What’s Really Happening in the Group Chat

What’s Really Happening in the Group Chat

The group chat is not just a group chat. For young people, it is where friendships are built, plans are made, social status is negotiated, identity is tested, and harm can spread quickly. It is also one of the places where students encounter cruelty, exclusion, disinformation, antisemitism, and other forms of identity-based targeting — often away from adult view, but with real consequences for how they feel, learn, and show up in school and in life.In this episode of Boston Jewish Now, Spencer Cronin, JCRC’s Director of Educational Partnerships, speaks with Dr. Jill Walsh [https://www.bu.edu/sociology/profile/jill-walsh/], sociologist, researcher, Boston University lecturer, and founder of Digital Aged. They unpack the social dynamics and parts of digital culture parents may not realize are shaping their children’s daily lives online.This conversation is part of JCRC’s broader K–12 work: helping schools understand the online culture shaping students’ lives, respond to antisemitism and identity-based targeting, and build safer, more inclusive school communities for Jewish students alongside all students.Digital spaces can help young people find belonging and connection, especially when they feel isolated offline. But chats, algorithms, viral content, and peer pressure can also normalize cruelty and make it much harder for students to push back when hate shows up.This episode offers families and educators a clearer way to understand the digital world young people are navigating, and practical guidance for talking with them about it so we can help shape healthier school communities and healthier teens.

A Bad Deal in Somerville, an Ambiguous Deal with Iran

In this episode of Boston Jewish Now, we unpack two verydifferent fights that raise a similar question: what happens when decisions are made about Jewish safety and belonging without the people most affected beingfully heard? The conversation begins in Somerville, where Jeremy recently testified before the City Council as it considered an ordinance tied to Israel divestment. Jeremy explains why JCRC showed up, what Shalom Somerville and local Jewish residents have been facing, and why local campaigns around Israel are more than just symbolic foreign policy debates. In Somerville, many Jewish residents have experienced these fights as a sustained climate of hostility, intimidation, and exclusion from public life in the city they call home. We also cover the possibility of a new agreement over Iran’snuclear program. Rather than rush to call it good or bad before the details are public, Jeremy argues for a more basic standard: release the agreement, brief Congress, and allow serious review by lawmakers, foreign policy experts, andnuclear nonproliferation experts. We discuss why Congress has to be part of any long-termforeign policy commitment, why American global credibility depends on commitments that can outlast a single administration and simply be overturned, and why Israel’s security interests cannot be treated as an afterthought indecisions involving Iran and its proxies.

Platner, Mamdani, and What We Expect From Civic Leaders

In this episode of Boston Jewish Now, JCRC CEO Jeremy Burton discusses what Jewish communities should expect from civic leaders — in moments of celebration, in moments of pain, and in moments when antisemitism and public Jewish life are being tested.   The conversation covers Toronto’s March with Israel, Mamdani and New York’s Israel parade, and the question of what it means for civic leaders to show up for Jewish communities. Jeremy also discusses Graham Platner, Ralph Northam, Jake Auchincloss, and the double standard around racism and antisemitism in public life.   The episode also covers Clover Food Lab and kosher food access in Boston, why consumer data privacy is a Jewish safety issue, and the importance of nonprofit security funding in the Massachusetts state budget. Find your legislators: https://malegislature.gov/Search/FindMyLegislator

What It Means to Be Queer and Jewish Right Now

This Pride Month episode is a conversation between two queer Jewish professionals working inside JCRC, each bringing a different generational lens to what it means to be queer, Jewish, visible, and civically engaged in this moment.   Rachel Schlesinger, JCRC's Marketing Coordinator, and Jeremy Burton, JCRC's CEO, are living different chapters of the same larger story. Jeremy brings decades of experience as an out Jewish communal leader who has seen the evolution of LGBTQ belonging in Jewish spaces. Rachel brings the perspective of a younger Jewish professional navigating a post-October 7 world, where being out can sometimes feel easier than being visibly Jewish or Zionist in some progressive and LGBTQ spaces.   Together, they talk about Pride, authenticity, Jewish belonging, antisemitism, Israel, civil rights, and the responsibility of communal institutions to make room for people to show up fully.

Are Jewish Families Chasing Prestige Over Education?

Many Jewish parents are looking at college differently right now. Dr. Greg Weiner offers a perspective few others can. He is the 17th president of Assumption University, the first Jewish president of a Catholic university in the United States, and a scholar of American political thought. In this episode, Jeremy Burton speaks with Dr. Weiner about why Catholic education may offer Jewish students something many families are looking for now: a serious educational environment where faith is taken seriously, difference is treated with respect, and students are formed to think, question, listen, and live responsibly with others. Dr. Weiner makes clear that Catholic universities are not trying to evangelize Jewish students. They take faith, reason, learning, and human dignity seriously. For Jewish students, that can mean entering a community where difference is understood, where conviction is respected, where education is about more than ivy-league prestige — and where there are no encampments. Together, JCRC CEO Jeremy Burton and Dr. Greg Weiner unpack what a college education is, at its best: a place to produce the kinds of people a healthy civic society depends on.