Raising Resilient Jews

Michael Dickson, who serves as the Executive Director of Stand With Us, and I were grabbing coffee in the Rova when the conversation turned personal. We’d been swapping origin stories, his from North London, mine from Philadelphia, both of us raised in proudly Jewish homes where Israel wasn’t a place on a map but a place we visited, a place that shaped us. We both made aliyah as young parents with little ones in tow. And now here we are.

“Let’s walk,” I said.

We ended up at the rooftop overlook at the Aish World Center, the Western Wall across from us, ancient and alive. But we weren’t talking about history. We were talking about the future. Specifically, what we’re building in the next generation that will carry them through whatever comes next.

Because here’s what I know for certain: The question isn’t whether our kids will face hard things. It’s whether we’re giving them the tools to get back up.

When I found myself struggling after October 7th, I thought about my grandparents. All four were Holocaust survivors from Transylvania who eventually made their way to Pennsylvania. They rebuilt vibrant Jewish lives in another country, in another culture, in another language. They didn’t have therapists or support groups or Instagram accounts to process their trauma. They had each other. They had Shabbat. They had forward motion.

They never sat me down and taught me resilience. They modeled it. The Friday night candles. The holiday tables that groaned with food. Every time they chose joy when despair would have been easier. I absorbed it without realizing I was learning anything at all.

Michael nodded when I told him this. “Trauma and despair are not a strategy,” he said. “You have to pick yourself up and think about what constructive things you can do.”

That’s not toxic positivity. That’s survival wisdom passed down through generations.

Michael co-authored a book called ISResilience: What Israelis Can Teach the World, with a pioneering Israeli psychologist. They interviewed war heroes, Olympic champions, Ethiopian immigrants — Israelis who had overcome extraordinary hardship. As we talked, Michael walked me through three traits that stood out. I couldn’t help but think about how we could cultivate these in our homes.

The first is empathy, feeling your emotions fully instead of pushing them away. “Israelis are never worried about showing you their emotions,” Michael explained. “They’re like open books.” In our homes, this means letting our kids see us cry. Letting them be sad. Not rushing to fix every feeling but sitting with them in it.

The second is flexibility. “As soon as Israelis have a problem, they find a way around it,” he said. We teach this when we let our kids problem solve instead of swooping in. When we show them that Plan B isn’t failure, it’s adaptation.

The third is the ability to take hardship and make it meaningful. “What’s the first thing people did after October 7th?” Michael asked. “Made meals for each other, supported each other, helped each other.” When hard things happen in our families, we can ask our children: What can we do? Who can we help? How do we make this matter?

But underneath all three is something so ordinary we might overlook it: community.

“You could be walking down the street here, and your kid doesn’t have socks on, someone’s going to tell you,” Michael laughed. That’s Israel. Sometimes maddening, always connected.

Shabbat dinner is the ultimate expression of this. Not just immediate family but friends, neighbors, the random cousin passing through. “We might underestimate it because we think it’s just what we do,” Michael reflected, “but actually it helps guard our own resilience and strength.”

Our grandparents knew this instinctively. They built communities wherever they landed. They never let their children feel alone. The table was always expandable.

Michael and I stood there for a while, looking out at the Western Wall, the Temple Mount beyond it. Thousands of years of Jewish continuity in a single frame.

That’s what we’re passing down. Not just empathy, flexibility, and making hardship matter. But the table itself. The community. The way our grandparents raised us is the way we raise our kids.

“From Jerusalem, the light will shine,” Michael said.

That’s the job. Raising a generation that knows how to carry it.

Jamie Geller is the Global Spokesperson and Chief Communications Officer for AISH. She is a bestselling cookbook author, Jewish education advocate, and formerly an award-winning producer and marketing executive with HBO, CNN, and Food Network.