By Steve Linde, JNS
As antisemitism rises in North America, Club Z founder Masha Merkulova tells JNS that Jewish teens must be equipped long before they reach college.
When Masha Merkulova talks about antisemitism, she does so without euphemism or panic.
“We know our kids are going to face Jew-hatred,” Merkulova said in an interview on Monday at the JNS Jerusalem studio. “The question is not if. It’s when. So why are we not preparing them?”
Merkulova is the founder and executive director of Club Z, a North American Zionist youth movement she launched in 2011 to strengthen Jewish identity, peoplehood and connection to Israel among teens—long before they reach college campuses.
She flew to Israel from the United States to attend the Second International Conference on Combating Antisemitism—Generation of Truth, hosted by the Ministry for Diaspora Affairs, where she represented Club Z and its growing network of teenage participants across the United States.
Club Z, Merkulova explained, was born not out of theory but experience. After nearly two decades working as a labor-and-delivery nurse, she watched her seventh-grade child come home from Hebrew school disturbed by anti-Israel material shown in what was meant to be a Jewish setting.
“That was my wake-up call,” she said. “We were sending our kids into environments completely unprepared.”
Rather than focusing on public relations or scripted advocacy, Club Z took a different approach. Merkulova rejects what she calls “rah-rah hasbara,” favoring instead long-term education that equips teens to advocate for themselves as Jews and as Americans.
“Our kids don’t memorize talking points,” she said. “They learn who they are. They learn Jewish history, Israel’s story, and then they learn how to translate that knowledge into student language, professor language and peer language.”
Club Z operates as a hybrid youth movement and academic program, with monthly and bi-weekly sessions that continue for several years. Participants begin as early as eighth grade and progress through increasingly advanced levels of study and leadership training.
“When something happens—and it will—they don’t panic,” Merkulova said. “They stand strong and speak clearly.”
From Belarus to Florida
Born in Belarus, Merkulova discovered her Jewish identity only as a teenager in the former Soviet Union. “I thought I was Russian,” she recalled. “I found out I was Jewish when I went to apply for my passport.”
She immigrated to the United States in 1992, settling first in California and then moving with her family to Florida.
Her political awakening deepened after Israel’s 2005 disengagement from Gaza, when she struggled to find Jewish frameworks willing to engage seriously with what was unfolding. Living in California, she witnessed the rise of organized anti-Israel activism on campuses and concluded that Jewish students were being outmatched.
“We send our kids to college to get an education,” she said. “The activists they face are there to organize.”
Since the Hamas attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, demand for Club Z has surged. Merkulova said the wave of campus protests in 2024 only confirmed what her organization had long warned: Jewish students needed preparation, not reassurance.
Some of the most troubling activism, she noted, involved Jewish students themselves.
“That is a failure of a system,” she said. “We have to ask who educated them—and how we missed it.”
By contrast, Club Z alumni, she said, largely stayed in school, organized Israel clubs, spoke at city council meetings and challenged misinformation in classrooms.
“One kid educates hundreds more,” she said. “That’s the force multiplier.”
Club Z trips to Israel
Club Z has already begun taking teens to Israel and Merkulova hopes to expand those trips, stressing that no Zionist education can be complete without time in the country itself. Alumni who later joined Birthright Israel trips, she said, often surprised tour guides with their depth of knowledge.
“They’re asked, ‘How do you know all this?’” she said. “And the answer is simple: they were taught.”
Looking ahead, Merkulova is blunt about the challenges facing Jewish communities in North America.
“Our biggest challenge is us,” she said. “If we don’t educate Jews about who they are, others will define them.”
For Merkulova, the mission remains urgent—and personal.
“You go to sleep a Jew. You wake up a Jew,” she said. “And sooner or later, you’re expected to explain that—to others and to yourself.”
More information about Club Z is available at clubz.org and on social media under the handle, Zionism for Teens.
