Amy Haber had one Jewish friend at Langley High School until she restored the school’s Jewish Student Association — that number is now up to 15. Jewish students across northern Virginia have similar stories.
Haber attended a private Jewish school when she lived in Palo Alto, California, and had Jewish friends outside of school. In northern Virginia, she felt “out of place” as a Jewish student.
Northern Virginia is home to an estimated 120,000 Jewish residents, making up about 41% of the Greater Washington area’s Jewish population. They can choose from 20 synagogues. But northern Virginia is so spread out that at times it can be hard for Jewish residents to find community.
“I felt like there wasn’t really a community of Jewish students at our school, and I know that we do have quite a few students who are Jewish, but we don’t know each other and we don’t know [who’s] Jewish,” Haber said.
“It was kind of awkward,” Zachary Topscher, a senior, said of his experience being Jewish at Chantilly High School.
Like Haber, he said he hadn’t been aware of which of his peers at school were Jewish.
Annaleigh Leidenberg, a senior at Freedom High School in Chantilly, said the Jewish student population was “definitely a minority” at Freedom. She felt that the school’s many affinity groups did not represent her: “There’s not many students I can connect to with the same culture.”
Haber, Topscher and Leidenberg each brought their respective school’s Jewish Student Association back from years of inaction, and now serve as JSA presidents. Though the JSAs are in various stages of development, all three have similar goals: build community and pride, educate about Jewish culture and collaborate with non-Jewish students.
Haber, a senior at Langley, said her teachers mentioned there had been a JSA at the school “a couple years back.” She began working on refounding the club in January, which became an official student organization in September, and now has nine members.
Chantilly High School’s JSA has had a little over 10 members since it was restarted last year, Topscher said. Other JSAs are larger, such as Freedom’s JSA, which has 25 to 30 student members.
The founders of the JSA at Langley meet on weekends to discuss what’s going on in their lives, talk about their plans for the Jewish holidays and get to know each other. Haber said the club leaders have plans to teach students about Chanukah and how Jewish people celebrate the holiday.
“I just think it’s good — especially given everything that’s happening now — to separate politics from culture; to teach people more about ‘what is Jewish culture?’ ‘What do we do for different holidays?’” Haber said. “I feel like Chanukah is just a very fun holiday.”
She is also working on incorporating an educational guide to finding “non-biased facts” regarding the Israel-Hamas war and the Middle East in her school’s advisory lessons. The staff at Langley have been receptive to working with the JSA, Haber said.
Leidenberg, who restarted Freedom’s JSA last academic year, educates her school’s JSA members about the purpose of various Jewish holidays as well as the different denominations of Judaism and how each practices. She noted that sometimes, the teacher sponsor will jump in with specific topics that a student might not know if they hadn’t grown up exposed to Jewish culture.
“Being able to share [our culture] is really cool because almost every lesson has something that somebody doesn’t know about,” Leidenberg said.
She is in contact with student leaders of other cultural groups at Freedom — the Muslim, South Asian and Black Student Unions — to host joint potlucks. For a Chanukah potluck last year, Jewish students brought in brisket, challah, black-and-white cookies, chocolate and a fruit platter to share.
Chantilly JSA’s monthly meetings are focused on fun. Topscher begins meetings with a short presentation explaining an upcoming Jewish holiday, as some attendees are non-Jewish friends, then members do a hands-on activity such as making masks for Purim or building matzah houses.
“Fun stuff is the goal, just to get people to really celebrate being Jewish,” Topscher said. “I didn’t realize how many people were Jewish [at Chantilly], and it’s because they all don’t have the same pride that I have had throughout my childhood. Pride is really important to me, to have my friends be proud of being Jewish … and I think [the JSA is] a safe space to really be proud of your own religion.”
He added that the revitalization of the JSA has impacted the administrators at Chantilly.
“They kind of started to recognize us as a group,” Topscher said of the administrators, noting that the principal has been supportive of the JSA. “Before, I would see that when I’ve mentioned to my teachers I’m Jewish, it seemed like a kind of weird fun fact, but now it’s taken as more of an identity, a part of my identity to administrators. … They kind of take us more seriously, and I feel a lot more heard and seen throughout the school.”
