eJewishPhilanthropy

Wexner Foundation to spin off North American leadership programs into new nonprofit

Gabby Deutch — Thu, 21 May 2026 19:19:49 +0000

The Wexner Foundation told alumni on Thursday that it will spin off its flagship leadership programs into an independent nonprofit, marking a major development within the Jewish philanthropic landscape that comes as the foundation’s benefactor, Les Wexner, continues to face pushback for his past ties to financier Jeffrey Epstein.

Wexner, the founder of the commerce empire L Brands, became one of the Jewish community’s best-known philanthropists over the past four decades as he developed and funded a range of programs to support emerging professional and lay leaders in the Jewish philanthropic world.

Wexner Foundation President Rabbi B. Elka Abrahamson said in a Thursday email that the foundation’s North American leadership programs will be moved to a new nonprofit beginning next year with a $40 million gift from Wexner and his wife, Abigail. Abrahamson told the Wexner alumni that the spin-off was a long time in the works.

“We have long imagined a time when our leadership programs would operate on their own and pursue new opportunities for growth and impact. That time has come,” Abrahamson wrote in the email, which was obtained by eJewishPhilanthropy.

The foundation’s leadership development programs have for decades been among the most prominent and prestigious fellowships in the Jewish world, helping leading rabbis, educators and Jewish communal professionals earn graduate degrees and providing professional development and educational opportunities to generations of lay leaders.

Wexner has in recent years faced scrutiny for his close relationship with Epstein, who for a period of time was granted power of attorney over Wexner’s affairs in the 1990s and early 2000s. Wexner cut ties with Epstein in 2007, a year after Epstein was first indicted on sex crimes charges.

The announcement comes three months after the Wexner Foundation began hosting listening sessions for alumni to be able to raise concerns and ask questions about Wexner as he faced continued scrutiny — most recently in the form of a congressional deposition at his home near Columbus, Ohio, earlier this year — for his relationship with Epstein.

Since Epstein was indicted in 2018 on sex trafficking charges, Wexner’s alumni networks have been grappling with the once-close relationship between Wexner and Epstein, though Wexner has maintained that he was unaware of Epstein’s illicit behavior.

When asked if the change was prompted by those listening sessions or the recent public conversation about Wexner, a spokesperson pointed to the letter, which said it had been under consideration for a long time.

Abrahamson announced that Wexner will shift the focus of his personal foundation to supporting Jewish programming in his hometown of Columbus and in Israel.

The foundation’s vice presidents, Rabbi Jay Moses and Or Mars, will lead the new organization, with Moses serving as president and Mars serving as executive vice president. The organization will be overseen by a new board of directors that is “in formation.”

The post Wexner Foundation to spin off North American leadership programs into new nonprofit appeared first on eJewishPhilanthropy.

Your Daily Phil: Jewish groups grapple with harnessing AI for Torah study

EJP — Thu, 21 May 2026 13:52:12 +0000

Good Thursday morning!

In today’s edition ofYour Daily Phil, we report from Jerusalem’sTower of David, whereHaGal Shelibrought together hundreds of high-tech leaders for a techno-themed fundraiser to support its surf therapy work. We explore how variousJewish organizationsare usingartificial intelligence forTorah study, and report onHadar Institute’s expansion to college campuses. We feature an opinion piece byIsrael AltmanandRabbi Eddie Shostakabout the role of integrative experiences in trauma recovery;Robert Lichtmanreflects on the ideal of Jewish unity in the context of Shavuot; andRabbi Ana Bonnheimhighlights the power of Jewish text learning as a lifelong practice for resilience and meaning-making. Also in this issue:Michael W. Sonnenfeldt,Shay ShwartzandBarney Frank.

Ed. note: In observance of both Shavuot and Memorial Day, the next edition ofYour Daily Philwill arrive in your inbox on Tuesday, May 26. Chag Shavuot sameach and Shabbat shalom!

Today’sYour Daily Philwas curated by eJP Managing Editor Judah Ari Gross, Opinion Editor Rachel Kohn and Israel Editor Justin Hayet. Have a tip?Email us here.

Follow us on Whatsapp Follow us on Telegram What Were Watching Today marks the one-year anniversary of the terror attack at the Capital Jewish Museum that killed two Israeli Embassy staffers outside of an American Jewish Committee event taking place inside the venue. In marking the day, the museum announced that it will be open to the public today “as a space of reflection and remembrance.”

The Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington is holding candidate forums today with D.C. mayoral candidates Kenyan McDuffie and Janeese Lewis George.

What You Should Know More than 700 figures from Israel’s business and philanthropic communities gathered last night for a rave at Jerusalem’s Tower of David — and also to mobilize the country’s high-tech sector to address the crushing mental health crisis by raising money for HaGal Sheli, a nonprofit that uses surf therapy to treat those suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, reports eJewishPhilanthropy’s Justin Hayet from the event.

Spearheaded by Paragon Solutions CEO Idan Nurik,the event was backed by a coalition of key high-tech sponsors and partners, including Paragon Solutions, Papaya Global, Natural Intelligence, NFX, WalkMe, Investing[dot]com, NextGen Philanthropic Funds, Island, Clarity Group, M.M., ION Asset Management, Kela, EON, Jefferies, Ratio Energies and Hadasim Group.

With tickets priced at NIS 2,000 ($690),the rave-themed event featured modern light installations projected onto the Tower’s ancient stones, as techno music filled the courtyard. HaGal Sheli (My Wave) did not provide an immediate tally of how much was raised at the event, but indicated that it brought in upwards of NIS 1.4 million ($480,000), not counting costs, a significant portion of which were covered by existing supporters, the organization told eJP.

The event highlighted theintersectionbetween Israel’s high-tech sector and its military reservists. Ido Galili, who works as a project manager at Paragon and volunteers with the organization, noted that his professional environment reflects the needs HaGal Sheli is trying to serve. Among my team at Paragon, 31% [of them] are in elite units and have served for hundreds of days since Oct. 7, Galili told eJP. I work at Paragon, I volunteer at HaGal Sheli, and I did 200 days in reserves. We are bringing together all different colors of Israeli society because trauma doesnt discriminate.

Since the start of the war,HaGal Sheli has treated thousands of IDF reservists, former hostages and their families, Nova music festival survivors and residents from the Gaza envelope. To accommodate the growing demand, the organization has received significant grants from Boston’s Combined Jewish Philanthropy and UJA-Federation of New York’s Day After Fund, as well as from individual donors and foundations. Despite this influx of support, the organization’s level of need continues to rise, the group’s co-founder, Yaron Waksman, told eJP, noting that the organization has supported 5,000 new participants this year alone.

“We see miracles,Waksman said at the event, surrounded by Israeli supporters and HaGal Sheli program alumni, with pulsing techno music and strobe lights reflecting off the Tower of David’s ancient stones. And yet, he continued, we are in an unprecedented mental health crisis. People will need us for the long term. We dont want to say no to anyone.”

Read the full report here.

TEXTUAL ANALYSIS As AI spreads, Jewish groups grapple with what it means for Torah study A man studies Torah with a laptop in the Belz Yeshiva in Jerusalem on Nov. 5, 2010. Abir Sultan/Flash90 When artificial intelligence exploded into everyday life after the release of ChatGPT in 2022, some religious organizations saw it as an opportunity to supercharge their existing services, speeding up their employees’ work, making it easier or both. Others saw the chance to expand their services, having AI-powered bots do the work that a person would normally have done,reportseJewishPhilanthropy’s Jay Deitcher.

Lost in translation:Sefaria is one of many Jewish nonprofits that aren’t evading AI but are also eyeing it warily. In February, Sefaria released the first-ever comprehensive English translation of Kli Yakar by Rabbi Shlomo Ephraim of Luntschitz. Such a translation would have taken 18 months for a person to do — Sefaria did it in a third of the time using AI, which was then checked by a human translator. “It was a really significant cost improvement,” Michael Kellman, chief product officer at Sefaria, told eJP. “And that was using Claude 3.7, which was state-of-the-art when we started that project. … Every month, there’s a new version that comes out that is twice as good or three times as good as the one that came before it.”

Read the full report here.

Share GOING TO COLLEGE Hadar expands onto campus with rabbis at Rutgers, UMass Amherst and NYU University students participate in Hadar Insittutes Manger Winter Learning Seminar in January 2026. Courtesy/Hadar Looking to bolster Israel’s national security and national standing, as well as provide a springboard for promising students in aerospace engineering, Houston-based businessman and proud Technion alumnus Max Blankfeld has endowed an international prize at the Israeli school to help transform the aerospace field, bringing in foreign researchers one year and boosting local students the next, reportseJewishPhilanthropy’s Justin Hayet.

Reaching new heights:“Aerospace in Israel plays a very important role in the security of Israel,” Blankfeld told eJP, explaining his decision to split the prize’s impact. “The idea was to have an international prize that would bring and honor the best minds… and allow them to share ideas and knowledge [with students and faculty].” The prize in the alternating year “will be to encourage students at the Technion who are very promising to develop their own ideas in the field.”

Read the full report here.

Share COMMUNAL HEALTH From Sinai to group therapy: Why follow-up matters for soldiers and Diaspora Jews alike Noam Weiss The Hadar Institute is making a push into Jewish campus life, announcing on Wednesday that it will place rabbis at three major universities across the Northeast for the coming academic year. The university expansion comes as part of an ongoing effort by the nondenominational egalitarian movement to extend access to its programming across every stage of Jewish life, reports eJewishPhilanthropy’s Nira Dayanim.

Northeast extension: The three “Hadar campus rabbis” will be installed at Rutgers University, University of Massachusetts Amherst and New York University, in partnership with Hillel, the organization said. “Theres really no substitute for being on a campus in order to have a direct and sustained relationship and connection with college students,” Rabbi Elie Kaunfer, president and CEO of the Hadar Institute, told eJewishPhilanthropy. “It was the right moment to take this next step for a deeper connection to campus life.”

Read the full report here.

Share SHAVUOT 5786 The brilliance of brokenness A depiction of the giving of the Ten Commandments in a tapestry by Marc Chagall housed in the Chagall State Hall of the Knesset building in Jerusalem. Avishai Teicher/Wikimedia Commons “It never escapes me that whenever we go back in time to accept the Ten Commandments on Shavuot, we know — because we have been here before — that soon the sapphire tablets created by God will be broken, smashed to smithereens. That explosion echoes for 40 years, all the way to the end of Torah and God’s moving eulogy of Moses,” writes veteran Jewish communal professional Robert Lichtman in an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy.

Strange praise:“The very last Rashi in the Torah ends with God saying to Moses, ‘Yishar kochacha sheh’shavarta— More power to you for smashing them’ (Deuteronomy 34:12). This, to me, is the most breathtaking, perfect metaphor for where we find ourselves today, and where Jews of every generation that came before us stood as well, because the differences among us are not new.”

Read the full piece here.

Share LIFE SUPPORT Why an answer to our anxiety might lie in Jewish texts Illustrative. Women learning together. Antonio Diaz/Adobe Stock “Jewish learning is often framed as enrichment; as something for children, or for adults with time and prior knowledge, or as preparation for a lifecycle event. But that framing misses learning’s deeper function,” writes Rabbi Ana Bonnheim, founding executive director of the Jewish Learning Collaborative, in an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy.

A source of resilience: “Judaism is a lifelong practice. When we center learning in that experience, adults can access and reaccess it at any stage, especially in moments of searching or instability. That shift has practical implications. It means investing in adult learning with the same seriousness as youth education; and not just one-off programs, but sustained study. It means tweaking learning experiences so that people with little or no background can feel welcome and curiosity, not prior knowledge, is the prerequisite for participation. It means expanding models beyond the classroom to include one-on-one or small-group study, where learners can bring real questions and not feel exposed. And it means integrating Jewish texts into the moments when people are actively seeking meaning after loss, during crisis or in periods of transition.”

Read the full piece here.

Share Worthy Reads Values Over Ideology: In The Atlantic, Israel Policy Forum co-founder and philanthropist Michael W. Sonnenfeldt examines the modern crisis of identity and security facing American Jews. “Anti-Semitism is rising political identities are being reshuffled, and emotional ties to Israel are strained by policies that clash with deeply held democratic and ethical commitments. The simultaneity of these pressures — political, moral, and psychological — is what makes the present moment feel so destabilizing… We cannot accept the erosion of pluralistic democracy as the price of order, security, or ideological victory. That lesson, more than ideology, anchors where I ultimately stand.” [TheAtlantic]

Solidarity Despite Rhetoric:InThe Forward, Rob Eshmanarguesthat despite the divisive and inflammatory rhetoric previously expressed by the leadership at the Islamic Center of San Diego, Jewish organizations were right to offer support following a deadly shooting at the mosque. “The teenagers who opened fire on the Islamic Center of San Diego didn’t care what the imam said about Gaza. They saw Muslims, and they wanted them dead — the same way the Pittsburgh and Poway shooters saw Jews. Our enemies are not making the distinctions we make about each other. Maybe it’s time we stopped making them too.”[TheForward]

Revisiting Ben-Gurion’s Vision:In an Israel Democracy Institute explainer, Shlomit Ravitsky Tur-Paz and Hodaya Ben Aricontendthat a Knesset bill to use Orthodox definitions to define “Who is a Jew?” is not a reversion to traditional ideas but a radical shift that risks fracturing Israel’s social cohesion and jeopardizing its relationship with Diaspora Jewry. “Over the years… many political attempts have been made to add the words ‘according to halakha’ to the law. Yet every prime minister, from both the Right and the Left, refrained from doing so. In practice, if the current proposal is adopted, it would constitute a revolution in relation to all previous decisions on the matter, rather than a return to any prior arrangement.”[IDI]

Word on the Street The Institute for Jewish Policy Researchreleaseda policy paper by top Jewish demographerSergio DellaPergolapredicting that shifting demographic power toward Israel, internal religious growth and the persistence of assimilation and antisemitism will necessitate new models of leadership and unity to sustain Jewish identity and collective interests over the next century…

ILTV CEOTom Zadokand entrepreneurReuven MoskowitzacquiredILTV from its original ownersSimon Falic,David Herzog,Jess DolginandYaakov Berg…

A study byInside Philanthropyfindsthatbillionaires and their heirsnow maintain control over half of the nations 100 largest private foundations…

A new international initiative led byThe Rockefeller FoundationandTemasek Trustis directingphilanthropic resources toward the global nuclear sector to assist nations in developing the essential infrastructure required to implement nuclear power safely…

Speaking at aHouse Education Workforce subcommitteehearing on Wednesday, a doctor accused his union of engaging in systemic discrimination against Jewish and Israeli health providers, supporting terrorist sympathizers and making “its obsession with a single geopolitical conflict a defining future of its identity” — all while he’ll be forced by federal law to fund it,Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports…

A new report fromChariotandK2D Strategiesillustrateshow nonprofits can significantly boost revenue and donor retention by treatingdonor-advised fundsas a core, long-term strategy rather than a secondary channel…

The Association of Israel Studieshas announced the winners for this year’s Shapiro Award for Best Book in Israel Studies:Elizabeth ImberforUncertain Empire: Jews, Nationalism, and the Fate of British ImperialismandAdam FerzigerforAgents of Change: American Jews and the Transformation of Israeli Judaism.Read eJP’s interview with Ferziger about his book here…

New York City Council SpeakerJulie Meninwill back fresh legislation to compel theNYPDto establish formal protocols for deploying buffer zones around schools during protests — a push Menin said will sail through the council with more than enough votes to beat any effort from MayorZohran Mamdanito block it,Jewish Insider’s Will Bredderman reports…

Metaiscuttingapproximately 90 positions in Israel as part of a 10% global workforce reduction aimed at redirecting resources toward AI infrastructure…

Shay Shwartz, an entrepreneur with a background in Israeli defense projects including theIron Dome, hasraised$28 million to launchOcean, an AI-powered cybersecurity platform…

TheState Departmentis investigating the defunctGaza Humanitarian Foundationregarding the management of a $30 million emergency aid grant…

James Murdoch’sLupa SystemsacquiredNew Yorkmagazine, the Vox Media podcast network and the news site for over $300 million— a move that expands his media portfolio and secures high-profile talent likeKara SwisherandScott Galloway…

Michael Bayisslatedto direct aUniversal Picturesfilm based on the real-life story of the mission to rescue two U.S. pilots shot down behind enemy lines in Iran during Operation Epic Fury…

Former Rep.Barney Frank(D-MA), who represented the Boston area in Congress for more than three decades and was the first openly gay member of Congress, died on Tuesday. He was 86. Known as a liberal firebrand, Frank’s most high-profile act in politics was drafting the legislation that tightened financial regulations in response to the 2008 financial crisis, a bill known as theDodd-Frank Wall Street ReformandConsumer Protection Act,Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch reports…

Major Gifts Brandeis Universityreceiveda $25 million gift from trusteeKaren RichardsSachsand her husband,David Sachs,to support student living projects and the construction of a new campus hub called “The Dot,” in honor of Karens mother…

George Soros’Open Society Foundationsannounceda $300 million investment aimed at strengthening economic security and defending civil liberties in the United States in response to concerns over democratic backsliding and rising affordability crises. This follows the foundation’s recent $30 million pledge to tackle antisemitism and anti-Muslim hate.See the eJP story on that initiative here…

Transitions Rabbi Elliott Tepperman was appointed to be the next president and CEO of Reconstructing Judaism…

Debbie Stillman, the principal gifts officer at theAnti-Defamation League,is leavingthe organization to become the next vice president of development at theNational Council of Jewish Womenin August…

Shai Kivitiwas selectedto be the head of the technology division at Israel’sFinance Ministry…

Pic of the Day Courtesy/Jewish Federations of North America Residents of the northern Israeli community of Shtula sit on a tractor today as part of a traditional harvest festival ahead of tonight’s Shavuot holiday, which celebrates both the receiving of the Torah and the wheat harvest.

Birthdays Mark Mirko/Connecticut Public via Getty Images Northern California-based monologist, he celebrated his bar mitzvah at 52 years old in Israel, Josh Kornbluth turns 67

Former U.S. senator from Minnesota, he was previously a comedian, actor and writer, Al Franken turns 75 Vice president of the Swiss Federation of Jewish Communities, Ralph Lewin turns 73 Guitarist and composer, Marc Ribot turns 72 Executive vice president of American Friends of Bar-Ilan University, Ron Solomon Chief rabbi of Mitzpe Yericho (a yishuv located in the Judean desert) and dean of Haraayon Hayehudi yeshiva in Jerusalem, Rabbi Yehuda Kroizer turns 71 CEO of the Boston-based hedge fund Baupost Group, he is co-founder of Times of Israel, Seth Klarman turns 69 New York Times contributing opinion writer, Jeffrey Toobin turns 66 Founder and publisher of City State NY, Thomas Allon turns 64 Director of antisemitism education and associate director of the Israel Action Program, both at Hillel International, Tina Malka Actor, artist and playwright, Lisa Edelstein turns 60 Former head of Dewey Squares sports business practice, now a freelance writer, Frederic J. Frommer Author and journalist, she was a reporter with The New York Times for eight years, Amy Waldman turns 57 U.S. cyclist at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia, she is now the executive director of the New England Mountain Bike Association, Nicole Freedman turns 54 President and CEO of the Michigan-based William Davidson Foundation, Darin McKeever University chaplain for NYU and inaugural chief rabbi of the Moses Ben Maimon Synagogue of the Abrahamic Family House in Abu Dhabi, Rabbi Yehuda Sarna turns 48 Founder of Agora Global Advisory, Brandon Pollak Executive vice president and chief legal officer at Sinclair Inc., David Gibber Professor of computer science at the University of Texas at Austin, Scott Joel Aaronson turns 45 President of Mo Digital, Mosheh Oinounou Los Angeles-born, raised in Israel, international fashion model for Versace, Sharon Ganish turns 43 CEO of CreoStrat, Steve Miller Windsurfer who represented Israel in the Olympics, she is now an energy management program manager at SolarEdge, Maayan Davidovich turns 38 Player on the USC team that won the 2016 NCAA National Soccer Championship, she is now an associate in the L.A. office of Foley Lardner, Savannah Levin turns 31 Comedian, actor and writer, known for starring in the HBO Max series “Hacks,” Hannah Marie Einbinder turns 31 COO at the Yael Foundation, Naomi Kovitz

The post Your Daily Phil: Jewish groups grapple with harnessing AI for Torah study appeared first on eJewishPhilanthropy.

Old City rave fundraiser for surf therapy group HaGal Sheli gets Israeli tech sector dancing, giving

Justin Hayet — Thu, 21 May 2026 12:04:26 +0000

More than 700 Israeli business and philanthropic figures gathered on Wednesday night for a rave at Jerusalem’s Tower of David — and also to mobilize the country’s high-tech sector to address Israel’s crushing mental health crisis by raising money for HaGal Sheli, a nonprofit that uses surf therapy to treat those suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

Spearheaded by Idan Nurik, CEO of the cybersecurity firm Paragon Solutions, the event was backed by a coalition of key high-tech sponsors and partners, including Paragon Solutions, Papaya Global, Natural Intelligence, NFX, WalkMe, Investing[dot]com, NextGen Philanthropic Funds, Island, Clarity Group, M.M., ION Asset Management, Kela, EON, Jefferies, Ratio Energies and Hadasim Group.

With tickets priced at NIS 2,000 ($690), the rave-themed event featured modern light installations projected onto the Tower’s ancient stones, as techno music filled the courtyard. HaGal Sheli (My Wave) did not provide an immediate tally of how much was raised at the event, but indicated that it brought in upwards of NIS 1.4 million ($480,000), not counting costs, a significant portion of which were covered by existing supporters, the organization told eJewishPhilanthropy.

As attendees danced, Noam Feller, 33, who worked with at-risk youth as a teacher before moving to working full-time for HaGal Sheli, shared his personal challenges after his first tour of reserve duty post-Oct. 7. I didn’t feel like the same person. Everything was different, Feller told the crowd. This is a safe zone for me. HaGal Sheli was the only place I felt comfortable after 100 days in reserves.”

A central theme of the evening was the intersection between Israel’s high-tech sector and its military reservists. Ido Galili, who works as a project manager at Paragon and volunteers with the organization, told eJP that his professional environment reflects the needs HaGal Sheli is trying to serve. Among my team at Paragon, 31% [of them] are in elite units and have served for hundreds of days since Oct. 7, Galili said. I work at Paragon, I volunteer at HaGal Sheli, and I did 200 days in reserves. We are bringing together all different colors of Israeli society because trauma doesnt discriminate.

A tech worker, who asked to remain anonymous and who said he has completed over 350 days of reserve duty since the war began, agreed, telling eJP, Look at these people: reservists and techies. They are the backbone of this country. Without them, we have no country. And HaGal Sheli looks after us when we come home.

The origins of HaGal Sheli trace back to well before Israel’s current mental health crisis. In 2013, Yaron Waksman and his co-founder, Omer Tulchinsky, quit their day jobs and took out personal loans to launch what was then a modest pilot program.

That initial vision has since grown into the one of the world’s largest surf therapy organizations, now operating 12 seafront locations in Israel in partnership with local municipalities. The organization has supported over 20,000 people since its launch. Since the start of the war, HaGal Sheli has treated IDF reservists, former hostages and their families, Nova music festival survivors and residents from the Gaza Envelope. To accommodate the growing demand, the organization has received significant grants from Boston’s Combined Jewish Philanthropy and UJA-Federation of New York’s Day After Fund, as well as from individual donors and foundations.

Despite this influx of support, the organization’s level of need continues to rise, Waksman told eJP, noting that the organization has supported 5,000 new participants this year alone.

While still raising funds abroad, the organization has fostered a strong domestic fundraising operation. With an annual budget of $7 million, 78% of funding comes from within Israel — through partnerships with government ministries, Israeli philanthropists and its partnership with the high-tech community, which has expanded significantly since Oct 7. In recent months, donations received in shekels have become increasingly valuable for nonprofits like HaGal Sheli as the dollar has weakened significantly against the shekel, down nearly 18% from a year ago.

The therapeutic framework that HaGal Sheli uses is rooted in the physiological demands of the ocean. Trauma traps your mind and body in place — you are reliving moments of danger all over again, Waksman said. Surfing demands presence, breathing and balancing. It brings the mind and body back to that presence. It’s not just surfing. The sea can be flat, and it can be crazy. It confronts you with yourself over and over again. We form groups of people who have experienced similar traumas.

The clinical results of this work were further solidified by a 2025 impact study conducted by researcher Maya Leventer-Roberts in partnership with Ben-Gurion University. The data indicate a significant clinical shift: while 20% of participants exhibited severe PTSD symptoms prior to the program, that figure fell to 5% following the intervention. Further, the program demonstrated effectiveness in notoriously difficult areas, with 74% of participants reporting a decrease in avoidance behaviors and 67% noting a reduction in the severity of intrusive thoughts.

“We see miracles, Waksman said at the event, surrounded by Israeli supporters and HaGal Sheli program alumni, with pulsing techno music and strobe lights reflecting off the Tower of David’s timeless stones. And yet, he continued, we are in an unprecedented mental health crisis. People will need us for the long term. We dont want to say no to anyone.”

The post Old City rave fundraiser for surf therapy group HaGal Sheli gets Israeli tech sector dancing, giving appeared first on eJewishPhilanthropy.

From Sinai to group therapy: Why follow-up matters for soldiers and Diaspora Jews alike

Contributing Author — Thu, 21 May 2026 12:00:00 +0000

In Jewish life, we learn that the most important moments often come after the big event. Pesach has its drama, but what really shapes us are the 49 quiet days of counting the Omer that lead to Shavuot. Liberation is a moment; integration is a process.

The same is true for trauma work with those who served in Israel’s security forces. Over the past years, intensive processing programs such as Peace of Mind, a cornerstone initiative of the Metiv Israel Psychotrauma Center, have become a vital lifeline for combat veterans. These programs are part of a wider ecosystem of care at Metiv that provides comprehensive support, from specialized interventions for spouses and children to advanced clinical treatments like MDMA-assisted therapy for those facing the most persistent, treatment-resistant post-traumatic stress disorder. In these spaces, men and women who have carried unspeakable experiences finally have room to speak, feel and begin to make sense of what military service has done to their bodies and souls, their relationships and their faith in the world.

Any responsible clinician will say that the real test is not what happens in the workshop, but what happens in the weeks and months afterward. Do new insights evaporate once the program ends? Or do they take root in the daily frictions of family life, sleepless nights, and the next emergency call? That space — the “after” — is where follow-up and integration work live.

The psychology of ‘after’: From catharsis to growth

In trauma treatment we now speak less about catharsis and more about consolidation. A powerful experience can open a door, but without follow-up it can just as easily leave a person more exposed, more raw, unsure what to do next. This is why “booster” or integration sessions are increasingly built into serious programs. These are not social reunions. They are carefully held meetings, weeks or months later. Integration is the heartbeat of the Metiv care model.

From the perspective of group psychology, these sessions also renew the group alliance — the sense that we are still “in this together.” Research on veteran mental health care consistently shows that cohesion and mutual commitment are healing factors in their own right. When a unit or cohort meets again months after an intensive program, the message is simple and powerful: Your process did not end when you returned to Israel. We are still here, you still belong.

Diaspora communities: A parallel journey

What is sometimes overlooked is that Jewish communities abroad are also on a journey of integration. In the Peace of Mind program, Israeli veterans process their experiences not in isolation, but inside Diaspora communities – hosted by families, embraced by synagogues, sitting in circles with local young adults late into the night. These encounters move people on both sides of the ocean.

From a group-analytic perspective, what develops between the Israeli group and the host community is a kind of parallel process: two groups, in very different life contexts, walking through structurally similar emotional terrain. The veterans are integrating combat and loss. The diaspora participants are integrating a visceral encounter with Israel’s vulnerability and resilience that no headline or speech can convey.

When the veterans fly home, they return to their families and units. The host families go back to their schools, offices, and synagogues. But internally, both are now carrying each other. The question is whether we build any follow-up for this relationship as well.

Just as we offer integration sessions to participants, we can offer parallel spaces for the communities that received them: circles where hosts and local students can name what changed for them, how their view of Israel, of Jewish peoplehood, of their own responsibility, has been affected. In the language of systems theory, this honors the mutual impact rather than pretending only one side was “helped”.

Practically, that can mean ongoing WhatsApp groups between cohorts, letters or short videos exchanged months later, joint learning sessions around the chagim, or coordinated actions – for example, a day of volunteering in Israel and a parallel day in the host community. The point is not sentimentality, but continuity: to create a living bridge rather than a one-time mission.

Shavuot and the Omer: an ancient model for integration

Here, the Jewish calendar is not just background; it offers a model. Our tradition teaches that Pesach and Shavuot are bookends of long holiday spread over seven weeks. Pesach is the dramatic rupture; Shavuot is the moment of receiving Torah. In between lies the Omer, a daily practice of counting. As contemporary Israeli writers on psychology and Torah have noted, this can be read as a spiritual-psychological process of moving “from constriction to expansion” – from crisis to new inner space – hitbonenut.

The Omer invites three actions that are deeply relevant for post-traumatic growth:

Daily naming: “Today is the nth day of the Omer.” Each day is located, not blurred. In integration work, inviting a veteran (or a community) to say, “today I notice this is different” is a modern Omer practice. Working one middah at a time: Each week is framed by a different quality: chesed (lovingkindness), gevurah (boundaries and strength), tiferet (balance and beauty), and so on. Likewise, follow-up work is most effective when it focuses: this month we look at anger; next month at relationships; then at meaning and purpose. Bikkurim — first fruits, not final harvest: Shavuot is “Chag HaBikkurim”, the festival of first fruits. The farmer does not bring a perfect harvest, only the first signs that something has grown. In integration terms, the question is not “are you healed?” but “what are your first fruits?” – one better night’s sleep, one conversation that didn’t end in shouting, one moment of unexpected laughter. Naming these “first fruits” together in a follow-up session shifts the tone from failure to fragile growth. For diaspora communities, Shavuot offers a parallel invitation. The Torah is not given once and for all at Sinai; in every generation, and in every community, it is received anew. When a synagogue in Toronto, New York or London chooses to invest not only in recruiting families to host veterans, but also in structured follow-up – learning, sharing, and acting differently because of that encounter – it is, in a very real sense, receiving Torah again: the Torah of shared responsibility, of arvut hadadit.

A shared covenant of accompaniment

In kabbalistic terms, trauma is sometimes described as a shattering that can become the starting point of “tikkun” – repair and re-creation. But tikkun is never a solitary project. It is relational, communal, covenantal.

If there is one message that follow-up and integration work teach us, it is this: the journey out of trauma is rarely a straight line, and no one should be asked to walk it alone. For Israel’s veterans and for Jewish communities around the world who stand with them, Shavuot and the Omer offer more than metaphors. They offer a calendar-shaped reminder that liberation is only the first step – and that the slow, counted work of integration is holy work, too.

Rabbi Eddie Shostak serves as rabbi of Or Chaim Minyan and as principal of Yeshivat Or Chaim in Toronto, Canada. His community recently hosted a delegation of IDF veterans as part of the Peace of Mind program.

Israel Altman is a clinical social worker and Peace of Mind therapist specializing in mental health, resilience and trauma care, and adventure-based counseling.

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Hadar expands onto campus with rabbis at Rutgers, UMass Amherst and NYU

Judah Ari Gross — Thu, 21 May 2026 11:32:05 +0000

The Hadar Institute is making a push into Jewish campus life, announcing on Wednesday that it will place rabbis at three major universities across the Northeast for the coming academic year. The university expansion comes as part of an ongoing effort by the nondenominational egalitarian movement to extend access to its programming across every stage of Jewish life.

The three “Hadar campus rabbis” will be installed at Rutgers University, University of Massachusetts Amherst and New York University, in partnership with Hillel, the organization said. Beginning their roles this summer, the Hadar rabbis will be embedded within their local Hillel’s staff, an arrangement intended to complement existing Jewish student programming while expanding opportunities for Hadar-style egalitarian Jewish learning, prayer and other forms of communal life.

“Theres really no substitute for being on a campus in order to have a direct and sustained relationship and connection with college students,” Rabbi Elie Kaunfer, president and CEO of the Hadar Institute, told eJewishPhilanthropy. “So we reached out to some longtime partners on campus, and they were also excited about having more rabbinic support to bolster Hillels presence and work with students. It was the right moment to take this next step for a deeper connection to campus life.”

Founded in 2006 by Rabbis Kaunfer, Shai Held and Ethan Tucker, Hadar typically rejects conventional denominational labels, instead presenting itself as a values-based traditional egalitarian educational institution and movement.

With this expansion, Hadar will join the landscape of Jewish organizations active on university campuses. While university Hillel centers are typically nondenominational or pluralistic environments, other major campus Jewish organizations — including the Jewish Learning Initiative on Campus, Chabad and Meor — operate within an Orthodox framework or are affiliated with Orthodox institutions.

According to its five-year strategic plan, Hadar plans to have rabbis at five universities by 2028. Placing three instead of two in its first year puts the organization ahead of schedule, said Kaunfer, though the goal remains the same. In the coming years, Hadar also plans to launch a gap-year program and expand its community groups — small, peer-led, grassroots gatherings aimed at creating egalitarian “micro-communities.”

“College students are hungry for Jewish experiences that are both intellectually serious and genuinely welcoming, and that’s precisely what this partnership delivers. Having a Hadar campus rabbi as part of our team has enriched what we’re able to offer students in ways that feel organic and lasting, and we’re thrilled to see Hadar deepen its investment here,” Lisa Harris Glass, CEO of Rutgers Hillel, said in a statement.

Rabbi Noam Blauer, the incoming Hadar campus rabbi at Rutgers University, described his role as centered on relationship-building and empowering students from a range of observance levels to access Torah learning. Transitioning from a part-time role at Rutgers Hillel, said Blauer, he already has a close relationship with the Hillel community, where he will be embedded as part of the campus staff while remaining formally employed by Hadar, and will attend staff meetings for both organizations and serve in a liaison role between them.

“I will have an office at Hillel, a Hillel email, and a Hadar email,” he told eJP. “I really see myself wearing these two hats, which is amazing for me because I see them as two really incredible organizations, and I just feel blessed that I get to be a part of both of them.”

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Why an answer to our anxiety might be in Jewish texts

Contributing Author — Thu, 21 May 2026 11:30:00 +0000

A few weeks after the Oct. 7 attacks, a woman in her forties logged onto Zoom for her first Jewish learning session since childhood. She didn’t come with a clear goal. She wasn’t looking to become more observant or mark a lifecycle event. She came because she couldn’t shake a general sense of unease about Israel, about antisemitism, about what it means to raise Jewish children in this moment.

Her teacher, after listening to her describe her experience, suggested that they begin with the Book of Psalms.

At first, the words felt distant. Then, slowly, they didn’t. Poetry that had felt old and inaccessible slowly became understandable. The fear, the disorientation, the search for steadiness was all there. Week by week, the practice of returning to the text gave shape to feelings that had been hard to name. It didn’t resolve the uncertainty. But it made it more navigable.

I hear a version of this story almost every day.

For many Jews, this decade, from the COVID-19 pandemic to the Oct. 7 attacks and the global surge in antisemitism, has carried a sustained sense of danger and uncertainty. Crisis once felt like disruption and now feels like a sustained condition. In many ways, it is a condition our ancestors would recognize. For much of our history, Jewish life was precarious, sometimes frightening and rarely predictable.

Much of the communal response has focused, understandably, on security, advocacy, public policy. But beneath those urgent needs is a quieter question: How do we live with this level of uncertainty over time?

Our answer has been hiding in plain sight.

Jewish learning is often framed as enrichment; as something for children, or for adults with time and prior knowledge, or as preparation for a lifecycle event. But that framing misses learning’s deeper function. At its core, Jewish learning is a resilience practice.

It is not only about what is studied, but the act of studying itself: the discipline of returning regularly to a set of texts and questions that are bigger than the present moment. It creates rhythm where there is chaos. It offers language for experiences that feel isolating. And it situates the learner within a continuum, reminding them that others have wrestled with these same fears before.

Illustrative. Women learning together. If Jews are going to thrive in this moment, we cannot leave 3,000 years of our collective wisdom confined to childhood classrooms.

Judaism is a lifelong practice. When we center learning in that experience, adults can access and reaccess it at any stage, especially in moments of searching or instability.

That shift has practical implications. It means investing in adult learning with the same seriousness as youth education; and not just one-off programs, but sustained study. It means tweaking learning experiences so that people with little or no background can feel welcome and curiosity, not prior knowledge, is the prerequisite for participation. It means expanding models beyond the classroom to include one-on-one or small-group study, where learners can bring real questions and not feel exposed. And it means integrating Jewish texts into the moments when people are actively seeking meaning after loss, during crisis or in periods of transition.

Different age groups require different approaches. Teenagers can benefit from structured, discussion-based learning that helps them process identity and belonging. Young adults often seek meaning in peer cohorts, where learning is as much about connection as content. Many adults, especially in midlife, are looking for something quieter but no less urgent: a way to make sense of anxiety, responsibility and change. At every age, Jewish study reminds us that we are part of something far larger than any one of us, a sense of connection that psychologists like Jonathan Haidt, Lisa Damour and Tovah Klein remind us is foundational to mental health.

In each case, the goal is not mastery. It is engagement.

In recent years, new models have begun to emerge that reflect this broader understanding. Independent educators, community initiatives and digital platforms are lowering barriers to entry and meeting learners where they are. Some, like the Jewish Learning Collaborative, offer flexible, personalized study, pairing individuals with teachers for one-on-one learning shaped around their interests and questions. Others build small cohorts or topical series that respond directly to current events.

Increasingly, individuals are seeking out text study in response to real-time questions: Parents turning to the prophets to process fear after the Oct. 7 attacks, college students studying passages about identity and responsibility in the face of antisemitism on campus or professionals carving out weekly time to study in order to create structure in an otherwise chaotic news cycle. These approaches are expanding the ecosystem in necessary ways, because the question is no longer whether Jewish learning matters — it is whether Jewish learning is accessible, relevant and integrated enough to serve people in the moments they actually need it.

We should not expect the coming years to feel stable, but we can equip ourselves with practices that make instability more livable. Jewish learning is one of those practices, not because it provides easy answers, but because it offers something more durable: a way of thinking, questioning and returning that helps people not only survive crisis but live meaningfully within it.

Rabbi Ana Bonnheim is the founding executive director of the Jewish Learning Collaborative, which is incubated at Mem Global.

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The brilliance of brokenness

Contributing Author — Thu, 21 May 2026 10:45:00 +0000

What we envision as Jewish unity is an ideal that originated at the foot of Mount Sinai. This is how Rashi (on Exodus 19:2) describes us the first time we were there, on Shavuot morning over 3,300 years ago: “Am echad, b’lev echad — one nation with one heart” We carry that ideal with us as if it were still true, but in fact, this is the complete Rashi: “Like one nation with one heart [here], but every other encampment was with complaints and strife.”

It has been the strife, the divisions among us, rather than some vision of unity, that has manifested among us in every generation. We say we are one. We yearn for unity. We dwell on that ideal because we feel its absence. We pray for it. We sing songs about it. We teach it. We preach it. Can we truly achieve it?

We saw an attempt at this in the early days of the Operation Swords of Iron, when Jews who are called Haredi fanned out throughout Israel to barbecue for soldiers who are called Hiloni. They sang and danced together in what was described as an exceptional expression of Jewish unity. Tragically, that feeling was as fleeting as a Snapchat story, because those beautiful moments of holding one another never matured into the harder work of truly understanding one another.

The myth of Jewish unity

What many of us think of as Jewish unity is inherently elusive because our call to come together often masks a desire for you to become more like me. Such thinking is not only backward; it undermines the construct and the complexity of who we are as a diverse Jewish People.

Let’s begin at the beginning with God’s creation of Adam. The Mishna comments:

“How great is our God! When a person stamps many coins with one seal, they are all similar to each other. But the supreme King of kings stamped all people with the seal of Adam the first human; all of us are Adam’s offspring, and not one of us is similar to another.” (Sanhedrin 4:5)

Rav Avraham Yitzchak HaKohen Cook offers his powerful insight that human diversity is not accidental but deliberate; that the differences among us do not expose flaws, they reveal the infinite facets of the Divine.

Sh’ma Yisrael: Jews, please listen to one another. Rather than reveling in our superficial similarities and downplaying our differences, let’s take the time to explore those differences — maybe to understand them, maybe to appreciate them, but at the very least to learn from them, for this is how we might emulate God. This is how we evolve in our wisdom. “Eizeh’hu chacham? Ha-lomed mikol adam” – “Who is the wise one? One who learns from everyone” (Avot 4:1). The wise person knows that he doesn’t know it all. He leans in to learn from each and every person. He is the chacham at our seder who asks, “What are the testimonies, statutes and laws that God commanded to you?” He knows what these mitzvot mean to him. But rather than overwhelming the conversation with his point of view, he says, “I am curious. I want to know — what do these things mean to you? Perhaps I can become a better person by learning something from you.”

The wise among us will ask, “What color are you seeing that I am not seeing? What music are you hearing that I am not hearing? What dance are you dancing that I am sitting out? What sensation are you feeling that I am not feeling? What injustice are you experiencing that I am clueless about?”

This can be difficult. But I believe this is a practice we will need to cultivate now. The cracks among us are growing deeper and wider. The divisions in Israeli society were overshadowed by the war, but like a moon eclipsed by the earth, they never disappeared. They were there all along, and they are more threatening now. Judicial reform. Jewish vigilantism. Who learns Torah and who fights wars? Does a two-state solution mean a State of Jerusalem and a State of Tel-Aviv? How do we fight antisemitism? What is antisemitism? And most recently, another pain point for Diaspora Jewry: a prominent column in the Religious Zionist publication Makor Rishon, calling upon the Chief Rabbinate to declare that we who do not make aliyah within the next five years will no longer be counted among the Jewish People.

Many of the arguments hurled from one side to the other contain dangerous ideas and warped versions of reality, and they should ultimately be rejected. But even those ideas contain some truth. While we are not obligated to agree, we are obligated to listen. Ben Azzai counsels us, “Do not despise any person and do not discriminate against any thing. For there is no person that has not his hour, and there is no thing that has not its place.” (Avot 4:3)

When we read the Book of Ruth of Shavuot, we learn about a Moabite woman named Ruth who was gleaning in the field of a Jew named Boaz. Jews and Moabites were like parallel lines, destined to exist side by side and never to meet, for a Moabite was forbidden from joining the Jewish People. A man referred to in the text as Ploni Almoni had the opportunity to marry Ruth, but he refused, citing this prohibition. Boaz acknowledged the difference between them, but he did not resign himself to it; he explored it. His curiosity led him to discover a new insight: that this restriction refers to Moabite men but does not apply to Moabite women.

Ploni Almoni — in his smug complacency, in his belief that this relationship could not be redeemed, in his insistence that this chasm was unbridgeable — is consigned to the anonymous void of oblivion; his name will never be known. But Boaz’s courage to try to see things differently, his willingness to shrink the distance between people — he chose a path that led to the birth of a great-grandchild named David and to the promise of our redemption.

The big bang

It never escapes me that whenever we go back in time to accept the Ten Commandments on Shavuot, we know — because we have been here before — that soon the sapphire tablets created by God will be broken, smashed to smithereens. That explosion echoes for 40 years, all the way to the end of Torah and God’s moving eulogy of Moses. The very last Rashi in the Torah ends with God saying to Moses, “Yishar kochacha sheh’shavarta — more power to you for smashing them” (Deuteronomy 34:12).

This, to me, is the most breathtaking, perfect metaphor for where we find ourselves today, and where Jews of every generation that came before us stood as well, because the differences among us are not new.

This is how I understand Rashi: “More power to you sheh’shavarta, for exposing the Torah to reveal its thousands of facets of gleaming light. Each one is a different size. Each one is a different shape. Yet each one is dependent upon every other one, generating infinite ideas, philosophies and practices, reflecting a nation that in its diversity is greater than the sum of all of these parts. A nation that sparkles with more than one perspective, a nation that pulses with more than one understanding.”

Finally, God says: “Moses, you and I will write a new set of tablets. But these fragments she’shavarta also belong in the Holy Ark. Every generation should know that in what seems to be their brokenness lies their brilliance.”

Robert Lichtman has served in senior roles at major Jewish organizations, including UJA-Federation of New York, Hillel International and the Jewish Federation of Greater MetroWest NJ, where he founded The Partnership for Jewish Learning and Life and later served as the chief Jewish learning officer. Now an essayist, mentor and educator, he explores the challenges and possibilities of Jewish communal renewal in his writing and teaching.

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As AI spreads, Jewish groups grapple with what it means for Torah study

Jay Deitcher — Thu, 21 May 2026 10:13:19 +0000

When artificial intelligence exploded into everyday life after the release of ChatGPT in 2022, some religious organizations saw it as an opportunity to supercharge their existing services, speeding up their employees’ work, making it easier or both. Others saw the chance to expand their services, having AI-powered bots do the work that a person would normally have done.

When Michael Kellman, chief product officer at Sefaria, saw the latter —such as one “Maimonides bot” that used the Judeo-Arabic writings of the 12th-century exegete and physician to answer questions about contemporary issues, like the use of stem cells —he immediately recoiled.

“We looked at those examples and said, ‘Were not going to go anywhere near those things. Were running in the other direction,’” Kellman told eJewishPhilanthropy. “AI is there to help us with our mission. Its not changing our mission. And our mission is to give people a real experience with these traditional texts. If AI can help us do that, then thats how were going to use it.”

The different tacks also reflect differences in how Jews engage with religious texts. For some, especially those who observe halacha in their daily lives, those texts provide concrete answers to pressing questions — what, if anything, do I have to do with this dairy spoon that I accidentally just dipped into a meat saucepan that currently only contains hot vegetables? An AI-powered tool could give you a speedy answer to such a question instead of having to call a human rabbi. However, religious text study in Judaism is also considered a good thing lishma, for its own sake. You don’t study the Torah to answer a question; you study Torah because studying Torah is a good thing to do.

Is an AI-powered bot making Torah study more accessible by breaking down barriers, as Rabbi Zohar Atkins argued in a recent essay, or are AI-powered bots curtailing Torah study by just spitting out answers to questions instead of forcing the questioner to take the time to “toil” with the texts, as Max Hollander explored in an essay last year for Lehrhaus?

Sefaria is one of many Jewish nonprofits that aren’t evading AI but are also eyeing it warily. From the moment the organization launched in 2011, it was “about the marriage of access to Torah and technology,” Kellman said. The original goal was to create a free digital library of Torah literature accessible to everyone, and today Sefaria has a library of 383 million words and over 1 million monthly users.

The organization has been the beneficiary of funding and advice from leaders in the AI field, including Joshua Kushner, founder and managing partner of Thrive Capital, one of the leading investors in AI, who served on Sefaria’s board for over a decade. AI is only expanding the organizations mission and quickening the pace of its innovation.

In February, Sefaria released the first-ever comprehensive English translation of Kli Yakar, the early-17th-century Hebrew Torah commentary by Rabbi Shlomo Ephraim of Luntschitz. Such a translation would have taken 18 months for a person to do — Sefaria did it in a third of the time using AI.

How did the organization do it? First, it generated a translation of the Hebrew text using Claude 3.7, an AI model released by Anthropic in 2025, and then Rabbi Francis Nataf, Sefaria’s translation and research specialist, went over the translation — line by line — for accuracy.

“It was a really significant cost improvement,” Kellman said. “And that was using Claude 3.7, which was state-of-the-art when we started that project. Now [Anthropic has released Claude] 4.6… so the technology keeps evolving and getting better. Every month, theres a new version that comes out that is twice as good or three times as good as the one that came before it.”

Sefaria is also testing a tool that can be used to translate text in real time, which may lack “the “artistry of a human translation,” Kellman said, but it can help users understand the meaning of short passages. In addition, Sefaria is investing in “automated checkers” that use one AI program to translate a text and a second to check the translation, reporting where inaccuracies may be, so a human can go in and make edits.

Because Sefaria is the largest free digital library of Torah literature, AI programs are already training themselves on the library. Since January, there has been an “explosion” in programmers using Sefaria’s open-source Torah to craft innovative ways to study the texts through its “Powered by Sefaria” initiative, Kellman said.

Initiatives include a tool that color-codes Torah by the amount of commentary in each section, a tool that creates a personalized learning schedule for users and a tool that digitizes the popular ArtScroll Siddur, allowing users to highlight sections, add notes and change font size.

A goal for Sefaria, Kellman said, is to use AI to learn regular users’ interests and personalize the experience. When individuals walk into a public library, it looks the same for everyone, but, he said, “The study hall or beit midrash is more customized. You might have your particular chair that you go back to every day, and youve got your books arrayed in a particular way. I like to organize them by alphabet. You like to organize them by height. Ive got the three books open that I was reading yesterday that I want to come back to, and I want to jump right in.” He wants Sefaria to have that “beit midrash feeling.”

While there is still hesitancy to implement AI in the Jewish world, trust is growing, especially as organizations like Sefaria roll out programs slowly and carefully, Rabbi Geoffrey Mitelman, the founding director of Sinai and Synapses, which provides classes, programs, grants and fellowships at the intersection of science and Judaism, told eJP.

If someone asks AI to write a dvar Torah, a Torah speech, and then reads it off verbatim, it will be bad, Mitelman said, but if someone uses AI to research a dvar Torah, it may not only take less time but also be more accurate.

“AI and computers are great at very repetitive, very manual tasks that humans dont really like to do anyway,” Zachary Fish, founder and CEO of Sofer.Ai, a for-profit company that offers an AI platform that transcribes shiurim, religious lectures, told eJP.

As long as people have a “sensitivity to how special, how sensitive the [Torah] is,” he said, “AI can let us bring out our potential, to focus on where we could be creative, where we have differentiated views that are not patterns that everyone has.”

Sinai and Synapses is working on projects based around setting boundaries and using AI for good, including Digital Menches, a program at the Union for Reform Judaism’s 6 Points Sci-Tech Academy, a summer camp in Newbury, Mass., and Moral Compass, an interfaith initiative that helps users set guidelines for AI based around their “personal moral compass.” The initiatives are “asking the questions of, what does it mean to be a decent human being when theres all of these questions that are coming up in an upending of the digital world,” Mitelman said.

People are scared that AI models, known as Large Language Models, are “going to encapsulate everything and take over everything, but, if youre able to say, “Heres what I want the red lines to be, here the things that I want to make sure that stays human, then I feel more comfortable using AI, knowing that Ive created guardrails,” he said.

Establishing such guardrails is a topic many are worried about. Last month, a Faith-AI Covenant meeting was held in New York with representatives from OpenAI, Anthropic and tech companies along with leaders from the Archdiocese of Newark, the New York Board of Rabbis, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the Hindu Temple Society of North America, to discuss the consequences of AI.

“Like social media, theres going to be products and platforms that are addictive and helpful in the short term, but in the long term are bad,” Fish said. “But I think were much more aware from the social media kind of cycle to be thoughtful about the product. I hope, collectively as a society, we are thoughtful about really taking advantage of the potential while limiting the dangers on a bigger scale.”

Fish’s company, Sofer.ai, is used by nonprofits, including Aish and the Orthodox Union, to transcribe lessons and classes. Pre-COVID, Aish had 200,000 students per year who visited its Jerusalem campus, but that number dwindled to 60,000 due to the pandemic and Oct. 7 massacres.

Aish is using Sofer.ai to translate their over 1,000 recorded classes, as well as transcribing classes in real time. The transcripts are then fact-checked by two experts. They also use AI to analyze the lessons, so teachers, some with 50-plus years of experience, can better understand the techniques they use and their methodology.

Aish has “always been looking for different ways to innovate,” Noah Levin, the organization’s chief product officer, told eJP. In June, Aish plans to launch a free app, AishU, with the goal of having 10,000 users by the end of the year.

The initiative takes 50 years of wisdom — 50,000 hours of Aish courses — and funnels it into AishU, putting “the Aish curriculum in every single persons hands,” Levin said. “Anybody can go and access it anywhere in the world, in any language. Our core mission is to make Jewish wisdom accessible and relevant to people at scale, and this is the best way weve found to do that today.”

Pre-AI, the app would have taken 10 years to create, but it took only a year to program using AI. It includes videos that were created in hours that would have cost thousands of dollars to create only five years ago. Lessons are personalized to users, so a novelist or a musician will have lessons tailored to their experiences. Users can learn at their own pace, and even partner with a study buddy.

Aish has also used AI for something more controversial — an “AI rabbi” that users can ask anything. Levin said that some people worry that the AI rabbi will displace human rabbis, while others complain that it doesn’t always offer decisive answers based on Jewish law.

Aish decided to launch the AI rabbi because some users feel more comfortable asking questions to a computer anonymously rather than to a person. The AI does its “best to offer, based on our entire library of 50 years of Jewish wisdom, something that can help answer your questions,” Levin said. Aish measures success based on if a user is engaged with Jewish wisdom, Levin said, something the AI rabbi helps them do. On top of the site, there is a disclaimer: “AI responses are for educational purposes only. Please consult a qualified rabbi for real-life decisions.” (You still need to ask a human rabbi what to do with your dairy spoon, sorry.)

And what would Maimonides, the Rambam, say about stem-cell research?

“Maimonides had a sophisticated approach to this kind of question, though he didnt address stem cells specifically — the technology is obviously far beyond his time,” the AI version of the real-life Aish rabbi, Daniel Rowe, replied when asked. “But heres what matters from his thinking: He held that saving a life overrides almost everything else in Jewish law. The principle is pikuach nefesh, and its absolute. You violate Shabbat, you violate dietary laws, you violate nearly any commandment if a life hangs in the balance.”

But then AI-Rowe’s answer gets complicated.

“Maimonides would likely support the healing aim and probably permit the research if it genuinely saves lives, but hed want clarity on the ethics of the source material. Thats a conversation for contemporary rabbinic authorities,” AI-Rowe summed up, “not the Rambam himself.”

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Your Daily Phil: How can Israel shore up diminishing American Jewish support?

EJP — Wed, 20 May 2026 13:54:24 +0000

Good Wednesday morning!

In today’s edition ofYour Daily Phil, we interviewTed Sasson, a scholar at Tel Aviv’sInstitute for National Security Studiesand co-author of a new report on how Israel can shore up American Jewish support, and report on a new aerospace prize at Israel’s Technion that was endowed by alumnusMax Blankfeldwith the goal of boosting Israeli security and international standing.We feature an opinion piece byShelley Rood WernickandLiv Mendelsohnspotlighting a caregiver crisis in the U.S. and Canada;Lisa EisenandDawne Bear Novicoffidentify priority areas for investment based onReimagining Israel Education’s framework for the field; andAudra Bergshares what it takes to build and sustain Jewish community in America today. Also in this issue:Fay Twersky,Andrew BergerandDebbie Wasserman.

Today’sYour Daily Philwas curated by eJP Managing Editor Judah Ari Gross, Opinion Editor Rachel Kohn and Israel Editor Justin Hayet. Have a tip?Email us here.

Follow us on Whatsapp Follow us on Telegram What Were Watching The Knesset unanimously advanced a bill to dissolve the parliament, which would move up elections that are slated to take place no later than Oct. 27. The bill still needs to go through several more readings and votes before it is passed.

The American Innovation Forum is hosting an event this evening at the American Hub in Jerusalem featuring a panel with Tamir Goodman, Orit Greenbaum Lipski and Muawyah Akash.

Also in Jerusalem, HaGal Sheli, the Israeli nonprofit that uses surfing to combat post-traumatic stress disorder, is hosting a gala event tonight at the Tower of David, featuring leaders from Israels high-tech community. If youre there, say hi to eJPs Justin Hayet!

The Jewish Federations of North America, Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, Combat Antisemitism Movement and the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History are hosting a congressional breakfast to celebrate Jewish American Heritage Month.

What You Should Know A QUICK WORD FROM EJPS JUDAH ARI GROSS The Knesset’sConstitution, Law and Justice Committee gathered this morningfor a lively debate on a bill that would effectively criminalize egalitarian and women-led prayer at the Western Wall, including areas that currently permit it, by designating any practice in violation of the Chief Rabbinate’s rulings as “desecration,” punishable by up to seven years in prison.

There are several reasons to believethat the bill will not be voted into law on technical grounds. But another reason why the bill, which was backed by nearly every member of the coalition, may end up buried is that its passage would deeply alienate the vast majority of Diaspora Jews, particularly American Jews, at a time when American popular support for Israel is waning.

It is therefore fitting that as this bill,which is nearly universally opposed by mainstream American Jewish organizations, was being debated in the Knesset,eJewishPhilanthropy’s Judah Ari Gross was speaking withTed Sasson, a scholar of American Jewry now at Tel Aviv’s Institute for National Security Studies, who is the co-author ofa new report, “American Jewry Is Changing: What Israel Must Do to Preserve the Partnership,” examining how the Israeli government can shore up its increasingly strained ties with American Jewry.

JAG:We’re having this conversation as a Knesset committee discusses a bill that would effectively criminalize non-Rabbinate-approved practices at the Western Wall —something that most American Jews would oppose but that the ruling coalition supported. Are your recommendations feasible for this government or a similar one, or are you effectively saying that new leadership is necessary to shore up American Jewish support for Israel. If this coalition is reelected, is there still a way to maintain that support?

TS:Youre right that the report is geared toward a new government, but we try to imagine that it could be a new Netanyahu-led government that seeks to repair some of the damage that accumulated during this very long war.

I think a new Israeli government has to be able to articulate a moral commitment, a strategic vision that enables us to see beyond the permanent integration of millions of Palestinians into Israeli society [without citizenship]. That might be a two-state solution, it might be a federation, it might be a confederation, who knows? But an incoming Israeli government has to be able to enunciate a vision of an Israel that is secure, with a Jewish majority and a democratic polity, in order to continue to benefit from strong support that extends beyond the Orthodox and the right wing of American Jewry.

JAG:In addition to those higher policy recommendations, what else can Israel do?

TS:In the report, we recommend that Israel focus on the areas where its uniquely capable of supporting American Jewry, and thats especially in the area of education. So with Birthright, we gotta get the numbers back up. Masa and university-based programs are an opportunity for Israel to build upon and expand the role it plays in educating Jewish young adults who are facing universities that are increasingly hostile.

Gap-year programs are [also] a part of that. So its not just a matter of restoring Birthright to the numbers that existed previously, but lets expand gap years and make it as normative a part of the Jewish life course as Birthright had been for many years. I think theres an opportunity there.

Read the rest of ‘What You Should Know’ here.

TAKING OFF Technion alum endows new aerospace prize to foster global innovation at his Haifa alma mater Builing on the campus of Technion – Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa. Screenshot Looking to bolster Israel’s national security and national standing, as well as provide a springboard for promising students in aerospace engineering, Houston-based businessman and proud Technion alumnus Max Blankfeld has endowed an international prize at the Israeli school to help transform the aerospace field, bringing in foreign researchers one year and boosting local students the next, reports eJewishPhilanthropy’s Justin Hayet.

Reaching new heights:“Aerospace in Israel plays a very important role in the security of Israel,” Blankfeld told eJP, explaining his decision to split the prize’s impact. “The idea was to have an international prize that would bring and honor the best minds… and allow them to share ideas and knowledge [with students and faculty].” The prize in the alternating year “will be to encourage students at the Technion who are very promising to develop their own ideas in the field.”

Read the full report here.

Share CRITICAL CARE The care crisis reshaping Jewish life Illustrative. Adobe Stock “In both Canada and the United States, 1 in 4 adults provides care to a family member, friend or neighbor,” write Shelley Rood Wernick, associate vice president of the Center on Aging, Trauma and Holocaust Survivor Care at the Jewish Federations of North America, and Liv Mendelsohn, executive director of the Canadian Centre for Caregiving Excellence, a program of the Azrieli Foundation, in an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy. “[C]aregivers are holding families and communities together while facing serious financial, emotional and health pressures.”

Falling short:“Care is essential to Jewish communal infrastructure. That fact was front and center at the Network of Jewish Human Service Agencies PowerNET conference May 4-7 in Toronto. … But that belief has to inform institutional practice. And Jewish philanthropy must continue to be a core partner by calling for better care policies in workplaces and by funding what public systems often overlook.”

Read the full piece here.

Share WHAT COMES NEXT Building on ‘Reimagining Israel Education’: Moving forward with shared purpose and shared investment Jewish educators on a professional development trip to Israel led by Prizmah in March 2024. Courtesy/Prizmah “Nearly two years ago, our foundations embarked on Reimagining Israel Education, an ambitious initiative to reshape how the Jewish community delivers Israel education and meets this challenging moment for young Jews. The need was clear: Despite real progress over the past two decades, the last five years — especially after Oct. 7, 2023 — showed that many Jewish learners need a more holistic, realistic and relevant approach to Israel education, woven across Jewish learning at every age and setting,” write Lisa Eisen, co-president of Schusterman Family Philanthropies, and Dawne Bear Novicoff, executive vice president of the Jim Joseph Foundation, in an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy.

From insights to action:“Last month, we released this framework and its 10 core principles for more authentic Israel education. It builds on the field’s strengths, while also calling on us to center learners and to invest in educators, leaders and high-quality content so that Israel education can be deeper, stronger and more impactful and enduring. … [I]t is urgent that the field put this work into practice now, responding strategically and at scale, by equipping educators to deliver. Here are some of the areas we believe require immediate investment.”

Read the full piece here.

Share LESSONS IN LEADERSHIP Holding a Jewish community together, consistently and over time Audra Berg, CEO of the Jewish Federation of Broward County (Fla.), at an event marking the anniversary of the Oct. 7 attacks. Courtesy “I have spent my career inside the Jewish community — as a professional, a leader and someone deeply invested in its future — and it is hard to remember a moment that feels quite this unsettled,” writes Audra Berg, CEO of the Jewish Federation of Broward County (Fla.),in an opinion piece foreJewishPhilanthropy.“The headlines are relentless: war on and off in Israel, rising antisemitism, deepening political divides and a growing sense that the institutions we once trusted are no longer steady. There are days when it feels as if things are spinning beyond anyone’s control.”

And yet:“When I look at the world, it is easy to feel discouraged, but when I look at how people are responding — reaching toward one another rather than turning away — the horizon feels hopeful. Jewish life feels both fragile and fiercely alive. In Broward, we have seen that when we lean into the kind of connection that builds trust, our community responds. What follows are four lessons about deepening and growing community, shaped in partnership through an initiative we call Ignite Broward.”

Read the full piece here.

Share Worthy Reads Post-Aid Glow-Up: In the Wall Street Journal, the American Enterprise Institutes Daniel Samet argues that phasing out U.S. military aid is a strategic imperative that would protect Israel from Washingtons political volatility and restore its full strategic independence. “Unlike other American security partners, Israel can get by without a check from Uncle Sam. The Jewish state now has a higher per capita gross domestic product than Germany or Qatar. Assistance from Washington accounts for about 8% of Israel’s approximately $45 billion defense budget, a smaller share than before… If Democrats win in 2028, expect them to punish Israel…What will happen if a Democratic president or a Democratic Congress suddenly cuts off assistance, shocking the Israeli system? Better to begin before then so Israel can wean itself off on its own terms.”[WSJ]

Anything Goes: Days after The New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof published a piece alleging numerous abuses of Palestinian prisoners by Israeli security officials, Kristof’s colleague on the Opinion desk, Bret Stephens, observes the documented history of news outlets publishing falsehoods about Israel without basic fact-checking. “The common thread in these and many other stories is that they all involve strenuous, if ultimately embarrassed, efforts to prove that Israelis deliberately seek to kill the innocent and maim the vulnerable, apparently for no other reason than gratuitous cruelty. This isn’t a matter of reporters’ impartially trying to expose wrongdoing wherever they find it — if that were the case, the errors wouldn’t invariably lean in the same ideological direction. It isn’t speaking truth to power. It’s feeding narratives to the credulous.” [NYTimes]

Word on the Street A newly launched super PAC with ties to Republicans has spent nearly half a million dollars to help boost a Democrat running for a competitive open House seat in Texas who is facing growing bipartisan furor over a series of virulently antisemitic social media remarks, including calls to detain American Zionists, Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel reports…

New York City MayorZohran Mamdanihas in recent daysheld a series of meetings and listening sessionswith Wall Street executives, including JPMorgan Chase CEOJamie Dimonand Goldman Sachs CEODavid Solomon, after Mamdani angered business leaders by filming a video outside the home of Citadel’sKen Griffinin which the mayor announced a plan to tax second homes in the city…

The Forwardexaminesthe controversy surrounding an opinion piece by a pro-Israel Jewish writer that was published in an Oklahoma news outlet comparing the underdogOklahoma City ThunderNBA team to Israel, which drew threats against the newspaper’s Jewish owner…

British Airwayshasextendedits cancellation of all flights to and from Israel until at least August due to ongoing security concerns and regional operational assessments…

The University of Haifalaunched“Northern Radiance,” a new transition program designed specifically for discharged Druze IDF soldiers…

In a post on X,RabbiAvi Weiss, the founder of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah and Yeshivat Maharat in the Bronx, N.Y.,announcedthat he and his wife madealiyah…

TheJewish Federation of Greater Harrisburg(Pa.)plansto sell its six-acre campus and rely on private donations to cover roughly $500,000 in debt and an outstanding mortgage to avoid filing for bankruptcy…

The Department of Justice’s Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism isdebutinga 15-city national tour aimed at increasing incident reporting, enhancing local law enforcement collaboration and protecting students in schools…

Police in New Yorkareinvestigatingthe death of a Jewish bakery owner and formerHatzolahvolunteer whose body was found in the Queens neighborhood of Flushing after he was shot in the neck and back…

Irish authorSally Rooneyhasarrangedto publish the Hebrew translation of her latest novel,Intermezzo,through an Israel-based publisher aligned with the BDS movement…

Media executivesAri EmanuelandMark Shapiroareacquiringindividual minority stakes of less than 10% in the NFL’sLas Vegas Raiders…

Comedy writerBarry Blaustein, a longtime collaborator of comedian Eddie Murphy who worked on the screenplays of “Coming to America” and “The Nutty Professor,”diedat 71…

Bernie Ghert, a Toronto-based businessman and philanthropist,diedon May 4 at 86

Major Gifts Hillel Internationals seventh annual Global Giving Week raised over $5.5 million through 11,000 donations to support Jewish campus life across 170 locations worldwide…

University of Richmond alumni Carole and Marcus Weinstein donated $6 million to expand the universitys Wilton Center to support expanding interfaith campus programming…

Transitions Fay Twerskyhasannouncedher upcoming retirement as president of theArthur M. Blank Family Foundation…

Cincinnati’sCollege for Contemporary Judaismhas selected its inaugural board of trustees, which will be led by Board ChairAndrew Berger: Gary Greenberg, James Greenberg, Rabbi Micah Greenstein, Mark Kanter, Jerry Kathman, Amy Katz, B.H. Levy Jr., Lynn Rosenberg Mayfield, Rabbi Sandy Eisenberg Sasso and Rick Seibold..

King Solomon High Schoolin the U.K. hasselectedJonathan Harristo serve as its interim head teacher starting in June…

The International Council of Jewish WomenhasinductedDebbie Wassermanas its new president…

Pic of the Day Courtesy/Jewish Federations of North America Jewish Federations of North America Board Chair Gary Torgow addresses Jewish community leaders and lawmakers yesterday on Capitol Hill, where he led a coalition of more than 400 leaders from 82 communities in over 200 meetings with Congress. The lobbying effort focused on advancing the bipartisan Jewish American Security Act to secure increased federal funding for Jewish institutional safety.

Sponsored by Sens. Jacky Rosen (D-NV) and James Lankford (R-OK), the proposed legislation would increase Nonprofit Security Grant Program funding to $1 billion for houses of worship and community centers. The bill also includes provisions requiring the Department of Education to appoint an antisemitism coordinator, establishing new regulations for colleges receiving federal funding and mandating new disclosures from online platforms regarding the moderation of antisemitic content.

Birthdays DENISE TRUSCELLO/GETTY IMAGES FOR BOA STEAKHOUSE LAS VEGAS Emmy Award-winning singer and songwriter, Rachel Platten turns 45

CEO at Kings Care A Safe Place, operator of multiple drug and alcohol rehabilitation and treatment centers, Ilene Leiter Canadian businesswoman and elected official, she served in the Ontario Assembly and in the Canadian House of Commons, Elinor Caplan turns 82 Former member of the New York State Assembly until 2020, representing the 97th Assembly District in Rockland County, Ellen Jaffee turns 82 Former member of the U.S. House of Representatives (D-CT) for 20 years, he was born in a DP camp in Germany after WWII, Sam Gejdenson turns 78 Chagrin Falls, Ohio, attorney, Robert Charles Rosenfeld CEO emeritus of the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, Michael S. Miller Seamstress and weaver, Bernice Ann Penn Venable Retired in 2022 as a federal judge for the Southern District of Texas, she is now a mediator and arbitrator, Judge Nancy Ellen Friedman Atlas turns 77 Five-time Emmy Award-winning producer and writer who has worked on “Saturday Night Live,” PBS “Great Performances” and “Its Garry Shandlings Show,” Alan Zweibel turns 76 Former director of international affairs, policy and planning at the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, following 12 years at the ADL, Michael Alan Salberg Professor at Tulane, he was president of the Aspen Institute, CEO of CNN and managing editor of Time, Walter Isaacson turns 74 Born in upstate New York as Michael Scott Bornstein, former Israeli ambassador to the U.S. and then member of the Knesset, Michael Oren turns 71 Actor and singer, known for her work in musical theater, Judy Kuhn turns 68 CEO and founder of Abrams Media, chief legal analyst for ABC News and the founder of Mediaite, Dan Abrams turns 60 New York City location scout and unit production manager for feature films, TV and commercials, David Brotsky Co-founder and CEO of Breitbart News, Larry Solov turns 58 Senior advisor at Majority Democrats, Ami Copeland French singer and actor, at 13 she became the youngest singer to ever reach No. 1 in the French charts, Elsa Lunghini turns 53 Co-president of Major League Baseballs Tampa Bay Rays, Matthew Silverman turns 50 Principal of public policy at Amazon, Philip Justin “PJ” Hoffman Program officer of Jewish life at the Michigan-based William Davidson Foundation, Vadim Avshalumov Founder and CEO of Berkeley, California-based Caribou Biosciences, a genome engineering company, Rachel Haurwitz, Ph.D. Senior director of government relations and strategy for the ADL, Lauren D. Wolman Executive communications leader, Susan Sloan Vice president of digital advocacy at McGuireWoods Consulting, Josh Canter Beauty pageant winner who was awarded the title of Miss Israel 2014, Doron Matalon turns 33 Master of public policy candidate at Oxford University, Aylon Berger turns 26 Conservative political activist, he is a survivor of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, Kyle Kashuv turns 25

The post Your Daily Phil: How can Israel shore up diminishing American Jewish support? appeared first on eJewishPhilanthropy.

How can Israel shore up American Jewish support?

Judah Ari Gross — Wed, 20 May 2026 12:22:50 +0000

The Knesset’s Constitution, Law and Justice Committee gathered this morning to discuss a bill that would effectively criminalize egalitarian and women-led prayer at the Western Wall, including areas that currently permit it, by designating any practice in violation of the Chief Rabbinate’s rulings as “desecration,” punishable by up to seven years in prison.

There are several reasons to believe that the bill will not be voted into law on technical grounds. Representatives of the Justice Ministry noted that it is problematic to give a non-legislative body like the Rabbinate the de facto power to send people to prison for seven years, and the bill’s own author —Avi Maoz of the far-right Noam Party —acknowledged that the legislation would also criminalize Jews’ visiting the Temple Mount, a practice which he supports, as the Rabbinate has deemed that a violation of religious law. But another reason why the bill, which was backed by nearly every member of the coalition, may end up buried is that its passage would deeply alienate the vast majority of Diaspora Jews, particularly American Jews, at a time when American popular support for Israel is waning.

It is therefore fitting that as this bill, which is nearly universally opposed by mainstream American Jewish organizations, was being debated in the Knesset, eJewishPhilanthropy was speaking with Ted Sasson, a professor at Middlebury College and the Ruderman Family Foundation Scholar in Residence in the Israel-United States Research Program at Tel Aviv’s Institute for National Security Studies, who is the co-author of a new report examining how the Israeli government can shore up its increasingly strained ties with American Jewry. (This includes addressing Israeli policies that reject non-Orthodox Judaism, which “continue to rankle many American Jews,” according to Sasson and his co-author, Avishay Ben Sasson-Gordis.)

The 67-page report, “American Jewry Is Changing: What Israel Must Do to Preserve the Partnership,” which is based on dozens of interviews with Israeli and American Jewish figures, as well as scholarly and journalistic articles, examines both the current state of affairs for American Jews, including Israel’s policies toward them, and issues recommendations on how the Israeli government can more effectively engage with American Jews and maintain the relationship, which the authors describe as critical for the country’s national security.

The policy memorandum describes American Jews as increasingly secular, moving away from traditional institutions and less connected to Israel than in the past. To address this, the report encourages the Israeli government to invest in immersive educational programs —Birthright trips, gap-year programs, university-level initiatives —and to scale back its more divisive policies, both those directly related to world Jewry and those connected to the Palestinians, which are at odds with American Jewry’s positions.

Judah Ari Gross: Let’s jump right into the report. One of the things that stands out to me in your descriptions of American Jewry is that there’s no mention of “the Surge,” which has been widely discussed by American Jewish organizations. Was that deliberate? Do you not see that as a significant milestone?

Ted Sasson: Yeah, I didnt think it was a milestone. I thought there was a bump, not a “Surge.” That was reflected in self-reported data, which is not especially reliable. But also my friends who head up JCCs, day schools and synagogues said that they did feel that there was incremental change, some increased interest and participation, but that waned a little bit after the second year. I just dont think its a structural transformation.

Now the folks who invented the notion of “the Surge,” who described it and promoted it, did so for really laudable reasons to say, “Theres an opportunity here that we need to embrace.” And thats the right impulse. I support it entirely.

I think American Jewry may be on the cusp of inventing new movements, new ways of being Jewish, new cultural and intellectual directions, and well see them unfold in the years ahead.

A lot of smart observers have chronicled the decline of the establishment, of the major movements. The headwinds are just enormous. American Judaism really became a dynamic and forceful component in American life in the context of robust American Christianity in the post-World War II period. Thats when the Conservative movement took off, the Reform movement, the suburban synagogues. All of that is slowly decaying and declining together with — and not as rapidly as —mainline Protestantism.

The point of the report is not to say that Israel can correct American Jews problems, but that it can contribute, which is important.

JAG: Is the development of those new movements and institutions necessarily a good thing? Theres a real downside that I see in throwing out these existing institutions that are strong and robust and starting anew. I understand the motivations and the concerns about the “establishment,” but those big organizations can also more effectively concentrate and wield power on behalf of American Jews. Without it, Israeli leaders can just pick and choose whom to talk to.

TS: Thats why the State of Israel should talk to everyone. Now, that doesnt mean Jewish Voice for Peace, but it does mean that the State of Israel should not say that J Street’s leadership is not Jewish, which is just wrong factually, and I think is morally very damaging.

But American Jewry really is fractured around Israel, and that fracture extends to the right and to the left, and that diminishes American Jewish power. The State of Israel cant turn to American Jewry the way it did in the 1980s and 1990s and expect it to effectively pressure the American government.

It happens to have a sympathetic president in the White House right now, but absent that, it does not look like the organizations of the Israel lobby are capable any longer of exerting meaningful political influence and power, and that is because theyre so fragmented and divided and cancel each other out and are open to politicians across the political spectrum. Each can choose their own fragment of the Israel lobby to claim their pro-Israel bona fides. Democrats turned to J Street, and the hawks turned to [the Zionist Organization of America], and that is a problem for Israel. But Israel needs to not just be indignant or disappointed, but needs to pursue enlightened public policy that makes the best of the situation. And in this case, for Israel, its not to boycott J Street, which represents a very significant section of American Jewry, but instead to engage in dialogue.

American Jewry will continue to be important to Israel, and Israel should pursue policies that enact its commitment to the flourishing of world Jewry (as mandated by Israel’s 2018 Nation-State Law).

Israel, under this government, has ignored the sensibilities, the interests, the desires of world Jewry and American Jewry, and thats caused considerable alienation that were just seeing surfacing this year in hard data. Our surveys look very different now than the surveys that have tracked this for 30 years. And what Im hearing from our network of friends in the American Jewish establishment is very different from anything Ive heard before in the past. And I think thats because of an Israeli government thats been remarkably insensitive to the consequences of its policies for world Jewry.

American Jewry is weakening institutionally and politically, and is also facing surging anti-Zionism and antisemitism, and Israel needs to pursue, we think, a much more thoughtful and enlightened policy with respect to antisemitism and anti-Zionism.

JAG: Appropriately enough, we’re having this conversation as a Knesset committee discusses a bill that would effectively criminalize non-Rabbinate-approved practices at the Western Wall —something that most American Jews would oppose but that the ruling coalition supported — and as the government is taking steps to prevent the possibility of a Palestinian state, which is something else American Jews would oppose. Are your recommendations feasible for this government or a similar one, or are you effectively saying that new leadership is necessary to shore up American Jewish support for Israel. If this coalition is reelected, is there still a way to maintain that support?

TS: I think a lot of the activity that were seeing right now in the Knesset, around conversion, around the Western Wall, the moves in the West Bank, is actually evidence that this government doesnt expect the election to go its way. Its trying to create facts on the ground, its trying to accelerate through a variety of issues, take a variety of decisions that it hopes will, you know, bind future governments. I think were going to have a new government. Its not clear whether that will be a new government led by Naftali Bennett, Gadi Eisenkot or Benjamin Netanyahu, but there will be a new government.

Youre right that the report is geared toward a new government, but we try to imagine that it could be a new Netanyahu-led government that seeks to repair some of the damage that accumulated during this very long war.

It is surprising that the damage to U.S.-Israel relations is unfolding at a moment of peak strategic cooperation in the war.

I think that where American Jewry needs to be reassured —at the level of government pronouncements and also at the level of public policy and strategic policy — is in respect to Israels commitment to remaining Jewish and democratic, of course, within secure borders in the future, and that it has a strategic vision that keeps alive that possibility.

I think a new Israeli government has to be able to articulate a moral commitment, a strategic vision that enables us to see beyond the permanent integration of millions of Palestinians into Israeli society [without citizenship]. That might be a two-state solution, it might be a federation, it might be a confederation, who knows? But an incoming Israeli government has to be able to enunciate a vision of an Israel that is secure, with a Jewish majority and a democratic polity, in order to continue to benefit from strong support that extends beyond the Orthodox and the right-wing of American Jewry.

JAG: In addition to those higher policy recommendations, what else can Israel do?

TS: In the report, we recommend that Israel focus on the areas where its uniquely capable of supporting American Jewry, and thats especially in the area of education.

Through Birthright Israel and related initiatives and programs, like Masa, Israel played an enormously important role in American Jewish continuity and American Jewish identity formation.

Birthright really is revelatory for American Jews who arrive and realize that there is a Jewish people, there is a Hebrew language and that theyre a part of that story. It makes such a deep impression that it causes new life decisions, which shape the future course of many of the folks who participate in those educational programs.

Over the last five years, as we show in the report, more than 100,000 fewer American Jewish young adults participated in Birthright than did in the previous five years. Thats a huge blow to American Jewry.

Israel, for all of the challenges it causes American Jewry, is also inspirational and is a critical feature of Jewish identity globally and American Jewish identity. So, as quickly as possible, Israel needs to renew and expand upon the educational frameworks that it provides that enable American Jews to encounter Israel.

So with Birthright, we gotta get the numbers back up. Masa and university-based programs are an opportunity for Israel to build upon and expand the role it plays in educating Jewish young adults who are facing universities that are increasingly hostile. And many more of them are interested for that reason, and also because its cost-effective and because Israeli academia is exciting and intellectually freewheeling.

Israel should expand academic programs for international students, for American students. It should have in mind American Jewish students in particular, with more dual degree programs, more full degree programs, taught in English with intensive Hebrew components, and Israel should really invest in becoming the world center of higher education for the Jewish People. Theres a moment here.

Gap-year programs are a part of that. So its not just a matter of restoring Birthright to the numbers that existed previously, but lets expand gap years and make it as normative a part of the Jewish life course as Birthright had been for many years. I think theres an opportunity there.

We also have a tremendous ecosystem of Jewish educators in Israel who are uniquely capable of contributing to the identity formation education of American Jews. So I think that needs to be a national priority. I think were pushing at an open door there. I think Israels interested and would like to accomplish that. But I think its absolutely critical in the next phase.

Another thing is political representation, not of Diaspora Jews as voters. Israelis — Jews and non-Jews — are the electorate of the State of Israel. We’re not advocating for Diaspora Jews to have voting rights, but an enlightened Israeli government will systematically take into account the impact of its policies and its rhetoric about those policies on Diaspora support for the State of Israel and the safety of Diaspora Jewry. This government hasnt done that. And its conduct over the last three years would have looked different if it were asking, “What policies should we be pursuing and how should we be talking to the rest of the world about those policies, keeping in mind that we have an obligation to represent not only the people of the State of Israel but global Jewry.

JAG: Why the focus on gap-year programs and university-level programs and not on K-12 and even early childhood?

TS: We interviewed 50 people for the report, more or less, and there was division on this question of whether Israel should be funding American Jewish education. Some said, “Absolutely, its a state with taxation capacity, its got huge resources, and American Jewish education should be the beneficiary of those resources.”

JAG: Considering there was just a report that less than 3% of Israeli ninth graders met their science requirements, I can already imagine the attack ads against any Israeli government that would improve such spending: “We can’t afford to educate our own kids, but we’re paying to educate the kids of rich American Jews.”

TS: Yeah, others objected for that reason and also just because they thought it was an American Jewish obligation, and they didnt want the outside interference.

We also believe that the cost of intensive immersive Jewish experiences in the United States and in Israel really is a barrier that philanthropy has to work on, together with the State of Israel. Gap-year programs could be expanded if we can develop an adequate subsidy framework. Right now, if they cost something close to a year of college, theyre not viewed as a good source of college credit.

And cost really is a barrier, and weve seen that when cost is addressed, the numbers go right up. In Atlanta, the Jewish federation has a wonderful pilot [to subsidize gap-year programs], and they went from a few people going on a gap year to dozens going on a gap year by increasing funding and partnerships between federations.

And, incidentally, I believe in the federation movement. I dont think its going anywhere. I think its incredibly valuable. I agree with you that we shouldnt dismantle organizational networks and institutions that we urgently need. Those institutions should continue to invest in innovation and in new intellectual, cultural, religious, spiritual movements that will galvanize American Jews, because I think thats where theres a need.

JAG: Thank you so much for speaking with me. Just one last question, have you started sharing this report with Israeli politicians?

TS: Yes, we handed it to Yair Lapid [head of the Yesh Atid Party] on Thursday when he came to INSS, and were eager to circulate it widely.

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Technion alum endows new aerospace prize to foster global innovation at his Haifa alma mater

Judah Ari Gross — Wed, 20 May 2026 12:07:57 +0000

Looking to bolster Israels national security and national standing, as well as provide a springboard for promising students in aerospace engineering, Houston-based businessman and proud Technion alumnus Max Blankfeld has endowed an international prize at the Israeli school to help transform the aerospace field.

The Technion – Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa announced this month the establishment of the Max and Desiree Blankfeld Endowed Prize for Transformative Innovation in Aerospace. The award will be given to a single recipient each year, alternating annually between an international track for senior researchers from abroad and a local track honoring a promising Technion student who has developed original ideas in the field of aerospace engineering.

The official call for nominations will be issued in summer 2026, with the inaugural prize ceremony scheduled for June 2027. The university declined to specify the size of the endowment, and the specific financial values of the annual prize and student scholarship have not yet been determined.

Every other year, the international track, known as the Distinguished Leader Award, will provide prize money and travel funding for a multi-week stay in Israel to foster collaboration with local faculty and students. On the alternating years, the Early Career Award provides a selected Technion student with both scholarship support and prize money, allowing them to focus on developing original aerospace concepts. Technion President Uri Sivan emphasized that this dual structure will simultaneously elevate the university’s global research standing and incentivize its own student body.

Aerospace in Israel plays a very important role in the security of Israel, Blankfeld told eJewishPhilanthropy, explaining his decision to split the prizes impact. The idea was to have an international prize that would bring and honor the best minds and allow them to share ideas and knowledge [with students and faculty]. The other year will be to encourage students at the Technion who are very promising to develop their own ideas in the field.

Blankfeld’s philanthropic focus on the university is rooted in his personal history. The son of Holocaust survivors who had immigrated to Brazil after World War II, Blankfeld came to Israel from Brazil at age 17 to study in the Technions aeronautical engineering program, which he attended from 1970 to 1973. He credits those formative years in Haifa and the mix of scholarships and parental support he received as his primary motivation for giving back.

This endowment marks Blankfelds latest contribution to the institution. Appointed to the Technion Board of Governors in 2025, he previously established the Eli and Chaya Blankfeld Graduate Fellowship in 2021 to honor his parents. The fellowship specifically supports doctoral and postdoctoral students making aliyah to study aerospace engineering at the university.

Every scholarship you give is an investment in the person, and since I focus heavily on Israel in my philanthropy, its also an investment in the country, Blankfeld added. The future of the country depends on the education of the people who live here.

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Holding a Jewish community together, consistently and over time

Contributing Author — Wed, 20 May 2026 10:08:00 +0000

I have spent my career inside the Jewish community — as a professional, a leader and someone deeply invested in its future — and it is hard to remember a moment that feels quite this unsettled.

The headlines are relentless: war on and off in Israel, rising antisemitism, deepening political divides and a growing sense that the institutions we once trusted are no longer steady. There are days when it feels as if things are spinning beyond anyone’s control.

And yet, at the very same time, I am witnessing something else.

In the wake of the Oct. 7 attacks, we have seen what some call “the Surge” — a sharp and sustained rise in Jewish engagement. Here in Broward County, Fla., one of the largest Jewish communities in North America,we see it not just in attendance but in what people are asking of us: connection, meaning and a way into Jewish life.

The contradiction is striking. When I look at the world, it is easy to feel discouraged, but when I look at how people are responding — reaching toward one another rather than turning away — the horizon feels hopeful. Jewish life feels both fragile and fiercely alive.

Meeting this moment requires institutions that can hold the whole while staying in close relationship with the communities they serve. In Broward, we have seen that when we lean into the kind of connection that builds trust, our community responds.What follows are four lessons about deepening and growing community, shaped in partnership through an initiative we callIgnite Broward.

1.) Belonging begins with being noticed.

Over the past year, we sat with members of our community — in living rooms, in coffee shops, in synagogues — listening to how they experience Jewish life today.

What we heard was consistent. People told us they want to connect — they just don’t always know how. Theyre not opting out. Theyre waiting for a way in.

And they don’t engage because they found us. Its because someone found them first.

Often, they said, what’s missing is something simple. No one has reached out. No one has made it clear that there is a place for them. That is where belonging begins.Not with a program, but with a moment of recognition when someone is seen, invited and welcomed into something that already exists.

When those moments happen consistently across neighborhoods and networks, they begin to form the foundation of real community.

2.) Safety is not just about protection.

Earlier this year, we convened a security briefing with local partners. Community leaders filled the room — synagogue presidents, school heads, lay leaders — each carrying the same concern: What does it mean to keep our community safe right now?

The conversation was not theoretical. It was grounded in real threats, real fears and real responsibility.

But what stood out was not only the information shared. It was the room itself: a network of people, across institutions, sitting together, asking how to protect not just their own spaces, but the community as a whole.

That kind of coordination does not happen automatically. It depends on relationships — built over time, sustained across institutions and ready to be activated when it matters most.

That is what safety requires now: not only preparation, but connection, and not only vigilance, but trust.People show up when they know they are not facing this moment alone.

3.) Identity deepens through experience.

At one of our synagogues, a group of teens sat in a circle as part of our listening process. They weren’t there for a class or a program. They were there to be asked what being Jewish meant to them right now.

Some hesitated. Some spoke quickly. Some admitted they weren’t sure what they believed, or where they fit. But they stayed in the conversation.

And as they talked — about Israel, about social media, about what they were hearing from friends at school — something shifted. Not in what they knew, but in how they saw themselves: not as observers of Jewish life, but as participants in it.

What mattered in that moment was not what they were taught, but that they were in it together — speaking, listening and seeing themselves reflected in one another.

Identity takes hold not through information alone but through moments of participation; when people are invited to step in, to speak and to see themselves as part of something larger than themselves.

Curiosity may bring people to the door. Experience is what invites them to stay.

4.) Our future depends on who stands with us — and who we stand with.

Last spring, after a rise in antisemitic incidents, we brought together leaders from across Broward — Black, Hispanic, Muslim, LGBTQ+ and interfaith partners.

There was no press conference. No formal statement. Just a room, a shared concern and a willingness to listen.

What followed was not a single meeting, but the beginning of an ongoing relationship. These leaders check in on one another. They show up for one another. They speak candidly about the challenges their communities are facing — and the ways those challenges intersect.

In a time of rising division, this kind of work can feel quiet. But it is foundational.

Because our future will not be shaped only by how we respond within our own community, but by the relationships we are willing to build — and sustain — beyond it.

The people in our community are telling us something important.

None of this is new. The importance of relationships, of showing up for one another, of building trust over time — these have always been at the core of Jewish life. What is different is the recognition that this work cannot be incidental. It has to be sustained, intentional, and built into how we operate.

What we are seeing, across all of these moments, is that none of it happens on its own. People are ready. Ready to connect. Ready to belong. Ready to step in — not despite this moment, but because of it.

Someone has to hold the whole. In Broward, that means taking responsibility across the whole community: Caring for vulnerable individuals and families. Supporting Jewish education and identity. Strengthening security across the community. Connecting our community to Israel and global Jewry. Mobilizing quickly in moments of crisis. Convening leaders across sectors and backgrounds and building the relationships that sustain us over time

This is what it looks like when a community is not only supported, but held — consistently, responsibly and in close partnership with the people it serves. It is how Jewish life holds together.

And continues to grow, even now.

Audra Berg is the CEO of the Jewish Federation of Broward County (Fla.).

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The care crisis reshaping Jewish life

Contributing Author — Wed, 20 May 2026 09:59:00 +0000

A fall. A new diagnosis.A hospitalization. A child’s changing needs. A parent who can no longer manage alone.Any one of these can move care from the edge of our lives to thecenter. At some point, every family will give care, need care, or both.

Caregiving to family or friends can be rewarding and empowering, but it can also be all-consuming,impactingfinances, mental health and physical well-being for millions of North Americans.Families need supportssuch as workplace policies, social service accessibility, support groups and respitein order tobothprovidecareandmaintainthecapacityto engage inJewish communal life.

Demographic, economic and policy shifts are turning theserealitiesinto a full-blown crisis — one that our community organizations are working to address through philanthropy and government partnerships. More people are living longer, often with more complex needs, while workforce shortagesandrising costsputfamilies under pressureand strain resources,reshaping Jewish communal life in Canada and the United States.

Careisessential toJewish communal infrastructure. Thatfactwas front andcenterat theNetwork of Jewish Human Service Agencies PowerNET conferenceMay 4-7 in Toronto.In session after session, the conversationsmade clear that caregiving is not a side issue. It is part of what makes communal lifepossible.

We work on different sides of the border, one at the Azrieli Foundation in Canada and one at Jewish Federations of North America in the United States. Our partnership began as Mandel Executive Fellows, in a cohort of Jewish leaders asked to look beyond our own institutions and think honestly about what this moment requires.

In those conversations, we kept finding our way back to care. Across different systems, the pressures were strikingly familiar: aging communities, serious workforce shortages, rising costsand families doing more than any system should assume they canabsorb.Our work, which enables us to have these crucial discussions, would not be possible without philanthropy.Philanthropy can also help ease the care crisis by stepping in where public systems fall short.

In both Canada and the United States, 1 in 4 adults provides care to a family member, friend or neighbor. Different systems, same reality: caregivers are holding families and communities together while facing serious financial, emotionaland health pressures. In both countries,nearly halfof caregivers report financial strain or negative financial impacts from caregiving.

These impactsreverberate beyondcaregivers. When caregivers are struggling, the people they support are at greater risk,too.Caring in Canada 2026found that when caregivers are unsupported, health outcomes for care recipients can be more than 60% worse.Caregiverwell-being is not separate from communal resilience. It is one of its clearest measures.

The paid care workforce is also under intense pressure. Across North America, Jewish communities are seeing these pressures arrive at their doors.This reality is also precarious. Many of today’s older caregivers will soon needcarethemselves.Caregivers are essential to the stability of our communities, but too often their own well-being is untracked and unsupported.

That makes the lessons of Jewish human services even more urgent.

Through decades of supporting Holocaust survivors, the field has learned profound lessons about care, dignity and trauma. We have learned that trauma does not simply disappear with time. It can re-emerge in older age through illness, loss of independence, cognitive decline or the need for intimate personal care. We have learned that care can heal; we have also learned that care can unintentionally retraumatize. A locked door, a rushed shower, a confusing form, a staff person who does not explain what is happening — these moments may seem small inside a system, but they can feel enormous to someone whose life has been shaped by fear, displacement, loss or control by others.

JewishFederationshaveappliedthese lessons more broadly by spreading the use of person-centered, trauma-informed (PCTI) care, whichtrainsagencies to design services that feel safe, transparentand humane. Ithelpsus offer peopleavoiceandachoice. In practice, that means staff trained to recognize trauma, intake processes that do not overwhelm people and systems that include caregivers asintegral members of theteam.

It also means tracking caregiver wellness over time. Too often, caregivers become visible only when they are already in crisis. Jewish human service agencies can help change that by assessing caregiver well-being, noticing when people are becoming isolated or depleted and offering support before families reach a breaking point.

This approach also mattersforthe workforce.ThePCTI approach is not only a model for client care;it is a way to build healthier workplaces and create the conditions for people to provide care without being harmed by the systems around them.

Jewish tradition should already move us in this direction. Caregiving is not only an ethical obligation. It is holy work. It is one way we sustain life, protect dignity and honor the sacredness of each person’s journey. But that belief has to inform institutional practice. It has to show up in budgets, benefits, staff training, service design, grantmaking and advocacy. It must determine whether caregivers are seen early and supported meaningfully and whether direct care workers are treated as essential to the dignity of those receiving care.

And Jewish philanthropymust continue tobe a core partner by calling for better care policies in workplaces and by funding what public systems often overlook.Families need help with system navigation, respite, mental health supportand peer connection. Agencies need training, evaluationand room to test new models. The field needs advocacy strong enough to move caregiving fromaprivate family struggle toashared communal priority.

Jewish philanthropy knows how to build across borders. We have done it in education, emergency response and fighting antisemitism. Caregiving should be part of that same equation. We need shared learning, common language and stronger relationships between Jewish human service agencies, federations, foundations, researchers and advocates. No single institution has to invent this alone.

This is a moment for Jewish leadership to act with the scale the issue requires.If Jewish philanthropy and Jewish human services are serious about strengthening communal life, carehas tobe central to that work.

Liv Mendelsohn is the executive director of the Canadian Centre for Caregiving Excellence, a program of the Azrieli Foundation.

Shelley Rood Wernick is the associate vice president of the Center on Aging, Traumaand Holocaust Survivor Care at Jewish Federations of North America.

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Building on Reimagining Israel Education: Moving forward with shared purpose and shared investment

Contributing Author — Wed, 20 May 2026 09:23:00 +0000

Nearly two years ago, our foundations embarked onReimagining Israel Education, an ambitious initiative to reshape how the Jewish community delivers Israel education and meets this challenging moment for young Jews. The need was clear: Despite real progress over the past two decades, the last five years—especially after Oct. 7, 2023 — showed that many Jewish learners need a more holistic, realistic and relevant approach to Israel education, woven across Jewish learning at every age and setting.

David Bryfman and Rabbi Dena Klein of The Jewish Education Project and consultant Beth Cousens led this field-wide effort, engaging more than 400 thought leaders and practitioners across the broad spectrum of Jewish and Israel education. We are grateful to them and the manyother partnersandfellows whose insightsshaped the resulting framework that will guide the field forward.

Last month, we released this framework and its 10 core principles for more authentic Israel education. It builds on the field’s strengths, while also calling on us to center learners and to invest in educators, leaders and high-quality content so that Israel education can be deeper, stronger and more impactful and enduring. The framework is not meant as a curriculum, but rather as a guide for aligning around a new shared vision, language and approach. It can be used as a tool for planning, scaling what works, adapting what does not and designing professional learning to be more effective for educators across the field.

At its core,Reimagining treats Israel education as an ongoing and integral part of Jewish education and engagement, not a stand-alone topic. It is based on the premise that good Israel education requires the same standards of good educational pedagogy as any other content area. This means that educators will have knowledge and confidence to engage with Israel’s complex realities and diverse society. Learners will encounter Israel’s history, land, people and modern state in all their richness and nuance, participating in an evolving Jewish conversation about what Israel means today.

At this moment of upheaval and change, it is urgent that young people and their families have stronger content and more meaningful learning experiences. And it is urgent that the field put this work into practice now, responding strategically and at scale, by equipping educators to deliver.

Here are some of the areas that we believe require immediate investment:

1.) Educator capacity and professional learning: The field already has strong organizations and training resources. What is lacking is scale, alignment and coordination. Educators need more sophisticated and sustained professional learning that helps them grow over time, across settings and career stages, and connects to shared goals. Proven models of success, such as educator travel to Israel, should be expanded, and more effective training in facilitation, content and pedagogy should be offered.

2.) Engaging new audiences through innovation and pilots:If Israel education is truly for anyone, inanyJewish learning environment, the field needs to reach the people it is missing. We have strong talent and successful models. Now we need the infrastructure to pilot new ideas quickly, learn from them and ultimately grow what is most effective. That can mean novel approaches for engaging parents, expanded roles forshlichim (Israeli emissaries) or innovative models for meeting learners where they are. But without testing, learning and scaling, the field will stall. Reaching new audiences cannot be left to hope; it must be intentionally built.

3.) Research to inform and improve practice:The Reimagining initiative has created a strong research base. Now the field needs a coordinated strategy that surfaces what we do not know, challenges outdated assumptions and generates actionable insights that can improve practice in real time. That requires ongoing dialogue amongst researchers, practitioners, funders and leaders, as well as stronger pathways for turning evidence into better outcomes for learners.

4.) Content development and digital enablement:Educators need easy access to timely, high-quality content that reflects a richer and more transparent approach to Israel education. Technology can do more than speed up lesson planning. It can open new pathways of learning and connection.

We are inspired by the new framework and excited about investing in the important work that lies ahead. The Reimagining team is hosting a series of webinars focused on the new framework, with the next one on June 3. The ecosystem is large and diverse, and it will take all of us to effectively educate a new generation of Jewish learners about Israel and its importance to the Jewish people. We see this as a pivotal moment, and we feel a collective responsibility to align and move forward with shared purpose and shared investment. Learners, practitioners, leaders and families should feel well supported, resourced and connected as they embark on the vital efforts ahead.

The needs are urgent. The opportunity is immense. The pathway is now clear. Let’s get to work — together.

Lisa Eisen is co-president of Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies, which works in the United States and Israel to achieve more just and inclusive societies. Eisen oversees Schusterman’s Jewish community grantmaking portfolio and its gender and reproductive equity grantmaking portfolio.

Dawne Bear Novicoff is the executive vice president of the Jim Joseph Foundation, which works with grantee-partners tofoster compelling, effective Jewish learning experiences for young Jews.

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Your Daily Phil: Jewish groups ‘horrified’ by Calif. mosque attack, urge greater security funding

EJP — Tue, 19 May 2026 13:23:51 +0000

Good Tuesday morning!

In today’s edition ofYour Daily Phil, we examine Jewish communal reactions to yesterday’sdeadly shooting at a California mosque, which organizations said highlighted the need for greatersecurity grants. We also report on theJewish Federation of Greater Washington’s efforts to set up the infrastructure to allow local Jewish day schools to access a new federal tax credit. We feature an opinion piece byRandy Spiegelabout not letting politics preclude giving to Israeli universities, and a piece byJay Strearabout why nonprofits focus on symptom management versus treating what ails them. Also in this issue:Nuseir Yassin,Mel BrooksandCarrie Darsky.

Today’sYour Daily Philwas curated by eJP Managing Editor Judah Ari Gross, Opinion Editor Rachel Kohn and Israel Editor Justin Hayet. Have a tip?Email us here.

Follow us on Whatsapp Follow us on Telegram What Were Watching The Jewish Federations of North America is bringing hundreds of Jewish community leaders to Capitol Hill today to push Congress to increase funding for the Nonprofit Security Grant Program; a press conference will be held this afternoon.

The Washington Nationals will host Jewish Community Day as the baseball team takes on the New York Mets at Nationals Park.

In New York, the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue is holding its spring benefit, where the congregation will honor Proskauer Rose’s Ira Bogner and former State Department antisemitism envoy Deborah Lipstadt.

What You Should Know A QUICK WORD FROM EJPS JUDAH ARI GROSS Jewish groups and leaders expressed horror and solidarity with the American Muslim community following a deadly shooting at a mosque in San Diego, which they said demonstrated the need to combat extremism and protect all houses of worship.

Jewish California, the umbrella political advocacy grouprepresenting Jewish communities throughout the state, said it was “horrified and heartbroken” by the deadly attack, in which three people were killed at the Islamic Center of San Diego, which also contains a school. The identities of the victims have not yet been released, though one was said to have been a security guard at the mosque, whom police called “heroic” and credited with preventing an even worse tragedy.

The names of the suspected gunmenwere not immediately released, but local law enforcement said that they were 17 and 18 years old, and that while the precise motive was not yet known, “hate rhetoric was involved,” apparently referring to a note left by the younger suspect that was found by his mother, who contacted police. The two suspects were found dead of self-inflicted gunshot wounds near the scene.

The deadly mosque attack comes amid rising polarizationand follows a spate of politically motivated violence, including last year’s shooting outside an American Jewish Committee event at the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, in which two Israeli Embassy staffers were killed, whose first anniversary will be marked on Thursday; the deadly firebombing of a march in support of Israeli hostages last June; a thwarted terror attack on Temple Israel outside Detroit earlier this year; and a shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner last month.

The Jewish Federations of North Americanotedthat the attack came shortly before hundreds of Jewish leaders headed to Capitol Hill to lobby Congress to increase the federal Nonprofit Security Grant Program to $1 billion (from its current $300 million), which can be used to better protect houses of worship.

“Today’s attack is yet another painful reminderthat the threat facing religious communities in America is real, urgent and growing,” JFNA said.

Read the rest of ‘What You Should Know’ here.

TEACH YOUR CHILDREN WELL D.C. Jewish federation rallies local day schools to tap into federal tax-break program A teacher instructs a student at Milton Gottesman Jewish Day School in Washington, in an undated photograph. Courtesy/Milton Gottesman Day School The Jewish Federation of Greater Washington has rallied local Jewish day schools to organize quickly to take advantage of a new $1,700 federal tax break for those who donate to so-called Scholarship Granting Organizations — an initiative that is poised to make private schools more affordable, reports eJewishPhilanthropy’s Jay Deitcher.

Community service:To attain the benefits of the credit, day schools need to prepare well ahead of time, Joel Frankel, senior director of community capacity at the Washington federation, told eJP, especially since donations cannot be made directly to schools. Instead, the new law requires communities to launch new nonprofits dedicated to offering scholarships, which are then provided to students. Deborah Skolnick-Einhorn, head of school at Washington’s Milton Gottesman Jewish Day School, told eJP that schools would struggle to do this on their own as the process is “a legal and financial behemoth in terms of the bureaucracy.”

Read the full report here.

Share DOWNSTREAM VIEW What a ‘paused gift’ actually pauses Adobe Stock “Recently, I reached out to a philanthropic advisor who counsels high-net-worth individuals. My appeal was straightforward: among a diverse client base, surely there are those interested in high-impact investments in education and research,” writes Randy E. Spiegel, CEO of Canadian Friends of Bar-Ilan University,in an opinion piece foreJewishPhilanthropy.

What’s at stake:“She explained that many of her clients are not aligned with Israels current foreign policy, particularly regarding Gaza, and that this misalignment affects their willingness to support Israeli institutions. She added that even among her Jewish and Israeli contacts, there is disagreement with current leadership, and suggested that a shift in policy — or leadership — would likely lead to greater philanthropic support for the university. I appreciated and respected her honesty. Their discomfort is real, and it deserves to be taken seriously rather than argued away. But it also deserves to be examined.”

Read the full piece here.

Share ORGANIZATIONAL HEALTH The symptom trap Adobe Stock “I spent the last year sitting across from nonprofit leaders, most of them in Jewish communal life, and asking them to be honest about what is not working and why. This wasn’t for a board report or a grant application; it was for a structured diagnostic study built on deep, confidential interviews,” writes leadership consultant Jay Strear, founder of The Strear Group, in an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy. “The structural deficiencies documented in this study are not mysteries, and they are not inevitable. They are, in significant part, produced by us.”

Big example:“Of the three structural domains I assessed, the one leaders were least prepared to name — and the one that does the most persistent damage — is the organizational learning gap. It’s not the inability to work hard, and it’s certainly not the absence of good intentions. Rather, the organizational learning gap is the inability to look at a recurring problem and ask: What in the design of our organizations is producing this?”

Read the full piece here.

Share Worthy Reads Wealth Without Architecture: In the Stanford Social Innovation Review, Sarah Cone argues for tech billionaires to build new robust philanthropic institutions, as their Gilded Age counterparts did. “We are living on the institutional inheritance of the Gilded Age. We are spending it down, and we are not replenishing it. The libraries are still open, the universities still teach, the museums still hang their paintings — but these are the creations of the dead, maintained by the living, and supplemented by almost nothing new. And when the scaffolding finally fails, as all structures eventually do, we will discover that the richest generation in human history has bequeathed to its descendants only the memory of how much money it once had, and how little of that went toward building anything that lasts.” [SSIR]

A Call to Veto: In The Washington Post, SARs Binyamin Krauss called on the New York City Council to override Mayor Zohran Mamdanis veto of a buffer zone bill aimed at protecting schools by restricting demonstrations directly outside them. “I was astonished last month when New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani used his first veto since taking office to strike down a bill that would have required law enforcement to consider, on a case-by-case basis, establishing buffer zones around schools and educational facilities to protect students, staff and faculty from potentially violent protests… The mayor vetoed a bill that simply seeks to ensure New York children can attend school without fear of being harassed or attacked. The City Council still has time to do what the mayor won’t.” [WashingtonPost]

Word on the Street Nuseir Yassin— also known as Nas Daily — haspartneredwith theDavid Merage Foundationto launch a content creation fellowship for 50 Jewish and Muslim creators, honoring the legacy of his late friendZaki Djemal;read eJP’s obituary of Djemal here…

TheUJA-Federation of New Yorkand theJewish Community Relations Council-New Yorkrefused to attend MayorZohran Mamdanis Shavuot reception yesterday, accusing the mayor of inflaming local tensions and rejecting Israels legitimacy as a core pillar of Jewish heritage,Jewish Insider’sWill Bredderman reports…

BloombergspotlightstheJewish Federations of North Americaslobbying effort, which begins today, to press Congress for $1 billion in federal security grants to help protect religious institutions from attacks…

LondonsMetropolitan Policeisinvestigatinga hate crime after a 22-year-old Israeli man was chased and severely beaten by a group of men shouting in Arabic after he was overheard speaking Hebrew on a street inGolders Green…

TheJewish Federation of St. Louishasrenamedits annual professional achievement honor theBarry Rosenberg Professional Leadership Awardto honor its longtime former president and CEO…

InThe Hollywood Reporter, Oscar-winnerLászló Nemescondemnsthe Western orgy of antisemitism and Hollywoods moralizing elites, stating that political friction over Gaza has severely hindered the distribution of his Jewish-themed films…

Israel’sMinistry of Transportationhas proposed allowing the Dubai-basedEmiratesairline to operate direct routes from Tel Aviv to New York and Bangkok — without requiring a stopover in the UAE — in an effort to address the severe shortage of transatlantic flights and soaring ticket prices,Jewish Insider’sTamara Zieve and Haley Cohen report…

Kehillat Israel Synagoguein Pacific Palisades, Calif., hasreopenedfor services 16 months after devastating Los Angeles wildfires destroyed the building, along with the homes of its clergy and hundreds of congregants…

Ofer Bronchtein, a French-Israeli peace activist and co-founder of theInternational Peace Forum, who served as a senior advisor to French President Emmanuel Macron on Israeli-Palestinian issues,diedyesterday at 69…

Major Gifts Mel Brooks has gifted his expansive career archive of more than 150,000 documents and 5,000 photographs to the National Comedy Center in Jamestown, N.Y., where the collection will sit alongside the papers of his longtime collaborator and friend, Carl Reiner…

Transitions NJY Campshas hiredCarrie Darskyas its next CEO, effective June 1; Darsky succeedsMichael Schlank, who stepped down from the role last year…

Dror Binannounced he is stepping down from his role as CEO of theIsrael Innovation Authorityin the coming months…

Israel’s Channel 13appointedIdan Elromas acting CEO, following the departure ofEmiliano Calemzuk…

The ForwardhasnamedStacey Bosworthas its next vice president of development

Yael Shamouilianis joining theAnti-Defamation Leagueas director of media relations…

Pic of the Day Courtesy Participants in the joint Repair the World-Yahel Jewish Service Alliance Israel Service Seminar visit the Tamar Center in Idan HaNegev, in southern Israel, last week, as part of the inaugural weeklong program. Read eJP’s coverage about the Repair the World-Yahel partnership here.

In addition to the Tamar Center, which assists local Bedouin high school students, the trip showcased a number of volunteer initiatives in Israel, including a therapeutic farm, a support center for people with visual impairments, a community woodshop that makes furniture for “lone soldiers” and more. Participants came from Repair the World, Yahel Israel, Boston’s Combined Jewish Philanthropies, Hillel International, the JCC Association, Jewish Federations of North America and the Bender JCC of Greater Washington.

Birthdays Alexander Nemenov/Getty Images Chabad-Lubavitch rabbi, born in Milan, now chief rabbi of Russia, Rabbi Berel Lazar turns 62

Retired senior counsel in the D.C. office of Blank Rome, Harvey Sherzer turns 82 Retired chief judge of the New York Court of Appeals, now of counsel in the NYC office of Latham Watkins, Jonathan Lippman turns 81 Clinical psychologist, author, teacher, public speaker and ordained rabbi, Dennis G. Shulman turns 76 Former member of the California state Senate, she was also a member of the California Legislative Jewish Caucus, Hannah-Beth Jackson turns 76 Israeli novelist and former journalist, Edna Shemesh turns 73 Nurse and former member of the Wisconsin State Assembly (2009-2015), Sandra “Sandy” Pasch turns 72 Retired chief of the general staff of the IDF, now leader of the Yashar party, Gadi Eizenkot turns 66 Journalist, teacher and playwright, now editor-in-chief of Streetsblog NYC, Gersh Kuntzman turns 61 Born in Moscow, he is a professor of mathematics at the University of Chicago, Alex Eskin turns 61 Author of 28 novels, four of which have been adapted into Lifetime Original Movies, Jodi Picoult turns 60 Business manager and spokesperson for NBA Hall of Famer Michael Jordan, Estee Portnoy turns 59 Former CEO of Bend the Arc, a Jewish partnership for justice, Stosh Cotler turns 58 Israeli-born chef, owner of multiple New York City restaurants, she is a cookbook author and comedian, Einat Admony turns 55 Israeli actor and fashion designer, Dorit Bar Or turns 51 Canadian food writer and cookbook author, she is a judge on Bravos Top Chef, Gail Simmons turns 50 Member of the Knesset for the Likud party since 2019, Ofir Katz turns 46 Nonprofit manager and consultant, Alex Shapero Pitcher for Team Israel at the 2017 World Baseball Classic and is now pitching coach for the UC Davis Aggies, Zachary Zack James Thornton turns 38 Activist, advocacy educator, engagement strategist and TED speaker, Natalie Warne Ice hockey free agent, Brendan Leipsic turns 32

The post Your Daily Phil: Jewish groups ‘horrified’ by Calif. mosque attack, urge greater security funding appeared first on eJewishPhilanthropy.

Jewish groups ‘horrified’ by Calif. mosque attack, urge greater federal security funding

Judah Ari Gross — Tue, 19 May 2026 11:57:54 +0000

Jewish groups and leaders expressed horror and solidarity with the American Muslim community following a deadly shooting at a mosque in San Diego, which they said demonstrated the need to combat extremism and protect all houses of worship.

Jewish California, the umbrella political advocacy group representing Jewish communities throughout the state, said it was “horrified and heartbroken” by the deadly attack, in which three people were killed at the Islamic Center of San Diego, which also contains a school. The identities of the victims have not yet been released, though one was said to have been a security guard at the mosque, whom police called “heroic” and credited with preventing an even worse tragedy.

“Our hearts are with the victims, their families, and the entire San Diego Muslim community,” Jewish California said. “Houses of worship must be sacred, protected spaces for people of every faith. When one community is targeted for how they pray, all of us are diminished. Our Jewish community knows this experience all too well. … We recommit ourselves to working with Californias leaders to enact policies and direct resources that ensure every faith community can worship and gather free from fear.”

The names of the suspected gunmen were not released, but local law enforcement said that they were 17 and 18 years old, and that while the precise motive was not yet known, “hate rhetoric was involved,” apparently referring to a note left by the younger suspect that was found by his mother, who contacted police.

“No one should face violence or fear while at prayer or in school,” William Daroff, CEO of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, said in a statement. “We stand in solidarity with all those affected. Violence against any faith community demands clear and unequivocal condemnation.”

The deadly mosque attack comes amid rising polarization and follows a spate of politically motivated violence, including last year’s shooting outside an American Jewish Committee event at the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, in which two Israeli Embassy staffers were killed, whose first anniversary will be marked on Thursday; the deadly firebombing of a march in support of Israeli hostages last June; a thwarted terror attack on Temple Israel outside Detroit earlier this year; and a shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner last month.

The Jewish Federations of North America noted that the attack came shortly before hundreds of Jewish leaders headed to Capitol Hill to lobby Congress to increase the federal Nonprofit Security Grant Program to $1 billion (from its current $300 million), which can be used to better protect houses of worship.

“Today’s attack is yet another painful reminder that the threat facing religious communities in America is real, urgent and growing,” JFNA said.

Sydney Altfield, CEO of the Orthodox Union’s Teach Coalition, which advocates for funding for Jewish day schools, also called for Congress to approve a $1 billion budget for the Nonprofit Security Grant Program in the wake of the San Diego attack.

“No child should fear violence at school because of their faith. An attack targeting one faith community is an attack on all people of faith,” Altfield said in a statement. “At a time when threats against religious institutions are rising across the country, Congress must fully fund the Nonprofit Security Grant Program at $1 billion, and state leaders should strengthen security for faith communities facing growing threats.”

In addition to the fight over funding for the Nonprofit Security Grant Program, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs said that a number of programs to counter extremism have recently had their federal budgets cut.

“We are horrified by today’s shooting at a mosque in San Diego,” JCPA said. “While we still wait to learn more details, what we know is this is particularly frightening in a moment when rising anti-Muslim hate and the gutting of anti-hate programs leave too many at risk and afraid.”

The Anti-Defamation League, which works closely with law enforcement, said it was “devastated” by the attack and “monitoring the situation closely.”

“No one should fear for their safety while attending a house of worship or school,” the organization said. “Our hearts are with the victims, their loved ones, and the broader Muslim community during this horrific moment.”

The American Jewish Committee similarly expressed solidarity with the American Muslim Community, saying “You are not alone.”

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What a ‘paused gift’ actually pauses

Contributing Author — Tue, 19 May 2026 09:25:00 +0000

Philanthropy likes to imagine itself above politics. In practice, it is just as susceptible to bias, emotion and geopolitical currents as any other form of discretionary spending — and donors today are increasingly making decisions that blur the line between supporting humanity and endorsing policy.

Full disclosure: I represent an Israel-based university. It is not a political body. It exists to educate, advance research and to create opportunities for students and scholars regardless of nationality, religion or politics.

Recently, I reached out to a philanthropic advisor who counsels high-net-worth individuals. My appeal was straightforward: among a diverse client base, surely there are those interested in high-impact investments in education and research. The response I received was candid — and eye-opening.

She explained that many of his clients are not aligned with Israels current foreign policy, particularly regarding Gaza, and that this misalignment affects their willingness to support Israeli institutions. She added that even among her Jewish and Israeli contacts, there is disagreement with current leadership, and suggested that a shift in policy — or leadership — would likely lead to greater philanthropic support for the university.

I appreciated and respected her honesty. These are not unreasonable concerns, and they are not unique to her clients. They surface in conversations I have had with thoughtful, principled donors who have given generously for years and now find themselves uncertain. Their discomfort is real, and it deserves to be taken seriously rather than argued away.

But it also deserves to be examined.

The question underneath these conversations is not whether donors are entitled to their views — they are — but whether withholding support from a university is the instrument that actually expresses those views. And on that question, I think that the honest answer is no.

Universities do not and should not dictate foreign policy. An Israeli university has no more influence over national leadership than a Canadian or American university has over its own governments international stance; nor should it. What universities offer is something more modest and yet much more profound: open inquiry, collaboration across borders and the pursuit of solutions to problems that do not recognize geopolitical boundaries. Universities are places where minds meet, where ideas are tested and where breakthroughs emerge that change lives far beyond any one nation.

Philanthropy, at its best, understands this distinction. It recognizes that funding a university is not an endorsement of a government, but an investment in humanitys shared future — a commitment to education, discovery, and to the belief that knowledge can outlast conflict.

And yet, increasingly, that distinction is collapsing. Since Oct. 7, 2023, and the war that has followed, geopolitical pressure has begun to seep into spaces that were once insulated from it — campuses, advisory rooms, funding decisions — where the line between policy and institution is being redrawn in real time.

This is where the cost becomes real, and where it is worth being specific. Because when support is withheld from a university, what is actually paused is not policy. It is people, programs and possibilities.

Consider what that looks like in practice:

It is the scholarship that allows a Druze student to pursue her dream of becoming a physician. It is the research grant that leads to breakthroughs in retinal transplants, restoring sight to children across the globe, regardless of religion or nationality. It is the investigation into rare diseases that not only saves individual lives but transforms entire families and communities.

None of these outcomes are political. None of them hinge on who holds office or what decisions are made in a cabinet room or a leader’s office. They are the quiet, persistent work of people committed to making life better — work that continues across election cycles, across changes in government, across the rise and fall of the very policies donors are reacting to today.

That last point matters. The time frames do not match. Foreign policy decisions are measured in news cycles and election cycles. The work of a university is measured in decades — the years it takes to train a physician, the longer arc required to move a discovery from a laboratory bench to a patients bedside, the generational return on educating a student who goes on to teach, build, heal and lead. Pausing support in response to a moment in geopolitics interrupts work whose value will only be visible long after the moment has passed.

Donors have every right to their views, and advisors are right to honor them. But there is a difference between acknowledging a clients concerns and allowing those concerns to foreclose meaningful, nonpolitical impact. Philanthropy has always required a certain discipline: the ability to see beyond the immediate, to separate signal from noise and to invest in what endures.

We often say we should not throw out the baby with the bathwater. In todays philanthropic landscape, that warning feels less like a cliché and more like a diagnosis. When discomfort — however understandable — leads to the withdrawal of support from institutions that educate, heal, and innovate; the result is not a statement about policy. It is a narrowing of the pathways through which progress happens.

Philanthropists have a unique capacity to rise above this. Their influence is not limited to writing checks; it lies in shaping what is possible over time.

The ask is not to fund politics. It is not to endorse foreign policy. It is far simpler, and far more consequential: to recognize that within universities are the tools to change how we understand, treat and improve life itself — and that those tools are built slowly, through sustained commitment, and lost quickly when that commitment is paused.

That is not a partisan act. It is a human one.

Randy Spiegel is the CEO of Canadian Friends of Bar-Ilan University. He is a career Jewish communal service professional, human services manager and certified fundraising executive.

The post What a ‘paused gift’ actually pauses appeared first on eJewishPhilanthropy.

The symptom trap

Contributing Author — Tue, 19 May 2026 09:07:00 +0000

I have had some version of the same conversation dozens of times. A CEO walks me through what is not working. Persistent staff turnover. A strategic plan that everyone endorsed, but nobody follows. Conflicts that last well beyond every intervention, every restructuring, every coach and consultant. The CEO is smart. She is committed to the mission. She has given her professional life to this work. And she is well beyond tired.

When I ask what she has tried, the list is long. When I ask what she thinks is breaking, there is silence.

Because the honest answer, more often than not, is this: I don’t know.

That conversation is the reason I spent the last year sitting across from nonprofit leaders, most of them in Jewish communal life, and asking them to be honest about what is not working and why. This wasn’t for a board report or a grant application; it was for a structured diagnostic study built on deep, confidential interviews, the kind of conversations that only happen when truth is at stake.

The Nonprofit Leadership Diagnostic Study was conducted through 30 in-depth interviews using a consistent protocol and scoring rubric. Joel Swanson and Curt Swindoll, co-authors of the forthcoming book Amplify Impact, served as contributing interviewers on four of the 30 cases.

The interview subjects included leaders of synagogues, camping organizations, Israel engagement programs, federations, JCCs and senior housing organizations; alongside them were a small number of general nonprofit comparison cases, included to test whether the patterns I was seeing were specific to Jewish communal life or something broader. Each participant took part in a 30-to-45-minute structured interview covering 10 common organizational pain points and the operating rhythms, governance practices and decision-making habits beneath them.

I used a consistent framework to analyze what I heard, organized around three structural domains: the clarity and enforceability of strategic direction (Vision); the operating infrastructure that translates direction into consistent action (Execution); and the organizational capacity to learn from what happens rather than just manage it (Diagnostic). I developed this framework through earlier advisory work, which means I came to the data with a hypothesis. I have tried to account for that by applying a documented scoring rubric consistently across all 30 cases, so that the judgments are traceable rather than impressionistic.

The numbers matter less here than the patterns, and one pattern was unmistakable: Across all 30 organizations, the gap between knowing your mission and building the systems to actually get there was the most consistent structural failure I found.

It wasn’t the only one, but it was the most consistent one.

In organization after organization, I met leaders who could articulate their mission with clarity and conviction. Fewer had built the operational infrastructure to make that mission sustainable week in and week out, let alone during a leadership transition. Strategic plans existed and were largely decorative, collecting dust upon a shelf. Accountability operated through personal relationships rather than documented ownership and follow-through. Institutional knowledge lived inside one or two people who were not, in any structural sense, replaceable.

These leaders knew it and named the issue without prompting. And in most cases, nothing structural had been done about it.

Where the Jewish context makes it harder That is a diagnosis, not a criticism. There are structural pressures in Jewish organizational life that do not have direct analogs elsewhere, and it would be dishonest to write about our sector without naming them.

When a Jewish nonprofit struggles with lack of clear direction, it is sometimes because no direction exists. More often, it is because competing directions exist, each one powerful enough to shape decisions, but none is dominant enough to provide real clarity. What is our relationship to Israel right now? Who counts as our community? How do we hold the tension between our particular Jewish commitments and universal obligations? These are honest theological and communal tensions that strategic planning processes frequently paper over with “and” statements, producing documents that satisfy every constituency and guiding none.

The “culture of niceness” compounds the problem. Boards hesitate to name what they see. Executives protect relationships by avoiding hard truths. The question “What are we doing that reliably produces this outcome?” is threatening enough that it rarely gets asked. So the cycle continues.

Oct. 7, 2023, did not create these structural conditions — but it did clarify the cost of carrying them. The organizations in this study that absorbed the shocks of the past two years most effectively were not the luckiest or the best-resourced. They were the ones that had built sound operating systems before the shock arrived. Resilience, it turns out, is structural. It is built in advance, or it is not there when needed.

The gap we talk about least Of the three structural domains I assessed, the one leaders were least prepared to name — and the one that does the most persistent damage — is the organizational learning gap. It’s not the inability to work hard, and it’s certainly not the absence of good intentions. Rather, the organizational learning gap is the inability to look at a recurring problem and ask: What in the design of our organizations is producing this?

A development director turns over three times in four years. Each departure is rationalized as a bad hire, a compensation problem or a personality issue. The organization never pauses long enough to ask whether the role itself is structurally broken, or if something in the system is causing the issue. The symptoms are managed and the system goes untouched. A fourth development director walks in, and may soon walk out.

The Talmud has a concept called a chazakah, a legal presumption based on a pattern that has repeated itself three times. If something happens three times, we are obligated to treat it as a structural reality rather than a coincidence. Most of the organizations in this study have been watching their development directors, their strategic plans, their accountability conversations fail the chazakah test for years. They have kept treating each instance as a new problem.

What this demands of us The structural deficiencies documented in this study are not mysteries, and they are not inevitable. They are, in significant part, produced by us.

A philanthropic culture that rewards new programs and treats infrastructure requests with suspicion produces exactly the execution gaps this study documents. Organizations that cannot get a grant to document their processes, train their managers or build their accountability systems will keep building their operating systems inside one indispensable person. And when that person leaves, the organization will spend its next two years rebuilding what should have been institutional in the first place.

Boards that function as relational and ceremonial bodies, that show up for the annual gala and defer to the executive on everything structural, are not neutral but are actually a structural risk. And to the leaders themselves: The exhaustion is real, and it is not a character flaw. But some of what is exhausting you is a set of structural conditions you have the authority to change. The strategic plan no one uses. The accountability conversation you have been avoiding. The role that has turned over three times without anyone asking why. These are organizational design problems with design solutions.

In Deuteronomy, as Moses prepares to hand over everything he has built to a generation that will carry it forward without him, he does not give them a strategic plan. He gives them a question. “And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God ask of you?” Not what have you done. Not what will you launch. What does the work actually ask of you, right now, honestly?

That is the question Jewish communal leadership needs to sit with: not “What are we doing?” but “What does the actual condition of our organizations ask of us, if we are willing to look at them honestly?”

A physician who treats symptoms without investigating the root cause is merely managing discomfort, and Jewish nonprofits deserve better than symptom management. Nonprofit leaders, many of them running on fumes right now, deserve a sector that has the courage to tell the truth about what is breaking and why — not as a critique of the individuals inside these organizations, but as an act of care for the communities that depend on them.

We have spent a long time being very good at naming what hurts. It is time to get honest about what is causing the pain.

Jay Strear is a rabbi, leadership consultant and the founder of The Strear Group. He served as the president and CEO of JEWISHcolorado from 2018 to 2022 and prior to that as the senior vice president at American Jewish University.

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D.C. Jewish federation rallies local schools to tap into federal tax-break scholarship program

Jay Deitcher — Mon, 18 May 2026 18:53:25 +0000

Jewish day schools in Greater Washington granted $25 million in tuition assistance last year to over half of their 2,700 students, but that figure is poised to rise dramatically as a result of a new federal tax-credit initiative that takes effect in January.

Signed into law last July as part of President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the initiative offers up to a $1,700 income tax break to individuals who donate to Scholarship Granting Organizations supporting K-12 students. To ensure local schools reap the benefits, the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington has rallied local schools to organize early.

“The vast majority of the students who are going to Jewish day schools are receiving tuition assistance because the cost of a day school education is incredibly high,” Joel Frankel, senior director of community capacity at the Washington federation, told eJewishPhilanthropy. “Our goal for this program is to make day school education more accessible to more people.”

Already, 31 states have opted into the tax credit, including Virginia, which was the first state to join in, and the Joint Committee on Taxation estimates the program will lead to $500 million donated to SGOs.

To attain the benefits of the credit, day schools need to prepare well ahead of time, Frankel said, especially since donations cannot be made directly to schools. Instead, the new law states that the nonprofit people donate to must be solely focused on granting scholarships. Therefore, communities need to launch new 501(c)(3) organizations dedicated to offering scholarships, which are then provided to students in schools. In addition, each SGO must support two schools and at least 10 students.

Setting up an SGO is “a legal and financial behemoth in terms of the bureaucracy,” Deborah Skolnick-Einhorn, head of school at Washington’s Milton Gottesman Jewish Day School, told eJP. Milton Gottesman has 480 students, over half of whom receive tuition assistance. Last year, the school granted $5 million in aid, including emergency support for federal workers affected by cuts implemented by the Trump administration.

To ease the work of setting up SGOs, the federation corralled lay leaders to establish bylaws and organized pro-bono attorneys to fill out paperwork and research policy and regulation. This allowed schools to remain focused on educating students. Just waiting for the nonprofit to be approved by the IRS can take months.

“Its been amazing to have that as an in-kind gift to our school community that allows us to keep doing our core work while federation and its partners are collaborating so that we can benefit from this potential, but without diverting our essential resources toward it on a daily basis,” Skolnick-Einhorn said.

There are seven Jewish day schools in Greater Washington — a region which includes the District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia, referred to as the DMV — so the federation brought schools together as partners, creating an SGO for each state because it’s still unclear if SGOs can provide to schools across state lines. “A huge part of our work was to make sure that we were prepared regardless of what the regulations say,” Frankel said.

In addition to setting up the SGOs, the federation is working to educate the larger Jewish community about the potential of the tax breaks for all of the Jewish DMV.

“As wonderful as every individual school is in the work that we do, our reach is limited, and the federations reach is much beyond where we are,” Rabbi Mitchel Malkus, head of school at Maryland’s Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School, told eJP. “If the schools were to do this on their own, it would be seen as just a day school initiative. With the federation involved, it can be seen as a communal opportunity, where families and individuals and households in the DMV can see that they have a role to play in supporting serious Jewish education because thats a community priority versus a school priority.”

The Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School awards $10 million in tuition assistance to half of his 870 students. Malkus hopes the tax break initiative will allow the school to offer more assistance, making it a viable option for more families.

If half the population of Greater Washington who send their kids to a Jewish day school took advantage of the tax break — “the lowest-hanging fruit” — schools would bring in $500,000, Frankel said. But the federation is hoping to enlist the entirety of the 150,000 Jewish households in the region.

Early awareness will breed success, Frankel said. “Our focus over the next six months and beyond wont necessarily be to educate school communities, but its actually to develop plans to be able to get to the wider and broader audience. Thats how were going to be able to make this not a million and a half or $2 million or $3 million to our day schools, but potentially upwards of $10 million.”

Another role the federation plays is in advocating for politicians to join the cause, something the larger Jewish Federations of North America is supporting local federations with, emphasizing that this isn’t simply a private school initiative, but one that can benefit public school children, also. SGOs can use the funds to cover after-school programs, special needs services, transportation, technology and tutoring at public schools.

“We are partnering with federations across the country to encourage governors to opt in so communities can access these resources, opening doors for countless families, connecting more families to Jewish education, and helping more children thrive in school,” Sheila Katz, chief Jewish life officer for Jewish Federations of North America, told eJP.

As the only Jewish day school in Washington, Milton Gottesman Jewish Day School was afforded a unique opportunity to partner with a public charter school that offers a Hebrew immersive program as a way to qualify for Washington’s SGO.

With all the work that the federation and local schools are putting into the initiative, there are concerns that it will be all for naught. Governors need to opt in every year and the next presidential administration could shutter the program.

“Virginia, in particular, is a purple state,” Philip Blumenthal, vice president for strategic planning and allocations at the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington and former president at Virginia’s Gesher Jewish Day School, told eJP. “We tend to swing back and forth [depending on] which party holds the governor spot. It will be interesting to see if the community can feel like theres a long-term commitment here.”

Although the program seems like a game changer for day schools, there are no prior policies that set a precedent for how the initiative will play out, he said. The majority of states that have bought into the program are Republican-led and many progressive politicians and advocates believe it will benefit private schools more than public and have therefore turned against it.

But Blumenthal is encouraged to see Democrat-led states joining in also, with New York Gov. Kathy Hochul stating that she planned opt in earlier this month. “Its not necessarily a strictly partisan thing. Its not necessarily that, if youre Republican, you support this, and if youre Democrat, you dont.”

Even if a state does not opt in for 2027, the tax break aspect is a federal program, so even though scholarships may not be able to be offered through the initiative in a state, donors can receive breaks across state lines. This is something the federation is recommending for Washingtonians and Marylanders if their governors don’t join, although it is planning as if they will. For instance, donors in Washington can donate to a Virginia SGO, supporting Virginia day schools, and receive the tax break.

For Skolnick-Einhorn, it’s not simply about the dollar signs — the program is an opportunity to expand local connections. “There are many people who might not currently be donors, but who have at least a tangential interest or commitment to Jewish education,” she said.

The program allows individuals a free way to invest, and once they do, schools have the opportunity to learn about their needs and interests.

“Its beyond the money,” she said. “Its about the relationships that we could make with people whom we learn about through this initiative.”

The post D.C. Jewish federation rallies local schools to tap into federal tax-break scholarship program appeared first on eJewishPhilanthropy.

Your Daily Phil: Israel on a high note: Noam Bettan at Eurovision

EJP — Mon, 18 May 2026 13:40:01 +0000

Good Monday morning!

In today’s edition ofYour Daily Phil, we examine Israel’s second-place finish in theEurovision Song Contestand what it means for the often-isolated country. We spotlight the anti-loneliness nonprofitDorot, which keeps getting confused with the foundation of the same name that recently announced it was shutting down. In the latest installment of eJP’s exclusive opinion column, “The 501(C) Suite,”Idana Goldbergreflects on the challenges facing philanthropy in uncertain times; and we feature an opinion piece byGidi Grinsteinproposing a framework to secure American Jewry’s way of life, and one byBrian Seymourwith lessons about healthy allyship between the American Jewish community and other groups. Also in this issue:Erica Brown,Dr.Miriam AdelsonandGregandAlexandra Mondre.

Today’s Your Daily Phil was curated by eJP Managing Editor Judah Ari Gross, Opinion Editor Rachel Kohn and Israel Editor Justin Hayet. Have a tip? Email us here.

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What Were Watching The first-ever multidisciplinary Israeli Science Conferencekicks off today in New York City, featuring Israeli and American scientists, researchers and academic leaders, aimed at connecting top institutions in both countries as Israel faces growing academic boycotts.

The Israeli Ministry of Transportation’s Samson International Smart Mobility Summit continues today in Tel Aviv. Elon Musk, who was meant to attend when the conference was originally scheduled for March, delivered a video address,hailingIsrael for its innovation.

TheNational Task Force to Combat Antisemitismwill meet today at the Museum of the Bible in Washington. Speakers include the Justice Department’s Leo Terrell, Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL), Reps. Randy Fine (R-FL), Elise Stefanik (R-NY) and Kat Cammack (R-FL).

The Interfaith March for Human Rights and Peacewill take place this evening in Jerusalem, bringing together Jews, Muslims, Christians and Druze for a procession from the Jerusalem International YMCA to the Old City’s Jaffa Gate.

The Israeli HaShomer HaChadashvolunteer organization is hosting a gala tonight in Tel Aviv, featuring some of its main funders, including Dr. Miriam Adelson; her daughter, Yasmin Lukatz; and Michael Eisenberg.

What You Should Know A QUICK WORD FROM EJPS JUSTIN HAYET On Saturday evening in Vienna, Israeli singer Noam Bettan finished secondat the Eurovision Song Contest with his multilingual pop ballad Michelle” —marking the second year in a row that the Jewish state has claimed the runner-up spot in one of the world’s most-watched competitions.

This second-place finish for Israeloffers a rare glimmer of hope for the country’s international standing, which has taken a serious hit over the past 2 1/2 years of war. The achievement also stands in stark contrast to much of the controversy surrounding the event and comes as Jewish communities throughout the world have faced growing threats and deadly attacks.

“It showed that beneath the polarizationoften amplified online or in political debates, there remain strong human, cultural and strategic ties between many Europeans and Israelis,” said Benjamin Touati, CEO of ELNET-Israel, a nonpartisan organization dedicated to strengthening strategic, diplomatic and economic relations between Europe and Israel.

It’s easy to dismiss Eurovision as a silly spectacle,full of over-the-top costumes and bizarre performances. But behind all the kitsch and choreography, there are profound people-to-people connections. “Eurovision is not simply a music competition; it is one of the few truly shared cultural moments watched simultaneously by hundreds of millions of people across very different countries, languages and histories,” Touati toldeJewishPhilanthropy.

Bettan’s entry,a pop ballad about heartbreakon the streets of one of Tel Aviv’s hippest neighborhoods that flowed seamlessly between Hebrew, French and English, marked something of a return to normal for Israel. This story of the eponymous Michelle, Bettan’s “queen of problems,” served as a far more lighthearted, personal song compared to last year’s submission by Nova massacre survivor Yuval Raphael, titled “New Day Will Rise,” about national feelings of hope, healing and war.

Next year in Sofia!

Read the rest of ‘What You Should Know’ here.

WHAT’S IN A NAME? The Dorot Foundation is shuttering; the anti-loneliness Dorot nonprofit is decidedly not oselote/Adobe Stock There’s Daniel Septimus, the outgoing CEO of Sefaria, who’s not to be confused with Rabbi Daniel Septimus, of the JCC Association of North America. And for that matter, the JCC Association is not to be confused with theotherJCCA, the nonprofit formerly known as the Jewish Child Care Association. Ordinarily, these duplicate names and abbreviations are good for a chuckle or an easily rectified miscommunication, but for Dorot, a New York-based nonprofit focused on combating loneliness among the elderly, sharing a name with the Dorot Foundation, which recently announced it was shuttering, has been a major headache for the past few weeks,reportseJewishPhilanthropy’s Judah Ari Gross.

Here to stay:According to Mark Meridy, Dorot’s executive director, the problems started with calls from clients who were concerned that they would soon no longer be able to access the organization’s programs. “And then I literally had a number of foundations who said, ‘Well, Im not sure we want to fund you because youre spending down,’” Meridy said. Finally, he said, other organizations in the field started reaching out to poach Dorot’s employees. “So were just looking to try to alleviate some of the concerns, particularly with our vulnerable older adults, that were not going anywhere. Were financially strong, weve got great programming, and were not phasing out.”

Read the full report here.

Share THE FUTURE OF AMERICAN JEWRY A ‘National security framework’ for U.S. Jewry A photo from Summer 2025 at Beber Camp in Mukwonago, Wis. Courtesy/Foundation for Jewish Camp “If antisemitism is an existential threat to American Jewry, then our community must be strategic in its response. We need anational security frameworkto inspire and guide our allocation of resources,” writes Gidi Grinstein, founder and president of Reut USA,in an opinion piece foreJewishPhilanthropy.

A communal strategy:“‘National security’ is different from ‘safety and security.’ The former protects the community’s way of life, while the latter defends individuals and institutions. In other words, stronger ‘national security’ usually means there is greater safety and security, but the opposite is not necessarily true. … American Jewry, though heterogeneous, has shared long-term interests that can guide a communal strategy, and these principles can be effectuated even by a diffuse leadership.”

Read the full piece here.

Share GAINING PERSPECTIVE What my non-Jewish friends taught me about the promise of Israel Government officials, CEOs and leaders from Florida visit Kibbutz Kfar Aza on the Gaza border in February 2024. The Jewish Federation of Palm Beach County brought its first delegation of non-Jewish community leaders to Israel to explore the country and its people and bear witness just months after the Oct. 7 attacks. Courtesy “‘Justice, justice you will pursue, so that you will live and you will inherit the land that God is giving to you’ (Deuteronomy 16:20). Though some translations differ slightly, the message is clear: Our promise of the Land of Israel is not unconditional. We must earn it,” writes Brian Seymour, the newly installed chair of Jewish Federation of Palm Beach County,in an opinion piece foreJewishPhilanthropy.

Maiden voyage:“Over the past two years, I have had the unique privilege to join Palm Beach County leaders who are not Jewish on their first visits to Israel. These trips were meant to show them the reality of Israel, which we certainly accomplished. But for me, the trips did much more. They revealed a broader conversation, a discussion too often forgotten, that extends beyond how Israel or the Jewish community is impacted in the world today.”

Read the full piece here.

Share Worthy Reads Birthday Wishes:InARC Magazine, Erica Brownwonderswhat insights Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks would offer as America marks its 250th anniversary during a time of social fracture. “I think he would have reminded us that we were created as a country with a mission of liberty for all and that we must return to the higher political ideals that shaped this country and bend the rugged individualism that can and has soured a once great collective consciousness. … I can imagine Sacks at a podium, with his elegant oratory style and distinctive British accent, reading the words of the prophet Hosea: ‘And I will betroth you to me forever and I will betroth you to me with justice and judgment, with kindness and compassion that you will know the Lord’ (Hos. 2:19-20). It is these qualities of justice and mercy that bound us then and that, 250 years later, bind us still.”[ARC]

A Paper Divided: InPuck, Dylan Byersoutlinesthe internal friction atThe New York Timesfollowing a controversial column by Nicholas Kristof. Nevertheless, manyTimesjournalists told me they remain suspicious of Nick’s sourcing for the most incendiary allegations, skeptical that those sources would have cleared the standards of the newsroom rather than Opinion, and mildly miffed at the Pulitzer-eager columnist for bringing scrutiny on the paper in a piece that should have been in their jurisdiction. Above all else, many seemed exasperated by what they viewed as another instance of the Times brand being undercut by the actions of another department that, they feel, is not held to the same standards. Said one, I am sick of being embarrassed by the Opinion section.'[Puck]

Pictures at a Roundup:InThe New York Times, Jean-Marc Dreyfusreflectson the discovery of dozens of photographs of roundups of Parisian Jews during World War II that were taken to be used as Nazi propaganda and are newly on display at the city’s Holocaust memorial. “They remind us that the past is never entirely buried, and that images can unexpectedly return to challenge the void of memory and representation. They function today not as propaganda, the purpose for which they were originally produced, but as fragments of truth — painful, incomplete and indispensable — that allow us to better understand the way the roundup was organized and conducted and also to get a glimpse of the victims’ shock, fear and pain.”[NYTimes]

Word on the Street A California judgehas bannedKars4Kids, which raises money for Jewish religious programs, from advertising in the state after ruling that the charity violated false advertising laws by misleading donors into believing their vehicle donations were supporting local underprivileged youth; Kars4Kids says it will appeal the decision…

Muslim civil rights groupThe American Muslim Multifaith Women’s Empowerment Councilisscheduledto march in New Yorks annualIsrael Day on Fifthparade, marking the first time in the events history that a Muslim organization will participate…

Data from Israel’sMinistry of Educationthat was leaked to Israels Channel 12 from national standardized examsshowsthat only 3% of Israeli ninth graders met curriculum standards in science…

BloombergspotlightsLas Vegas Sands CEOPatrick Dumont, the son-in-law of Dr.Miriam Adelson,who is seeking to turn Dallas into a sports and gambling hub…

New York Jewish leaderscondemned MayorZohran Mamdani’ssocial media post marking last week’s so-called Nakba Day, criticizing him for failing to acknowledge crucial facts surrounding the birth of the State of Israel, notably the attack on the fledgling nation by five neighboring Arab countries and the expulsion of 800,000 Jews from Muslim nations,reportsJewish Insider’sWill Bredderman…

MamdanitappedRabbiMiriam Grossman, an anti-Zionist religious leader, to serve as the Jewish faith liaison within his newly establishedOffice of Mass Engagement,Jewish Insider’sWill Bredderman and Matthew Kassel report…

The New York Timesexaminesthe New York state Assembly race for the seat being vacated byMicah Lasheras he mounts a congressional bid; the race pitsRabbiStephanie Ruskayagainst public defenderEli Northrup, with theTimesnoting that both candidates have “cited their faith as drivers of their political ambitions, pointing to Judaism’s teachings and their own unique backgrounds”

AnIraqi militia commanderandIranian operativeappeared in a federal court in New York after being charged with orchestrating nearly 20 international terror attacks and plotting an explosive strike against a Manhattan synagogue,reports Jewish Insider’s Haley Cohen…

TheDepartment of Justicehasannouncedit will pursue the death penalty for the suspect charged in the May 2025 fatal shooting of Israeli Embassy staff membersYaronLischinskyandSarah Lynn Milgrimoutside the Capital Jewish Museum in D.C…

The Wall Street JournalspotlightsMiami, which is both attracting new wealthy residents and driving out college graduates and the middle class due to rising prices in the Florida city…

Hebrew University’s Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Brain Sciences andHarvard University’s Kempner Institute for the Study of Natural and Artificial Intelligenceannounceda new collaboration in the emerging field ofNeuroAI, the intersection of neuroscience and artificial intelligence…

A new book byNikki Goldstein—Conversations with My Rabbi: Timeless Teachings for a Fractured World— will bereleasedon May 26 to preserve the universal moral legacy ofRabbi Eli Schlanger, who was killed in the December 2025 Bondi Beach terrorist attack

The Yeshiva Worlddoes a deep diveinto theWhite House’s celebration of Shabbatover the weekend, coinciding with Rededicate 250 celebrations that took place over the weekend…

JudgePaul M. Rosenberg, who served over three decades as an assistant U.S. attorney and U.S. magistrate judge,diedat 89…

Major Gifts GregandAlexandra Mondremadea $20 million gift to theUniversity of Pennsylvaniato establish a financial aid initiative serving over 1,000 middle-income families annually…

Anthropicislaunchinga four-year, $200 million initiative in partnership with and funded by theGates Foundationto deploy advanced technology toward global health, education and economic mobility in developing regions

Transitions PresidentDonald Trumpappointedsix new members to the board of thePresidio Trust, which oversees a national park of the same name, after removing members appointed by PresidentJoe Bidenlast month; the new members are: Lynne Benioff, Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen, James Burnham, Trevor Traina, John Bickford and Kyle Corcoran…

Pic of the Day Courtesy/Good People Fund Beth Gansky, board chair of the Good People Fund (left); Naomi Eisenberger, founder and outgoing executive director; and Julie Fisher, the incoming executive director, celebrate the organizations 18th anniversary yesterday at a gala at Congregation B’nai Israel in Millburn, N.J.

The event also honored Eisenbergers legacy and served as the official transition as she hands over the reins to Fisher.

Birthdays Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic Film producer and CEO of Miramax,Jonathan Glickmanturns 57

Leader and rebbe of the Hasidic dynasty of Ger since 1996, RabbiYaakov Aryeh Alterturns 87 Best-selling author of nine spy thriller novels, he has served in both the U.S. and the Israeli armies,Andrew Gary Kaplanturns 85 Pioneer of the corporate investigations industry, he is now chairman and co-founder of K2 Integrity and Kroll Bond Rating Agency,Jules B. Krollturns 85… Widow of Bernard Bernie Madoff,Ruth Madoffturns 85 RetiredNew York Timescolumnist and editorial writer, he was the NYTs Jerusalem correspondent for four years in the early 1990s,Clyde Habermanturns 81 President of Everest Management and trustee of the Cheetah Conservation Fund,Gary Kopffturns 81 Los Angeles-based attorney, board member of American Friends of Nishmat, past president of Westwood Village Synagogue,Linda Goldenberg Mayman Long-time Washington correspondent forNewsweek, now writing forSpyTalk,Jonathan Broderturns 78 Longest-serving member of the Maryland General Assembly, starting in 1983,Samuel I. Sandy Rosenbergturns 76 Chair of the executive of the Jewish Agency for Israel, a former IDF major general and leading activist for the disability community,Doron Almogturns 75 Senior advisor at Moelis Company, a former IDF major general, then CEO of Teva Pharmaceutical Industries,Shlomo Yanaiturns 74 Director of nutrition and hospitality at Philadelphias Temple University Hospital,Nancy Baumann Attorney in Atlanta, he was the director of congregational engagement at the Union for Reform Judaism for nine years,Alan Kitey Venture capitalist and author of a book on business principles derived from the Book of Genesis,Michael A. Eisenbergturns 55 CEO at Waze from 2009 to 2021,Noam Bardin VP for communications strategy at Strategic Marketing Innovations (SMI),Bryan Benderturns 54 Former head of development at New York City charter school system Uncommon Schools,Sarah Danzig Author of Substack-based newsletter and blogSlow Boring, he was a co-founder of Vox,Matthew Yglesiasturns 45 Founder of London-based Tech With Intention,Eliza Krigman Staffer for the Senate Armed Services Committee,Eric Trager Founder of Satori Global Media,Joshua Lederman Former acting under secretary of defense for intelligence and security, then a member of the National Archives Public Interest Declassification Board,Ezra Asa Cohenturns 40 Tech entrepreneur in the AI and gaming space,Dan Garon Co-founder of Rebel (formerly known as Rebelmail) then acquired by Salesforce,Joe Teplow Managing associate in the D.C. office of Orrick Herrington Sutcliffe,Lauren DePinto Bomberger Journalist and podcast producer,Netanel “Tani” Levitt Director of strategic partnerships at Anduril Industries,Sofia Rose Gross Haft Five-time member of the U.S. Womens National Gymnastics Team, now a business manager in the office of the CIO at Citadel,Samantha Sami Shapiroturns 33 Chief development officer at TAMID Group,Rachel Philipson Marsh

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