A message from BaMidbar’s CEO: 

Dear BaMidbar Community, 

Starting September 1, 2025, BaMidbar will be closing its operations. We are grateful to share that a trusted community partner will continue our groundbreaking teen, young adult, and professional development education and programming, ensuring that BaMidbar’s mission and impact live on. The decision to sunset our current format did not come lightly. While we are saddened that we cannot continue on in our present form, we are also profoundly grateful and inspired that our mission and entire intellectual property will live on within another national Jewish organization. In this way, we are living the very resilience we have taught for nearly a decade. We look forward to updating you with the specifics about where BaMidbar’s work will live on in the coming weeks. 

BaMidbar began as a dream that we were blessed to see become a reality. In 2012, Rabbi Eliav Bock of Camp Ramah in the Rockies, together with Cliff Stockton and current BaMidbar board members Rabbi Anat Moskowitz and Teena Slatkin asked the hard question: what does the Jewish community offer to Jewish teens and young adults suffering through addiction and mental health struggles? At that time, the answer was nothing. With vision, courage, and determination, this group dedicated time, energy, and resources to exploring the need and viability of creating a residential Jewish wilderness therapy program. In 2016, our founding CEO, Jory Hanselman Mayschak was hired and two years later, BaMidbar launched as the first Jewish residential wilderness therapy program. 

When the COVID-19 pandemic and low enrollment forced the closure of the residential facility, BaMidbar once again embodied resilience. By 2021, BaMidbar became an independent 501(c)3 and pivoted to a national community health model, focusing on mental health education through a Jewish lens. In partnership with 22 organizations, BaMidbar delivered 94 programs reaching 2,323 Jewish communal professionals. By 2023, BaMidbar launched outpatient clinical services in Boston while simultaneously reaching 2,085 participants across 73 educational programs. 

BaMidbar was the first national Jewish organization to focus exclusively on the mental health and resilience of Jewish teens and young adults, well before the COVID-19 pandemic and before the broader Jewish community began prioritizing this work. Guided by our values and an unwavering concern for our youth, we blazed a trail. We asked the hard questions. We put mental health at the forefront of the Jewish communal agenda. What began as a small spark has become a flame now carried by many new organizations responding to the urgent needs of our adolescents. 

As the pandemic exacerbated the mental health crisis, Jewish teens and young adults faced additional burdens: the rise of antisemitism and the trauma of October 7th and its aftermath. BaMidbar stood with them through it all and will continue to do so as our mission lives on in its new organizational home. 

We are deeply grateful to the visionary funders and philanthropic partners who sustained this work, and to the staff, board, and community members who walked this path with us. If you currently have a recurring gift set up with BaMidbar, those contributions will end on September 1. We are so thankful for the generosity you’ve shown through your ongoing support. Please note that our Boston clinic will also close September 1. However, I, along with our COO, Rachel Eisen, will remain onboard through November 2025 as we finalize the details of BaMidbar’s next resilient chapter. 

Jewish wisdom teaches in Pirkei Avot 2:16: “It is not your duty to finish the work, but neither are you free to desist from it.” While BaMidbar’s current chapter closes, the work continues, and our mission will endure. This is resilience in action, the very value at the heart of BaMidbar’s vision from the start. 

Born from the Jewish camping movement, BaMidbar was founded on the power of experiential education and the belief that Jewish tradition offers profound opportunities for growth and self-discovery. We are proud beyond words of what we have accomplished together, and we are confident that the seeds planted will continue to grow in the next stage of this journey. 

With Deepest Gratitude, 

Whitney Fisch, MSW CEO, BaMidbar