Zoe Bell and Andrew Guckes | Staff Writers
More than half of the young Jewish American women surveyed indicated that they‘re hiding their Jewish identities in the years post-Oct. 7, according to a new survey by Jewish Women International.
Nearly half of the respondents reported dating less as a result of increased antisemitism and other ramifications of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks.
Regarding the post-Oct. 7 impact on their personal lives, three-fourths of the respondents reported that their mental health (75%) and relationships with friends (74%) suffered.
“We were hearing from the young women that they’re experiencing [negative] mental health impact where they hadn’t before,” said Meredith Jacobs, the CEO of JWI.
The survey results, released in February, sought to gather young Jewish women’s experiences with antisemitism and the subsequent impacts on their personal, academic and professional lives and connection with Judaism.
JWI and Sharp Insight LLC collected the data through a mixed-methods study that included a nationwide survey of Jewish American women ages 20 to 34, and a focus group series with the same audience at JWI’s 2025 Women to Watch event. The data were collected from November to December.
“Based on our findings, young Jewish women feel disenfranchised in the workplace, ostracized in social circles and compelled to erase their Jewish identities for fear of personal safety,” Jacobs told Jewish Insider.
Jennifer Grossman is co-founder and COO of Baltimore-based Shalom Tikvah, a Jewish mental health services agency that works with whole families as opposed to just individuals. She said that in the decade of Shalom Tikvah’s existence, there have been two major events that changed the nature of their care — the COVID-19 pandemic and the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel.
“We saw a huge intake uptick after Oct. 7. We saw almost a shift in the kind of clients we were receiving,” Grossman said. “A lot of families coming in before Oct. 7 were [coming in for] generational trauma. After Oct. 7, we found much more mainstream types of clients, because most of our clients wanted to feel safe in a Jewish environment. They wanted to be with a Jewish clinician. They wanted to be able to speak freely.”
Grossman said that the organization also reported a number of members on their teen advisory board approached them, asking to call the organization something different on college applications because they feared the pushback of associating with an openly Jewish group.
JWI reported similar findings. One respondent with JWI wrote that she no longer wears heels in Jewish spaces in case she needs to quickly escape an emergency situation, according to Jacobs.
What does this all mean for JWI? The findings will help inform the next steps regarding the nonprofit’s programming.
“The survey asked them what support they needed,” Jacobs told Baltimore Jewish Times. “So our intention as JWI is not just to do the study and see information, but create the needed responses and support to meet [young Jewish women’s] needs.”
JWI’s Young Women’s Impact Network supports Jewish professional women in their 20s and 30s in 10 cities across the U.S. Jacobs and JWI are looking to launch more chapters of YWIN, with the next cities being Miami and Pittsburgh.
“What we’re hearing from the young women is that those spaces for having friends … where they know they can show up as their full selves, is important and gives them that base of support and friendship,” Jacobs said.
The effects haven’t just been felt in a professional setting. Grossman said that her own daughter left the school that she had been at since kindergarten not long after Oct. 7, opting for a Jewish day school instead.
This summer in New York, JWI will debut a series of classes on Jewish identity in the workplace, helping them proudly uphold their Jewish identity and create Jewish employee resource groups or affinity groups.
JWI is also working to build a program that aims to support young Jewish women navigate relationships, Jewish identity and Israel, because one-fourth of the surveyed women indicated their dating life had been impacted by the events of Oct. 7.
“What’s important to them? What do they need in a partner?” Jacobs asked. “You’re taught not to talk about money or religion or politics, but we want to help them understand how to have those conversations early on in the relationship, so that they develop long-term with a partner who, whatever they believe, supports them and they can feel safe in their relationship.”
This program guides women through how to have these conversations and also confront any myths that arise.
“I think this is what is unique about what JWI does, because we work in leadership, but we also work very deeply in addressing violence against women. We approach women’s leadership with an understanding of trauma, and so we say, ‘This is the reality of what [Jewish] women experience. How do we address that? How do we give women the tools to not only be resilient, but to thrive and grow and become empowered to be leaders and voices?’” Jacobs said.
She described this work as “post-traumatic growth.”
“It’s … more than resiliency,” Jacobs said. “This is about taking this moment and growing.”
Ultimately, Grossman said that what’s important to her and her organization is helping Jews feel comfortable to be themselves. She advised those same teen advisory board members to be proud of who they are.
“We sat down with the students and we talked about, would they want to be in an environment where they would not be admitted for the fact that they were making an impact in the Jewish community?” she said. “We strongly suggested that they really think hard about wanting to apply to somebody and going for four years to a community that they want to hide that from.”
