Keshet offers LGBTQ+ Jewish teens community, affirmation, and glow-in-the-dark Capture the Flag

As a college counselor for LGBTQ+ Jewish teens, I care about their well-being far beyond the college process. I want my students to grow, thrive, and find community in their high school years, so I would like to highlight Keshet, an organization that works for equality for LGBTQ+ Jews and offers youth programming as part of that mission.

I spoke with Sawyer Goldsmith (they/he), a Keshet staff member who works on their youth programs, and I am excited to share the conversation with you. Sawyer participated in Keshet programs as a teen and came back to work on staff as an adult. They share insights from both perspectives.

Sawyer primarily works on Keshet’s Shabbaton retreat weekends. In this conversation, he offers valuable information about the programming at these Shabbatonim, the overall vibe, the impact of being in a space like this, and the opportunities for youth leadership.

Here is my conversation with Sawyer.

Can you give me a brief overview of your work at Keshet?

I’m Sawyer. I use they, he pronouns. I am the Youth Programs Manager at Keshet, which means I get to work with a bunch of really cool and rad queer and trans Jewish teens from around the country. I work mainly on our Shabbaton retreat weekends: working with our teen leaders to plan the programs, doing the logistics, and doing leadership development.

Can you tell me more about the teen leaders? What do they plan, and what do they lead?

We have three groups of leaders: our Co-Chairs, Steering Committee, and Shabbaton Fellows.

Our Co-Chairs are the face of the leadership of our Shabbatonim. This year we have six Co-Chairs: two for our midwest Shabbaton and four for our east coast Shabbaton. The Co-Chairs lead the meetings for our Steering Committee, which is our largest group of teen leaders. The Steering Committee develops our Shabbaton programs.

We have a really broad spectrum of programs ranging from arts and crafts to learning to outdoor recreation. For the past couple of years we’ve been doing glow-in-the-dark Capture the Flag, which our youth really like. We get them glowsticks and supervise them as they run around in the dark for an hour.

I want them to be creative and ambitious. I will let them know if it’s unattainable, but I tell them to reach for the stars, and I will try to make it happen. We’ve done a leathercrafting program where we made bracelets as well as a metal-stamping activity, and we’ve done text studies queering the torah.

Our third leadership segment is our Shabbaton Fellows, who are college-aged alumni of our programs. They gather once a month for a workshop to help them work with youth and be better educators. Last month we did a workshop on adultism and had really great conversations.

In my time at Keshet, I’ve been able to work with two generations of leaders, the first of whom just graduated college, and it is just really incredible to see them grow up and blossom.

Your youth come to you for a special space for LGBTQ+ Jews. Why is it valuable to build community at this particular intersection of identities?

It’s not easy being queer or being Jewish right now, and oftentimes it’s hard to show up as both identities in a single-identity space. Sometimes you have to repress your queerness in Jewish spaces, and sometimes you have to repress your Jewishness in queer spaces.

Affinity spaces in general are really important. We have a lot of intersecting identities within our population, so we’ve led queer Jewish disabled affinity spaces before. Keshet also has programming for queer Jews of color that overlaps with our youth programming a little bit.

I think something really important for our youth is to see queer Jewish adults thriving. To have people to look up to and know that they are openly queer and openly Jewish in the world.

Let’s talk more about the challenges that come with bringing both identities into a single-identity space. One of the challenges I’ve seen is that LGBTQ+ spaces tend to be politically progressive, which includes opposing Israel. If an LGBTQ+ Jew is pro-Israel, they may not be welcome in that space. Do you see any of that in your work with your youth?

A lot of youth feel that sentiment. We hear from youth who are feeling unwelcome in LGBTQ+ spaces and youth who are feeling unwelcome in Jewish spaces. At Keshet, on our Youth Programs team, we do not share our personal beliefs, as we strive to be a safe space for all our youth, but we empower youth to discuss this together.

Because of our commitment to youth empowerment and centering youth voices in our programs, our programs are based on what youth themselves want. At times, we have held online processing spaces around the events taking place in Israel and Gaza, teen-led group discussions around queerness and Zionism, and workshops around navigating difficult conversations. These all center the voices and experiences of our youth, ensure that it is a safe environment for everyone on all sides, and take place in a contained environment. We don’t and will never force youth to talk about topics that they don’t want to, but we encourage healthy discussion on topics that they do.

If you’re interested, Keshet has a resource on talking about Israel and Palestine that we created about a year ago.

What are some other serious topics that you give your youth a space to discuss?

For the past decade, we’ve been doing a full group workshop on enthusiastic consent and how we can employ it in our day-to-day lives.

I am currently working on revamping the workshop. Because we’ve been doing it for the past decade, we have teens who have been to five or six Shabbatonim, and they’re like, “I am tired of this! I’ve done it five times already!” So we’re working on creating small-group activities with more focused discussion and also having a 201 workshop for participants who have been to more than two Shabbatonim.

As for other heavy topics, many of our teens have requested that we do not talk about what is going on in the world. They just want relief and an escape from it, so we try our best to avoid talking about politics. If it is requested, we will definitely run something. We have run conversations in the past and will continue to do so when asked.

But we try to keep it positive and productive. We want to encourage hope, learn to have hard conversations, and work on skills. Complaining and being mad is not going to help anything and will only damper the vibe for the rest of the weekend.

It seems like you had a positive experience participating in Keshet programs as a youth because you came back on staff to organize them. What was it like to participate in these programs yourself, and what impact did it have on you?

In tenth grade I transferred to a Jewish day school after being in public school K through nine. I was the only trans person in school, so I was often stuck being the explainer, being the advocate. Sometimes people wouldn’t even know how to bring it up with me, so they would ask my one queer friend about me. Being in a space where there were other people like me, where I didn’t have to explain myself or hide was eye-opening and affirming, especially to be with other trans Jewish people.

The first Shabbaton I attended was in March 2017, and I just kept going back. I was on the Steering Committee for a couple Shabbatonim, and I was a Chair for the first ever midwest Shabbaton, which holds a really deep place in my heart because I played a role in starting it.

For the first two years that I was participating, it was nice to be a leader, but it was also good to be in that space and to have that space with other LGBTQ+ Jews. At a certain point, I didn’t really need that space anymore, but it felt good to be creating it for other people.

It was still lonely to be the only trans person at school, and people were still confused, but because I had attended these programs and met other queer and trans Jews my age, I felt a little more equipped to handle it.

In your view, what is the biggest challenge facing LGBTQ+ Jewish youth in 2026?

Lack of understanding and lack of empathy. We have a handful of teens in Florida and Texas, and because of the laws there, they had to go back in the closet, they had to start going by their deadname again, they had to revert to old pronouns. I think that is what is impacting them the most. They just feel scrutinized by the world.

What is the best part of being an LGBTQ+ Jewish youth in 2026?

There are opportunities available to be in community. Fifteen years ago, there weren't opportunities for queer and trans Jewish teens to gather together in one space, let alone have weekly online programs. Just having access to community and togetherness across the country.

If someone reading this interview wants to get involved in Keshet youth programming, how do they do that?

They can email me: sawyer.goldsmith@keshet.org, they can email youth@keshetonline.org, or visit our website: keshetonline.org/youth. If they are specifically interested in the Shabbatonim, the website is keshetonline.org/shabbaton. I am always happy to answer questions and talk about our Shabbatonim. They are incredibly deep and important to me, and I want more people to come.