​Teen Summit on Israel and Antisemitism

Date: Sunday, March 1
Location: Moise Safra Center
Time: 10am-3pm

Featured Presenters
Elisha Baker
Antar Davidson
Ben M. Freeman
Sam Fried
Gavy Friedson
Bar Guzi, PhD
David Harris
Asher Katz
Naya Lekht, PhD
Jerry Lindenstrauss
Arianna Schurdrich
Sami Steigmann
Tessa Veksler
Atir Vinnikov
Jean Weschler
Chai Defense
Daniel ve’Jacobi

This day-long summit, organized by and for teens with help from local JCCs and partners, unites Jewish high schoolers from across NYC, Westchester, and Long Island.

Through powerful sessions and hands-on experiences, the summit fosters Jewish joy, community, and confidence while addressing rising antisemitism and growing bias around Israel.

Schedule, Session, and speaker information

Featured Presenters

Sami Steigmann

Elisha Baker

Jerry Lindenstraus

Tessa Veksler

More About the Teen Summit

Why this summit matters

The Summit is a direct response to the growing challenges Jewish teens face today, including rising antisemitism in schools and online spaces and increasing polarization around Israel. While college students and Jewish day school teens often benefit from structured support, Jewish teens in public and independent high schools remain underserved.

Rather than prescribing answers, the program equips teens with the tools, language, and support to explore, articulate, and own their Jewish and Israel narratives. The Summit employs a teen-led, adult-guided, identity-based model that fosters confidence, critical thinking, and belonging.

Program Structure

Program development is led by a Teen Advisory Council in partnership with Education Director Rachel Fish, PhD. Throughout the day, participants engage in plenary learning, small-group breakout sessions, experiential workshops, and community-building activities. Teens choose sessions aligned with their interests, ensuring both ownership of the experience and exposure to diverse perspectives.

Core Program Themes

Jewish Identity & Belonging
Understanding Antisemitism
Israel Education & Nuance
Leadership & Advocacy Skills
Lived Experience & Testimony
Community, Culture & Resilience

Long-Term Vision

The New York Jewish Teen Summit lays the foundation for a long-term, JCC-led strategy to address antisemitism and strengthen a thoughtful, nuanced Jewish connection to Israel among teens. By investing in education, identity-building, and themselves peer leadership, the Summit strengthens the next generation’s capacity to stand up for, for Israel, and for the Jewish people.

For more information

Contact:
Ester Abramovich at [email protected]

More About our Presenters

Antar Davidson

Antar Davidson works in youth education and civic engagement at Jewish Philanthropies of Southern Arizona. Through the Jewish Community Relations Council, he focuses on youth leadership development and building relationships across communities.

His work is informed by Jewish learning and lived experience, including study at Aish HaTorah, Diaspora Yeshiva, and Ohr Somayach, as well as long-standing engagement with the history of Black–Jewish collaboration in the civil rights movement. Through Jewish Philanthropies of Southern Arizona, he supports initiatives such as the Jewish Latino Teen Coalition, which brings teens together through shared learning, dialogue, and civic participation.

Through his work, Davidson helps young people connect Jewish values to real-world responsibility and community life.

Atir Vinnikov

Atir Vinnikov is a 25-year-old business student at Reichman University based in Tel Aviv. The son of Israeli emissaries, Vinnikov was raised within the Jewish communities of New York before returning to Israel at the age of 16.
On October 7th, 2023, he survived the Nova Music Festival massacre, thanks to the heroic actions of a Bedouin Muslim who risked his life to save him and others. The following day, Vinnikov was drafted along with thousands of others to defend his country. His story is a powerful testament to resilience, courage, and the unbreakable bonds of humanity that emerge in times of crisis.

Asher Katz

Asher Katz is an Israeli founder and reserve combat soldier whose work spans education, security, and defense innovation. Katz previously founded the Zionist youth movement Me’ever at the Moise Safra Center, where he worked with teens on Zionism, leadership, and civic responsibility.
Since October 7, Katz has served in the IDF reserves in a unit focused on mapping and destroying terrorist tunnel networks, building on earlier service in a tunnel detection laboratory. Based on this operational experience, Katz is currently involved in founding Traysar, a defense technology company working to strengthen Western military capabilities in subterranean environments.
His work reflects a commitment to Zionism, patriotism, and a belief in the younger generation as a meaningful driver of leadership, responsibility, and long-term change.

Bar Guzi, PhD

Bar Guzi, PhD is the Head of Educational Opportunities at Boundless and a Visiting Research Scholar with the Brandeis University President’s Initiative on Antisemitism. He earned his doctorate in Near Eastern and Judaic Studies from Brandeis and has extensive teaching experience across college, high school, and adult learning settings. At Boundless, Guzi leads educational programs and develops resources that foster deeper understanding of Israel and equip educators, administrators, and communities to recognize and respond to antisemitism.

Ben M. Freeman

Ben M. Freeman is the founder of the modern Jewish Pride movement and one of the premier Jewish public intellectuals of his generation. He is the author of the groundbreaking Jewish Pride: Rebuilding a People (2021), Reclaiming Our Story (2022), and The Jews: An Indigenous People (2025), the first ever book to directly address and definitely prove that Jews are indigenous to the Land of Israel.

A Holocaust scholar for more than fifteen years, Freeman rose to prominence during the Corbyn Labour crisis in the United Kingdom and quickly became a central figure in contemporary discussions of Jewish peoplehood and experience. He was ranked number 8 on the inaugural 25 Young ViZionaries list by The Jerusalem Post and JNF USA, serves as a Jewish Diplomat for the World Jewish Congress, and is a Research Fellow at the Elizabeth and Tony Comper Interdisciplinary Center at the University of Haifa.

David Harris

David Harris served as CEO of the American Jewish Committee (AJC) from 1990 to 2022. Throughout the past five decades, Harris played a pivotal role in shaping critical global issues — from the rescue of Ethiopian Jewry and Soviet Jewry (including two detentions by Soviet authorities) to helping expand Israel’s diplomatic footprint throughout the world, his contributions have been far-reaching. Harris has been committed to preserving Holocaust memory, exploring new relationships in the Arab and larger Muslim world, supporting an end to communism in Eastern Europe, advocating for NATO expansion, combatting global antisemitism, and promoting interfaith dialogue and understanding.

He is the author of several books, as well as hundreds of op-eds and articles on global Jewish issues in leading media outlets around the world.

Harris received his education at the University of Pennsylvania and London School of Economics. He also served as a Visiting Scholar at Johns Hopkins University and both a Junior and Senior Associate at Oxford University.

He is the son of two Holocaust survivors and a dedicated husband, father, and grandfather.

Elisha Baker

Elisha Baker is a senior at Columbia University from Brookline, MA studying Middle East history. He spent two years as co-chair of Columbia Aryeh – a student-led Israel engagement group – and has published articles on Israel, antisemitism, and university governance in the Columbia Daily Spectator, Sapir, Tablet Magazine, Jerusalem Post and more. Baker co-authored the viral “In Our Name: A Message From Jewish Students at Columbia University” and has been featured on NY Times’ The Daily and Times of Israel’s What Matters Now podcasts as well as various mainstream television news channels.

Gavriel "Gavy" Friedson

Gavriel "Gavy" Friedson has been saving lives since he was fifteen. Over the course of nineteen years on the job, Friedson has distinguished himself by responding to more than 10,000 emergencies -- ranging from acute medical crises to multiple casualties and catastrophic events.

During his years as a first responder, Friedson has often been the first medic on scene at several terrorist attacks. Having spent most of his life volunteering with Israel’s rescue agencies, he returned to the United States in 2017 to help expand United Hatzalah's rescue operations for international cooperation. He is responsible for identifying additional locations for emergency programs and financial development.

Friedson has been to several disasters to provide humanitarian aid, including Hurricanes Harvey and Irma. He was the team leader during Hurricane Fiona in Puerto Rico and when Hurricane Ian decimated Ft. Myers, Florida in 2022. He assisted with medical rescue flights helping evacuate Ukrainian refugees to Israel in March 2022 and assisted with international coordination rescue efforts with Turkey when an earthquake hit their region killing over 40,000 people. As a soldier in the Israeli Defense Forces, Friedson served in the elite Nahal Infantry Brigade and later in the International Spokesperson’s Unit. He holds a Bachelor’s of Arts in Communications from Reichman University (IDC) and a Master’s Degree in Public Health specializing in Emergency and Disaster Management from Tel Aviv University.

Jerry Lindenstraus

Jerry Lindenstraus was born in a small town in East Prussia Germany in 1929 into an upper middle class family. After witnessing the burning of synagogues during Kristallnacht, Lindenstraus and his family escaped Germany in July 1939, barely a month before the start of World War II. They made their way to Shanghai, where he lived and grew up for the next seven years.

He attended a British-style school for Jewish refugees in Shanghai founded by Horace Kadoorie, became a bar mitzvah at a Shanghai synagogue, and joined the 13th Shanghai (United) Group of the Boy Scouts. After the war, Lindenstraus traveled across the globe alone to join his mother in Colombia. In 1957, at 23 years old, he settled in New York, married, had a son, and started working in the import-export business.

Today, at 96 years old, Lindenstraus lives in an elegant senior residence and is very active, giving talks to teenagers, playing chess, and going out!

Naya Lekht, PhD

Naya Lekht, PhD is a scholar, educator, writer, and public intellectual specializing in the history of anti-Jewish movements, the Holocaust, and contemporary anti-zionism. She holds a PhD in Russian Literature from UCLA and teaches humanities and Middle Eastern history in New York. Dr. Lekht is the co-founder of Stop Antizionism, an international educational and advocacy initiative confronting anti-zionism as the third era of Jew-hatred.

She is also the creator and host of the podcast Don’t Know Much About, which features conversations with scholars, journalists, and cultural critics on history, identity, and ideology. In 2024, Dr. Lekht was named one of the top 10 Young Zionist Visionaries by the Jerusalem Post and JNF.

Sam Fried

Sam Fried, 28, from New York City, is a First Sergeant in the 890th Paratrooper Battalion. Fried served as a Lone Soldier in the Paratroopers from 2020 to 2022. After the barbaric attacks by Hamas on October 7th, 2023, Fried returned to Israel to rejoin his unit, serving as a Squadron Commander and sharpshooter in Gaza until February 2024.

Upon returning to the United States, Fried began his activist journey, raising over $17 million dollars for Jewish organizations, fighting on the ideological battlefield by speaking and debating across the country in an effort to broker peace, combat rising anti-semitism, and change the narrative through his three foundational pillars: 1) Empowering Jews and their allies, 2) Promoting dialogue for peace, and 3) Humanizing the IDF. You can follow Fried on Instagram @Samfried26.

Sami Steigmann

Sami Steigmann was born on December 21, 1939 in Czernovitz, Bukovina, part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire belonging to Romania. Later, it became part of the former Soviet Union and today it is in Ukraine. From 1941-1944, he lived with his parents in Ukraine at Mogilev-Podolsky, a labor camp in Transnistria. The camp was liberated by the Red Army and his family was deported.

Steigmann grew up in a small town in Reghin, Transylvania. In 1961, his family emigrated to Israel where he served in the Israeli Air Force. In 1968, without knowing the language, with no money and alone, Steigmann came to the United States and settled in Milwaukee, Wisconsin where he married and eventually divorced. In 1983 Steigmann returned to Israel. However, in 1988, he came back to the United States and settled in New York City.

Steigmann is dedicated to reaching as many young people as he can, promoting tolerance, and, hopefully, influencing them to make a better world for themselves, their children and their grandchildren. Steigmann always faced life’s challenges and obstacles as a survivor! He now carries the torch for his generation and teaches young people life lessons based on his personal experiences.

Tessa VeksleR

Tessa Veksler is a public speaker, content creator, and Jewish advocate. Originally from the San Francisco Bay Area, she is a 2024 graduate of the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), where she earned her B.A. in Political Science and Communication.

Tessa began her higher education journey by spending a year in Israel, where she studied Judaics at Bar Ilan University while concurrently completing her first year of UCSB coursework.

Living through Operation Guardian of the Walls shaped her passion for Israel advocacy and combating antisemitism, which she carried into her leadership roles at UCSB. She went on to serve in multiple fellowships, including ICC’s prestigious Geller Fellowship, and spent three years in student government, culminating in her term as UCSB’s Student Body President. In May 2024, she made history as the first Shabbat-observant Associated Students President, representing more than 24,000 students.

In the wake of October 7th, after facing targeted harassment and antisemitism, Tessa chose to speak out bravely about her experiences, inspiring Jewish communities nationwide to stand strong against hate. With millions of people engaging with her Instagram content, Tessa has become a leading Jewish and Zionist voice on social media. Her advocacy has earned her numerous recognitions, including an invitation to the White House, United Nations, UCSB's University Service Award, and a recent feature in the documentary October 8th. Today, alongside her work in public relations at Hiltzik Strategies in New York City, Tessa travels nationwide sharing her message of resilience, empowerment, and activism.

Arianna SCHUDRICH

Arianna Schudrich brings a global perspective and a deep commitment to community building through her background in hospitality, public service, and Jewish communal leadership. Born in Tokyo, Japan, and raised in Warsaw, Poland, Arianna has been immersed in diverse communities from a young age. As a member of the opening team of the Moise Safra Center, she has been an integral part of the Center for the past eight years. Her passion for building meaningful community is reflected both in her professional work and in her personal life, where she regularly hosts Shabbat meals, challah bakes, and other gatherings in her home and in collaboration with community organizations
Arianna is excited to combine her love of baking with her knowledge of Judaism to create a beautiful and meaningful challah bake. Join her for baking tips, thoughtful conversation, questions about Judaism, and—of course—to take home delicious challah.

JEAN WESCHLER

Jean Weschler was born in 1938 in the town of Skalat in eastern Poland, the youngest of seven children of Samuel and Esther Parnes. In 1939, the region in which the family lived came under Soviet control as a result of the Hitler–Stalin Pact. Two years later, in the summer of 1941, when that pact was broken, Nazi forces advanced eastward into the area.
Just ahead of the invasion, the Parnes family fled east into the Soviet Union. They endured the war years there, surviving numerous near-death experiences both during their escape and amid the hardships of wartime life. When the war ended, they learned that Nazi troops had entered Skalat the day after they fled and that all of their extended family members who remained behind had been murdered.
After the war, the Parnes family made their way to Germany, where they spent several years living in Displaced Persons camps before ultimately immigrating to the United States.
Jean later married Izydor Wechsler, whom she had first met in one of those camps. Together they raised four children, and Jean went on to run a successful business of her own for many years. She now lives in Dix Hills, Long Island.