Jews Are ‘Surging’ Post-Oct. 7, with Plurality Heading to Chabad. Why?

by Dovid Margolin – chabad.org

Kevin Schmelzlen was in San Diego visiting his mother when the news broke. Something was unfolding in Israel, something big and terrible. It was Oct. 7, 2023. The brutal images on Schmelzlen’s screen were unlike anything he had ever seen before.

“I had my phone in front of me for hours, just following all the updates,” the 37-year-old recalled.

As shocking as the massacre of Jewish men, women and children in Israel was, it was what took place in the days and weeks that followed that really surprised Schmelzlen: Even before Israel had militarily responded to the barbaric Palestinian attack, large swaths of Western society were condoning the violence visited on the People of Israel—in the news, on social media and in public squares. Some did not even bother hiding behind euphemisms, declaring instead that the Jews deserved it.

“It was the first time in my life where I felt like Jews are under attack,” said Schmelzlen, who was living in Boise, Idaho, at the time. “And the first time in my life where it felt like being Jewish was different than being anything else. I never really experienced that before.”

Rather than hide, though, Schmelzlen felt the urge to explore his Judaism. In this way he became one of the millions of Jews around the United States for whom Oct. 7 became a catalyst for engaging or reengaging with their Jewish heritage, a true great Jewish awakening. The Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA) commissioned their first study of this upward trend in the American Jewish community in 2024, dubbing the phenomenon the data pointed to “The Surge.” The JFNA’s followup 2025 survey found that even approaching two years since the terror attack, of the Jews who refer to themselves as “only somewhat,” “not very” or “not at all engaged” in Jewish life—making up more than 80% of the Jewish community—over 30% are actively deepening their engagement in Jewish life.

“We started hearing from communities that something was changing in Jewish life,” explained Mimi Kravetz, chief impact and growth officer at JFNA, of the impetus for the study in the first place. “We were hearing from Federations and partners: ‘I took out more chairs after Oct. 7 for an event, and I haven’t put those chairs away.’” A year later they wanted to know if that was still taking place. It was.

According to the JFNA’s findings, the largest rise has been seen among Jews connected to the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, with 44% reporting deeper engagement in Jewish life since Oct. 7, 2023. “Close to half of those people who are part of this ‘Surge,’ this group showing up more in some way [to Jewish life] … are doing it through Chabad,” said Kravetz.

Jewish community surveys had for years grouped Chabad under the rubric of Orthodox Jewry. While Chabad rabbis and their wives are certainly Orthodox Jews, by now most demographers recognize that those participating with Chabad defy simple labels, and as a result ask separate questions with regard to Chabad affiliation. “We didn’t think we were fully capturing what was going on at Chabad, because it’s actually quite unique,” said Kravetz. Someone could self-identify as Reform and yet be an active participant in Chabad.

Indeed, the JFNA survey found that half of those participating in Chabad are unaffiliated, and that it attracts Jews who are “surging” across denominations and engagement levels. Of those who reported participating with Chabad, 39% identified as Reform, 20% as Conservative, 21% as Orthodox and 15% as no denomination.

“The people coming to Chabad, they’re not identifying their denomination as Chabad or Orthodox, which some people might assume,” said Kravetz. “They’re identifying with whatever denomination they think of themselves as, and then saying, but I go to Chabad. I show up at Chabad. That’s the place where I do whatever I’m doing that’s Jewish, whether they’re coming for an event or a service or a camp or a meal.”

The survey also found that younger Jews are turning to Chabad in particular, it being the most popular way to engage for Jews between 18-34, second only to “spending time with Jewish friends.”

It’s a sea change from what Rabbi David Eliezrie experienced when he first went out as a Chabad emissary in the late 1970s. “When I started off, many American Jews thought we were best suited to play the lead in Fiddler on the Rood, but not bring Judaism to their children,” said Eliezrie, director of Chabad of Yorba Linda, Calif. “Decades later it’s clear to everyone that something very real is happening here: Chabad is the mainstream.”

A curious observer might ask themselves: Why are so many “surging” Jews turning to Chabad?

‘My soul was touched’

Schmelzlen prefers to go by his Jewish name now, Alon. Born and raised in Southern California to a Jewish mother and a Catholic father, Schmelzlen grew up attending a Reform temple once a month with his mom and church once a week with his dad. He embraced his Jewish identity at a young age, had a bar mitzvah at the temple and was involved with Israel advocacy in college. After graduating he worked in wildlife conservation, living mostly in rural areas far from a Jewish community.

“I got physically disconnected, but not necessarily mentally disconnected,” he recalled of his years living in rural California, Washington State and Idaho. “But even though I had gone through these various levels of Jewish education, I was also never really knowledgeable enough to pray on my own or anything like that.” As time passed and Schmelzlen delved ever deeper into conservation and the world of science, he began to identify as an agnostic, and then an atheist.

A man of the center-left, Schmelzlen was moving in what he calls “liberal” circles in Boise when he returned from his October 2023 visit to San Diego. Back home, the dismissive way people in his environment spoke about Jews disturbed him. “I had thought we’re all on the side of humanity, and we support all people,” he said. “All of a sudden it was like, we support all people, but not the Jews.”

Schmelzlen’s first instinct was that he needed to spend time with fellow Jews, and he visited a Reform/Conservative hybrid congregation in Boise. By early 2024 he’d moved back to Southern California, where he began attending temple once every few months. Rosh Hashanah 2024 approached and Schmelzlen wanted to attend services. He’d forgotten that a ticket was required, and when he arrived was told there was no room. “I could have probably gotten in, but I didn’t want to fight for a spot for Rosh Hashanah services, so I drove back home.” Schmelzlen lived in the mountains east of San Diego at the time. It was during the 45-minute car ride home that he suddenly got the urge to learn more about Torah and Jewish tradition. “Before that it was like, I want to spend time with other Jews,” he recalled. “Now, my soul was being touched; I just felt this strong need to learn more.”

An internet search brought him to the very popular YouTube channel of Rabbi Manis Friedman, a noted Chabad lecturer, teacher and author whose Torah classes on the platform have more than 100 million views. “I started learning and thinking, and, being reintroduced to many Jewish ideas and practices, and introduced to a lot of other ones for the first time ever.” Alon put on a kippah, then tzitzit, and then, to the best of his ability, began fulfilling other mitzvahs.

Soon after Schmelzlen signed up for a secular Jewish volunteering trip to Israel, though he was warned that if he was hoping to actually learn more about Judaism the trip might not be very helpful. They were right about that, but the trip to Israel did cause Schmelzlen to first cross paths with Chabad in the flesh: A young man at a stand set up outside Tel Aviv’s Shuk HaCarmel offered Schmelzlen the opportunity to put on tefillin, which he did, for the first time in his life. “It was just a beautiful experience,” he said of his “bar mitzvah” on King George Street in Tel Aviv. A few days later he prayed in tefillin for a second time, this time at the Kotel, the Western Wall in Jerusalem. After a series of what could only be called Divinely providential encounters, Schmelzlen was gifted a pair of tefillin by a Jerusalem couple at whose home he’d enjoyed a Shabbat meal. With that he was on his way home to San Diego.

Schmelzlen had feared what leaving the elevated atmosphere of the Holy Land would do to his Jewish journey. “When I was still in Israel, one of the girls on my trip told me about Chabad,” he said. “She said that anywhere there are Jews, there’s Chabad, and they’re very inclusive, very welcoming, and I should just look them up.”

That’s what he did.

There’s a thirst out there

Rabbi Rafi Andrusier, who directs Chabad of East County in San Diego with his wife, Chaya, since 2012, was surprised to hear Schmelzlen mention the name of the distant mountain town where he lived. But he wasn’t surprised by the new face. “We’ve absolutely seen that ‘surge’ since Oct. 7,” the rabbi said. “We’ve seen Jews who never walked into Chabad start coming—people who were loosely affiliated until now, strengthening their bonds.”

Schmelzlen walked into Chabad of East County for the first time on Passover 2025. A few months later, in September, the Andrusiers celebrated the ribbon-cutting for Chabad’s new $5.3-million center in San Carlos. The rabbi said a permanent home was long in the plans, but the project launched in earnest a few months after Oct. 7. “Everyone suddenly recognized how vital it was to have a place where Jews could celebrate their identity, be proud to be Jewish, and learn what that really means,” he explained. “It’s like Oct. 7 blew away the layers and exposed the essence of what’s actually important to us.” Schmelzlen is now a regular at the shiny new Chabad of East County, attending services and a Torah class every week. He is well aware that no ticket will be required of him to attend Chabad’s Rosh Hashanah services this coming year.

Such explosive growth can be seen around the country.

Rabbi Berel Gurevitch of Chabad West Village in lower Manhattan estimates that attendance at the center he and his wife, Chana, direct has quadrupled since late 2023. “We have literal lines out the door for Shabbat morning prayers,” said the rabbi. “It’s a good analogy for the broader trend: People want to get out of the cold outside and find the warmth inside. We were growing before Oct. 7, but the growth since then has been on a different level. A lot of people who did not pay much attention to their identity before all of a sudden started to think about it very seriously.”

The Gurevitchs’ Chabad center off of West 4th Street has a diverse clientele, from young Jewish professionals excited to party and meet other young Jews in a warm, familiar space, to families searching for a place to give their children a fun and authentic Jewish experience, to older Jews interested in prayer, study and discussion, many of them finding themselves unhappy with what they’d previously seen as their “natural” Jewish homes.

“There’s a thirst for genuine Yiddishkeit,” said Gurevitch, “and an increasing number of people are recognizing that Chabad might be the option they’d never before thought of.”

In its qualitative research interviewing respondents at more length, the JFNA survey found that Jewish mid-lifers, “especially those who had been relatively unengaged prior to Oct. 7, mentioned more positive experiences at Chabad than any other single organization, and attributed positive experiences to Chabad more than any other group.”

“[Chabad is] making it easy,” one mid-life respondent told JFNA. “They’re being out there. They’re welcoming … . That’s my experience with them, that people welcome me, acknowledge me, shake my hand, ‘how are you? Shabbat Shalom.’ And so I feel community, I feel a connection.”

Kravetz noted that respondents from all three of the largest segments of the surge—young adults, parents and mid-lifers—brought up positive experiences with Chabad unaided by the interviewers.

A parent told JFNA that it was a joyful, non-political Judaism that she was looking for. “Fun things! Things I’m excited to take my kid to! Chabad is a great example. Sukkot they have donkey rides on the street, I would happily take her things like that. Fun things associated with Judaism would be great.”

JFNA’s research found that the two “stickiest” segments of “The Surge”—the ones most likely to be surging in their Jewish journey two years since Oct. 7—were the ones who were already very engaged prior to the attack and responded by deepening their engagement, taking on more mitzvot, and doing things like moving their children from secular schools or camps to Jewish ones. The second “stickiest” were the people who’d done nothing before.

“[They were] the ones who we all wondered, how are we ever going to get them to do anything?” said Kravetz. “And something about this moment caused an awakening of Jewish identity, or as you just called it, of the Jewish soul, and it caused them to do something, to take some kind of action.”

Whether that initial surge can be nurtured and expanded is the remaining question.

“Simply put, the approach of the Rebbe [Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, of righteous memory] works,” said Gurevitch. “When you give people authentic Judaism, it touches something deep inside of them.”

Beyond the numbers

Surveys can oftentimes inform us of what is going on, but they will have a much more difficult time explaining why it is happening. Are Jews, newly inspired to fan the fire in their souls, heading to Chabad because its rabbis and rebbetzins (and their children) are warm and welcoming? Is it because Chabad is in so many locations, especially smaller towns, where there is less and less other Jewish infrastructure? Take an area like Jacksonville region in northeastern Florida: A 2024 Brandeis study found that 15% of all Jews in the area considered themselves members of Chabad, while 26% of Jewish adults had attended services at Chabad over the previous year, both these metrics registering higher than any other group or denomination.

“Well, it’s not not true that Jews are coming to Chabad because we have so many locations, or because we’re welcoming,” observed Rabbi Menachem Schmidt, a longtime Chabad emissary in Philadelphia, who founded Lubavitch House at the University of Pennsylvania in 1980 and today serves as president of Chabad on Campus International. “At the same time, take a place like Chabad at Binghamton University: They have 700 people on a Friday night. They’re not just there because Chabad is the only choice in the vicinity.”

Schmidt spoke about Chabad’s interconnectedness, the flow of information and help between one Chabad emissary couple and a second—especially in the vast, and growing presence of Chabad on Campus—that creates a cohesive network working on behalf of the Jewish people. Eliezrie similarly pointed at aspects of Chabad’s structure, underlining JFNA’s findings that younger Jews are especially drawn to Chabad, and explaining that this is the case because they are much more familiar with the movement than some of their elders due to the growth in programming like CKids, CTeen, and Chabad on Campus, and are therefore perfectly comfortable walking into a very different Jewish atmosphere than they were raised in. Both of them, however, said that these logistical strengths do not get to the heart of the matter.

“The bottom line of shlichus [Chabad emissary work] is ahavas Yisrael [Love of a Fellow Jew],” said Schmidt, “it’s this unconditional love for every Jew without expectations of anything in return.” Schmidt quoted Tanya, the foundational text of Chabad Chassidic thought authored by the movement’s founder, Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, who wrote in Chapter 32 that a Jew must use “strong cords of love” to attract his fellow Jew to his heritage, this being a mitzvah itself—ahavat Yisrael.

In other words, the foundation of any project geared toward bringing a Jew closer to his or heritage, their rightful inheritance, must be Torah and mitzvot. “When a kid walks into your Chabad House, that’s an unqualified gift,” explained Schmidt. “However much the person reaching out to other Jews can have that attitude, that’s the greatest differentiator. That’s the special strength which the Rebbe connected us to.”

“The Rebbe taught us that this love for your fellow Jew is not a method; it’s who we are,” said Eliezrie. “That’s what drives us to connect Jews with mitzvahs—we know, with certainty, that when we approach them honestly, with no expectations but only the opportunity to do a mitzvah, the Jewish soul will respond in kind.”

“I think the community helps, and having a good rabbi helps to connect the pieces and gives you someone to learn from and feel invited,” said Schmelzlen of his experience. “But for me, it’s the wrapping of tefillin, praying, forming that direct connection with G‑d that does it. I feel great the rest of the day. I just feel connected.”

Giving Jews access to Torah and mitzvahs, something which will feed the yearning in their soul—which, as Kabbalah explains, is a literal piece of G‑d—is not just a way to connect Jews to their heritage, but the surest path towards them rediscovering who they are at their essence. It’s also not copyrighted by Chabad.

During a nearly two-hour-long 1972 meeting with Frank Lautenberg and David Adler of the United Jewish Appeal—Lautenberg, at the time national chairman of the UJA, was later a U.S. senator from New Jersey—the Rebbe made the case that UJA and other central Jewish communal organizations had an urgent responsibility to tend to the spiritual state of American Jewry through education, stating that the finances and material projects they were working on would only benefit from a soul-first approach.

This “can be made as one of the main purposes of the United Jewish Appeal, to instruct all these people who are active in approaching someone” for funds “to begin—or at least to finish—by telling them or explaining to them about the beauty of Jewishness, about the duties of Jewishness, about the manners of Jewishness,” the Rebbe stressed. Approached honestly about furthering his Jewish engagement, the donor “will do something to consider this request, and if he finds something valuable he will do something about it.”

The key, however, is to move with alacrity. During the meeting, Lautenberg asserted that his organization was slowly pivoting towards a more spiritual approach. It would take time, but it was where they were heading.

“The young people living in South Carolina do not know that this … process is undergoing a little change,” the Rebbe responded. “They need help tomorrow morning!”

American Jews are still surging, actively looking for real, meaningful ways to engage with their Jewish identity and souls. The example of Chabad over the past two years strongly suggests that this can be sustained across the board by lovingly connecting Jews with their authentic heritage, the same Torah and mitzvahs that G‑d gifted the Jews at Sinai, and which have kept the Jewish people for millennia.

Success depends only on our willingness to meet the demand.