eJewishPhilanthropy

Treating your DAF with the intentionality of a family foundation

Contributing Author — Tue, 13 Oct 2026 09:01:00 +0000

Donor-advised funds have become an increasingly popular charitable giving vehicle, offering donors flexibility, tax advantages and administrative simplicity. For many people, a DAF allows them to recommend grants to nonprofit organizations without having to take on the time and responsibilities of formalizing a family foundation. However, this simplicity does not mean that DAF holders have to sacrifice the intentionality and strategic approach often associated with foundations. By embracing some of the elements associated with family foundations, DAF holders can become more informed and impactful funders. In 2023, my parents and I established The Seacove Fund, a DAF housed at the Jewish Community Foundation of San Diego (JCF). While we had initially considered creating a family foundation to meet our goals of supporting small nonprofits in the region, we were soon drawn to the idea of opening a DAF to meet our philanthropic goals without having to navigate the complexity of creating a foundation. Even though we chose a different model, we took the idea of acting like a family foundation seriously and became interested in applying some of those best practices to how we managed our DAF. Since launching The Seacove Fund, we have conducted three grant cycles and awarded nearly 20 organizations with unrestricted funding to support their missions and strengthen their capacity. Based on our experience, here are some recommendations for other DAF holders thinking about taking a similar approach. Create a grant program (but keep it simple) Rather than responding to funding requests as they arose or making contributions without a consistent strategy, we wanted a more structured approach to our giving. We created the CHANGE Grant Program as the centerpiece of The Seacove Fund, much in the same way a family foundation might establish and manage its own grant program. From the beginning, we embraced many of the principles of trust-based philanthropy, which included offering unrestricted funding and making the application process as simple as possible. Our application was intentionally designed to take no more than 10–15 minutes to complete using a basic Google form; rather than asking nonprofits to provide extensive information about themselves in the application, we took responsibility for learning more about the organizations by conducting our own research. We make our grant decisions within a month and ensure funds are received no more than one month after that, following JCF’s required approval and sign-off. We also chose not to require formal reports from our grantees. Instead, we stay connected through occasional site visits or informal meetups over coffee to hear how things are going, learn more about their work and understand how they are using the funding. We celebrate our grantees on our website and through social media announcements that tell the story of their organizations and the impact of their work. Establish your DAF at a community foundation Where you establish your DAF matters, too. While donors can set up DAFs at large financial institutions such as Fidelity or Schwab or on apps like Daffy, we made the choice to house our fund at JCF. JCF was founded in 1967 and has built longstanding relationships with local nonprofits, community leaders and other funders throughout the region. Being part of that established ecosystem gives us a better understanding of the organizations doing important work in our community and also creates connections with other funders who are interested in similar issues. JCF also helps increase our visibility among local nonprofits by promoting our grant program through their newsletters and social media platforms. This was especially valuable when we were getting started and trying to reach potential applicants for the first time. After each grant cycle we also share all of the applications we receive with JCF staff with the goal of giving these small nonprofits additional exposure. Even when we are unable to fund an organization, sharing an application may help connect the organization with other funders in JCF’s network who may be interested in supporting its work. Consider opening a DAF at a community foundation not just as a place to house your fund, but as an opportunity to access local relationships, knowledge and expertise. Build a public presence and brand Even though DAFs are not required to operate publicly and most do not have a website, from the start we put an emphasis on transparency and accessibility. Having a visible presence was important to us, particularly when we first launched our DAF and announced our grant program. We wanted potential grantees and others in the community to be able to learn about who we were, what we cared about and how we approached philanthropy. Using Weebly, a cloud-based website builder, we created a website that introduced The Seacove Fund and shared information about our funding approach. When our grant application is open, we include a direct link from our website and also maintain a frequently asked questions page and contact information page. Over time, we also added a grantee spotlight page featuring information and videos about organizations we have supported as well as other nonprofits we have contributed to. We created a logo using Canva and developed a consistent visual identity for the fund. None of these efforts required professional design or web-development experience and while a website isnt necessary for every DAF, we found it to be an important part of our approach. Continue to learn, grow and share Dont assume that because you are an individual DAF holder, you have to figure out the process on your own. We looked early on for opportunities to learn more about grantmaking, connect with other funders and better understand the issues facing our community. In addition to benefiting from the resources at JCF, we became members of Catalyst of San Diego and Imperial Counties, formerly San Diego Grantmakers. Through Catalyst, we found a learning community of other funders, including family foundations, large corporate foundations and other DAF holders. Although The Seacove Fund is one of the smaller funders in this network, it has been an invaluable experience to participate in training and networking events to help us continue to refine our approach. Many communities across the country have similar funder networks, and DAF holders should take advantage of them. Finally, we believe DAF holders have a responsibility to share what they learn with their grantees. Nonprofit leaders and staff are immersed in their missions every day and often dont have the time to sort through newsletters, funding announcements, professional development opportunities and other resources. As funders, we can help shoulder some of that burden and make a point of passing along opportunities and resources we hear about to our grantees to support their own fundraising and professional development. In closing: Put your DAF to work Though a donor-advised fund provides simplicity and flexibility, DAF holders can do more than simply recommend grants. For us, that has meant embracing some of the best practices of a family foundation (even when they aren’t required) to become more informed and responsive funders. This includes establishing a grant program, creating a website, joining learning communities and nurturing ongoing relationships with the organizations we support. Approaching The Seacove Fund this way has made our experience as funders more meaningful and connected us more deeply to the San Diego nonprofit community. In short, the DAF structure may be simple, but how you choose to use it doesn’t have to be. Brett Schwartz is the co-founder of The Seacove Fund.

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Oct. 7 exposed a gap in Holocaust education that we must fix

Contributing Author — Tue, 13 Oct 2026 08:09:00 +0000

For decades, Holocaust education in the U.S. has typically treated antisemitism as a sealed chapter beginning in 1933 with the rise of Hitler and ending in 1945 with the defeat of Nazi Germany. The lessons of this dark period have been taught as universal truths: Be kind. Show empathy. Stand up for others. We have Holocaust museums and state mandates for Holocaust education, eighth-grade units on The Diary of Anne Frank and Elie Wiesel’s Night. Never Again became a slogan for defending the vulnerable from humanity’s worst impulses. Then came Oct. 7, 2023, the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust. It was the latest in a long line of genocidal attempts to erase Jewish life from the map. What made it different was watching it happen in real time, and watching the world’s response in real time, too. We watched groups celebrate a massacre of Jews before the dead bodies were even counted. We watched posters of kidnapped Jewish babies torn down in broad daylight. We watched womens rights groups stay silent on mass rape, with some even questioning if it happened. We watched Jewish businesses vandalized, Jewish preschools double their security and global Jewry demonized. And we watched as students on college campuses embraced terrorist chants calling to globalize the killing of Jews. These same students, many of whom had been taught about the Holocaust in school and self-identified as upstanders for social justice, were unable to recognize antisemitism when it was right in front of them. That was the moment when I saw an unsettling gap: We taught a generation about the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust without teaching them how to recognize the pernicious type of hate that caused it. We need to teach students how to recognize antisemitism, not only as it appeared in Nazi Germany, but as it has mutated and resurfaced across centuries. We need to teach how this ancient hatred reinvents itself in every era, often presenting itself as a righteous cause and repackaging itself in the language of the day. If we teach students only what antisemitism looked like during the Third Reich, we leave them unprepared to recognize what it looks like now. Recognizing antisemitism also requires understanding the people it targets. Students rarely learn that Jewish history stretches back thousands of years before the Holocaust to regions beyond Europe, or about the culture, traditions and contributions Jews have made to the societies of which theyve been part. Most schools omit Jewish American Heritage Month in their long list of celebrations, leaving students to learn about Jews through black and white pictures from World War II. We must introduce students to the totality of Jewish peoplehood, not reduce Jews to victims in a faraway time and place. We’ve also been teaching students about Jews who were killed without introducing them to living ones. That is another gap we need to fill. Living Links, a national nonprofit, empowers descendants of Holocaust survivors to carry forward family testimony in a way that keeps the lessons of the Holocaust relevant and resonant. By sharing personal stories in classrooms and communities, descendants bring Jewish peoplehood to life, reveal the devastating consequences of antisemitism and inspire the next generation to break this dangerous pattern for good. When a descendant walks into a classroom, something shifts. Students see a real and relatable human being and the people behind the history: their names, relationships, traditions, values, losses, and legacies. As one middle-school student shared, “It’s not just history in a textbook — it feels personal.” By humanizing history, students stop reciting facts and start asking questions, engaging in critical thinking and meaningful dialogue. They connect the dots on their own, because a living person is standing in the gap. My grandparents survived the unthinkable, and I understood early that carrying their legacy was not just personal, but a moral and civic obligation. The events of Oct. 7 and their aftermath made that obligation urgent. Survivors like my Grandpa Barry, whose entire family was brutally murdered solely for being Jewish, understood the importance of the Jewish State of Israel as their only place of refuge. For many, it was the only option, and that certainty became home. Half of all Holocaust survivors alive today live in Israel. That fact speaks louder than any argument could, and it’s at the heart of why Zionism is woven into Jewish identity. Holocaust survivors gave us testimony with powerful lessons for all humanity, and it is up to us to make sure those lessons are taught in ways that can shape a better future. That starts with a choice. Let’s teach the full story of who Jews are and teach antisemitism as a living subject, with roots long before the Holocaust and realities just as frightening today. Bring living Jews into the room, especially the descendants keeping testimony and continuity alive, and measure success by whether a student can recognize and counter hate today while inspiring them to carry their own history forward, connect more deeply with their own family and become the kind of upstander who respects everyone’s story, not just their own. Never Again was a promise. Now its ours to keep. Bari Rogoff is the CEO of Living Links and the granddaughter of two Holocaust survivors.

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Your Daily Phil: Ziegler rabbinical school stays Conservative, but with revamped focus

EJP — Mon, 12 Oct 2026 14:27:39 +0000

Good Monday morning! In today’s edition of Your Daily Phil, we get the scoop on American Jewish University’s Ziegler rabbinical school sticking with the Conservative movement after considering going nondenominational. We report on a $1.9 million donation to fund a permanent position at West Chester University Hillel, and on New York Gov. Kathy Hochul’s decision to opt the state into the federal scholarship tax credit program, which delighted Jewish groups. We feature an opinion piece by Yehudis Smith responding to the news that a Reggio Emilia conference in Italy required participants to sign a “values charter” denouncing Israel and one by Connie Kanter, Deanne Weiss Etsekson and Melissa Rivkin responding to a recent op-ed calling for communal mobilization to address antisemitism in Seattle; plus ?Ethan Zadoff joins the ongoing conversation about the day school “bubble.” Also in this issue: Maya Kenig, Stephanie Epstein and Gil Pazy. Correction: Friday’s edition of Your Daily Phil incorrectly identified the date of our election event. The panel will take place on Wednesday, Oct. 14. Sign up here. Today’sYour Daily Philwas curated by eJP Managing Editor Judah Ari Gross, Israel Editor Justin Hayet and Opinion Editor Rachel Kohn. Have a tip?Email us here. Follow us on Whatsapp Follow us on Telegram What Were Watching Israeli emergency services are responding after at least 20 people were injured, one of them critically, in an explosion in Israels Upper Galilee region today; the cause of the blast was not immediately known, but unexploded ordnance is reportedly suspected. The Global Jewish Educators Summit, spearheaded by Israel’s Diaspora Affairs Ministry, kicks off today in Jerusalem; some 250 Jewish teachers, principals and thought leaders are expected to take part in the four-day conference. Jewish and Israeli aid groups are responding after a powerful earthquake struck Panama on Friday. Former Israeli hostage Eliya Cohen and his wife, Nova music festival survivor Ziv Abud Cohen, are slated to speak at tonight’s UJA Young Leaders’ Oct. 7 commemoration in New York. The Jewish Federation of Detroit, in partnership with the local Anti-Defamation League and American Jewish Committee chapters, is hosting “Call Me Back” host Dan Senortonight for a conversation focused on Judaism and Zionism in public life. What You Should Know The American Jewish Universitys Ziegler School of Rabbinical Studies, it turns out, is staying in the Conservative fold — but with a dramatically revamped curriculum for the 2027-28 school year that stresses real-world financial and technological skills rabbis need to succeed in todays market, reports eJewishPhilanthropy’s Jay Deitcher. And, at a fraught moment in the Jewish community, the seminary is reaffirming its deep connection to Israel — though it says it will not impose a Zionist litmus test on its rabbis-to-be. In announcing the changes exclusively to eJP, including that Ziegler admissions for next year are now open, AJUs president, Jay Sanderson, said, “The school is going to continually evolve as the community needs to evolve. Theres a gaping hole in the education rabbis need to get to lead synagogues and lead non-synagogues,” he said. Read the full report here. News MAJOR GIFTS Anonymous foundation helps endow permanent role at West Chester University Hillel An anonymous family foundation donated a $1.9 million endowment last week to fund a permanent Hillel staff member at West Chester University in southeastern Pennsylvania, eJewishPhilanthropy’s Judah Ari Gross reports. Growth trajectory: Since launching in 2018 with its first full-time staff member, the university’s Hillel has added an additional full-time position, and Philly Hillel said that it now reaches hundreds of Jewish students each year. “I’m incredibly proud of the growth I’ve helped lead on campus over the past several years,” Jenn Reiss, the Hillel’s director of Jewish student life, said in a statement. “Seeing that foundation create the momentum and opportunity to invest in staff is incredibly meaningful.” Read the full report here. Share NEW YORK STATE OF MIND Hochul will opt N.Y. into federal scholarship tax credit that will help fund Jewish education A new report from the Jewish Institute for National Security of America demonstrates how, even among hawkish experts in Washington, the question is increasingly not how to preserve the traditional model of military aid to Israel, but what should replace it,Matthew Shea reports foreJewishPhilanthropys sister publicationJewish Insider. Allies with benefits:“The question for policymakers is not what America owes Israel. It is what America gains from having Israel as an ally — and how much more both countries can gain by making that alliance stronger,” JINSA said in a statement accompanying the report, titled “Shifting the Center of Gravity: Transforming the U.S.-Israel Security Partnership.” Gov. Kathy Hochul announced Friday that she will opt New York into the new federal scholarship tax credit program, making her the second Democratic governor to do so since the administration published formal regulations for the program, reports Marc Rod for eJewishPhilanthropy’s sister publication Jewish Insider. Two sides: Hochul’s decision bucks intense opposition from teachers’ unions, but has won her support from the Jewish community, which has been urging governors to opt in. Read the full report and sign up for Jewish Insider’s Daily Kickoff. Share Opinion A LEARNING EXPERIENCE We didnt need Reggio Emilia to teach us how to see children In an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy, Yehudis Smith, director of early childhood education at Miami’s Center for the Advancement of Jewish Education, not only captures the sense of betrayal and grief expressed by several professionals who wrote to eJP in response to the news item “Jewish preschool educators forced to condemn Israel to attend Reggio Emilia conference” (Jewish Insider, Oct. 8), but also identifies an opportunity that can come out of this controversy. “We’ve been so focused on whether we can embrace Reggio Emilia while remaining unapologetically Jewish that we may have overlooked something: the educational values we’ve looked to Reggio to articulate have existed within our own tradition for thousands of years.” Read the full piece here. Share READERS RESPOND Seattles Jewish future will be decided in the classroom In an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy, Samis Foundation CEO Connie Kanter, trustee Deanne Weiss Etsekson and Melissa Rivkin, director of day school strategy, respond to Sam Jefferies and Joe Schocken’s recent op-ed “Canary song from the Seattle coal mine” (eJewishPhilanthropy, Sept. 23). “The warnings about rising hostility toward Jews in our state are justified. But [a 2026 community survey by the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle] points to a greater danger underneath the first: a generation growing up with too little Jewish knowledge and attachment to stand on when that hostility reaches them. If this hostility is part of a longer trajectory, how do we prepare coming generations of young Jews for the world they may inherit?” Read the full piece here. Share READER RESPONDS Every decision is a values decision In an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy, Ethan Zadoff, principal of DRS Yeshiva High School for Boys in Woodmere, N.Y., responds to David Zalik’s recent op-ed in eJP (“Jewish day schools are a bubble, and that is the point,” Sept. 14) as well as discussions in other outlets about the risks of a generation of Jewishly uneducated Jews. “The bubble is not good or bad in itself. What matters is what fills it, and that is always a question of values. … When values are not the explicit filter, something else takes over: the college list, parent pressure, the budget or simple habit. None of these is illegitimate, but none is a mission. A school that allows them to drive it will slowly drift from its own goals, often without noticing until a graduating class reveals it.” Read the full piece here. Share Worthy Reads Rejection Letter: In a letter, Highgate United Synagogue in the North London borough of Haringey dismisses an attempt by the leader of the local city council to assuage its members’ concerns after his Green Party passed a resolution declaring that “Zionism is racism” and affirming support for violence against Israel “If this motion does not mean that Jews in Haringey who have family or friends in Israel, or who attend our synagogue, or who maybe aren’t religious but believe that there is a place for a haven for the tattered remnant of the most persecuted race on earth, are considered by you and your party as racists and by implication fair game for ostracism, intimidation, violence or worse, please explain to us what else it means,” the letter reads. Cinema Therapy: In Haaretz, Linda Dayan interviews filmmaker Maya Kenig about a new project creating films about and starring the children from several of the kibbutzim that were hardest hit in the Oct. 7 terror attacks. “Usually you see documentaries where they show and report things, but this is a little different. Its written and directed and theyre acting, but its no less real. Acting can allow a person to express their own life and experiences themselves in a way you normally wouldnt. Modern Remake: In Tablet, Natan Sharansky, the former Israeli minister, Jewish Agency chairman and refusenik, reflects on the widespread, but unproven, charges of “genocide” against Israel, comparing them to previous blood libels against the Jewish People. “Of course, we are not above criticism, and we must acknowledge and correct course when we deviate from our own standards. But remaining vigilant about our shortcomings is not the same as accepting guilt we don’t deserve.”hose six words crystallized everything I had come to believe about philanthropy.” Major Gifts Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, donated $900,000 to establish a medical respite village in Lihue, Hawaii… Transitions The board of the Jewish Federation of Orange County (Calif.) hired Stephanie Epstein to serve as the organizations permanent CEO; Epstein, who has been the federation’s COO since 2024, has been serving as acting CEO since November 2025… Jonathan Stahl was named the next COO of Lehrhaus… Alan Sweifach, who has worked at the Jewish Agency for Israel for 12 years, is moving to American Friends of Tel Aviv University to serve as associate vice president for institutional giving… Wendy Young has joined UJA-Federation of New York as a senior development executive… Word on the Street One in five Israelis struggles daily with mental health issues following the Oct. 7 terror attacks, according to a new study by Israel’s National Mental Health Barometer,a joint project by Clalit Health Services and American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee… New figures from the U.K. Home Office show that British Jews faced the highest levels of religious hate crimes of any group —nine times more than the next highest group, with 117 crimes per 10,000 British Jews, compared 13 per 10,000 British Muslims… The nonprofit collecting funds for President Donald Trump’s renovations to the White House ballroom, known as The Trust for the National Mall, raised more than $320 million last year, including $20 million from donors whose identities the organization is not required to disclose… Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas postponed the PA’s upcoming elections, slated for late November, to Sept. 11, 2027; Abbas has repeatedly postponed Palestinian legislative elections, which were last held in 2006… For the second time, seven women are scheduled on Wednesday to take Israel’s state rabbinical exams; the first exams that the women were allowed to take were marked by delays and apparent efforts by Israel’s Chief Rabbinate to prevent them from participating, despite a court order… Israel’s financial newspaper Calcalist reports that the country’s Finance Ministry is considering a capital gains tax exemption in a bid to prevent Israeli entrepreneurs from relocating abroad… New York GOP gubernatorial candidate Bruce Blakeman met with Allure Group founder and Satmar philanthropist Yoeli Landau at the nursing home executive’s home in Williamsburg, Brooklyn… In the inaugural episode of The London Initiative’s podcast, “Team Talk Israel,” former Israeli politician Stav Shaffir and Jewish philanthropy veteran Jeffrey R. Solomon discussed funding Israel’s liberal “endangered majority.” In the conversation, Solomon said: “The Jewish Diaspora has allowed itself to be politicized. So for every dollar that was coming in from the Diaspora to support organizations on the left, there were $4 coming in to support organizations on the right.” Vandals burned an American flag outside the University of Oregon Hillel last week; this comes days after activists put up posters declaring the Hillel director an “enemy of the people” J. The Jewish News of Northern California examines the findings of a study on Jews’ use of psychedelics by the nonprofit Shefa, Emory University and the Jim Joseph Foundation. Read eJP’s coverage of the study here… Pic of the Day Meir Pavlovski/OneFamily Members of the OneFamily team cross the finish line yesterday at the Chicago Marathon. The team, organized by the Israeli nonprofit that supports bereaved families, was made up of 25 parents, widows and siblings of Israelis killed in terror attacks and war. “The moment I saw it said Chicago, I knew I was signing up,” said Gil Pazy (not pictured), who was running in memory of his son, Cpt. Yogev Pazy, who fell in battle in Gaza in November 2024 and who had served as a shaliach (emissary) in Chicago after high school. “For me, the running is the means, not the goal,” Pazy said in a statement. “When they asked me what scares me about the run, I said nothing about the running scares me. What scares me is the day after, when this journey ends.” Birthdays New York Yankees Raanan Agus, longtime managing director at Goldman Sachs, now chairman of the David Group Marjorie Berg Ancowitz, founder of Medical Reports Service, turns 101 Murray Chass, longtime baseball reporter for The New York Times, he is enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame, turns 88 Lewis M. Eisenberg, U.S. ambassador to Italy during the Trump 45 administration, he is a co-founder of private equity firm Granite Capital International, turns 84 Chris Wallace, longtime Fox News anchor, more recently at CNN, turns 79 Linda Gerstle, retired CEO of Wakefield, Mass.-based CAST, a nonprofit whose mission is to transform education for students with disabilities John D. Lantos, pediatrician and medical ethicist, turns 72 Lamar A. Nelson, dermatologist in Los Angeles Amy Eilberg, first female rabbi ordained in Conservative Judaism, turns 72 Richard B. Ancowitz, secretary to the New York State Tax Appeals Tribunal, turns 68 Tony Ressler, co-founder of both Apollo Global Management and Ares Management, he is the owner of the NBAs Atlanta Hawks, turns 66 Seth D. Harris, deputy director of the National Economic Council during the Biden administration, now a distinguished professor at Northeastern University, turns 64 Wendy Singer, former executive director of Start-Up Nation Central until 2022, now a strategic advisor to select Israeli start-ups including Remilk Gary Rosen, former editor of The Wall Street Journals Weekend Review section, now a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute Babak Bobby Samini, Los Angeles-based trial attorney for many high-profile clients, turns 56 Alexandra Smothers, producer, actor and screenwriter Yael Cohen Paran, former member of the Knesset, she now serves as the co-chair of the Green Movement of Israel, turns 53 Bram Cohen, computer programmer, creator of the BitTorrent protocol and founder of Chia cryptocurrency, turns 51 Rabbi Aharon Mordechai Rokeach, only son and heir -apparent of the current rebbe of the Belz chasidic dynasty, turns 51 Miri Bohadana, Israeli actor, model and television anchor, turns 49 Michael Barbaro, reporter and co-host of “The Daily,” a podcast at The New York Times Lauren Book, former member of the Florida Senate, turns 42 Rosie Gray, freelance journalist, formerly the politics and media reporter for BuzzFeed News, turns 37 Naomi Preizler, Argentine fashion model and artist, turns 36 Alex Katz, pitcher for Team Israel in the 2020 Olympics and 2023 World Baseball Classic, he is the founder of Stadium Custom Kicks, turns 32 Noa Argamani, Oct. 7 hostage, she was rescued by the IDF in June 2024, turns 29

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Every decision is a values decision

Contributing Author — Mon, 12 Oct 2026 13:00:00 +0000

Two recent pieces make a case every Jewish educator should welcome. In eJewishPhilanthropy, David Zalik argues that the day-school “bubble” is not a flaw but the point: “The child who first knows exactly who they are is the one who can later walk into a room full of difference and engage it without fear.” In The Times of Israel, Darin Katz warns that we cannot afford a generation of Jewishly uneducated Jews and insists that our schools transmit real knowledge — of Jewish history and texts, Hebrew and tradition — not talking points. I agree with both of them. Security of identity is the foundation for courage and curiosity, and knowledge is the foundation for conviction. But beneath both arguments lies a premise worth stating plainly: The bubble is not good or bad in itself. What matters is what fills it, and that is always a question of values. There is no neutral choice in a school. The bell schedule, the balance of Judaic and general studies, the trips we run and the speakers we invite all say something about what we believe matters. So do the books on the syllabus and the people who stand in front of the classroom. Each school community holds its own core values. For some, they center on Torah learning and halachic commitment; for others, on Zionism, chesed, intellectual openness or pluralism. Most of us hold several at once. The question is not whether our schools have values, but whether those values actually steer our decisions or are merely printed in the admissions brochure. When values are not the explicit filter, something else takes over: the college list, parent pressure, the budget or simple habit. None of these is illegitimate, but none is a mission. A school that allows them to drive will slowly drift from its own goals, often without noticing until a graduating class reveals it. This question runs through every level of school life, and any list of examples can only begin to capture it. It shapes our programs: whether a shabbaton, an Israel trip, a service-learning partnership or a new elective advances what we say we care about — and whether a beloved tradition still earns its place. It shapes our curriculum: why we teach a particular text or period of history and what we hope students carry out of the room. The strongest curricula are coherent across departments, so that students encounter the same commitments in Chumash, American history and the science lab. It also shapes how we hire, mentor and develop our faculty, since students learn values from the adults who model them. We should never demand uniformity of opinion, but every teacher, in Judaic and general studies alike, should understand how the classroom carries the mission. The same principle applies to admissions, discipline, the calendar and the budget. It shapes, too, how a school lives within its community. A day school is not only a place where children learn; it is one of the institutions through which a community expresses what it stands for. Our values should guide what we ask of families, how we speak with them, how we bring parents into the learning, which partnerships we build with shuls and communal organizations and how we show up beyond our walls. When a school and its families share and articulate the same values, children hear them at the Shabbat table as well as in the classroom and the community itself grows stronger. Values are not one department of a school. They are the grammar of the whole institution and the bond that ties the school to the community it serves. Katz is right that values without knowledge are hollow. Of course we must teach our history: Tanach; the rabbinic period; the long Jewish experience in Europe, North Africa and the Middle East; the Holocaust; and the complicated story of Zionism and the State of Israel. Students who do not know that history cannot defend their tradition, argue with it or build upon it. But knowledge is not an end in itself. We teach history and text because they provide the context from which our values emerged, and because students who understand where a commitment comes from are far more likely to hold it. Facts taught without any sense of why they matter tend to be forgotten by the time students reach the college quad. Content gives values their depth; values give content its purpose. Zalik makes another point that deserves emphasis. He reminds us that when a child enrolls in a day school, “your whole family joins something,” and he points to Prizmah’s study, Jewish Day School Alumni on Campus: A Comparative Analysis of Engagement and Identity. Drawing on a survey of more than 2,500 college students, Prizmah found that 56% of day-school alumni feel “very close” to the Jewish community, compared with 19% of their peers, and that 53% engage regularly in Jewish life on campus, compared with 23%. Zalik is right that this connection is among the most important things our schools create. Our graduates reach the most selective universities and take their places as citizens, professionals and leaders. They should understand the Jewish community’s place within American society and the wider world. I would carry his point one step further. That connection does not happen by accident; it is the fruit of values deliberately taught and lived. We want graduates who are serious contributors to our own community: adults who take responsibility in their shuls and schools, who serve their community, who give, volunteer and lead, and who understand how much is at stake for Jewish life today. A school that names that goal explicitly and measures its programs against it is far more likely to reach it. The stakes have rarely been higher. The State of Israel comes under attack daily, and Jewish communities in the United States and around the world face persistent hostility on campuses, in the streets and online. In this moment, fortifying our students’ identities by teaching and living our values is not a luxury but a necessity. Values matter more now than ever. They help our students grow into rooted, confident adults, and they help our communities navigate the realities we face. Without them, we do not have very much at all. Preparing students for the wider world and for our own community are not competing aims when values sit at the center. A clear sense of what we stand for is exactly what allows a young person to step confidently into the wider world and still know the way home. So yes to the bubble, and yes to deep Jewish literacy. But neither will do its work unless school leaders, boards and faculties name their values explicitly and hold every decision up against them: the schedule, the syllabus, the trip itinerary, the hire and the parent meeting. This is not easy. It sometimes means saying no to a popular program or defending a curricular choice to a skeptical parent. It means investing in teachers so they can carry the mission with conviction. But it is the only way to ensure that the bubble we build is shaped by what we believe. Values must guide everything we do. Every decision in a Jewish day school is a values decision; the only question is whether we make it on purpose. Ethan Zadoff is the principal of DRS Yeshiva High School for Boys in Woodmere, N.Y.

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Seattle’s Jewish future will be decided in the classroom

Contributing Author — Mon, 12 Oct 2026 12:00:00 +0000

In recent months, Seattles Jewish community has been asking itself a hard question. Hostility toward Jews has been normalized in our politics, our academic institutions, our K-12 schools and our cultural life. Anyone paying attention is left wondering what we can actually do. We believe the answer is something older than any political strategy, and it begins with our children. According to the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattles 2026 community survey, ours is a less connected Jewish community than most. Thirty-eight percent of survey respondents say they are very or somewhat engaged with Jewish organizations, compared with 43% nationally. Forty-four percent attend religious services regularly or sometimes, compared with 55% nationally. Fewer than half of Jewish households that answered the survey pay dues to a synagogue or Jewish organization — and those were the people who bothered to answer. That context matters. The warnings about rising hostility toward Jews in our state are justified. But the federation survey points to a greater danger underneath the first: a generation growing up with too little Jewish knowledge and attachment to stand on when that hostility reaches them. If this hostility is part of a longer trajectory, how do we prepare coming generations of young Jews for the world they may inherit? We have done this before We are not powerless. For thousands of years, in places far more dangerous than Seattle, Jewish communities endured and thrived by focusing on education. Each generation handed the next not just its texts, history, language and arguments, but a deep sense of Jewish identity and unbreakable connection to am yisrael. Passing on the vast store of spiritual, cultural and intellectual wealth that belongs to every Jewish child was seen as the first and most important task of every Jewish parent and community. That inheritance is at risk. Greater Seattle is home to roughly 70,000 Jews, around 10,000 of them school-aged children. Today, fewer than 5% of them attend a Jewish day school. Families make that choice for many reasons, but Prizmah research shows that cost is among the most significant barriers. If we want the next generation to be armed with the tools needed to face what comes next, we owe it to them to lower this cost enough so that every Jewish family has the option to choose day school. There is also real concern about who will shape the curriculum in our public schools. This is not a theoretical concern. On Mercer Island, which boasts one of Washington State’s highest Jewish populations, a middle school teacher compared the Holocaust to Islamophobia. A Seattle public school teacher, Ian Golash, told an interviewer that violence against Israeli women was “justified.” Jewish parents and students deserve better options. Fluency before advocacy Like it or not, many Jews today are expected to explain Israel, define antisemitism and defend their place within civic life. Those capacities cannot be built in a day, or even in a seminar the summer before freshman year. Before young Jews can understand why Israel matters, they need to know Torah and Jewish history. Before they can decide what Judaism means to them, they need opportunities to experience its daily richness. Before they are asked to answer someone elses questions, they need enough knowledge to explore their own. Jewish day school is where this happens. In a Jewish day school, Israel does not first appear as something controversial, Jewish history does not begin and end with the Holocaust, and Judaism is not explained only as an identity that needs defending. Over thousands of immersive hours, it is learned, questioned, argued about, practiced and lived. That fluency is the foundation that prepares every Jewish child for the wider world. Day school education isn’t simply a safer place for Jewish students to go; its the inheritance that has served diaspora Jewry better than any other strategy for millennia. The cost of waiting Two recent pieces in eJewishPhilanthropy show how hard it is to build that fluency later. In “A curriculum alone won’t get Jewish teens through their time on campus. Immersion will.” (Sept. 23), Richard Kemp describes Club Z, an after-school program that prepares teens for hostility on campus. At age 13, participants start learning what it means to be a Jew and a Zionist. Separately, in “Why today’s global advocacy demands investment in Torah learning” (Sept. 24), Meggie Wyschogrod Fredman explains a new program that invites Jewish advocates to study more Torah, citing “Jewish advocates [who] find themselves engaging with Muslim partners or Catholic members of Congress who demonstrate a greater familiarity with Judaism’s foundational texts and ideas than they do.” These are important efforts to close serious gaps. Jewish day schools prevent these gaps from ever opening. Not only by teaching Jewish students Torah, history, Hebrew and Zionism, but by honing skills that nurture lifelong Jewish learners, capable of navigating today’s tsunami of misinformation. The evidence for starting early is strong. A 2025 Prizmah analysis of more than 2,500 Jewish college students found that 81% of day school alumni said being Jewish was very important to them, compared with 35% of students who had not attended day school. Alumni were also nearly four times as likely to report a strong connection to Israel. Day school is not the only way to build Jewish literacy. Camp, Israel experiences, congregational education, youth groups and families themselves all matter. But the intensity and time of day school are unmatched. The barrier philanthropy can change So why do so few Jewish children attend? For many families, the answer is arithmetic. Jewish day school tuition has become a barrier that is too high for many families. This is not news. But if Jewish literacy is our most vital diaspora communal asset, making full-time Jewish education accessible must be a communal investment. Hostility toward Jews has become embedded and normalized in many Seattle-area institutions. The answer to this is clear and proven. We cannot control who wins the next school board race, what a professor says in a lecture hall or what our children will scroll past on their phones. But we can ensure that they walk into those situations knowing who they are. Funders can act on that now by treating day school philanthropy as a critical investment that gives every Jewish child the knowledge to stand on. That part is in our hands. Connie Kanter is CEO, Deanne Weiss Etsekson is a trustee and Melissa Rivkin is director of day school strategy at the Samis Foundation, Washington state’s largest Jewish philanthropy.

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Anonymous foundation helps endow permanent role at West Chester University Hillel

Judah Ari Gross — Mon, 12 Oct 2026 11:36:23 +0000

An anonymous family foundation donated a $1.9 million endowment last week to fund a permanent Hillel staff member at West Chester University in southeastern Pennsylvania, the Greater Philly Hillel Network said. The donation will help ensure “that future generations of West Chester University Jewish students will continue to benefit from dedicated staffing and community-building,” the network said. The endowment fund will be administered by the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia’s Jewish Community Foundation. “At a time when supporting vibrant Jewish life on campus has never been more important, this endowment ensures that Jewish students at West Chester University will have access to the community, mentorship and meaningful Jewish experiences that help them thrive,” Michael Balaban, president and CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia, said in a statement. West Chester University, one of the largest universities in Pennsylvania, with an enrollment of more than 17,000 students, first hired a full-time staff member in 2018 with funding from the same anonymous family foundation that has now created the endowment. With that initial seed funding, Hillel hired Jenn Reiss as director of Jewish student life. Over the past eight years, the university’s Hillel has brought on an additional full-time staff, and Philly Hillel said that it now reaches hundreds of Jewish students each year. “I’m incredibly proud of the growth I’ve helped lead on campus over the past several years,” Reiss said in a statement. “By deepening relationships with students, expanding our reach, and building trusted partnerships with university leadership, I’ve worked to create a Hillel presence that is strong, visible and deeply connected to the campus community. Seeing that foundation create the momentum and opportunity to invest in staff is incredibly meaningful.” Philly Hillel added that its board chair, Kenneth Ginsburg, created his own endowment fund for the West Chester University Hillel —the Theodore R. Ginsburg Memorial Fund —with an undisclosed donation in memory of his father. I am thrilled that Philly Hillel can honor my father’s legacy through this memorial fund,” Ginsburg said in a statement. “Among the many things he valued, education and Jewish identity were especially important to him,” he said. “Knowing that this fund will help the next generation deepen their Jewish identities and knowledge brings me tremendous pride.”

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We didn’t need Reggio Emilia to teach us how to see children

Contributing Author — Mon, 12 Oct 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Ive spent much of my career believing in the Reggio Emilia approach. Ive studied it, taught it, advocated for it and helped schools bring its principles into their classrooms. Ive encouraged teachers to see children as capable and competent, to listen to their ideas and to understand education as something built through relationships. I believed in these principles as a classroom teacher, and I believe in them today as a Jewish early childhood leader. I wrote my doctoral dissertation on how the Reggio Emilia philosophy intersects with our own Jewish educational concepts specifically as they pertain to educators’ perceptions of challenging behavior in the early childhood classroom. These values are central to how I view and approach education. Thats why the events of this past week have been so painful. The news that Jewish early childhood educators preparing to travel to Reggio Emilia for professional learning were confronted with a demand to make a political declaration against Israel’s actions in Gaza has left me struggling to articulate what Im feeling. Betrayal is one word for it. Grief is another. There is something almost like a death in this experience: the loss of a philosophy and community woven into my professional identity. I believed this community stood for dialogue and human dignity. How does a philosophy that emphasizes belonging and respect for identity arrive at a moment in which Jewish educators feel their own identity and connection to Israel have made them unwelcome? How does an approach built around listening to multiple perspectives make participation dependent on affirming a particular political position? I recognize differing perspectives about Israel and Gaza. But I cannot get past the fact that educators seeking to learn about young children were placed in this position. Im heartbroken, and I know Im not alone. The questions I dont want to answer In the days since this unfolded, early childhood directors that I have worked with over the past decade have been reaching out to me for guidance and comfort. Many have built schools around Reggio-inspired principles; those principles are reflected in their classrooms, websites and mission statements. Now theyre asking questions I wish none of us had to ask: Do we still call ourselves Reggio-inspired? Should we remove the name from our websites? How do we stand up for our Jewish community without compromising what we believe is best for children? Part of me wants to retreat from these conversations. I dont want to tell directors that the philosophy theyve worked so hard to bring to life must now be discarded. And I certainly dont want teachers to abandon practices I continue to believe are developmentally appropriate and respectful of children. But I also cannot pretend nothing happened. We cannot insist that belonging and dignity matter in our classrooms, then act as though those values cease to matter when the people seeking belonging are Jewish or connected to Jewish schools. Ive wanted to avoid answering these questions because Im still trying to answer them for myself. Yet helping Jewish schools articulate educational values has been my work for years. I have a responsibility to engage. Looking to our own tradition Weve been so focused on whether we can embrace Reggio Emilia while remaining unapologetically Jewish that we may have overlooked something: the educational values weve looked to Reggio to articulate have existed within our own tradition for thousands of years. My dissertation explored that intersection. Ive long believed these philosophies are compatible; now I wonder why weve relied so heavily on Reggio to articulate beliefs we could also express through Torah. I dont mean claiming that every Reggio principle originated in Judaism or using Torah to justify modern practices. I mean studying the Jewish understanding of children, relationships, learning and human dignity as seriously as weve studied contemporary educational theory. Reggio Emilia may have given us contemporary pedagogical language for these values, but it did not give us the values themselves. For instance, long before Reggio Emilia founder Loris Malaguzzi articulated the belief that children should be approached by educators with respect for who they already are, rather than defining them by what they cannot yet do, the Torah taught that every human being is created Btzelem Elokim, in the image of G-d (Bereishit 1:27). In Judaism, a persons worth is inherent, regardless of their abilities or accomplishments. A childs dignity does not depend on what they produce, how independently they function or how closely their development matches our expectations. Chassidic thought adds another dimension: Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi, in Likkutei Amarim (Tanya, Chapter 2), describes the Jewish soul as chelek Elokai mimaal mamash, literally a part of God above. This understanding of the soul reinforces the responsibility to recognize worth and potential in every child, including those whose behaviors or developmental needs challenge us. Another central Reggio principle is respect for each childs individuality. Reggio-inspired educators recognize that children develop understanding through different interests, experiences and ways of engaging with the world. The Torah offers a corresponding principle in chanoch lanaar al pi darko, educate a child according to their way (Mishlei 22:6). The Lubavitcher Rebbes teachings on education similarly emphasize recognizing each childs particular nature and abilities and adapting education accordingly. I think about how easily we slip into teaching the child we wish we had, or the child who fits our expectations. Our responsibility is to teach the actual child with their own temperament, interests, struggles, and possibilities. This speaks directly to inclusion. Both Reggio-inspired practice and Jewish educational thought challenge us to consider what each child needs to participate, learn and experience belonging. Inquiry and curiosity are equally central to Reggio Emilia. Children are encouraged to ask questions, investigate their surroundings and actively construct understanding. Jewish tradition also places questioning at the center of learning. The Pesach Seder is intentionally structured around childrens curiosity, inviting them to notice, wonder and ask: Mah nishtanah? The Talmud teaches that one who is too embarrassed to ask cannot learn (Pirkei Avot 2:5). Jewish tradition recognizes that meaningful learning requires children to take an active role in seeking understanding. Reggio also emphasizes learning through relationships and dialogue. Knowledge develops through interactions among children, educators and their communities. Jewish tradition similarly recognizes learning as a reciprocal process. Rabbi Chanina taught that he learned much from his teachers, more from his colleagues, and most of all from his students (Taanit 7a). This resonates with Reggios understanding of educators as learners alongside children, listening carefully and recognizing that childrens ideas can shape the direction of learning. Finally, Reggios concept of “the hundred languages of children” recognizes that children communicate and construct meaning through art, movement, music, materials, and many other forms of expression. Jewish tradition also recognizes forms of wisdom beyond spoken and written language. Betzalel, entrusted with creating the Mishkan, was endowed with chochmah, tevunah and daat (wisdom, understanding and knowledge), which he expressed through design and craftsmanship (Shemot 31:2–5). His example reminds us that intellectual understanding can be expressed through creative and hands-on work. These connections do not make Jewish tradition and Reggio Emilia interchangeable. They emerged in different contexts and serve different purposes. But the parallels are meaningful. The image of the child, individualized education, inquiry, relational learning and multiple forms of expression are all principles we can articulate through Jewish sources. I believe they deserve the same serious study and consideration we have devoted to Reggio Emilia. What do we do now? I dont believe every school needs to make the same decision about identifying as Reggio-inspired. Jewish institutions have legitimate reasons to reconsider affiliations or labels associated with organizations whose actions have hurt their communities. Those decisions require care. Still, I would urge us to distinguish between the institutions associated with an educational philosophy and the principles themselves. We can object strongly to the treatment of Jewish educators while preserving sound pedagogy. We can reconsider affiliations without taking meaningful learning experiences away from children. We can demand that inclusion and dignity apply to Jewish children while holding ourselves to those same commitments. And we can become more intentional about explaining our practices through Jewish sources. When we describe children as capable and competent, lets also speak about Btzelem Elokim. When we honor individual pathways, lets articulate chanoch lanaar al pi darko. When we value collaborative learning, lets draw on chavruta, kehilla and areivut. These sources can shape our curriculum, mentoring and conversations with families about why we teach the way we do. Im grateful for what Ive learned from Reggio Emilia. Studying its philosophy helped me question practices that werent serving children well. It made me a better educator; I wont pretend otherwise because Im hurt. But this controversy has made me reconsider my own work. Maybe Ive spent so much time showing Jewish educators the compatibility between Reggio Emilia and Judaism that I havent done enough to encourage us to articulate our philosophies directly from Jewish sources. Weve become fluent in the language of Reggio — the image of the child, the hundred languages, emergent curriculum, the pedagogy of listening — but how fluent are we in the Jewish educational language that could give these commitments their own foundation? We could make Torah, Talmud and Chassidic thought a more deliberate part of preparing teachers and leading schools. I began this reflection feeling as though something important to me had died, and while that feeling hasnt entirely gone away, alongside the grief Im beginning to recognize an opportunity. Weve spent years learning how to articulate what we believe about children through the language of Reggio. Imagine what we could build if we brought that same curiosity, commitment and intellectual rigor to the study of our own tradition. I dont know exactly what that will look like yet, but I believe it is work worth doing — for our educators, for our Jewish community and, most importantly, for the children who will grow up in the schools we create. Yehudis Smith is the director of early childhood education at Miami’s Center for the Advancement of Jewish Education, where she leads community-wide initiatives to strengthen Jewish early childhood education through professional development, leadership support and educational innovation. Her work focuses on building the capacity of Jewish early childhood schools, supporting educators and directors and advancing inclusive, high-quality educational practices. With over two decades of experience in early childhood education, she is also the founder of Yehudis Smith Consulting, the author of Rethinking Discipline and an adjunct professor at American Jewish University.

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Ziegler announces seminary will remain Conservative, add focus on finance, technology

Jay Deitcher — Mon, 12 Oct 2026 09:59:28 +0000

The American Jewish Universitys Ziegler School of Rabbinical Studies, it turns out, is staying in the Conservative fold — but with a dramatically revamped curriculum for the 2027-28 school year that stresses the real-world financial and technological skills that rabbis need to succeed in todays market. And, at a fraught moment in the Jewish community, the seminary is reaffirming its deep connection to Israel — though it says it will not impose a Zionist litmus test on its rabbis-to-be. In announcing the changes exclusively to eJewishPhilanthropy, including that Ziegler admissions for next year are open as of today, AJUs president, Jay Sanderson, said, “The school is going to continually evolve as the community needs to evolve. Theres a gaping hole in the education rabbis need to get to lead synagogues and lead non-synagogues,” he said. When Sanderson announced in January that Ziegler was pausing enrollment for the 2026-27, many in the Jewish world worried that the only Conservative seminary on the West Coast was considering going nondenominational or shuttering completely. He put those fears to rest last week, telling eJP: “As an institution and as Jewish people, we have to be honest with how we look at denominational life. Were keeping our affiliation with the Conservative movement because of the depth and breadth of that education. Founded in 1996, Ziegler ordained its first class in 1999, but enrollment declined over the following decades, with only two students enrolling in 2021. To counteract the waning number, the seminary slashed tuition by 80% in 2022, which led to an uptick of incoming students into the double digits. Still, enrollment remained a concern for the school, a trend among all non-Orthodox rabbinic schools, causing what is referred to as “the rabbinic pipeline problem” — an abundance of congregations unable to find a rabbi to lead them. Sanderson told eJP that seminaries, including Ziegler, have been paying attention to the wrong things — what makes a quality school isn’t the number of students enrolled, but the quality of graduates and their ability to serve the Jewish community. “This will never be a profit generator,” Sanderson told eJP, about Ziegler. “It is a leadership generator.” A November 2025 Atra study, “From Calling to Career: Mapping the Current State and Future of Rabbinic Leadership,” revealed that new rabbis preferred non-pulpit roles over congregational roles, despite lower pay, because pulpit positions were considered far more emotionally taxing with blurred boundaries and unrealistic expectations. In Los Angeles, where Sanderson lives, the two most significant Jewish leadership roles are at the Jewish Federation Los Angeles and the Jewish Community Foundation of Los Angeles, and both positions are held by rabbis. “Theres a gaping hole in the education rabbis need to get to lead synagogues and lead non-synagogues,” he said. Ziegler’s curriculum is changing because the rabbinate is changing. The school will remain connected to the Conservative movement, but the curriculum will be constantly in flux. It will continue to focus on Torah and religious study, but also include an emphasis on the financial and technological skills that modern rabbis need to succeed in today’s world. The curriculum will include classes on strategic planning, financial management, fundraising and media and technology, including artificial intelligence. The school plans to eventually offer two master’s degrees, one for rabbinic education and one for organizational leadership. Jewish studies classes will be taught by Jewish educators, but all other courses will be taught by leaders in their fields. The school will be in a state of fluidity, not even able to publish the full curriculum for the fall of 2027, given the fast pace of change, especially related to AI, Sanderson said. “The school is going to continually evolve as the community needs to evolve.” When Sanderson was announced as president of AJU in May 2025, the board wanted him to shake things up. Prior to joining AJU, Sanderson served for 12 years as president and CEO of the Jewish Federation Los Angeles. “Im not an academic,” Sanderson said. “Im not a rabbi. I have a deep Jewish education. Im a Jewish communal leader, but Ive run businesses. And what I understand about synagogue life, on top of nonprofits, is they are businesses. They have revenue. They have expenses. And rabbis may have executive directors, but they need to read a balance sheet. They need to be effective fundraisers, and they definitely need to embrace technology.” In addition to the intertwining business and Torah, “our school is going to be a school that puts Israel in the forefront of what we do,” Sanderson said. “Were going to deepen our education in Israel, and we are going to make sure that we are identifying and selecting candidates that understand the essential role Israel plays in the Jewish experience and should be playing in the rabbinate.” Still, the decision about whether a candidate will study at the school will not be defined by their relationship to Zionism, he said. “The word Zionism has been co-opted, misunderstood. [If a student is chosen to study at Ziegler, it is] not about [their definition of] Zionism. Its about Israel being a central part of what it means to be a Jew and the homeland of the Jewish people… At the end of the day, my Jewish identity has Israel in its core.” Another revelation that came from the Atra study is that new clergy were increasingly being ordained at nondenominational schools, often chosen based on convenience, not ideology. On a mid-January episode of Jonah Platt’s “Being Jewish” podcast, which was taped in July 2025, Sanderson said he would like to see Ziegler go nondenominational. Instead, the school will remain connected to the Conservative movement. “I just know, as a Jewish leader, and I know based on the curriculums of all the rabbinical schools, that the depth and breadth that we are teaching, and that and [the Conservative movement’s] Jewish Theological Seminary are teaching, allows any student to be able to lead services, lead a community at any non-Orthodox denomination, and I want our rabbinical students to have every option in the world to be great rabbis and great Jewish leaders,” Sanderson said. While tuition currently costs $8,240 per year to attend, even that could change or disappear. Rabbinic schools that claim to charge $30,000 are rarely charging full tuition because they offer scholarships and financial aid, Sanderson said. “So it is a little bit of a misnomer that enrollment impacts the bottom line of rabbinic education.” Other professional schools have fellowships to incentivize students, and the same needs to be done for rabbinical students as fewer young Jews want to become rabbis or serve as Jewish professionals, Sanderson said. “We as a Jewish community also have to be honest: a generation ago [the rabbinate was] a field that young young Jews wanted to go into,” he said. “We have to figure out how we build up the pipeline — and some of that might be financial incentives — some of that might be models where the education is free, and in turn, maybe the rabbinical students in the future work for a year for the institution that ordains them.” To make up for the lack of tuition, Ziegler would turn to donors. “In all the conversations Im having with my friends who run foundations and with other major philanthropists, theyre deeply concerned about the future of the rabbinate,” Sanderson said. “Theyre deeply concerned about the future of synagogue life, and so if we can make a compelling case that we are creating a school of the highest excellence, where we are looking for the select few who are going to not just be rabbis, theyre going to be the next generation of great rabbis in North America, I believe philanthropic dollars will follow.” Becoming a rabbi is costly. The Atra study also showed that 66% of current rabbinical students are entering the field after leaving another career. To attend an in-person program, students need to stop working, pay tuition and live in an expensive city. Then they enter a field that does not pay that well, Rabbi Shira Koch Epstein, the executive director of Atra, who supports Ziegler and other schools across the non-Haredi spectrum with their work, told eJP. Because of this, rethinking tuition is a focus of Atra’s work with seminaries. In January, when Sanderson announced the pause in applications, he announced that Ziegler’s longtime dean, Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson, was leaving his current role — while staying on at the university as the Mordecai Kaplan Distinguished Scholar. A new dean is not planned to be announced in the near future, Sanderson said. The changes are inspired by a Zeigler-commissioned independent review that included interviews with students, faculty, administrators, alumni, lay leaders and prominent Jewish communal leaders. While the full results will not be completed until November, Sanderson said, the school has learned enough to know the direction to pivot. “We decided not to wait until the study was done because I dont believe we can wait to restart the rabbinical school because the Jewish community is in crisis.” Results from the review already affirmed that the schools business model was failing and that the rabbinic school needed to do more than just teach Torah; it needed to teach rabbis to lead in today’s world. There needs to be a push to bring in the highest-achieving students who have already shown leadership qualities, Sanderson said, and want to “become part of a rabbinic school because they want to be a part of the future of the Jewish people.” The components that make a successful seminary are for an institution to know “who it is, what it stands for, what its theology and philosophy is” while being “willing to make the hard and necessary changes to deal with the conditions and the opportunities,” Epstein said. While Ziegler is making a bet on the direction to take, other seminaries are making different choices, Epstein said, “but making strong choices, testing them, trying them and being willing and wanting to change if it turns out that the needs are different are necessary ingredients for success.” Sanderson hopes that the changes in the school are forcing a larger conversation in the Jewish world that things need to change. “We have to recognize that we have a challenge on the back end,” he said. “Many potential rabbinic students look at the jobs that they could get, and they are questioning whether thats the life they want. We have to look at work-life balance in the rabbinate. We have to look at pay in the rabbinate.” A strong community needs strong leaders, Sanderson said, and “if we want great Jewish professionals and great rabbis, they have to want the jobs.”

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Your Daily Phil: Putting Israel-Diaspora ties on the election agenda

EJP — Fri, 09 Oct 2026 14:59:15 +0000

Good Friday morning! In today’s edition of Your Daily Phil, we announce an upcoming Israeli election event that eJewishPhilanthropy and our sister publication Jewish Insider are hosting next week with the Anu Museum of the Jewish People and Peoplehood Coalition. We profile Dr. Yasmeen Abu Fraiha of IsraAid, who is aiming to build bridges across the Middle East through medicine, and speak with Boston-based philanthropist Izhar Armony about his nonprofit Habaita’s push to improve education in Israel’s Western Negev region. We feature an opinion piece by Leila Beckwith and Tammi Rossman-Benjamin spotlighting their research on the role of faculty networks in the anti-Israel wave that broke over college campuses in the wake of the Oct. 7 attacks, and a piece by Sydney Altfield urging American Jewish communities to advocate for public funds to help keep day school education financially accessible even as security costs rise. Also in this issue: Rabbi Kenneth Brander, Tamir Sheafer and Daniel Klein. Shabbat shalom! Today’sYour Daily Philwas curated by eJP Managing Editor Judah Ari Gross, Israel Editor Justin Hayet and Opinion Editor Rachel Kohn. Have a tip?Email us here. Follow us on Whatsapp Follow us on Telegram What Were Watching Mem Global will celebrate its 20th anniversary this evening with a Shabbat dinner in New York City. The Norwegian Nobel Committee announced Navi Pillay, a former U.N. high commissioner for human rights and International Criminal Court judge, as the winner of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize. Pillay, a South African jurist and sharp critic of Israel, served as the head of a U.N Commission of Inquiry that accused Israel of genocide; Israeli officials have harshly denounced the selection, saying, “Joseph Goebbels is certainly applauding from hell.” What You Should Know A QUICK WORD FROM eJPS JUDAH ARI GROSS In two and a half weeks, Israelis will head to the polls for national elections, their first since the Oct. 7 terror attacks. The campaigns so far have primarily focused on issues of national security, sectarian divisions, religion-and-state, the economy and democracy. While there is broad recognition that this election has direct consequences for Diaspora Jewry and although Diaspora Jews care deeply about it, Israel’s relationship with Diaspora Jewry has rarely been on the agenda. Next week, we will change that. On Wednesday at 12:30 p.m. ET, eJewishPhilanthropy and Jewish Insider, in partnership with Anu Museum of the Jewish People in Tel Aviv and the Peoplehood Coalition, with support from Masa, the American Zionist Movement, the Jewish Federation of Tulsa (Okla.) and Belong, will host an election debate focused specifically on Israel’s commitments to world Jewry. We hope you’ll be there. Read the rest of ‘What You Should Know’ here. News HEALING HANDS IsraAid’s Yasmeen Abu Fraiha aims to build bridges in the Middle East through medicine Dr. Yasmeen Abu Fraiha awoke at the crack of dawn on Oct. 7 to sirens wailing and knew she needed to rush to Beersheva’s ?Soroka University Medical Center, where she worked in internal medicine. She expected to treat traumatic injuries caused by rockets fired from Gaza, as in previous attacks. Instead, she saw a bloodbath. But amid the chaos, Abu Fraiha glanced around and witnessed religious Jews treating Christian Arabs. Muslim doctors caring for settlers. Everyone was helping one another, no matter their background, reports eJewishPhilanthropy’s Jay Deitcher. Can’t go back: “I knew that the world has changed,” said Abu Fraiha, who now serves as the head of strategic partnerships in the Middle East at IsraAid, told eJP. “I cant go back to the hospital, to my nine-to-five, as if nothing has happened,” so she turned to IsraAid after seeing the agency supporting both Israelis post-Oct. 7 and Palestinians in Gaza. The organization had “the ability to see the humanity in both sides and say, ‘We are a humanitarian organization that will help everyone who is in need.’ Thats quite significant and quite moving.” Read the full report here. Share SUNSET CLAUSE Destined to dissolve: An Israeli nonprofit built to hand its work to the state by 2029 Boston-based venture capitalist Izhar Armony founded the nonprofit Habaita in 2024, giving it five years to boost the schools in Gaza border communities to encourage their displaced residents to return to the region. When that runs out in 2029, its leadership plans to wind it down, regardless of whether the demographic crisis it was built to reverse is fully solved. “If we say well be here forever, the government has no incentive to step in,” Armony told eJewishPhilanthropy’s Justin Hayet recently. Fourfold growth: Habaita launched in the summer of 2024 with an NIS 20 million ($6.5 million) pilot, serving 9,900 returning students, in partnership with the Tekuma Administration, the governmental body overseeing the reconstruction of the Gaza border region. By the 2025-26 school year, the organization says, it was serving 40,000 students. Read the full report here. Share Opinion DATA DIVE The overlooked faculty roots of the post-Oct. 7 campus crisis In an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy, Amcha Initiative co-founders Leila Beckwith and Tammi Rossman-Benjamin make the case that universities cannot seriously combat campus antisemitism until they address the problem where much of it is rooted: in faculty and departmental conduct. More than a decade of our research shows that long before the Hamas attack on Israel, faculty anti-Zionist activism was already deeply embedded in academic life and had acquired the legitimacy, reach and staying power that made it a critical driver of the campus crisis that followed.” Read the fullpiece here. Share UNDER PRESSURE After Oct. 7, Jewish parents chose Jewish schools. Now we have to keep the door open. In an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy, Teach Coalition CEO Sydney Altfield argues that with more Jewish families seeking to put their children in Jewish day schools since the Oct. 7 attacks and subsequent rise in antisemitism, communities need to advocate for public funds as well as Jewish philanthropy to ensure this option is financially accessible. “Teach Coalition surveyed 63 Jewish schools across New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Florida and found that the average school is spending more than $400,000 a year on security, 124% more than before Oct. 7, 2023. Per student, the cost has more than doubled, and families are increasingly being asked to bear the financial burden. … That creates a painful contradiction. At the very moment more parents are asking how to give their children a deeper Jewish identity, we risk making that future harder to afford.” Read the fullpiecehere. Share Worthy Reads New Three Ps Please: In Semafor, Mohammed Sergie, the outlet’s Gulf editor, interviews Abdulla Al Ghurair Foundation CEO Sonia Ben Jaafar, who says a younger generation of Gulf donors wants to help design programs as Western aid cuts leave gaps that philanthropy cannot fill alone. “The narrative that philanthropic capital will just fill that up is not going to happen. We need a new model of how public, private, and philanthropy — this is the new three Ps — are going to partner together.” The Laws of Mourning: In The Wall Street Journal, Rabbi Kenneth Brander, the president and rosh yeshiva of Ohr Torah Stone, reflects on Jewish mourning practices as the world marks the third anniversary since the Oct. 7 terror attacks. “In Jewish practice, when one says the name of a deceased person, one adds the phrase ‘may his memory be a blessing.’ The goal of mourning is to make that phrase true: The memory of the dead actually improves our physical lives and our moral selves.” Crumbling Ivory Tower: In Haaretz, Meirav Arlosoroff interviews Hebrew University President Tamir Sheafer about what he describes as the perilous state of his school and Israeli academia. “‘The fact that Hebrew University is still ranked among the worlds 100 best universities is a miracle,’ he says, suggesting that the miracle may not last much longer.”e I trust.’ Those six words crystallized everything I had come to believe about philanthropy.” Major Gifts The DLA Piper Israel Charity Basketball Tournament, pitting 10 Israeli law firms against each other on the other kind of court, raised NIS 172,000 ($56,000) to provide meals to residents of northern Israel… Brandeis University’s “America and its Jews at 250,” an open course on Jewish life in America, received a National Endowment for the Humanities grant of up to $25,000…ect Hometo double its TRUST program, which provides unrestricted cash to low-income single mothers… Transitions Shalom Austin hired Jared Isaacson as its chief strategy impact officer… Daniel Klein joined the national board of the American Technion Society… Professor Ayelet Fishman began her new role as vice president for diversity and inclusion at Technion Israel Institute of Technology… Word on the Street Susan and Michael Dell appeared with President Donald Trump at the White House on Wednesday, where Michael Dell announced that 10 million of the 25 million Trump Accounts funded by their $6.25 billion pledge have been funded and the rest will be by week’s end. Trump praised Susan Dell and joked she should run for office… The Jewish Council for Public Affairs released an open letter urging candidates in both parties to reject antisemitism and political violence in their own coalitions before the midterms, warning that conspiracy theories and efforts to exclude Jews are becoming normalized, Jewish Insider’s AJ Rodriguez reports… In Philanthropy Roundtable, Jamie Lundberg writes that donor-advised funds need no new federal rules because their sponsors already police inactive accounts, citing $54 billion in grants in 2023… Fortune magazine reports that wealthy baby boomers are losing confidence their heirs will carry on family giving even as Bank of America data show Gen Z and millennial donors support more causes and take a more hands-on approach than their parents… Sheryl Sandberg tells CNN’s Anderson Cooper on his podcast “All There Is” that she found love again after her husband,Dave Goldberg, died in 2015, and urges adult children of widowed parents to encourage them to date… Bloomberg reports that billionaire Josh Kushner’s Thrive Capital, which now manages more than $65 billion, is expanding beyond startups into public markets and trophy assets, citing iting Kushners proposed $12.5 billion deal to buy the Los Angeles Lakers... In a closed lecture series in Nashville, Tenn., Peter Thiel argued in religious terms against AI regulation and called Pope Leo XIV and former President Barack Obama opportunistic on AI… OpenAI said on Thursday that Iranian operatives used ChatGPT to help place nearly 100 articles criticizing the Iran war under fake journalist bylines in roughly a dozen online outlets around the world… House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) said he “strongly” backs the creation of an Oct. 7 memorial in Brooklyn; any future memorial, the funds for which are being privately raised, would require the approval of the mayor’s office to move forward… The Gaza Children’s Village network is planning to use AI to monitor classroom lessons for “hateful” speech and ensure teachers adhere to a peace-focused curriculum… Germany’s Left Party, which won a plurality of votes in last month’s state elections in Berlin, agreed to measures to address antisemitism within the party as part of coalition talks with the Social Democrats and Greens… The FBI charged Sheikhdoon Abdullahi Mohamud, 18, with buying an AK-47 to attack the Mall of America for ISIS, after he told an undercover agent he targeted it because its owners are Jewish… Stephen A. Jarislowsky, a German-born Jewish refugee who founded the investment firm Jarislowsky Fraser in Montreal and later endowed about 50 research chairs at Canadian universities, died at 101…… Pic of the Day New York Academy of Sciences Scientists David Nagib of Ohio State University, Jonathan Rivnay of Northwestern University and Patrick Hsu of the Arc Institute and Stanford University joined Len Blavatnik, founder of Access Industries and head of the Blavatnik Family Foundation (second from right), at the 20th anniversary gala of the Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists earlier this week at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Each received $250,000 for research in drug chemistry, implantable medical devices and gene editing, respectively. Birthdays Courtesy/Ronald S. Roadburg Foundation Mark Gurvis, former executive vice president at JFNA, now CEO at the Vancouver, British Columbia.-based Ronald S. Roadburg Foundation, turns 67 on Sunday FRIDAY Brian Lamb, founder and retired executive chairman and CEO of C-SPAN, known for his unique interview style, turns 85 Charles Miller, retired federal government manager and analyst Bernard Dov Cooperman, associate professor of Jewish history at the University of Maryland, turns 80 Richard Marpet, Burbank, Calif., resident David Jacobson, U.S. ambassador to Canada during the Obama administration, then vice-chair of BMO from 2013 to 2024, turns 75 Don Garber, commissioner of Major League Soccer since 1999, turns 69 David Gerstman, research analyst at the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis Eric S. Kassoff, president of Wilkes Artis, he is active in AIPAC, the Washington JCC and the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington, turns 66 Debby Arzt-Mor, retired director of Jewish learning at the Brandeis School of San Francisco Todd Richman, managing director and financial advisor at Morgan Stanley Private Wealth Management and chair emeritus of Democratic Majority For Israel Simon Sinek, best-selling author and motivational speaker, his 2010 TED Talk about leadership is one of the most popular talks of all time, turns 53 Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld, rosh yeshiva at Yeshivas Elimelech following 17 years as rabbi at Ohev Shalom Synagogue in Washington, D.C., turns 52 Neshama Carlebach, musician and singer, the protégé of her late father, singer-songwriter Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, turns 52 Karin Elharar Hartstein, member of the Knesset for Yesh Atid., turns 49 Benjamin Berger, senior vice president for Jewish education, community and culture at Hillel International Justin Barasky, partner at TKO Political Ben Lusher, CEO at Denver-based energy firm Nexus Energy Partners, he was the national board chair of Moishe House (now known as Mem Global) until 2022 David Meyerson, executive director of international initiatives at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Institute for Legal Reform Ian Karmel, stand-up comedian and Emmy Award-winning television writer, turns 42 Lily Goldstein, vice president of portfolio management for LEO Impact Capital David Cohen, counsel in O’Melveny’s NYC office, he was an executive assistant and advance associate in the Obama White House Chaya Notik, physical therapist in Montreal Jason Kaplan, vice president at LOréal, turns 36 Julia Schechter, senior manager of policy communications at Snap Daniel Rubin, Israel-based vice president at JP Morgan Kayla Levinson Segal, manager of in-stock management at Amazon in NYC Inbal Rabin-Lieberman, security coordinator of Kibbutz Nir Am on Oct. 7, 2023, where her team killed 25 terrorists and the kibbutz suffered no casualties, turns 28 Nick Itkin, foil fencer, he won a team bronze medal at the 2020 Olympics (Tokyo) and an individual bronze medal at the 2024 Olympics (Paris), turns 27 Y.O. Gross, gymnast and ballerina SATURDAY Laurence Tribe, professor emeritus of constitutional law at Harvard Law School, he has argued 36 cases at the U.S. Supreme Court, turns 85 Bruce Karatz, past chairman and CEO of KB Home, a nationwide home builder, turns 81 Miriam Adelson, physician, philanthropist and the majority owner of the Las Vegas Sands Corporation and the NBAs Dallas Mavericks, turns 81 Ronald Maurice “Ronny” Naftaniel, former director of the Center for Information and Documentation Israel in The Hague, promoting a positive view of Israel within Dutch society, turns 78 Meir Sheetrit, former member of the Knesset for 30 years on behalf of three political parties, he has served in seven ministerial roles, turns 78 Yedidya Atlas, longtime IDF chaplain Diane Schmidt, award-winning writer and photographer based in Albuquerque, N.M. David Lee Roth, vocalist and songwriter best known as the lead singer of Van Halen, he is an inductee of the Rock Roll Hall of Fame, turns 72 Bruce Karsh, co-chairman and chief investment officer of Oaktree Capital Management, turns 71 John M. Grunsfeld, former NASA astronaut who flew on five space shuttle missions, he has held many positions at NASA including chief scientist, turns 68 Neil Gurvitch, senior counsel at the Bethesda, Md., law firm of Selzer Gurvitch John C. P. Goldberg, dean of Harvard Law School, turns 65 Rodney Freeman, founder and principal of Los Angeles-based real estate firm, Freeman Group Sam Lauter, governmental relations and strategic communications principal at BMWL Public Affairs Mark H. Shpall, head of school at de Toledo High School, a Jewish school in northern Los Angeles County Evgeny Kissin, concert pianist and composer, turns 55 Asi Cohen, Israeli comedian and actor, twice voted as the funniest Israeli, turns 52 Rabbi Schlomo Elieser Hofmeister, community rabbi of Vienna and chief rabbi of the Austrian Armed Forces, turns 51 Matti Friedman, columnist for The Free Press, he is the author of five acclaimed books, turns 49 Chanan Weissman, Jewish liaison during the first two years of the Biden administration, now the director of emerging technologies at the Maimonides Fund Ian Sugar, president of Ian Sugar Strategies Seth Levey, head of U.S. government relations and corporate affairs at Glencore Avi Davidoff, vice president in the Chicago office of Goldman Sachs Rabbi Elliot Schrier, rabbi of Congregation Bnai Yeshurun in Teaneck, N.J., turns 37 Hali Haber Spiegel, director of education at CAMERA Avner Netanyahu, winner of Israels National Bible Quiz as a teen and then a soldier in the IDFs Combat Intelligence Collection Corps, he is a son of PM Benjamin Netanyahu, turns 32 Or Shaked, U.S. correspondent at Israel Hayom and deputy director at Jewish Virtual Library Joseph Besso-Cowan, rabbinical student at Yeshivat HaKotel in Jerusalem’s Old City SUNDAY Saul Friedländer, professor emeritus of history at UCLA, winner of both a Pulitzer Prize and the Israel Prize, he won a MacArthur Genius fellowship in 1999, Saul Friedländer, turns 94 Ronald S. Liebman, former assistant U.S. attorney who prosecuted then-vice president Spiro T. Agnew in 1973, he is the author of four novels, turns 83 Amos Gitai, Israeli filmmaker and artist, turns 76 Patty Murray, U.S. senator (D-WA), turns 76 Barry G. Silverman, senior judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, turns 75 Helane Goldstein, past president and then board chair of Congregation Bnai Tzedek in Potomac, Md., turns 73 Ron Prosor, Israeli ambassador to Germany, he has also been Israels ambassador to both the U.K. and the U.N., turns 68 Shari Aronson, NYC-based philanthropist Sharon Rockman, owner of Sababa Travel Peter Turman, Los Angeles-based real estate agent Rob Speyer, president and CEO of NYC-based real estate firm Tishman Speyer, turns 57 Asher Epstein, CEO of Focus at 50, helping Israeli companies break into the U.S. market Joshua London, head of philanthropy at the University of Haifa UK, also an advisor at the Yad Vashem UK Foundation, turns 51 Michael Dickson, executive director of the StandWithUs Israel office in Jerusalem, turns 49 Brianne Nadeau, member of the Council of the District of Columbia since 2015, turns 46 Jamie Weinstein, political journalist, opinion commentator and satirist, he is the host of “The Dispatch” podcast, turns 43

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This Israeli NGO gave itself 5 years — no more — to improve the Gaza border area’s education system

Justin Hayet — Fri, 09 Oct 2026 13:14:47 +0000

Some nonprofits merge. Some close. Others rebrand and relaunch. Habaita was built to close its doors. Boston-based venture capitalist Izhar Armony founded Habaita in 2024, betting that better schools could bring families back to the Gaza border communities that were evacuated following the Oct. 7 attacks. The Israeli education nonprofit has since expanded to 14 municipalities in the Western Negev and the Galilee. When the organizations five-year clock runs out in 2029, its leadership plans to wind it down, regardless of whether the demographic crisis it was built to reverse is fully solved. “Even if the 2029 survey doesnt show the full impact we want to see, I feel that Habaitas job, and time to make a difference, is done,” Armony told eJewishPhilanthropy recently. “Five years feels like a long enough period of time to pilot programs, to grow those that are showing positive results, and to get to full scale.” Habaita grew out of Armonys earliest wartime work. In the weeks after Oct. 7, he supported five of the hardest-hit border kibbutzim: Kfar Aza, Nahal Oz, Kissufim, Reim and Holit. Leaders there warned that families would stay away unless the region offered them a reason to return, and a February 2024 population survey pointed to schools as that reason. Habaita launched that summer with a NIS 20 million ($6.5 million) pilot, serving 9,900 returning students, in partnership with the Tekuma Administration, the governmental body overseeing the reconstruction of the Gaza border region. Habaita funds programs and leaves physical buildings to others. Its flagship effort operates out of assorted government facilities and school buildings, where students in the Western Negev and the Galilee can try technology, performing arts and competitive sports. One program, run with a major Israeli defense contractor, fills a converted hangar with robotics, drones and machining equipment and hosts weekly three-hour sessions for classes from across the region. By the 2025-26 school year, the organization says, it was serving 40,000 students. Still, the notion of an organization with a sunset date — a date when the lease will not be renewed, when staff will no longer be employed and when the mission will only be mostly or somewhat complete — is rare across American and Israeli nonprofits alike. Israel has 40,000 registered nonprofits, according to GuideStar. How many still operate is harder to say, according to Alon Bachar, co-founder of Community O and the former head of the Israeli Corporations Authority, which regulates Israel’s nonprofits. Registering an Israeli nonprofit is relatively simple, with 1,500 to 2,000 new ones added each year, Bachar said. Dissolving one is slow and costly, in part because any remaining assets must go to similar public purposes. Most defunct groups simply stop filing reports and linger on the registry until the authority removes them. “The gap between the cessation of operations and removal from the registry makes it difficult to determine with certainty how many nonprofits in Israel are active,” Bachar said. No official figures track voluntary dissolutions, he added, but they are rare. Habaita plans to be one of them. Oct. 8 Israeli expats While the emergence of so-called “Oct. 8 Jews” in America has been largely covered, less covered is the advent of a different type of Jew: a reawakened Israeli who spent much of his professional life living in America. Armonys own awakening was born of personal loss. His cousin Sharon Avigdori and her 12-year-old daughter, Noam, were kidnapped from Kibbutz Beeri and taken into Gaza on Oct. 7. Both were released in November 2023 during the first hostage-release deal. “I felt very, very frustrated, sad and I just went,” Armony said. He flew to Israel on one of the first flights, on Oct. 10, and spent weeks with a five-person team helping evacuated families find temporary housing. Early on, he said, that meant buying displaced families basics like underwear and toothpaste. “I felt it was my responsibility because I can,” Armony said of why he got involved so immediately and so directly, rather than simply writing a check from Boston. Habaita founder Izhar Armony. (Courtesy) Before Oct. 7, Armony said, trips to Israel were a family vacation once or twice a year. Since then, he has spent 165 days in Israel one year and 155 the next. “My attention and time shifted to Israel,” he said, describing the change as a kind of personal reprioritization that went well beyond philanthropy — it now demanded his time and presence. Habaita was also his first exposure to Israeli local and central government, he said. “I knew nothing about that.” Before Oct. 7, his Boustan Charitable Foundation mainly focused on shared-society work in Israel. Armonys family has committed $25 million to Habaitas $120 million five-year budget. Philanthropic support is expected to cover half of the organization’s budget, with the Israeli government matching it. Beyond Armony, various Jewish federations and foundations have committed $21 million in total, leaving $14 million more to raise. Donors include the Jewish federations of Boston, Washington, Cleveland, Detroit, Houston, San Diego and Toronto, as well as New York, including through its Day After Fund. Habaita also noted the generosity of the Jewish Federations of North America; Jewish Federations of Canada-UIA; Keren Hayesod-UIA; KKL-JNF; the Edmond de Rothschild, Frieze Family, J. Blair and Tina Frank, and the de Toledo family foundations. The ultimate goal Asked how he balances Habaita achieving its goal when it sunsets with the fact that the cause it serves will likely never be fully solved, Armony acknowledged that it poses a serious challenge, in part because his focus —education —is not the only factor in addressing the larger aim. “Our ultimate goal is to drive demographic growth in the Western Negev and the Galilee regions,” he said. “We recognize it will be impossible to isolate education [as] a single contributing factor. We might do a great job improving the education system, but the demographic growth wont be where it should be because of other factors; and vice versa: even if the demographic growth is great, how can we tell it is mostly due to education?” Armony said Habaita tracks how residents feel about their schools year over year and looks for a rising trend, since the groups own research and other studies tie those attitudes closely to population growth. A final study at the end of the program will compare results against a February 2024 baseline and the data gathered along the way. Interim readings, he said, make him fairly confident that parents and students are already noticeably more satisfied with their schools. Setting an end date Armony said the choice to sunset in 2029 is deliberate and strategic. An open-ended Habaita would give the government no reason to take over, even though the need will persist. “If we say well be here forever, the government has no incentive to step in,” he said. Part of making that handoff work, Armony said, meant learning early on that the political leadership of a ministry is rarely where the actual work gets done. He said Habaita won the relevant ministers blessing. The team went further down the hierarchy to career officials like a district head with 34 years in the job who, he joked, knows the details down to how many pencils a classroom needs. Those officials already had plans for the region but lacked the money and attention to carry them out, and most of their priorities overlapped with Habaitas. The partnerships started small and grew as Habaita shared results and gave officials the credit. In less than two years, Habaitas annual philanthropic contribution quadrupled, from roughly NIS 10 million ($3.25 million) to NIS 40 million ($13 million). “A lesson for nonprofits and philanthropists is to find the people who are there to do their job — usually nonpolitical, usually civil servants, many years in the office,” he said. The key, he added, is humility: treating the work as a shared effort. With government funds roughly matching it, the full project runs about NIS 80 million ($26 million) a year through 2029. In the Western Negev, Habaitas main government partner is the Tekuma Administration. In the Galilee, it works mostly with the Education Ministry and local municipalities as there is no single government body tasked with reconstruction efforts —a sore point for northern residents and the nonprofits that support them. While much of the Oct. 7 emergency response focused on southern Israel, Armony said the Galilees needs were different and arrived on a different timeline. He said the average evacuation there lasted 15 to 18 months, far longer than in most Negev communities. “[In parts of] the Galilee, return rates are much lower — we have places below 50% return rate,” he said. He added that the Galilees challenges predate the war: “Their problems with education did not start with the war — they were there before. They were just exposed, and [the war] made it worse.” Armony, the venture capitalist turned Oct. 8 Israeli philanthropist, is betting that five years of results will persuade officials to take over what has been working. “And if the stakeholders — local municipalities in particular, but also the Ministry of Education — do not want to finance a program, it is their right,” he said. “[Its] not for us to force them.”

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Putting the Israel-Diaspora relationship on the agenda in this month’s Israeli elections

Judah Ari Gross — Fri, 09 Oct 2026 12:57:55 +0000

In 2018, the Knesset passed a contentious bill, primarily symbolic but still potent, known as the Nation-State Law, which declared the State of Israel to be the exclusive nation-state of the Jewish People. For Israel’s minority populations — particularly its deeply integrated, patriotic Druze citizens — the bill,which passed 62 to 55, felt exclusionary and callous, ignoring their connection and contributions to the state. But buried in the middle of the bill —section six out of 11 —was also a commitment by the State of Israel to the Jewish People writ large. “The State shall strive to secure the welfare of members of the Jewish People…” the law reads. “The State shall act in the Diaspora, to strengthen the affinity between the State and members of the Jewish People. The State shall act to preserve the cultural, historical, and religious heritage of the Jewish People among Jews of the Diaspora.” As a largely symbolic piece of legislation, the Nation-State Law did not dictate how the State of Israel should do those things, just that it was required to do so. In two and a half weeks, Israelis will head to the polls for national elections. The campaigns so far have primarily focused on issues of national security, sectarian divisions, religion-and-state, the economy and democracy. While there is broad recognition that this election has direct consequences for Diaspora Jewry and although Diaspora Jews care deeply about it, Israel’s relationship with Diaspora Jewry has rarely been on the agenda. Next week, we will change that. On Wednesday at 12:30 p.m. ET, eJewishPhilanthropy and Jewish Insider, in partnership with Anu Museum of the Jewish People in Tel Aviv and the Peoplehood Coalition, with support from Masa, the American Zionist Movement, the Jewish Federation of Tulsa (Okla.) and Belong, will host an election debate focused specifically on Israel’s commitments to world Jewry. This election comes at a challenging time for the Jewish People, both in Israel and around the world, and also between Israel and Jewish communities around the world, particularly those in the United States. While a large majority of American Jews feel connected to Israel, only a minority explicitly identify as Zionists and many sharply disagree with the government’s actions during the Gaza war. But this is also a time of opportunity for the Jewish People, as the relationship between Israel and Jews in the Diaspora has become even more significant: what happens in Israel has a direct impact on Jewish communities abroad; and with their wallets and voices, Jewish communities abroad have demonstrated their commitments to Israel and the Israeli people. The panel, which will be hosted in person by the Tisch Center for Jewish Dialogue at the Anu Museum in Tel Aviv and will be livestreamed over Zoom, will be held in both English and Hebrew, with simultaneous translation between them. We have invited all of the parties that are currently polling at or above the minimum threshold for the Knesset to participate in this debate. At least eight parties — from across the political spectrum —have agreed to send a representative; we would still welcome any others that choose to participate. The debate, which will be moderated by eJP Managing Editor Judah Ari Gross, will push the candidates to explain and defend their parties’ platform on Israel-Diaspora relations. The questions will be informed both by Israelis who work closely with the Diaspora and by Diaspora Jews who work closely with Israel. In many cases — though not all —parties’ official platforms on the subject focus primarily on immigration. Others offer more robust, concrete plans to strengthen the country’s connection with world Jewry. Our goal with this discussion is not to hold simply another English-language election event, but to focus on the core essence of what it means for Israel to be the nation-state of the Jewish People, and not only the specific Jewish people who live in it. We hope you’ll be there.

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IsraAid’s Yasmeen Abu Fraiha aims to build bridges in the Middle East through medicine

Jay Deitcher — Fri, 09 Oct 2026 12:55:50 +0000

Dr. Yasmeen Abu Fraiha awoke at the crack of dawn on Oct. 7 to sirens wailing and knew she needed to rush to the Soroka University Medical Center, where she worked in internal medicine. She expected to treat traumatic injuries caused by rockets fired from Gaza, similar to previous attacks. When she arrived at the hospital, the largest in Israel’s southern Negev region, she saw a bloodbath instead: There was a flood of young Israelis who had been mowed down by terrorist gunfire at the Nova music festival. There were foreign farm workers with extreme burns from running through flaming fields to escape murder. There were also Bedouin parents who lived in unrecognized villages — their communities were neither protected by the Iron Dome missile defense system nor equipped with bomb shelters —cradling their slain children. In a different life, that could have been her. Abu Fraiha knew about the hostages kidnapped by Hamas before the Israeli government and the news stations did — she had heard their names cried out by family members. By 12 p.m., the hospital had run out of antibiotics. Amid the chaos, Abu Fraiha glanced around and witnessed religious Jews treating Christian Arabs. Muslim doctors caring for settlers. Everyone was helping one another, no matter their background: secular, religious, left-wing, right-wing, Jews, Christians, Bedouins. “The lessons that I learned that day, I still believe in today, maybe even more,” Abu Fraiha told eJewishPhilanthropy. “The one thing that I feel sorry about is that we didnt take advantage of the opportunity to tell a new story of Israel/Palestine. We fell into the trap of revenge and anger and hate and dehumanization, and sadly, its getting worse.” Three years later, Abu Fraiha serves as the head of strategic partnerships in the Middle East at IsraAid, the largest Israeli nongovernmental humanitarian aid organization. Soon after the massacres, IsraAid partnered with international aid organizations to provide aid in the Gaza Strip. Now, under Abu Fraiha’s guidance, the agency is expanding into other countries in the Middle East, some that dont have diplomatic relations with Israel. Before Oct. 7, IsraAid didn’t have a presence in the Middle East; today, providing aid in the Middle East is a pillar of its work, and Abu Fraiha believes that healthcare workers like her and her partners in the region can build trust across borders. Born in Tel Sheva, the first Bedouin town in Israel, Abu Fraiha’s life took a dramatic turn in 1996 when she was 5, and her parents — her mother a Palestinian schoolteacher; her father a Bedouin engineer — moved the family to the nearby affluent Jewish suburb of Omer, yearning to give their four children a better education. “The difference between Omer and Tel Sheva is a five-minute drive but 100 years away,” her father would tell her. According to a ranking of Israeli cities released by Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics in 2016, Tel Sheva ranked lowest in socioeconomic status; Omer ranked highest. While Abu Fraiha was afforded a quality education, she never fully fit in. She knew she spoke a different language at home than her friends did and practiced a different faith. When her mother died of breast cancer when she was a teen, Abu Fraiha said that she felt that viscerally when her family tried to bury her mother in Omer, and they were told the sole cemetery in the community was a Jewish one. Abu Fraiha also had another realization at that time. She watched as her mom received chemotherapy. The doctors, she felt, had a magical ability to soothe others. She knew her destiny, and she never let up, receiving a medical degree from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a Master of Public Administration from Harvard Kennedy School. In the years since, she has started two nonprofits supporting Bedouin communities in Israel and served as the health policy director at the Task Force for Health Promotion and Equity in the Arab Society at the Israeli Ministry of Health. She was chosen as one of Forbes’ “30 under 30” in 2017 and one of Israels 50 most influential women by the Israeli business publication Globes in 2023. After leaving Israel in 2024 for a two-year stint as clinical fellow at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, Abu Fraiha returned home in February. “I knew that the world has changed,” she said. “I cant go back to the hospital, to my nine-to-five, as if nothing has happened,” so she turned to IsraAid after seeing the agency supporting both Israelis post-Oct. 7 and Palestinians in Gaza after it was devastated by the war with Israel, its infrastructure in ruins, with much of the population displaced and the civilian death toll climbing, something she said hasn’t ended, with fighting persisting even as the larger war has halted. The organization had “the ability to see the humanity in both sides and say, ‘We are a humanitarian organization that will help everyone who is in need.’ Thats quite significant and quite moving.” That view, Abu Fraiha said, “embodied exactly the way I see medicine and the way I see my job.” In 2025, as part of the Middle East Initiative at Harvard Kennedy School, she co-authored a study, published in The New England Journal of Medicine, titled “Health Care Bridges — Pathways toward Trust in Gaza and Beyond.” “Our findings suggest that cross-national healthcare programs can overcome formal and informal segregation, establish connections and help build trust between groups in conflict,” the study said. “Moreover, our interviews and surveys revealed that many Palestinians and Israelis are receptive to working with one another in programs related to health, even in wartime.” The reason healthcare workers can build trust between communities, Abu Fraiha said, is because that skill —trust building — is intrinsic to the profession. “I keep saying that my superpower is to go into a room and make you, after two minutes, trust me enough to tell me about your bowel movements and your sexual life and all the things that you wont tell anyone else,” she said. Additionally, healthcare workers “flip the power imbalance,” she said. “Suddenly, the Palestinian is your doctor or the Palestinian is your nurse, and they hold the information and the solutions and what needs to be done. Then you look up to them, which is different than the usual experience in Israel/Palestine, so that breaks some prejudice sometimes.” When healthcare workers from different backgrounds come together, Abu Fraiha said, they also have a common goal: saving lives. Still, the Israeli healthcare system is not the utopia that some people would have others believe, as evidenced by recent attacks on Arabic-speaking staff at Rambam Health Care Campus in Haifa who were accused of mistreating Israel Defense Force soldiers, even after the hospital found that the claims against them baseless. “When you say coexistence, it’s like, ‘OK, we exist one next to each other.’ Thats basically what you would see in the hospitals. ‘OK, yeah, Arabs and Jews work at the same building. Cool,’” she said. “That does not mean that the place is not racist. That does not mean that people there feel that like theyre equal or they have equal rights of free speech or to assemble.” These systems need to move beyond mere coexistence to create a shared society built on partnership, she said. “If you and I are partners, then were equal. We talk about things. We dont ignore the issues, and we see each other for who we are.” Through IsraAid, Abu Fraiha strengthens the healthcare systems of Israel’s neighboring countries that have been hit by brain drain caused by doctors fleeing due to constant wars. IsraAid trains junior doctors, nurses and midwives in Jordan to fill those roles in the countries they serve. All the training is done in Arabic and includes mental health support, which is essential since so many in the region suffer from trauma, which Abu Fraiha described as being like a toothache, in a November interview with Rabbi Sharon Brous, who leads the Ikar congregation in Los Angeles. “Imagine you have a toothache, and its so terrible [that] the entire universe is your tooth,” Abu Fraiha said at the synagogue event. “Nothing else matters. You cant really think of someone elses pain. Thats natural. Thats human. Thats just how we are. But at some point, you need to understand that the way you deal with trauma [isn’t working]. Theres a healthy way to deal with traumas, and then theres an unhealthy way to deal with trauma.” Winter is coming in Gaza, and while more food is coming in, they still lack clean water and medicine, Abu Fraiha said; large swaths of the population are displaced and living in tents. Still, she is inspired by the people she works with: “Jewish Israelis, Jewish Americans, Palestinians, both in Gaza and the West Bank, and people who see eye to eye and are on the same page,” she said. “Theyre like, We just turn off all the bull**** from outside, and lets just do the work. Thats what keeps me going. Theres a lot of people like this. They wake up, and theyre like, ‘OK, lets work. Lets make people happy and help other people.” Yotam Polizer, the CEO of IsraAid, told eJP, that he “cant think of a better person” to lead the organization’s work in the Middle East. Abu Fraiha is a humanitarian and a doctor who understands diplomacy and politics. “She knows a lot of the world were dealing with: the Palestinian, the Israeli, the American, the Jewish diaspora, the medical, and then she has an incredible network.” Abu Fraiha also serves on many boards, including at the New Israel Fund for the past four years, where she is a passionate and insightful advocate for humanitarian work in Gaza, as well as for anti-occupation and Palestinian equality initiatives, Shira Ben Sasson Furstenberg, the director of New Israel Fund in Israel, told eJP. Abu Fraiha’s work with IsraAid gives her inside expertise on what partners NIF should work with and how to allocate funds related to Gaza humanitarian work. In Abu Fraiha’s work and personal life, she doesn’t see herself as representing Israel, IsraAid, NIF or anyone other than herself, she said. “Thats a major message to bring out there to the world,” she said. “To understand that not every person that you meet represents a government or a country or a history. Lets see the person that is inside the person that were talking to. And also it also helps me not feel [like I have to be superhuman]. I dont want the responsibility.” She tries to remind people: “Im just a curly girl who does things.”

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The overlooked faculty roots of the post-Oct. 7 campus crisis

Contributing Author — Fri, 09 Oct 2026 09:44:00 +0000

Three years after Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack, the images that defined the campus response remain familiar: student encampments, occupied buildings, disruptive protests, divestment campaigns, and Jewish students facing harassment, intimidation and exclusion. Students became the face of the campus antisemitism crisis. But a less visible force had been shaping the campus environment long before Oct. 7: anti-Zionist faculty activism. When the Amcha Initiative began studying campus antisemitism more than a decade ago, the problem received little national attention and what concern there was focused largely on students. Our experience as faculty members at the University of California led us to look elsewhere. We had watched professors and academic departments do something student activists could not: use classrooms, curricula and the university’s academic authority to give anti-Zionist activism institutional legitimacy and reach. Concerned that this could foster hostility toward Jewish and pro-Israel students, we set out to investigate the relationship empirically. Beginning in 2013, Amcha built a national database of faculty who had publicly endorsed the academic boycott of Israel. Academic-BDS support was unusually well suited to our purpose because it was both measurable and consequential. Endorsements were public and verifiable, while academic BDS itself is a program of action inside the academy, urging faculty to cancel study-abroad programs, research collaborations, speakers, events and courses connected to Israel. Its broader anti-normalization goal seeks to delegitimize Israel and Zionist perspectives within academic life, making support for academic BDS a particularly clear indicator of faculty anti-Zionism. Over the next decade, six studies produced a remarkably consistent picture. Faculty anti-Zionism did not remain a private political commitment. It moved into the academic domain. Faculty who supported academic BDS were associated with departments thatsponsoredfar more anti-Zionist programming,classroomsin which anti-Zionist perspectives were much more heavily represented, and departments willing toissueanti-Zionist political statements in their own institutional voice. At the same time, campuses with more academic boycotters saw more antisemitism. Across more than 100 schools popular with Jewish students,thosewith faculty boycotters were about four times as likely to have incidents targeting Jewish students for harm as those with none, and the more faculty boycotters a campus had, the more such incidents it tended to have. In our statistical model, the number of faculty boycotters was one of the strongest predictors of anti-Jewish hostility on campus a stronger predictor than even the presence of an anti-Zionist student group such as Students for Justice in Palestine. Taken together, Amcha’s studies pointed to something more consequential than politically outspoken professors. Faculty wield authority students do not: they teach and evaluate students, shape curricula, organize academic programming and lead departments. When those roles are enlisted in political advocacy against Israel and Zionism, that activism becomes woven into academic life. For Jewish and pro-Israel students, the consequences can be profound. They encounter the same hostile ideas not only from classmates protesting on the quad, but in classrooms and department-sponsored programming, backed by faculty expertise and university authority. Political activism thus becomes embedded in university life and gains staying power. By Oct. 7, much of that infrastructure was already in place. What changed afterward was its scale and organization. That shift was most visible in the rapid spread of Faculty for Justice in Palestine groups across American campuses. Their connection to academic BDS was built in: years earlier, the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, which promotes academic BDS on U.S. campuses, had urged boycott supporters to form FJP groups. It was hardly surprising, then, that our 2024 studyfoundcampuses with more preexisting academic boycotters were far more likely to form FJP chapters, and that more boycotters predicted more active chapters. Where those organized faculty groups were present, the broader campus environment was markedly different. Protests lasted about three times longer and encampments nearly five times longer. Most troubling, physical assaults on Jewish students were about seven times more likely and violent threats, including death threats, about three times more likely than on campuses without FJP groups. Across our studies, the pattern has been remarkably consistent: where faculty anti-Zionist activism is more deeply embedded in academic life, antisemitism is more likely to concentrate and intensify. And when those faculty organize, the effects are magnified. A newbook chapterbrings this research together for the first time. The findings show why the post-Oct. 7 crisis cannot be understood by looking only at the students whose protests dominated the headlines. Faculty had long given anti-Zionist activism a foothold in university life that students alone could not. That should change how universities respond. Since Oct. 7, administrators have understandably concentrated on student conduct: encampments, building occupations, disruptive protests and violations of campus rules. But addressing only the conduct of students leaves untouched the academic structures that have helped create and sustain the political climate in which that conduct occurs. Professors are free to hold and express political views. The institutional line is crossed when academic positions, departmental authority or university resources are used to advance political campaigns in ways that compromise the educational mission or harm students and colleagues. More than a decade of our research shows that long before the Hamas attack on Israel, faculty anti-Zionist activism was already deeply embedded in academic life and had acquired the legitimacy, reach and staying power that made it a critical driver of the campus crisis that followed. The clearest lesson from our studies is that universities cannot seriously combat campus antisemitism until they address the problem where much of it takes root: in faculty and departmental conduct. Leila Beckwith is professor emeritus of pediatrics at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the co-founder of the Amcha Initiative. Tammi Rossman-Benjamin was a faculty member at the University of California, Santa Cruz, for two decades and is is the co-founder and executive director of the Amcha Initiative.

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After Oct. 7, Jewish parents chose Jewish schools. Now we have to keep the door open.

Contributing Author — Fri, 09 Oct 2026 08:30:00 +0000

After Oct. 7, 2023, Jewish parents started asking different questions — not only whether their children are safe, but what does it mean to raise a Jewish child in this moment? What do I want my children to know about who they are? And what will ensure there is a next generation that not only knows it is Jewish, but wants to be? For many families, those questions led somewhere very concrete: a Jewish school. There is something deeply Jewish about that response. Nearly 2,000 years ago, with Jerusalem under siege, Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai famously asked for Yavneh and its sages. He understood that if Jews still had a place to learn and to teach, the Jewish people could survive even catastrophe. Oct. 7 did not only awaken alarm. It awakened a determination to hold tighter to the people, traditions and identity that suddenly felt more fragile than ever. We saw families put on Stars of David they had not worn in years and walk into synagogues they had rarely attended. And we saw parents choose Jewish education. Some had been considering it for years. Others had never imagined it. Schools began hearing from parents looking for a place where their children would not have to explain who they are, hide a Jewish symbol or wonder whether being visibly Jewish made them a target. But safety was only part of it. If their children were going to encounter hatred because they were Jewish, parents wanted them to understand what being Jewish meant. The numbers suggest this was more than anecdotal. Teach Coalition’s research found 175,798 students enrolled in New York’s Jewish schools this year, 8,502 more than in 2022-23, even as the state’s broader nonpublic-school sector declined. In Pennsylvania, Jewish school enrollment grew nearly five times faster in a single year than its prior average. That should be one of the most hopeful Jewish stories of the past three years. In a moment when hatred sought to make Jewish life smaller, families chose more of it. But just as Jewish education has become more urgent, it has also become more expensive. Security is now a major added cost. Teach Coalition surveyed 63 Jewish schools across New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Florida and found that the average school is spending more than $400,000 a year on security, 124% more than before Oct. 7. Per student, the cost has more than doubled. Increasingly, families are being asked to bear it. Nearly 6 in ten students now attend a school that charges a separate security fee. That creates a painful contradiction. At the very moment more parents are asking how to give their children a deeper Jewish identity, we risk making that future harder to afford. I have met those parents. They are sitting up at night with a tuition bill, calculating what they can cut, whether grandparents can help, and whether the school they want for their child is simply beyond their reach. That cannot be theirs to solve alone. The good news is that we know we can solve this problem. At Teach Coalition, we have seen what happens when families speak up. In state capitals from Albany to Tallahassee, lawmakers have funded security guards, STEM teachers, transportation, and other costs that would otherwise land on the tuition bill. That happened because tens of thousands of parents, grandparents, and school leaders called their legislators and told their stories. They made clear that Jewish families are not asking for special treatment. They are asking that their children count, too. Now there is a chance to reach families nationally. Beginning Jan. 1, 2027, the Federal Scholarship Tax Credit will offer a federal tax credit of up to $1,700 ($3,400 for couples filing jointly) for contributions to scholarship organizations, but only in states that choose to participate. Governors are making that decision now. Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai did not know what the future would look like. He knew only that if Jewish learning continued, the Jewish people would too. After Oct. 7, Jewish parents are reaching for that same answer. Our job is to make sure cost is not what stands in their way. Our greatest obligation is not only to inherit what generations before us protected. It is to pass it on. Sydney Altfield is the CEO of Teach Coalition, which advocates for government funding for nonpublic schools in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Florida and Maryland.

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Your Daily Phil: Post-Oct. 7 Jewish engagement keeps ‘Surging,’ JFNA finds

EJP — Thu, 08 Oct 2026 15:01:39 +0000

Good Thursday morning! In today’s edition of Your Daily Phil, we consider the lessons learned from the Oct. 7 terror attacks, and report on a new Jewish Federation of North America study about “The Surge” in Jewish engagement growing again. We examine a new Hebrew University study aboutthe role of political affiliation in PTSDamong Israels reservists, and feature opinion pieces by Joshua Simmons and Rabbi Avi Killip reflecting on the purity tests and political loneliness that have become familiar to many American Jews since Oct. 7, 2023. Also in this issue: Danny Shapiro, Shaun Maguire and Henri Kagan. Today’sYour Daily Philwas curated by eJP Managing Editor Judah Ari Gross, Israel Editor Justin Hayet and Opinion Editor Rachel Kohn. Have a tip?Email us here. Follow us on Whatsapp Follow us on Telegram What Were Watching New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is slated to hold a press conference with Council Speaker Julie Menin this morning on nonprofits. It comes on the heels of the mayor’s widely panned statement on the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks. More below. Israeli President Isaac Herzog will present the Presidential Award for Civilian Heroism today in Jerusalem to six people who helped thwart the attempted hijacking of the FlyDubaiflight from Dubai to Tel Aviv on Sept. 30: Tali Manes, Zvika Manes, Yaniv Hayoun, Shota Musayev, Asaf Rajuan and Or Pardilov. The Michael Levin Base, which supports Israeli “lone soldiers,” is hosting its annual gala ?this evening at The Jerusalem Theater. Friends of the Israel Defense Forces is hosting its National Gala this evening in New York City. What You Should Know A QUICK WORD FROM eJPS JUDAH ARI GROSS In the outpouring of music, art and creativity that emerged from the trauma and pain of the Oct. 7 terror attacks, one song stands out — composed in that first terrible week of sorrow and uncertainty by the Israeli folk band Jane Bordeaux. “We’ll all lend a hand/We are not alone/Partners in fate, pain and love, as one nation/We’ll weep and overcome/As before, we won’t break/We have only one another and no more/And we don’t need more,” sings Doron Talmon in “Not Alone.” The haunting tune, released on Oct. 15, 2023, immediately captured the fundamental, terrible lesson that millions of Israelis learned eight days prior: that in their worst moment, in their time of greatest need, the government was not coming to save them. They were on their own. Though on a far less visceral level, Jewish communities around the world have also learned a similar lesson over the past three years. In the immediate wake of the attacks, many Jews around the world, looking for comfort and acknowledgment from the organizations, movements and institutions that they had long supported, found instead silence and even rebuke. They too were on their own. And yet, while this sentiment —that we “have only one another and no more, and we don’t need more” —is prevalent and reflects tragically lived experiences, it is also wrong. Read the rest of What You Should Know here. News SURVEY SAYS ‘The Surge’ in post-Oct. 7 Jewish engagement is growing again, JFNA finds Three years after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, terror attacks, the wave of heightened Jewish engagement that followed — commonly referred to as “The Surge” — is not only holding, but growing, according to the third survey since the attacks from the Jewish Federations of North America released on Thursday, eJewishPhilanthropy’s Nira Dayanim reports. The survey, conducted in May and June, found that 38% of Jewish Americans are now engaging more fully with Jewish life, a seven-point increase from the 31% recorded last spring. The figure, however, is still lower than the 42% who reported engaging more in the first survey in 2024, but reverses last year’s decline. Who’s surging now: The age group most represented in The Surge is adults ages 55-74, who have time and resources to invest in the Jewish community, Mimi Kravetz, JFNA’s chief impact and growth officer, said, followed by young adults in their 20s and 30s, who are looking to find peers but less likely to engage in long-term membership. Parents of young children ranked third. Read the full report here. Share DATA COLLECTION New Israeli study links PTSD among combat vets with voting patterns Without a political “buffer” to protect them, Israeli combat reservists who oppose the current government are more likely to suffer from post-traumatic stress and experience high anxiety in their close relationships than those who back the governing coalition, according to a recent Hebrew University study, led by researcher Uri Lifshin, reports eJewishPhilanthropy’s Justin Hayet. Citation needed: The study is part of a growing body of research on the mental health toll that the Oct. 7 terror attacks and resulting three years of war have had on Israelis. But Lifshin warned that funding is not always being directed to the more complicated subjects of mental health, even as he says that these are critical to understanding how to prevent and treat things like post-traumatic stress disorder. “There is a real need for data and reliable information to understand which types of treatments and long-term support are most effective, and to determine how philanthropic funding should be allocated over time,” Maya Natan, CEO of the Keshet donor-advised fund, told eJP. Read the full report here. Share Opinion DÉJÀ VU I thought I was done coming out. Then Oct. 7 happened. In an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy, Bay Area clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst Josh Simmons, who serves on the advisory board of Gesher Community Care and the national advisory council of the Center for Combating Antisemitism, sees echoes in a post-Oct. 7 world of his coming-out experience almost 30 years ago in the internal deliberations over when and where one is willing to be fully visible as a Jew, including disclosing one’s relationship with Israel. “There are obvious differences between coming out as gay and what Ive experienced as a Jew since Oct. 7, 2023. Im not suggesting theyre equivalent. But theres something about concealment that I recognize immediately: its the calculation underneath it. Can I say this here? How will this person see me? Is explaining myself worth it? Maybe Ill just let it go. After a while, you dont realize how much energy youre spending.” Read the full piece here. Share SILVER LINING Political homelessness is freeing In an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy, Rabbi Avi Killip, executive vice president of the Hadar Institute, notes that while American Jews may feel increasingly abandoned by their political homes on both the left and the right in the years since the Oct. 7 attacks, freedom from a party mentality can remind us to whom we always belong: the Jewish People. “[I]n feeling less and less accountable to the ever-shifting demands of America’s political leaders and movements, I have come to see more clearly my accountability to Torah and mitzvot; in other words, to God.” Read the full piece here. Share Worthy Reads Counting Connection: In The Chronicle of Philanthropy, contributor Barbara Frye examines how nonprofits are trying to measure trust and belonging, two of the hardest outcomes in philanthropy to quantify. “The business of measuring is no substitute for donors who accept the complexity and typically slow pace of trust-building efforts. “Ours is often not headline work,” Parker said, noting that it can take years ahead of a crisis for the group’s efforts to come to fruition. “Donors who are interested in this work understand they need to watch how it evolves over time — and well ahead of when they will see the best outcomes.” Grandparents on Duty: In his Substack, former Women’s International Zionist Organization director Danny Shapiro reflects on the Israeli grandparents in their 60s and 70s who are raising some of the 27 children orphaned on Oct. 7 while still mourning their own murdered sons and daughters. “Life did not stop and politely give these people time to grieve. Childhood certainly did not stop. Children still had to be fed and hugged and disciplined and driven to school in the morning, picked up in the afternoon. Birthdays arrived. School years began. Clothes became too small. Children became teenagers. And these grandparents get up and do it. They do it all.”ust.’ Those six words crystallized everything I had come to believe about philanthropy.” Transitions Gili Gutwirt is joining the Legal Clinic for Combating Racism and Hate at Reichman University in Herzliya, Israel, as its director Word on the Street ENew York City Mayor Zohran Mamdanis Oct. 7 anniversary statement, which briefly condemned Hamas before primarily criticizing Israels war in Gaza, drew sharp rebukes from the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee and the UJA-Federation of New York, Jewish Insider’s Will Bredderman reports Sequoia partner Shaun Maguire told CNBC’s “Squack Box” how Oct. 7 changed him, framing the attack as part of a wider fight over the West while discussing why Sequoia invests heavily in Israeli companies… Calcalist reports Israel has paid NIS 38.6 billion ($12.6 billion) on about 1.18 million war-damage claims since Oct. 7, more than 10 times what it paid after the 2006 Second Lebanon War, draining most of its compensation fund French-Jewish scientist Henri Kagan, a Holocaust survivor, won the Nobel Prize in chemistry, alongside Japan’s Kenso Soai, for their work on homochirality, building off the 19th-century research of Louis Pasteur; Kagan, 95, is the third-oldest winner of a Nobel Prize… Canva’s chief marketing officer, Zach Kitschke, speaks with Inc. about how supporting nonprofits — the company has donated $2.5 billion in free software for more than 1 million groups — has been part of its mission since its 2013 founding… Axios reportsthat the Pentagon has ordered the U.S. military to finish preparing for a possible resumption of strikes on Iran… The Washington Free Beacon reports New York City First Lady Rama Duwaji has provided illustrations since at least October 2025 for at least two products from Olive Odyssey, an olive oil brand whose labels and social media celebrate Palestinian terrorists… Pic of the Day Alexei Rosenfeld/Getty Images Jon Polin (in red shirt) stands last night alongside more than 50,000 friends and relatives of victims of the Oct. 7 terror attacks, as well as supporters, at the third anniversary National Memorial Ceremony of October 7 Families. Polin’s son, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, was one of 251 hostages who were taken into captivity in the Gaza Strip in the attacks; he was murdered by terrorists in captivity on Aug. 31, 2024. Birthdays Araya Doheny/Getty Images for SAG-AFTRA Shira Piven, movie and theater director, writer and filmmaker, turns 65 Isadore Sharp, founder and chairman of Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts, author and philanthropist, turns 95 Agustin Estrada, general surgeon in Tempe, Ariz. Rona Barrett, gossip columnist and businesswoman, turns 90 R. L. Stine, author of more than 330 horror fiction novels, turns 83 Brian E. Frosh, attorney general of Maryland from 2015 to 2023, turns 80 Stephen Shore, director of the photography department at Bard College since 1982, more than 25 books of his photographs have been published, turns 79 Edward Zwick, Academy Award-winning film producer and director, turns 74 Jonathan Kessler, AIPAC senior staffer for 18 years and now CEO of Heart of a Nation David Kustoff, member of the House of Representatives (R-TN-8), one of four Jewish Republican congressmen, turns 60 Stefan Simchowitz, Los Angeles-based art collector, art curator and art advisor, turns 56 Rabbi Menachem Creditor, scholar-in-residence at UJA-Federation of New York Ben Lyons, entertainment reporter and sports commentator, turns 45 Ilana Blitzer Snider, magazine editor and daughter of Wolf Blitzer, turns 45 Yaakov Kobi Marimi, singer and actor, he represented Israel in the Eurovision Song Contest 2019 in Tel Aviv, turns 35 Aliyana Traison, N.Y.-based therapist Adina Lichtman, founder of Knock Knock, Give a Sock, an organization that collects socks for the homeless

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Oct. 7 taught Jews they were on their own, but that’s not enough

Judah Ari Gross — Thu, 08 Oct 2026 12:05:58 +0000

In the outpouring of music, art and creativity that emerged from the trauma and pain of the Oct. 7 terror attacks, one song stands out — composed in that first terrible week of sorrow and uncertainty by the Israeli folk band Jane Bordeaux. Full of pained nostalgia for kibbutzim that were destroyed “on one cursed morning” —fields that won’t be harvested, tractors and carts that won’t be decorated for festivals —the song, “Not Alone,” offers with its chorus a bittersweet determination for the future, not hope but rather a certainty of continuity: “We’ll all lend a hand/We are not alone/Partners in fate, pain and love, as one nation/We’ll weep and overcome/As before, we won’t break/We have only one another and no more/And we don’t need more.” The haunting tune, released on Oct. 15, 2023, immediately captured the fundamental, terrible lesson that hundreds of thousands of Israelis learned eight days prior: that in their worst moment, in their time of greatest need, the government was not coming to save them. They were on their own. More Israelis learned the same thing in the weeks and months following the attacks, as large swaths of Israel’s southern and northern border regions were evacuated amid continued attacks by Hamas and Hezbollah, respectively. Removed from their homes and placed in hotels around the country, these displaced people found themselves alone, lacking the basic necessities and services that they needed in this frightening new reality. Into that void, philanthropy entered. These displaced Israelis quickly became dependent upon the surrounding communities and nonprofits — some more established ones, like the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, Latet, Lev Echad, Brothers and Sisters in Arms, and other grassroots ventures —to get them the support that they needed. And of course, those communities and organizations were only too willing to help. “We have only one another and no more/And we don’t need more.” Three years later, a wide array of philanthropic initiatives and organizations have emerged and some still continue to operate not to complement and improve the services that are meant to be provided by the government but to perform them: The mental health organizations using philanthropic funds to provide treatment to Oct. 7 survivors and their families; the security groups training communities’ emergency response teams; the social lenders helping keep reservists’ small businesses afloat and helping survivors of the attacks find new homes. At last night’s National Memorial Ceremony of October 7 Families — deliberately and pointedly organized by bereaved families and not by the government —co-host and freed hostage Eli Sharabi, whose wife, two daughters and brother were murdered in the attacks, highlighted this “do it ourselves” sentiment in his opening remarks. “Thank you, citizens of Israel, here and around the world. Thank you for your mobilization, your support and your contribution. Because of you, we are here,” he said. “This is a ceremony of the people, which was created by the people and is held for the people. We will remember, grieve and hope together.” Israelis were also palpably reminded of this last week as civilians on a FlyDubai flight were forced to fight and incapacitate a co-pilot who had stabbed his captain and was attempting, according to his interrogators, to crash their plane into Ben Gurion Airport. The Omani pilot, who had previously been fired for expressing extremist, Islamist views, was not identified by any of Israel’s vaunted security services as a potential threat ahead of the flight, leaving ordinary folks the responsibility of saving themselves. Though on a far less visceral level, Jewish communities around the world have also learned a similar lesson over the past three years. In the immediate wake of the attacks, many Jews around the world, looking for comfort and acknowledgment from the organizations, movements and institutions that they had long supported, only to find silence and even rebuke. After Oct. 7, many Diaspora Jews found that they too were on their own –in academia, in politics, in professional settings, in media. And they also have sought to provide for themselves as a result. This includes becoming more involved in Jewish life generally — as fresh data from Jewish Federations of North America shows —as well as sending more of their children to Jewish day schools, launching and supporting new Jewish nonprofits in place of the secular ones to which they once belonged, and creating employee resource groups in their businesses. And yet, while this sentiment —that “We have only one another and no more/And we don’t need more” —is prevalent and reflects tragically lived experiences, it is also ultimately wrong. As Israeli First Lady Michal Herzog noted in her recent interview with eJP, the scale of philanthropy is orders of magnitude smaller than that of government. “At the end of the day, there are efforts that cannot be done only by philanthropy,” Herzog said. “I am a believer that philanthropy has to complement, has to support. It shouldn’t replace [government]. It should have an added value. It should have new initiatives that maybe the state authorities cannot take the risk of trying and failing, but philanthropy can do that. It can fail and learn. But in such moments as we had after Oct. 7, thank God for philanthropy, thank God for the Jewish world coming together.” While philanthropy and nonprofits are critical, they cannot stand in for government and its vastly larger resources, and rebuilding that trust —and pushing the government to effectively allocate those resources —will be the task of civil society for the years to come.

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New Israeli study links PTSD among combat vets with voting patterns

Judah Ari Gross — Thu, 08 Oct 2026 12:04:44 +0000

Without a political “buffer” to protect them, Israeli combat reservists who oppose the current government are more likely to suffer from post-traumatic stress and experience high anxiety in their close relationships, according to a recent Hebrew University study. The research, published earlier this year in the international journal Anxiety, Stress, Coping, was led by Hebrew University researcher Uri Lifshin with Vera Skvirsky, Merav Vider, Ariel Kor, Shaul Lev-Ran and Mario Mikulincer. Combat exposure was linked to more severe post-traumatic stress symptoms, depression and problem drinking, the paper found. The link to post-traumatic stress was strongest among reservists who voted for left-wing or centrist opposition parties. In an interview with eJewishPhilanthropy, Lifshin laid out the theory behind the findings, saying that human beings steady themselves against the fear of death through close relationships and shared beliefs that give life meaning, and that when several of those supports fail at once, coping becomes more difficult. “Lets say you have attachment anxiety and youre not connected, and youre still not connected in your relation to your culture,” he said. “Then youre more at risk.” The researchers regarded opposition voters as “experiencing a threat to the validity of their political worldview during the war,” the paper states, noting that the conflict began amid widespread protests against the governing coalition. How a person voted was the studys only political measure. Among opposition voters, combat exposure also tracked with higher depression and addiction. The pattern didnt appear among voters who back Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling coalition. The study is part of a growing body of research on the mental health toll that the Oct. 7 terror attacks and resulting three years of war have had on Israelis, though Lifshin warned that funding is not always being directed to the more complicated subjects of mental health, even as he says that these are critical to understanding how to prevent and treat things like post-traumatic stress disorder. For instance, he said, a lot of research money goes to animal studies, which may be important, but this means that the existential and social perspectives of mental health get less attention. “Look at how much money is spent on studying anxiety or addiction with mice,” Lifshin said. “We cant understand the phenomenon with this neglect of social, personality and existential psychology in understanding PTSD. So more research is needed.” Jewish philanthropic giving toward trauma care in Israel surged dramatically post-Oct 7, mobilizing hundreds of millions of dollars to address a profound and growing national mental health crisis. A 2026 study published in eClinicalMedicine by professor Yossi Levi-Belz at the Ruppin Academic Center found probable PTSD among Israeli adults rose from 16.1% before the attack to nearly 30% a month after, then eased to about 19.7% — nearly 1-in-5 — by January 2026. Several philanthropy professionals in Israel spoke with eJP about the hesitancy and interest many foundations have in the PTSD space. Many funders, they said, are considering the area — a clear challenge for Israeli society — but remain unsure whether and how to make substantive grants toward addressing it. One concern that philanthropy has been circling in recent years is the growing shortage of mental health professionals in Israel and what — if any— role philanthropy could play in reversing this trend. “There is a real need for data and reliable information to understand which types of treatments and long-term support are most effective, and to determine how philanthropic funding should be allocated over time,” Maya Natan, CEO of Keshet, told eJP. Understanding the trauma across Israels nearly 500,000 reservists — spanning age groups, demographics and backgrounds — is its own hurdle for data-driven philanthropists at both the individual and institutional level. The looming question is how to embed philanthropic support for PTSD treatment into a longer, more durable approach befitting of the long road of recovery facing many of Israel’s reservists. Natan, who closely monitors the Israeli nonprofit field, said that organizations serving soldiers with PTSD have grown and professionalized, but that “we have increasingly seen a need for greater regulation, coordination and professionalization of the sector.” Confronted with this prolonged psychological toll, the Jewish Federations of North America has dedicated tens of millions in emergency funding specifically to mental health. Federations, institutional foundations and family foundations of varying sizes are also including reservist PTSD treatment in their Israel portfolios. Rebecca Caspi, senior vice president at JFNA, said the early money went to triage — “hotlines, therapists and every psychiatric hospital in the country, because people needed care urgently. But three years in, she said, the dollars shifted toward lasting capacity: “Eighteen community mental health centers that didnt exist three years ago have now treated thousands of Israelis, in the towns where these men and women actually live.” Natan stressed, however, that philanthropy’s role in addressing Israel’s mental health crisis must be limited, complementing government services, not replacing them. “Philanthropy has a unique role to play. It can invest in innovation, take greater risks, test new approaches to treatment and care, and support ideas that may not yet be ready for government funding, she said. “There is also an important role for the government in funding this field, alongside philanthropy,” she said. “We are talking about very large numbers of people across the Israeli population, and a need for support that will continue for many years. This simply cannot be the responsibility of philanthropy alone.” Whatever treatments philanthropy or the government end up funding, Lifshin said, recovery involves more than the individual. “Its not just whats going on in the persons mind,” he said. “Its also strengthening the persons place within their society, within their culture.”

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‘The Surge’ in post-Oct. 7 Jewish engagement is growing again, JFNA finds

Nira Dayanim — Thu, 08 Oct 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Three years after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 terror attacks, the wave of heightened Jewish engagement that followed —commonly referred to as “The Surge” —is not only holding, but growing, according to the third annual survey from the Jewish Federations of North America released on Thursday. The survey, conducted in May and June and polling 2,836 people, found that 38% of Jewish Americans now fall into the Surge, a seven-point increase from the 31% recorded last spring. The figure is still lower than the 42% who reported engaging more in the first survey in 2024, but reverses last years decline. What we really thought was going to happen this year is that ‘the Surge’ would continue to decline, Mimi Kravetz, JFNAs chief impact and growth officer, told eJewishPhilanthropy. “Instead, we see something very different, which is that there was either a resurgence or a flattening of the surge, and that were now in a new normal.” The age group most represented in “The Surge” is adults ages 55-74, who have “time and resources” to invest in the Jewish community, said Kravetz, followed by young adults in their 20s and 30s, who are looking to find peers but less likely to engage in long term membership. Parents of young children rank third. Among the 55-74 age group, many dont always feel like the Jewish community has what they need, said Kravitz. Increased engagement has also been more pronounced in larger communities, she added. Nearly two-thirds — 65% — of those engaging “communally” reported doing so through their local synagogue, closely followed by 63% who said that they spend time with Jewish friends and 41% who engage Jewishly through social media or Whatsapp groups. Chabad also drew 32% of those engaging communally this year. Chabad in particular has been doing a really excellent job engaging people, said Kravetz, adding that many appear to be using it as an engagement institution rather than solely a religious institution. JCCs, federations and foundations each drew about a quarter, consistent with earlier years. Among respondents, the awareness and perception of communal safety infrastructure improved according to the survey, with those who reported knowing where to turn if targeted by antisemitism rising from 46% to 58%. Awareness of security programs grew from 39% to 57%, and confidence that Jewish organizations are providing effective security went from 47% to 60%. In open-ended responses, many indicated that they are looking to join informal social settings. Kravetz said people want to feel invited and followed up with, to have a task or goal, and to find spaces that are joyful and spiritual. Many also want settings that are “apolitical,” said Kravetz, where they can just feel comfortable showing up as themselves.” Pointing to what keeps them from staying involved in their answers to open-ended questions, participants most commonly cited obstacle was political tension, mentioned 140 times. That tension ran in several directions, with some respondents feeling their views on Israel were too critical for their community, and others too supportive. Some said they were simply worn out by how frequently political debate dominates communal spaces. However, most of those who experienced that friction did not disengage from Jewish life entirely, JFNA said, but shifted to a congregation or community that suited them better. Among the roughly 1-in-4 respondents who reported engaging more with a Jewish community or institution since Oct. 7, 2023, 16% have attended events but not yet found the right fit, and another 12% remain interested but havent made much effort. Only 1% said they were no longer interested. Kravetz said this is especially true of those who were not at all or only somewhat engaged before Oct. 7. Our responsibility and our opportunity,” said Kravetz “is really to think about how to turn some of that informal, asynchronous social engagement into people feeling like they have a place that they belong.

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Political homelessness is freeing

Contributing Author — Thu, 08 Oct 2026 09:47:41 +0000

Last week, a friend told me about teaching her high school students political philosopher Thomas Hobbes’ theory that without government, we can’t live moral lives. Moral precepts like seeking peace and keeping ones word, which Hobbes calls eternal and discoverable through reason, exist even in the “state of nature”; the problem is that no one can safely act on them without a sovereign power to ensure that others do the same. I am sure I must have learned these big ideas in high school, too, but I didn’t remember them. Hearing them in 2026, around the third anniversary of the Oct. 7 attacks, they landed with a thud. My view of politics and government has changed so much in recent years, and not for the better. Hobbes thinks we need to find morality through government, but I am turning to religion. Many American Jews feel politically homeless these days. Not all of us, but a lot of us. Those who once felt comfortable on the left are facing the antisemitism that has been there for years but now become impossible to overlook or excuse. Those who found a home on the right, grateful for leaders willing to acknowledge and defend Israel and Israelis, have watched that support waffle and wane with the winds of the moment. The loudest role models on the right — talk show hosts and social media heroes — have become unabashedly and outspokenly critical of the Jewish People. Around 2020, I spent enormous energy making sure I was saying just the right thing. The political and social movements I aligned myself with had many very specific demands on my language: Introduce yourself with your pronouns. Include a statement rejecting racism in every bio. Make a land acknowledgment, but not a performative one. These demands all correspond to real issues that I still care about deeply, but the language rules were nearly impossible to follow and I am embarrassed by how much of my mental and emotional energy I spent on trying to get them right. After Oct. 7, 2023, like many politically liberal Jews, I found myself suddenly and painfully uncomfortable in the movements and organizations I had been a member of. I wandered over to the right, hoping to find a different political home, but the right carried its own language rules — up to and including a willingness to declare Christ as king. I couldn’t meet those either. As American Jews, we are raised to be civic-minded and align ourselves with bigger fights, so it isn’t surprising that many of us are feeling abandoned and alone. But my experience has been different. I am not lonely — I am liberated. I still read the news with sadness and anger, but with clearer eyes. I ask critical questions regardless of which journalist is speaking in which outlet. I don’t feel required to sign anyone’s petition or open letter. I get to choose my own language. But total independence is, as Hobbes correctly noted, dangerous. I cannot, and should not, move through the world feeling accountable only to myself. That is a surefire recipe for immorality and greed. But in feeling less and less accountable to the ever-shifting demands of America’s political leaders and movements, I have come to see more clearly my accountability to Torah and mitzvot. In other words, to God. Every day, I recite traditional Jewish prayers in which I call God king. In this world that is so obsessed with power and influence, I am choosing to be influenced by the Divine. By coronating God, I reject the human kings with their human demands, and instead commit to assess my merit by who God wants me to be. Do I seek justice and practice kindness? Am I loving my neighbors and the stranger? Do I take time to pray? To feel joy? To sit with the pain of the world and then work to make it better? “A mitzvah is a candle, and Torah is light” (Proverbs 6:23). The Talmud explains that, like a candle, the commandments light the way to put one foot immediately in front of the other, while Torah offers the kind of deep wisdom that helps us see farther and feel existentially safe. The passage ends, “And the path of life is the rebuke that disciplines.” To navigate the world with morality, we need rebukes. We need guardrails. We need guidance. For the moment, while we are still lost in these political woods, I am choosing to take this guidance from the Torah. You can, too. Instead of bemoaning our loneliness, let’s take this opportunity to remember that we are part of the Jewish People. Thankfully, this membership comes with an abundance of guidelines for how to speak and behave. We need these commandments desperately right now. Let’s study them and do our best to live by them. Perhaps they will change us — and the world — for the better. Rabbi Avi Killip is the executive vice president of the Hadar Institute.

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I thought I was done coming out. Then Oct. 7 happened.

Contributing Author — Thu, 08 Oct 2026 09:47:00 +0000

As the third anniversary of the Oct. 7 attacks approached, I kept thinking about something I started doing after the attack and never entirely stopped: editing myself. I first noticed it in conversations with friends and colleagues in progressive and queer spaces. Id hesitate before mentioning Israel. Could I say that I loved it? Could I talk about people I knew there who were grieving or terrified? Could I talk about what the date brought up for me and my family without also acknowledging Netanyahu, the war, or Palestinian suffering? Sometimes Id say nothing. Other times, Id carefully choose my words, anticipating how they might be received. The feeling was familiar. I came out as gay almost 30 years ago. Like many gay men of my generation, I got very good at reading a room. You figured out who knew, who didnt, who was safe and how much you could say. Eventually, I stopped doing that. I built a life as an openly gay man. I married my husband and later had a child with a close friend. I became a psychologist and psychoanalyst and made my home in San Francisco. The life I wasnt sure I would ever have became ordinary to me, in the best possible way. I thought I was done deciding which parts of myself other people could handle. There are obvious differences between coming out as gay and what Ive experienced as a Jew since Oct. 7, 2023. Im not suggesting theyre equivalent. But theres something about concealment that I recognize immediately: Its the calculation underneath it. Can I say this here? How will this person see me? Is explaining myself worth it? Maybe Ill just let it go. After a while, you dont realize how much energy youre spending. My relationship with Israel isnt primarily ideological. My mother was born in a displaced persons camp after the Holocaust and later came to Israel as a refugee. Israel was the country that took my family in when they needed somewhere to go. My connection to Israel is personal, familial and deeply rooted in my Jewish identity. It doesnt disappear because I disagree with an Israeli government or grieve the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza. This has been particularly painful in queer spaces because these are the communities that taught me not to live that way. I came of age in a movement that insisted we shouldnt have to make ourselves more palatable to earn a place in the room. We didnt always live up to that ideal, but it mattered to me. I remember finding a community where I could finally stop worrying about how much of myself I could reveal. I never imagined Id find myself making those calculations again, this time about being Jewish. Thats partly why I kept thinking about what happened at San Franciscos Trans March this past June. State Senator Scott Wiener, who is gay and Jewish, was confronted over his views on Israel and Gaza. One person told him, You do not belong here anymore. Another shouted, You stopped being queer the moment you started supporting Israel. I wasnt at the march, and people have every right to disagree with Wiener, protest him and challenge his politics. But I wondered how a movement that fought so hard against conditional acceptance had arrived at a place where someones views about Israel could be used to question their queer identity. Those words stayed with me because Id spent so much of my life fighting against precisely that kind of thinking. Queer communities taught me that identity is complicated and that other people dont get to reduce us to whichever part of ourselves best fits their politics. Intersectionality gave us a language for understanding that our identities overlap and cant simply be pulled apart from one another. Yet when it comes to Jews and Israel, Ive watched some of that complexity disappear. A connection to Israel can become shorthand for an entire set of political beliefs, whether or not we hold them. My own Jewish identity has never fit neatly into those categories, nor have the experiences of many queer Jews Ive come to know. In my work as a psychologist and in support groups Ive facilitated for queer Jews since Oct. 7, 2023, Ive heard versions of the same questions Ive been asking myself: How much can I say? Where can I say it? What happens if I do? People have described pulling away from queer communities, losing friendships or avoiding conversations about Israel. Some are exhausted by the expectation that they explain themselves whenever their Jewish identity or connection to Israel comes up. I understand because I do my own version of it. Sometimes I simply dont feel like having the conversation, so I stay quiet. This is what reminds me most of being closeted. The closet wasnt only about whether people knew I was gay. It was about organizing myself around what other people could tolerate. I knew which parts of myself could appear in which rooms, and I became remarkably good at figuring that out. One of the great reliefs of coming out was eventually not having to think about it anymore. In some ways, the years since the Oct. 7 attacks have felt like a second coming out: not because being Jewish is new to me, but because Ive had to decide when and where I am willing to be fully visible as a Jew, including the parts of my Jewish identity that involve Israel. And, as with coming out the first time, Ive learned that visibility can change relationships. It can also reveal which relationships had conditions I didnt fully understand. I dont think this experience is limited to queer Jews. Over the past three years, many Jews have had to renegotiate their relationships with institutions and communities they once considered home. They have had to decide when to speak, when to challenge something, when to leave and when to stay. Jewish organizations have spent enormous energy responding to antisemitism from the outside. But there is another question worth asking: What do Jews need in order to remain fully themselves in the communities and institutions that matter to them? The answer cannot simply be retreating into Jewish spaces. Those spaces have become enormously important to me over the past three years. Ive watched new communities and networks emerge because people needed places where they didnt have to explain themselves. That kind of Jewish communal infrastructure matters; it gives people somewhere to bring experiences that may not be understood elsewhere and reminds them that they arent navigating them alone. But Jews also belong in universities, hospitals, nonprofits, cultural institutions, political movements, LGBTQ+ organizations and every other part of civic life. The goal shouldnt be to choose between Jewish community and the rest of the world. It should be to make it possible for Jews to participate in both without fragmenting themselves. That presents a challenge for Jewish communal organizations as well. Supporting Jews in this moment cannot only mean creating spaces where they feel safe among other Jews, important as those spaces are. It also means helping people develop the relationships, confidence and language to remain present in the wider communities that matter to them. Sometimes the work is creating a place to retreat to. Sometimes it is helping someone find their way back into the room. Ive never wanted Palestinians to feel unwelcome in queer spaces, nor do I expect people to set aside their anger about Gaza. I dont need everyone in my community to agree with me about Israel. Frankly, I wouldnt want it. What I want is something much simpler: the ability to disagree without feeling that my Jewishness is suspect or that my place in a community depends on getting Israel right. Almost 30 years after coming out, I sometimes catch myself making those old calculations again. Maybe dont mention this. Maybe soften that. Maybe just let it go. I spent too much of my life learning how to stop hiding to start doing it again now. Joshua Simmons is a clinical psychologist and Jungian psychoanalyst in private practice in San Francisco. He serves on the advisory board of Gesher Community Care and the National Advisory Council of the Center for Combating Antisemitism. His forthcoming book chapter examines the experiences of queer and trans Jews after the Oct. 7 attacks and his writing has appeared in The Washington Post, The Forward and The Algemeiner.

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