for a couple of them. But again, they don’t attract everyone. And then there are singles events, but there isn’t actually anything for connecting people, whether you are single or not.’” [JI]

If I Were a Rothschild: A new biography of the Rothschilds reveals that eight generations of women in the family were as accomplished as their male relatives, Moira Hodgson writes in The Wall Street Journal, including Miriam Rothschild (1908-2005), a zoologist known as “The Queen of Fleas” for her work on the insects. “[She was a] pioneering environmentalist, advocate of animal rights, and, among other pursuits, had worked as a code breaker at Bletchley Park [during World War II]. Looking at fleas under a microscope, she said, was even more enjoyable than smoking marijuana. One interviewer wrote of her: ‘Imagine Beatrix Potter on amphetamines and you come close.’… Nica (1913-1988), Miriam’s feisty younger sister, wore furs and drove a silver Rolls-Royce. She fought with the Free French in Africa during World War II, piloted airplanes, and drove ambulances in Italy. In the early 1950s she went to New York to “get in on the jazz scene.” Hers was not exactly the dutiful, industrious life the Rothschild patriarchs had anticipated for their women. She drag-raced Miles Davis across Manhattan, Charlie Parker died in her suite at the Stanhope Hotel, and she took up with the pianist Thelonious Monk, ‘the most beautiful man I [had] ever seen.’ Monk lived with her for several years in a modernist mansion in Weehawken, N.J., alongside a Steinway grand and more than a hundred cats.” [WSJ]

Pic of the Day

Leon Neal/Getty Images

Member of Parliament Grant Shapps leaving 10 Downing St. on Wednesday following his appointment as the U.K’s home secretary, a senior cabinet position, by Prime Minister Liz Truss, who just announced that she would resign. Shapps previously served as transport secretary in the Boris Johnson government. He is a former national president of the Jewish youth organization BBYO.