eJewishPhilanthropy

Your Daily Phil: Old guard passing torch to new generation of Jewish leaders

EJP — Fri, 18 Sep 2026 14:23:39 +0000

Good Friday morning! In today’s edition of Your Daily Phil, we report on the Met Council’s funding for a new Brooklyn warehouse and its record-setting High Holy Day food distribution efforts. We spotlight Rabbi Zohar Atkins’ new initiative, Yochai, which offers learners an AI-powered Torah study partner, and speak with DeborahLipstadt about the launch of the Emory Policy Institute on Countering Antisemitism. We feature an opinion piece by Betsy Berns Korn and William C. Daroff about embracing the next generation of leaders; a piece by Shira Hutt and Mimi Kravetz in response to Steven Windmueller’s recent op-ed about updating the federation system in North America; and one by Eli Gottlieb that offers advice for nonprofit executives on engaging their boards. Also in this issue: Rabbi Binyamin Krauss, Jenna Leventhal and Dina Leader. Ed. note: In observance of Yom Kippur, the next edition of Your Daily Phil will arrive on Wednesday, Sept. 23. Shabbat shalom and gmar hatima tova! Today’sYour Daily Philwas curated by eJP 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 Students from The Ramaz School and SAR High School in Riverdale, N.Y., will hold a prayer vigil today outside New York’s Gracie Mansion, the official mayoral residence. More on this below. Former Hamas hostage Eliya Cohen and his wife, Nova festival survivor Ziv Abud, will take the stage Tuesday evening at Tel Avivs ZOA House to discuss their joint memoir. What You Should Know Two million pounds of kosher food and $2 million for a new warehouse. Met Council, the poverty-fighting nonprofit in New York City, paired both milestones this week, as New York Gov. Kathy Hochul joined the organization at its Brooklyn Hub to help distribute kosher staples amid the High Holy Day season, reports eJewishPhilanthropy’s Nira Dayanim. New York state Sen. Sam Sutton, who represents the heavily Jewish Brooklyn neighborhoods of Borough Park, Flatbush and Midwood, provided a $1 million matching grant for a new facility in Canarsie, Brooklyn, Met Council CEO David Greenfield told eJewishPhilanthropy. The grant, issued as “community funding” through his state Senate office, closed out a $25 million fundraising campaign that the organization launched for the “AI-backed” 22,000-square-foot warehouse, which is expected to open in the coming weeks. The $1 million in state funding was matched by donors and members of the Met Council’s board. This year, the Met Council has fielded an 18% increase in food requests compared to last year, Greenfield told eJP. He attributed the increased scale of food distribution in part to the rising need due to increasing food costs. “Food prices have gone up something like 40% in the last five years,” said Greenfield, “and certainly for most working-class New Yorkers, their salaries have not gone up by 40%.” Read the full report here. News ANCIENT INTELLIGENCE With new venture Yochai, Rabbi Zohar Atkins hopes AI can make studying Torah ‘delightful’ Artificial intelligence, Rabbi Zohar Atkins is betting, won’t take human interaction out of Torah study. Instead, it can be a doorway in. In June, he launched Yochai, an AI chavruta, study partner, that provides users with everything from Torah-based life advice to support writing a d’var Torah. The program serves as “the beginning of study, not the end,” he said, allowing users to “have deeper, more interesting… Torah insights,” he told eJewishPhilanthropy’s Jay Deitcher. Text and Torah: Yochai received grant funding from Maimonides Fund and seed funding from Infinity Constellation, which supports AI-native companies. “The Jewish community needs to figure out how to use AI — not just to be more efficient, but to more effectively engage our people in Jewish life and Jewish learning,” Mark Charendoff, president of Maimonides Fund, told eJP. “Project Yochai is taking a bold step to try to deepen Jewish engagement with text and Torah. It’s a part of a growing AI portfolio that we are excited about expanding.” Read the full report here. Share POLICY PIPELINE Lipstadt launches Emory institute to train next generation of policymakers fighting antisemitism Deborah Lipstadt, a longtime Emory University historian, announced last week the launch of the Emory Policy Institute on Countering Antisemitism, reports Haley Cohen for eJewishPhilanthropy’s sister publication Jewish Insider. The institute will pair undergraduate fellowships with summer internships in Washington; offer seminars for diplomats, journalists and policymakers; and track how governments are implementing the Global Guidelines for Countering Antisemitism that Lipstadt helped develop while serving as special envoy under President Joe Biden. No longer just Shabbos talk: “When I was finishing up in January 2025, a number of people — some academics, some government officials — said to me that I had a very unique perspective on things,” Lipstadt told Jewish Insider. “They said now that I’m out of Washington, it can’t just be interesting stories I’m telling at dinner parties or the Shabbos table.” Read the full report and sign up for Jewish Insider’s Daily Kickoff here. Share Opinion NOT NEXT BUT NOW The next generation is already leading. Let’s make room. In an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy, Betsy Berns Korn and William Daroff, chair and CEO of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, call for the American Jewish establishment to recognize that the next generation of leaders is already here, and for those young leaders to rise to the challenge. “If we believe these young men and women belong in Jewish leadership now, our community has to find more ways to trust them with real responsibility. … But responsibility runs in both directions. Those stepping into leadership also face a challenge that is easy to underestimate: Leadership is not measured by the moment you win. It is measured by what you build, whom you bring with you and what remains after you leave.” Read the full piece here. Share READERS RESPOND The federation model isn’t static — and it never has been In an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy, Shira Hutt and Mimi Kravetz — executive vice president and chief impact and growth officer of Jewish Federations of North America — respond to Steven Windmueller’s vision of an updated distribution of roles, responsibilities and resources for Jewish federations (“The remake: Bringing the federation model into the 21st century,” Sept. 2). “The Jewish community does not need federations to be everything to everyone. It needs federations to do what few other institutions can do: to see the whole community, bring its disparate parts together, understand where the greatest opportunities and needs lie, and help translate collective priorities into collective action. … This is what federations do today — and it is precisely why federations are so well positioned to help build the Jewish communities of tomorrow.” Read the fullpiecehere. Share BEST PRACTICES How to get the best out of your board In an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy, cultural psychologist and executive coach Eli Gottlieb observes that while tensions are common between even outstanding nonprofit leaders and highly committed boards, “fantasizing about life without a board isn’t the answer.” “You can’t do it all alone, even if you sometimes wish you could. Years of heading institutions, developing leaders and advising boards have taught me that successful leaders know when to lead and when to follow.” Read the fullpiecehere. Share Worthy Reads Behind the Bima: J. The Jewish News of Northern California profiles seven non-Jewish professionals — a preschool director, a sound engineer, a security chief, two synagogue and JCC executive directors, a funeral director and a preschool teacher — who keep Bay Area Jewish institutions running. “In the Catholic church, Judaism is like the older brother… It’s like we are coming from the same family.” Art of Giving: In Inside Philanthropy, Wendy Paris draws on interviews with Jewish funding leaders to challenge three myths about next-generation Jewish donors — arguing most have not turned anti-Israel, have not abandoned Jewish causes, and are increasingly funding a long-neglected sector, Jewish arts and culture. “Whether or not funders had arts and culture as a focal point, they realize there is a sector here they had neglected,’ said Massachusetts-based Jewish philanthropy professional Lou Cove. ‘Culture is where identity and values get formed, and as a community, we make a big mistake if we don’t invest in it.’” Davening at Gracie: In The Times of Israel, SAR Academy Principal Rabbi Binyamin Krauss explains why students from his school, Ramaz and others will pray outside Gracie Mansion on Friday, two days before Yom Kippur — a vigil he casts as both prayer and a statement that Jewish children feel unsafe in New York and wont leave. “There are moments when we feel forced to take some of what we, as a community, typically hold quietly and privately and bring it into the public square. This feels like one of those moments. And as we approach Yom Kippur, it feels like the right time to do that.” Major Gifts The Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation is backing the March of Dimes Innovation Fund with an undisclosed commitment to advance early-stage companies working on maternal and infant mental health… The Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust has awarded Nuru, a locally led development network operating across Africa, an $8.5 million, three-year grant to expand regenerative agriculture and strengthen rural livelihoods across Ethiopia… Transitions The USC Shoah Foundation promoted Jenna Leventhal to the role of chief operating officer… Erika Vogel joined Spertus as its new managing director of Israel initiatives and conflict education… Eric Maurer is leaving his role as CEO of Jewish Peninsula, the local Jewish federation in Newport News (Va.) Leading Edge hired Limor Schwartz as its new vice president of programs… Phil Klay, an award-winning author who has criticized Israels conduct in Gaza while opposing cultural boycotts of Israeli writers, was appointed president of PEN America… Word on the Street Reps. Joe Neguse (D-CO) and Don Bacon (R-NE) introduced the Safe Spaces for All Act, letting synagogues use federal security grants for full-time and off-duty guards, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports… The New York Police Department is bracing for daily protests around next weeks United Nations General Assembly, where President Donald Trump, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Irans Masoud Pezeshkian are expected to speak though officials cited no credible threats, Jewish Insider’s Will Bredderman reports… The daughters of Dina Gottliebova Babbitt, a survivor of Auschwitz concentration camp, are suing the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in California federal court to recover seven watercolors the museum wont surrender, calling them irreplaceable evidence of Nazi crimes… Foundation for Jewish Camp opened a third round of Gottesman Capital Expansion Grants, making roughly $6 million available for construction and renovation projects at North American Jewish day and overnight camps. Read eJP’s coverage about the Gottesman grants here… Inside Philanthropy reports that the hundreds of millions Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez Bezos gave individuals like José Andrés, Dolly Parton and Eva Longoria to redistribute through their Courage and Civility Award have proved hard to trace, since recipients face no disclosure requirement A World Jewish Congress delegation met Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Janša earlier this week, marking the first major Jewish group to visit the country since Israel opened its embassy in Ljubljana… Baltimore Conservative synagogues Beth Israel and Chizuk Amuno have opened merger discussions with a member vote set for December… The Israel Antiquities Authority announced a 25-ton, 2,000-year-old mikveh was found intact in Kiryat Gat this summer providing evidence of a previously unknown Jewish settlement… The University of Maryland Hillel opened its nearly $27 million Rosenbloom Center, returning to the plot it first purchased in 1948 after decades housed elsewhere on campus… Michael Sweetney, the former New York Knicks forward who found a second act coaching at Yeshiva University and the Ramaz School, died Wednesday at 43… Rabbi Leigh Lerner, who led Montreals Reform Temple Emanu-El-Beth Sholom for 23 years and championed LGBTQ+ inclusion, interfaith dialogue and Soviet Jewry advocacy, died Sept. 5 at 81… Peter Max, who fled Nazi Berlin as a child and spent his teens in Haifa before his Day-Glo posters made him a staple of 1960s counterculture, died at 88… Pic of the Day Teresa Pyskaty Photography Philanthropist Dina Leader dances with family members of those who perished in the Sept. 11 terror attacks at a dinner held last weekend on Rosh Hashanah at Villa Amalfi, in Cliffside Park, N.J., to mark the 25th anniversary of the attacks. For 25 years, Leader has helped provide support primarily to Russian-speaking Jewish families who lost loved ones or were otherwise affected by the attacks, beginning in the days after the attack, when she set up a hotline and worked out of a booth at Pier 94 on the Hudson River to connect grieving families with the resources they needed. Some 120 people attended this year’s Rosh Hashanah event, which featured traditional holiday celebrations, as well as a magician and music. According to Leader, the community resulted from a simple scheduling choice: she deliberately double-booked her appointments with families so that as they waited together, they began talking. “They became each others backbone,” Leader told eJewishPhilanthropy this week. “They cried together. They talked together. They had dinners together. They felt that the world didnt understand them. They understood each other.” Birthdays Paul Bersebach/MediaNews Group/Orange County Register Henry Samueli, co-founder of Broadcom and owner of the NHLs Anaheim Ducks, turns 72 on Sunday FRIDAY Kathy Levinson Wolf, Marina Del Rey, Calif., resident Léo Apotheker, business executive who served as co-CEO of SAP and CEO of Hewlett-Packard, turns 73 Steven Pinker, Harvard professor of psychology, specializing in visual cognition and psycholinguistics, turns 72 Howard Tevlowitz, former CEO of the Jewish Federation of Sarasota-Manatee (Fla.) Brian Greene, former executive director of the Los Angeles Westside Jewish Community Center, now The J Los Angeles Gali Baharav-Miara, attorney general of Israel, turns 67 Mark Lee Romanek, winner of three Grammy Awards for music videos, he is also a filmmaker and photographer, turns 67 Joshua Angrist, professor of economics at MIT and a 2021 Nobel Prize laureate in economics, turns 66 Yanki Margalit, one of the earliest Israeli tech entrepreneurs, he is best known for starting Aladdin Knowledge Systems in 1985, turns 64 Ezra Uzi Yemin, founder of Delek US, turns 58 Simone Dinnerstein, classical pianist, turns 54 Karen Paikin Barall, chief policy officer at the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law Tali Farhadian Weinstein, NBC legal analyst, she was a 2021 candidate for Manhattan district attorney, turns 51 Justin Ishbia, founding partner of Shore Capital Partners, he is a part-owner of the NBAs Phoenix Suns and the WNBAs Phoenix Mercury along with his brother Mat Ishbia, turns 49 Billy Eichner, comedian, actor, producer and screenwriter, turns 48 Jason Horowitz, Madrid bureau chief of The New York Times Robin Anderson, director of operations at Camp Ramah in Wisconsin Lisa Abramowicz, co-host of “Bloomberg Surveillance” on Bloomberg Television, turns 47 Bakari Sellers, author, CNN analyst and an ardent supporter of Israel within the Black community, he was a member of the South Carolina House of Representatives, turns 42 Avi Mayer, founder of the “Jerusalem Journal” Substack following a stint as editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Post Nick Schulman, professional poker player whose total career live tournament winnings exceed $24.5 million, turns 42 Dan Kolko, baseball broadcaster for the Washington Nationals Shoshana Bush, television and film actor, turns 38 Zak Sawyer, senior director at TLG Communications Rabbi Joshua B. Cohen, West Coast regional director at Leket Israel SATURDAY Rabbi Haym Soloveitchik, professor of Jewish history and literature at Yeshiva University, he is the only son of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, turns 89 Jeffrey Salloway, member of the New Hampshire House of Representatives until 2022, he has served as synagogue president, turns 85 Barry Scheck, professor at Yeshiva Universitys Cardozo School of Law and co-founder of the Innocence Project, turns 77 Harold Rhode, distinguished senior fellow at the Gatestone Institute, after a 28-year Pentagon career as a Middle East expert, turns 77 Bruce Alpert, freelance reporter, he was a writing instructor at Montana State University Billings Jodi Magness, archaeologist and professor of early Judaism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, turns 70 Ronald Kass, Stockton, Calif.-based physician at the Pacific Sleep Disorders Center David Elliot Hoberman, producer of over 40 films in his career and executive producer of the television series “Monk,” turns 74 Rabbi David J. Wolpe, rabbi emeritus of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles, he is the inaugural rabbinic fellow for the ADL, turns 68 John Nathan Janno Lieber, chairman and CEO of NYCs Metropolitan Transportation Authority, turns 65 Ken Rosenthal, bow tie-clad field reporter for Fox Major League Baseball since 2005, he is also a senior baseball writer for The Athletic, turns 64 Michael Evan Horowitz, inspector general of the Federal Reserve Board and the CFPB, turns 64 Tim Scott, U.S. senator (R-SC), he chairs the Senate Banking Committee, turns 61 Ronald Halber, CEO of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington Mike Michalowicz, author of nine popular business books, former small business columnist for The Wall Street Journal John Harthorne, founder and managing director at Two Lanterns Venture Capital, he is also the founder of MassChallenge (a startup accelerator) Jillian Schwartz, pole vaulter, she competed for the U.S. in the 2004 Olympics and for Israel in the 2012 Olympics, now an associate brand manager at Kraft Heinz, turns 47 Neal Urwitz, CEO of Enduring Cause Strategies Danny Valencia, former MLB player for nine seasons, he was on Team Israel for the 2020 Summer Olympics and the 2023 World Baseball Classic, turns 42 Joseph Kristol, senior public affairs director at Elliott Investment Management Charlie Burg, singer-songwriter and producer, he frequently wears a Magen David pendant when performing, turns 30 Sam Sloman, former NFL placekicker, his college teammates nicknamed him the “Kosher Cannon,” turns 29 SUNDAY Candy Spelling, author, theater producer, television personality and philanthropist, turns 81 Curt Randy Grossman, wealth management advisor, he won four Super Bowls with the Steelers during his 8-year career as a tight end, turns 74 Rav Ahron Lopiansky, rosh yeshiva of the Yeshiva of Greater Washington, turns 73 Lloyd Blankfein, senior chairman of Goldman Sachs since 2019, prior to which he served as CEO there for 13 years, turns 72 Yosef Elron, former justice of the Supreme Court of Israel since 2017, turns 71 Lawrence Schreier, insurance agent in Tulsa, Okla. Marc Roberts, real estate developer, sports agent and boxing promoter, turns 67 Rabbi Tovia Singer, former rabbi of Congregation Beit Torat Chaim of Jakarta, Indonesia, turns 66 Randolph Lipscher, emergency medicine physician in Austin, he was the goalkeeper for the U.S. field hockey team at the 1984 Summer Olympics, turns 66 Lisa Bloom, civil rights attorney, author and legal analyst, turns 65 Deborah Gavin Shemony, chief marketing and brand officer at BBYO Keren Barak, former member of the Knesset for the Likud party, turns 54 Melissa Kronfeld, founder of PFAP (Passion for a Purpose) Consulting and COO of PizzaIDF James Mazol, deputy under secretary of defense for research and engineering Drew Singer, deputy news team lead at Bloomberg Law Emily Grunewald, principal at Blue Laurel Advisors Carter Lavin, climate activist in Oakland, Calif. Alison Bogdonoff, senior director of strategic initiatives at Sony Music Entertainment Zoe Plotsky, director of integrated marketing at Rent the Runway Isabel Tsesarsky, Manhattan resident Gabriel LaBelle, actor, best known for his leading role as young aspiring filmmaker Sammy Fabelman in Steven Spielbergs semi-autobiographical film “The Fabelmans,” turns 24 Jason Ian Drucker, theatre, film and television actor, turns 21

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Met Council marks record High Holy Days food distribution, new warehouse funding

Nira Dayanim — Fri, 18 Sep 2026 10:06:43 +0000

Two million pounds of kosher food and $2 million for a new warehouse. Met Council, the poverty-fighting nonprofit in New York City, paired both milestones on Wednesday, as New York Gov. Kathy Hochul joined the organization at its Brooklyn Hub to help distribute kosher staples amid the High Holy Day season. New York state Sen. Sam Sutton, who represents the heavily Jewish Brooklyn neighborhoods of Borough Park, Flatbush and Midwood, provided a $1 million matching grant for a new facility in Canarsie, Brooklyn, Met Council CEO David Greenfield told eJewishPhilanthropy. The grant, issued as “community funding” through his senate office, closed out a $25 million fundraising campaign that the organization launched for the “AI-backed” 22,000-square-foot warehouse, which is expected to open in the coming weeks. The $1 million in state funding was matched by donors and members of the Met Council’s board. “We were a few million dollars short, and so the senator said, Look, I want to create a challenge. Ill give [state] money if you give money,” said Greenfield. Also this year, the anti-poverty organization is distributing over 2 million pounds of kosher food through early October, a record for its High Holy Days food distribution. According to Greenfield, the amount of food —distributed in 162 events across shuls, yeshivas and “community tzedakah organizations” — also represents a record for kosher food distribution in the United States. No ones giving out more kosher food for the High Holy Days than we are. Thats the largest kosher food distribution in America around the High Holidays so far, Greenfield said. On Wednesday, both Hochul and Sutton joined Met Council for its food distribution in Borough Park, in which it distributed over 100,000 pounds of food in one day. The full haul to be distributed through early October — 2,016,982 pounds of food — consisted of 55,026 bottles of grape juice, 48,384 bottles of honey and 659,432 pounds of fresh produce, as well as chicken, frozen fish, eggs and other pantry staples. This year, food distribution took place across New York City, Long Island, New Jersey, and —for the first time — Florida, Greenfield told eJP. According to Greenfield, the organization began preparing for the High Holy Days season in June and typically spends two to four months sourcing food to meet varied kosher certification needs. For their next major push before Passover, the Met Council expects to expand to more than 200 sites, he said. This year, said Greenfield, the Met Council has fielded an 18% increase in food requests compared to last year. He attributed the increased scale of food distribution in part to the rising need due to increasing food costs. A 2023 UJA-Federation of New York study found that roughly 1 in 5 Jewish households is “poor or near-poor.” Food prices have gone up something like 40% in the last five years,” said Greenfield, “and certainly for most working-class New Yorkers, their salaries have not gone up by 40%.”

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With new venture Yochai, Rabbi Zohar Atkins hopes AI can make studying Torah ‘delightful’

Jay Deitcher — Fri, 18 Sep 2026 09:58:48 +0000

Artificial intelligence, Rabbi Zohar Atkins is betting, won’t take human interaction out of Torah study. Instead, it can be a doorway in. “I dont think that anybody is going to stop going to in-person classes or stop having friends and just use the AI,” he told eJewishPhilanthropy. In June, Atkins launched Yochai, an AI chavruta, study partner, that provides users with everything from Torah-based life advice to support writing a d’var Torah. The program serves as “the beginning of study, not the end,” he said, allowing users to “have deeper, more interesting… Torah insights.” And “because were social creatures,” people will want to share what they learn, leading to more teaching and more learning. Yochai is Atkins’ second venture into AI-backed study through Lightning Studios, an AI education platform Atkins founded in 2022 with the aim to “inspire learning as a way of life,” he said. Yochai comes on the heels of the Great Library of Alexandria, which launched last year and offers users access to over 4,000 classic texts along with guidance from an AI companion named Virgil. The Great Library of Alexandria was meant to “democratize liberal arts education,” Atkins said. It was natural for him to bring that same perspective to the Jewish world. Torah study is “one of the most incredible things that a Jew can participate in,” he said. “Learning in general is one of the great drivers of human flourishing, and AI enables dynamic, personalized learning.” Yochai lowers the bar to entry into Torah study, Atkins said, and will support users no matter their knowledge level. The program is named after Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, a second-century sage who spent 12 years living in a cave studying Torah. Bar Yochai is often credited with authoring the Zohar, Atkins’ namesake and one of the foundational texts of Kabbalah — although the claim has been disputed. It also helped that the rabbi’s name had the letters AI in it, Atkins noted, chuckling. Since launching earlier this year, over 10,000 people have visited the platform from 38 countries, including Israel, the United Kingdom, France, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa. Users have engaged with Yochai in English, Hebrew, Spanish, French, Portuguese and Russian. In addition to being able to answer halachic questions — such as if congregants need to wear socks to synagogue or if someone can eat while praying — the program can create study sheets for individual learning, classes and lectures. In addition, there is a WhatsApp number that will answer questions and can be invited to group chats. The AI pulls information from over 1,000 bilingual texts, the majority from Sefaria, that users can read and ask questions about in real time. The program will not actually write a d’var Torah for a user, but it will ask them a series of questions that will guide them towards the short talk or essay. “Its more like a co-pilot than a pure outsourcing device,” Atkins said. Yochai is for “anyone that wants to learn more Torah than they currently [know],” Atkins said. “Yochais job is to make the study of Torah delightful, and thats something that I think many Jews can rally behind, regardless of how they read or what the purpose of their reading is.” Atkins is not trying to convince people to study Torah, but to instead make it easier for people who want to learn to join the discussion by personalizing the experience and directing users to the relevant text or lenses to view it through — whether someone is more interested in structure and language or spirituality. The same way Sefaria supported Yochai by offering open-source texts, Yochai is similarly allowing developers to program their own Torah application on top of the Yochai foundation. Already, 18 projects use the program’s open-source knowledge graph. While Lightning Studios is for-profit, Yochai received grant funding from Maimonides Fund and seed funding from Infinity Constellation, which supports AI-native companies. “The Jewish community needs to figure out how to use AI — not just to be more efficient, but to more effectively engage our people in Jewish life and Jewish learning,” Mark Charendoff, president of Maimonides Fund, told eJP. “Project Yochai is taking a bold step to try to deepen Jewish engagement with text and Torah. It’s a part of a growing AI portfolio that we are excited about expanding.” Atkins plans to develop Yochai into a Torah-grounded computer operating system offering Jewish leaders a morally directed personal co-pilot to help with day-to-day operations — everything from employee relations to fundraising from a Jewish standpoint. As long as the product is good, funding will come, Atkins said. “If theres demand, then I imagine there will be funding for it. Now the goal is to drive growth and track retention.” He isn’t trying to put anyone out of a job. Atkins was ordained by the Jewish Theological Seminary and received a doctorate in philosophy from Oxford. “I have deep reverence for teachers and scholars,” he said. “Im not trying to put anybody out of a job. I dont believe that AI will do that.”

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How to get the best out of your board

Contributing Author — Fri, 18 Sep 2026 09:40:00 +0000

“They’re supposed to support me. But all they ever do is criticize.” “I wish they’d stop interfering and just let me do my job.” “They just don’t get it. They think they do. But they don’t.” I’ve coached some outstanding nonprofit chief executives with highly committed boards. Yet frustrations such as those paraphrased above seem to be the rule rather than the exception, even when the chief executive’s relations with the board are good. These tensions matter: weak board-executive partnerships can undermine organizational effectiveness and contribute to executive turnover. If you’re a chief executive and this is how you sometimes feel about your board, you’re not alone. But fantasizing about life without a board isn’t the answer. First, the board protects you. Without it, there would be no buffer between you and mob justice by donors, staff, clients, volunteers and other community stakeholders. Accountability to the board through its chair or president gives you a single address for setting goals, assessing performance and seeking support. Second, the board protects the organization from you. Without its oversight, you’d have more power than is healthy for one individual in a community institution. Unchecked authority increases the temptation to cut corners on financial transparency, hiring and firing policies, program quality and other aspects of organizational operations. The board protects you and the organization from such temptations by holding you accountable for mission, progress and ethical behavior. As Louis Brandeis noted, “Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.” What you need your board to do Nonprofit governance literature tends to converge on three functions a board serves: to steer, to support and to oversee. Some chief executives think only the second function matters — that the board should provide funding and run interference when stakeholders try to impose their will on the chief executive’s decisions or the organization’s operations. In reality, all three functions are crucial. Without a shared vision and broad agreement on strategy, there is no sound basis for assessing the organization’s progress or the chief executive’s performance. That may feel like a welcome reprieve from being judged. Over time, though, the absence of robust, transparent criteria invites arbitrary, opaque ones. Similarly, if the board fails to oversee the chief executive, more partisan stakeholders fill the vacuum. The board must keep the chief executive honest and ensure the organization’s most important challenges are addressed, not just the easiest ones. Without that oversight, leaders can drift off course, driven by the urgent rather than the important, cobbling together temporary fixes rather than long-term solutions. In other words, a chief executive needs a board that functions well: one that supports, steers and oversees. Help your board help you Unfortunately, there’s a catch. Not all boards or chairs function well. Volunteers with demanding day jobs may struggle to give their responsibilities full attention. Confusion over those responsibilities can compound the problem. Even trustees who understand their role may feel insufficiently expert in the organization’s work to steer, support and oversee the chief executive effectively. As a result, it’s not uncommon for boards to zigzag between overly demanding standards and none at all, importing inappropriate business expectations one moment and relying on rumor rather than evidence the next. This is where you come in. As chief executive, you’re not just the board’s employee; you’re also their partner. To get the best out of your board, you need to help them function well. To help them steer you, draft your vision and frame the key questions. Don’t usurp the board by bringing them the finished article, but also don’t wait for them to articulate a full-blown strategic plan from scratch (or sigh with misplaced relief when they don’t). Resolve with your chair to be clear with each other, and with board members, about the kinds of engagement you’re seeking on any given topic. When are you asking for advice, when for permission and when for neither? To help them support you, let them know what you need, what’s holding you back and how they can help. Being clear about this requires you to be both bold and vulnerable, neither shifting onto them burdens that are really yours nor pretending you’ve got it all figured out when really you haven’t. In other words, it requires you to develop real relationships. Board members are at their most supportive when they feel they’re actually making a difference. So make them feel truly seen and heard, not pandered to, hoodwinked or avoided. Use their genuine expertise, networks and authority where they are materially relevant. To help them oversee you, provide them with the information they need to assess your performance and the organization’s progress. Research on nonprofit boards finds that they trust executives more when they provide the type and quality of information board members want. Equip them with relevant evidence and develop their appetite for demanding and reviewing it. If this sounds like giving yourself more work, that’s because it is. But trust me, it’s far less work than managing arbitrary and unpredictable interference or trying to reverse a chair’s mistrust. Your job isn’t to be a star pupil, waiting for the board to set the agenda and always seeking the chair’s approval. Nor is it to be a conductor, playing board members against each other or restricting access to vital information to retain maximum room for maneuver. It’s to be the head coach. As an Englishman and soccer fan, I need to tread carefully here: My model here is Jürgen Klopp, Liverpool FCs manager from 2015 to 2024. The owners’ respect for his footballing expertise and judgment bought him enormous freedom to develop his squad, strategy and tactics. But Klopp never forgot who the boss was and took care to cultivate the owners’ trust and keep them informed. For those of you more into what passes for football in America, I’m told that a similarly symbiotic relationship has existed since 2013 between Andy Reid, head coach of the Kansas City Chiefs, and Clark Hunt, the team’s chairman and CEO. The point is that you’ll get the best out of the board if, like Klopp and Reid, you earn their confidence by accepting their authority to govern while exercising your authority to lead. When the going gets tough “Sounds idyllic,” I hear you say. “But what happens when the chief executive and chair disagree deeply and passionately, and neither feels able, in good conscience, to back down?” First, resist climbing that tree. Convert a looming my-way-or-the-highway confrontation into a shared discussion of consequences. Frame the issue in terms of if/then rather than either/or. Focus on the matter in dispute, not on who has the power. Second, use your expertise to make the implications concrete. Instead of “you’re wrong” or “that would be terrible,” spell out the specifics, e.g., “if we do X, then Y becomes impossible.” Third, know where the buck stops. Appreciate the difference between a strong disagreement and an ethical, legal or professional red line. If the board makes a decision within its legitimate domain of authority that you disagree with strongly, and your efforts at persuasion have failed, then it’s time to disagree, commit and implement loyally. You can’t do it all alone, even if you sometimes wish you could. Years of heading institutions, developing leaders and advising boards have taught me that successful leaders know when to lead and when to follow. In Jewish nonprofits, chief executives often have to juggle a particularly complex and potent brew of conflicting expectations of donors, staff, clients, volunteers and the wider community. That multiplicity makes a clear line of accountability especially valuable. The board, with the chair as its representative, provides a single, official address for the steering, support and oversight they need. Without it, they would face the cacophony of the crowd, unprotected and alone. So, don’t avoid your board. Engage it. Everyone needs a boss — even you. Eli Gottlieb is a cultural psychologist, executive coach and consultant to institutional leaders and boards on strategy and organizational change. He is a senior fellow at the Graduate School of Education and Human Development at The George Washington University and founder of The Pivot Doctor consultancy.

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The next generation is already leading. Let’s make room.

Contributing Author — Fri, 18 Sep 2026 09:00:00 +0000

A few weeks ago in Washington, D.C., we were asked what gives us confidence about the future of the Jewish community. The answer was sitting in front of us: we were speaking with hundreds of Jewish and pro-Israel student leaders at the Israel on Campus Coalition National Leadership Summit. Now, with a new academic year underway, those students are back on campuses across the country, carrying with them lessons learned under circumstances none of us would have chosen for them. They did not choose Oct. 7, 2023. They did not choose the explosion of antisemitism and Jew-hatred that followed, the encampments and disruptions, nor the hostility many encountered simply for standing publicly as Jews and supporters of Israel. In response, they organized, educated their classmates, advocated, supported frightened friends and built communities for students who suddenly discovered that institutions they trusted could not always be counted upon to defend them. Many stood publicly for Israel and against antisemitism when doing so carried real costs. That deserves admiration. But admiration is not enough. For years, the organized Jewish community has spoken about cultivating the “next generation.” After Oct. 7, that phrase feels inadequate. Many of these young people are not waiting for us to make them leaders. Circumstances already did. Our institutions need to catch up. If we believe these young men and women belong in Jewish leadership now, our community has to find more ways to trust them with real responsibility. That means moving beyond encouragement, conferences, fellowships and invitations to observe. We need to create more opportunities for them to participate in consequential conversations, learn how decisions actually get made, build relationships with senior leaders and assume responsibility before every credential has been accumulated and every rough edge polished. But responsibility runs in both directions. Those stepping into leadership also face a challenge that is easy to underestimate: Leadership is not measured by the moment you win. It is measured by what you build, whom you bring with you and what remains after you leave. At the Conference of Presidents, we bring together organizations with different constituencies, ideologies, priorities and approaches. If cooperation required unanimity on every issue, we would accomplish almost nothing. Consensus is not unanimity, but rather the ability to identify common responsibilities without requiring every participant to surrender independent judgment or institutional identity. The work of coalition leadership is not to eliminate disagreement; it is to build enough trust that disagreement does not make cooperation impossible. That means knowing the difference between a principle and a tactic, listening closely enough to understand what another person or institution actually needs, building relationships before an emergency makes them necessary and having the patience to maintain them. The relationships young leaders form now may follow them for decades. People remember who returned the call, kept a promise, shared credit and behaved decently when there was nothing immediate to gain. Ambition and conviction matter; so does the humility to recognize that disagreement, even serious disagreement, is not itself evidence of stupidity, immorality or bad faith. The strongest leaders have strong spines and open ears. None of this means young leaders should defer automatically to established institutions. Jewish communal life needs people prepared to challenge conventional wisdom. Institutions can become complacent. Practices can grow stale. Organizations can lose touch with the people they exist to serve. A new generation can also see blind spots that are less visible to those who have spent years working within existing structures. Challenging an institution, however, is only part of leadership. What matters is what the challenge leaves behind. Does it correct a failure, strengthen an institution, widen a coalition or create a better way forward? Or does it deepen divisions without producing meaningful change? There will be times when confrontation is necessary. Leadership is not conflict avoidance. But how leaders conduct necessary disagreements often determines whether a community emerges from them stronger or weaker. We have seen what is possible since Oct. 7. Organizations accustomed to operating in separate lanes worked together. Students who had never imagined themselves as activists became organizers. Donors responded to unfamiliar needs. Institutions adapted at remarkable speed. Across the Jewish world, many who had previously stood at its periphery stepped forward. Crisis accelerated cooperation. The challenge now is to make that cooperation durable. That will require more than preserving the programs and partnerships created in an emergency. The people who stepped forward after Oct. 7 need lasting opportunities to remain engaged, assume greater responsibility and help shape Jewish communal life. We also need to help them develop the skills that matter when leadership moves beyond the urgency of a crisis: judgment, coalition-building, patience, institutional memory, fundraising, governance and the ability to work across differences. This matters because relationships forged under the pressure of an emergency eventually have to survive disagreements over politics, personalities, tactics, funding, credit and priorities. The years ahead will demand stronger Jewish institutions, broader alliances and continued bipartisan support for Israel. They will require confronting antisemitism wherever it appears, including in universities, political movements, unions, professional associations and cultural institutions. None of that can be accomplished by outrage alone. It will require allies whose interests overlap with ours without perfectly matching them. Partnership does not require agreement on everything. It does require recognizing that genuine partners will sometimes expect us to care about what matters to them, too. Nor should the ambitions of this generation end at the doors of Jewish organizations. The students we met will become lawyers, physicians, entrepreneurs, teachers, journalists, public officials, philanthropists and civic leaders. Their Jewish commitments belong in those rooms, too. So do the relationships they build with people whose identities and priorities are not identical to their own. The strength of American Jewry has never depended solely on what happens inside Jewish institutions. It also depends on the place Jews occupy in the broader American civic fabric and on our ability to build enduring relationships beyond ourselves. What gives us confidence about this generation is that it has already demonstrated courage. Our responsibility now is to help that courage mature into judgment, patience, discipline and the ability to bring others along. The Torah’s account of Moses and Joshua offers a useful reminder. Moses did not simply recognize Joshua’s promise. He entrusted him with responsibility and prepared the people to follow him. Leadership, in that telling, included preparing for the day when someone else would carry the work forward. The ultimate measure of leadership is not simply what we accomplish while occupying our positions. It is whether we leave behind people prepared to assume them, relationships strong enough to survive disagreement and institutions capable of meeting challenges we cannot yet foresee. The students we met in Washington, now back on campuses across the country, are not merely our future. After Oct. 7 and everything that followed, they have earned the right to be regarded as part of our present. Our task is no longer merely to tell them how proud we are. It is to trust them with something worth inheriting. Their task will be to leave it stronger than they found it. Betsy Berns Korn is the chair and William Daroff is the CEO of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. The views expressed herein do not necessarily reflect the positions of all 50 member organizations.

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The federation model isn’t static, and it never has been

Contributing Author — Fri, 18 Sep 2026 08:30:46 +0000

Steven Windmueller’s recent article, The remake: Bringing the federation model into the 21st century (Sept. 2), asks the important question of what should Jewish federations become in a changing Jewish community. We agree that Jewish communities are changing: their needs are changing and the challenges facing them are changing, both at home and around the world. But what Windmueller doesn’t recognize is that this constant evolution and adaptation to the needs of the Jewish community and the commitment to evolving as the world changes is exactly what the federation model was designed to do. Many of his suggestions and frameworks are useful, and indeed are already core to how most federations approach their work. Adaptation is what federations have always done, from the generations that helped resettle the immigrants to America to the building of the State of Israel to the growth of formal and informal Jewish education to today’s post-Oct. 7 environment. Across the 141 federations, the “model” calls on skilled professionals, lay leaders, donors and partners to support the realities of Jewish life today while building the capacity to meet whatever comes next. The past six years have provided perhaps the clearest demonstration yet of the relevance, adaptability and enduring value of the federation model. Consider what Jewish communities have experienced over the past decade. The COVID-19 pandemic forced communities to rapidly coordinate resources, support vulnerable populations and rethink how Jewish life could function. Rising antisemitism and the attacks on Jewish institutions, from Tree of Life and since, have made security and community safety an increasingly urgent communal responsibility. The war in Ukraine and other global challenges have required federations to mobilize for global Jewish needs. And Oct. 7, 2023 fundamentally changed the reality for Jewish communities in Israel and around the world, calling on federations to show up with extraordinary levels of funding, advocacy, partnership and support. In each of these moments, federations have both drawn on our rich experience and adapted to answer the call. They are entrusted with the responsibility and the resources to find communal solutions to challenges that individual institutions could not solve alone. From fundraisers to builders of flourishing Jewish communities The purpose of a federation is to help build flourishing Jewish communities. We define this as communities that are healthy, safe, caring, welcoming and inclusive, educated and engaged, active in the broader community and connected to Israel and Jewish communities around the world. Achieving this vision requires much more than raising money and allocating it. Federations are community planners, investors, conveners, relationship builders, infrastructure builders and mobilizers of people and resources. They are focused not simply on existing programs or institutions, but on whether the community as a whole has the conditions necessary for Jewish life to flourish. That begins with understanding the community. Federations draw on community studies, pulse surveys, participation data, national research, information from local organizations and, perhaps most importantly, what they hear from the people who live in their communities. They seek to understand where people are thriving, where they are not being reached, what needs are emerging, which organizations are strong and where there are gaps. This process is not episodic, it is ongoing and relies on regular data and information, which Federations today have as a result of new systems and technologies. Then federations bring people and organizations together around what they are learning. Their role is to help the community understand what is needed and determine who is best positioned to respond. To support and reinforce these efforts, Jewish Federations of North America convenes and partners with national organizations. That is community planning in its fullest sense. It is not simply deciding which organizations receive funding, but helping a community understand itself, establish priorities and translate those priorities into collective action. Building the infrastructure Jewish life requires Perhaps nowhere is the evolution of the federation role more visible than in community infrastructure. Security provides a clear recent example. The rise in antisemitism has fundamentally changed what it means to operate a Jewish institution safely. Across North America, federations have built community-wide security infrastructure, including assessments, training, coordination, crisis response, relationships with law enforcement and intelligence agencies, and the philanthropic resources necessary to sustain this work. The same is true of community relations, which has been a function of federations for many decades. Federations today are building relationships with elected officials, law enforcement, school leaders, business leaders, interfaith partners and others in the broader community. Those relationships matter every day and become especially important when antisemitism or another crisis emerges. This enables the community to respond to crises, but more importantly, it makes it possible for Jewish life to continue and thrive. Mobilizing resources at scale Fundraising remains a core part of the federation model, and for good reason. Federations have a unique ability to mobilize philanthropic resources around shared community priorities. The response to Oct. 7 demonstrated this on an unprecedented scale, with the federation system raising over $900 million for Israel. But perhaps the more important lesson is that this was not simply a one-time response to a crisis. Many new donors stayed engaged, while existing donors increased their investment as they saw the continued needs facing Israel and Jewish communities. As Windmueller highlights, that trust contributed to more than 15% growth in federation annual campaigns in FY2025. Annual campaigns remain the most important source of philanthropic support in the federation system, while federation philanthropy today is increasingly diverse and encompasses endowments, donor advised funds, directed giving, emergency campaigns, major gifts and other forms of investment. These resources allow communities to respond to immediate needs, strengthen institutions, build infrastructure, support Jewish engagement and education, and connect local communities to Israel and Jewish communities around the world. But the growth of Federation philanthropy tells us something larger than the story of fundraising: People continue to see value in coming together to solve problems that are bigger than any one institution. To be clear, it is a process. The only way federations can be agile and adaptable is to continue learning from our communities, from our peers, from professionals and lay leaders, and from thought leaders. But as federations demonstrate value, in the many ways discussed in this article and beyond, they engage donors and lay leaders in new ways. Stronger relationships and more visible impact create greater philanthropic and leadership capacity, which in turn gives communities greater ability to address the challenges and opportunities before them. It is a virtuous cycle. Measuring what matters Perhaps one of the most important aspects of Federations’ work today is how they define and measure success. Dollars raised matter. They are key to accomplishing our mission, and the ability to mobilize philanthropic resources remains one of the Federation system’s defining strengths. But dollars raised are the means to the end, not the end itself. Federations also measure impact. Every Federation now has access to regular reports that look holistically at financial resource development, community allocations, organizational capacity, community infrastructure, participation, engagement and other indicators of organizational and community health. Federations also have more options than ever for understanding the attitudes and needs of their communities. Rather than relying solely on an every-ten-year community study, they can use community pulse surveys to understand how people are experiencing local Jewish life. Together, these tools allow Federations to look more holistically at whether their communities are healthy and thriving—a shift from measuring dollars raised and allocated to measuring community impact. The question is no longer only whether we have grown the resources to do the work. It is whether those resources, together with strong local institutions, effective leaders and shared infrastructure, are helping create the kind of Jewish community people participate in, feel safe in and show up for. Positioned for today and tomorrow The last six years have shown us that Jewish communities need institutions capable of building the community’s infrastructure to prepare for both good times and bad, moving quickly in a crisis, mobilizing resources at extraordinary scale, strengthening the organizations that make Jewish life possible, and creating new pathways for people to find connection and belonging. Federations have done all of that, and they are continuing to evolve. The Jewish community does not need federations to be everything to everyone. It needs federations to do what few other institutions can do: to see the whole community, bring its disparate parts together, understand where the greatest opportunities and needs lie, and help translate collective priorities into collective action. The crises of the past six years have shown us that this capacity is not a relic of the past. This is what federations do today — and it is precisely why federations are so well positioned to help build the Jewish communities of tomorrow. Shira Hutt is the executive vice president of Jewish Federations of North America. Mimi Kravetz is the chief impact and growth officer of Jewish Federations of North America.

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Your Daily Phil: Jewish funders can’t afford to ignore AI, JFN panel warns

EJP — Thu, 17 Sep 2026 14:29:40 +0000

Good Thursday morning! In today’s edition of Your Daily Phil, we cover aJewish Funders Networkpanel on the need for Jewish leaders to get involved in critical conversations about artificial intelligence, and report onRobert Kraft’s pledge to matchEd Sheeran’s $2 million for Middle East aid. We feature an opinion piece byIdit Kleinabout choosing audacious hope and a piece byStephen Markowitzhighlighting the needs of Jewish outreach professionals; plus,Rabbi Sarah Freidsonshares her congregation’s creative approach to learning aboutteshuva: analyzing public apologies gone wrong (and the few that get it right). Also in this issue:Jeremy Musighi,Darin McKeeverandRenée Wizig-Barrios. Today’sYour Daily Philwas curated by eJP 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 TheAtlantic Festivalkicks off today in New York. Speakers includeAnnie Polland, the president of theLower East Side Tenement Museum, and former U.S. Ambassador to JapanRahm Emanuel, who is mulling a 2028 presidential bid. New York City MayorZohran Mamdaniis holding a briefing today alongside NYPD CommissionerJessica Tischabout security around theU.N. General Assembly, which begins next week. TheNational Yiddish Theatre Folksbienewill open its 111th season this evening withNew York Sings Yiddishat Central ParksSummerStage. What You Should Know A QUICK WORD FROM eJPS JAY DEITCHER As business leaders, scientists, politicians and commentatorsdebate the risks and benefits presented by artificial intelligence —and the need to restrain the emerging technology —Jewish funders and leaders cannot afford to keep out of the conversation, a group of Jewish thinkers and professionals argued yesterday at a Jewish Funders Network High Holidays Gathering. The discussion, held yesterday on Zoom,comes after weeks of ominous warnings from within the industry,withOpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, Elon Musk and over1,000artificial intelligence scientists calling for self-imposed restraints. Many view the threat posed by the technology as existential. One of the panelists, Sara Wolkenfeld, chief learning officer at Sefaria,called for Jewish funders to “make a difference” by supporting thought leadership on the issue. “We need a group, a class of communal leaders, a diverse group of communal leaders, who look different and sound different and come from different streams of Judaism,” Wolkenfeld said, “and [funders] need to be able to give them the space and the resources to work on these questions, to work on educational initiatives, to work on convening these conversations, and doing that for the benefit of the Jewish community.” Read the rest of ‘What You Should Know’here. News MAJOR GIFTS Kraft pledges $2M for Middle East aid, matching donation by Ed Sheeran, following Macklemore discord New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft pledged $2 million for aid to the Middle East on Wednesday, matching a donation of the same amount by singer Ed Sheeran,eJewishPhilanthropy’s Judah Ari Gross reports. The commitment followed an uproar over Kraft’s decision to block one of Sheeran’s opening acts, Macklemore, from performing at his Boston-area venue, Gillette Stadium, over the rapper’s anti-Israel remarks at previous concerts and past antisemitic incidents. The check’s memo:In his statement announcing the $2 million donation, Kraft struck back at his critics, stressing his long-standing commitment to supporting peace-building between Israelis and Palestinians. “I’d like the people who are speaking in support of the Palestinian people to know that for decades, I have supported efforts that create opportunity for Palestinians and have brought young Palestinians and Israelis together to build businesses, create jobs, and forge relationships,” Kraft wrote. Read the full report here. Share Opinion HOPE FOR TOMORROW Both of my grandmothers were right In an opinion piece foreJewishPhilanthropy, Idit Klein, vice president for public engagement at the New Israel Fund,reflectson her two grandmothers’ differing responses to the trauma of the Holocaust and how her understanding of that duality has evolved in a post-Oct. 7 world. “Hope does not ask us to ignore the evidence; rather, it asks us to understand that evidence is not destiny. This distinction matters enormously today.” Read the full piece here. Share DATA DIVE What makes a career in Jewish outreach last? In an opinion piece foreJewishPhilanthropy, Stephen Markowitz, project manager of the Mayberg Foundation’s Maalot Collab (formerly known as the Jewish Outreach Professional Development pilot program),writesthat Jewish outreach organizations, practitioners and the communities their work serves “all stand to gain from articulating more clearly what the work actually is, what it demands and what a career in it can look like at its best.” “I spent months in deep-dive interviews with 17 practitioners and organizational leaders, each nominated by their organization as a best-case example. I framed those interviews around four dimensions of a vibrant career: confidence, competence, motivation and relevance. … Across these conversations, three traits consistently showed up in thriving, long-term careers.” Read the fullpiecehere. Share TACKLING TESHUVA What makes a career in Jewish outreach last? In an opinion piece foreJewishPhilanthropy, Rabbi Sarah Freidson of Temple Beth Shalom in Mahopac, N.Y.,writesabout Bad Celebrity Apologies, her congregation’s annual adult learning program on Yom Kippur afternoon. “This playful yet meaningful session explores what makes a genuine apology and how we seek forgiveness for our own missteps, all through the lens of the worst (and the rare best) celebrity apologies of the past year. It’s an energizing way to break up the long afternoon and invite laughter, learning and spiritual insight at a time when many feel low — and hangry.” Read the fullpiecehere. Share Worthy Reads Clock of Contrition:In theJewish Telegraphic Agency, Hadar Institute’s Rabbi Matthew Anisfeldcontendsthat genuine repair depends on the wronged persons readiness as a Yom Kippurs deadline can prompt an apology but cant do the work of reconciliation itself. “The test, then, isn’t when an apology arrives, or even how sincerely it’s meant. It’s who it’s actually for.” The Most Watched Nation:InProfoundAF, investor Jeremy Musighibreaks downinternational media coverage, showing a clear fixation on Israel. “Why does a country the size of a mid-tier metropolis city command a fixed, permanent, disproportionate share of the entire worlds attention, decade after decade, mostly in a negative register — while catastrophes 10 and 100 times larger pass in silence? … [The] spotlight is not a response to events. The spotlight is the operation — aimed at making Israel the thing you think about. The thing that infuriates you.” Major Gifts TheArthur J. and Betty F. Diskin Cultural Endowment Fundis granting $375,000 over five years to theJewish Community Center of Greater Pittsburghto strengthen itsSchool of Dance… Indiana Universityreceiveda $100 million gift — the largest from an individual in its history — from alumnus and Oxford Financial Group CEOJeffrey H. Thomassonand his wife,Benita. The gift will rename theKelley School of Businessgraduate division after him and fund undergraduate scholarships at theLilly Family School of Philanthropy… Transitions Touro University has named William “Bill” Miller vice president for institutional advancement… TheIDF Widows Orphans OrganizationhiredShir Rosenbaum-Yaakobias its newchief financial officer… Leba Faigenbegana new role atUJA-Federation of New Yorkas its regional director of Long Island… William Davidson Foundationpresident and CEODarin McKeeverjoinedthe board of directors of theDetroit PublicTheatre… Word on the Street IsraelsSecond Authority for Television and Radioclearedthe transfer of Channel 13 from billionaireLen BlavatniktoWizco-foundersAssaf RappaportandYinon Costicavia theMerit Spread Foundation, the first philanthropic entity to own an Israeli TV channel… Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin NetanyahusLikud PartypetitionedIsraelsCentral Elections Committeeto blockFly Vote, an initiative by theAID Coalition,which helps Israeli expats return home to vote in the Oct. 27 election. The party alleges voter bribery and campaign finance violations, a claim theAID Coalitiondenies.Check out eJP’s coverage of the initiative here. HarvardsMiddle East Initiativelaunchedan Israel Program, led by senior research fellowBarak Sella, to advance research and engagement on Israel… Reps.Brad Knott(R-NC) andTom Suozzi(D-NY) rallied outsideCapitol Hillyesterday with more than two dozen faith leaders to push theRight to Worship Act, a bill that would establish buffer zones around houses of worship,Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports… IsraelsClalit Health Servicesannounced it was building a NIS 400 million ($131 million) automated logistics center inBeersheva, which it said would ensure medical supplies flowed to southern hospitals and clinics, after the war exposed the regions vulnerable supply routes… Jewish students fromSAR Academyand theRamaz School, joined byIMPACT, theIsraeli-American Council,Congregation Kehilath JeshurunandRomemu, willleadprayer services on Friday outside the Gracie Mansion residence of New York City MayorZohran Mamdaniin response to rising antisemitism in the city; the political activity has drawn pushback from some students, families, alumni and liberal groups… InYnet,Zomet Institute’sRabbi Menachem Perldescribeshis battle with post-traumatic stress disorder after being tasked with identifying Oct. 7 victims, as he pushes for trauma treatment programs built around the religious lives of Haredi and observant soldiers… In theJewish Herald-Voice,Jewish Federation of Greater Houstonpresident and CEORenée Wizig-Barriosmarksfive years in the role and reflects on growing philanthropy 30% and expanding security for Houston’s Jewish institutions… Jewish Federation Los AngelesissuingPasadenasNorton Simon Museumto reclaim a Nazi-looted Cranach diptych, one of two restitution suits filed under a 2024 California law… InThe Conversation, obesity-medicine specialist Reed Berger-Fleishmanwritesthat most people on GLP-1 drugs likeOzempicandWegovycan safely fast forYom Kippur— but those with diabetes who also use insulin or sulfonylureas face the highest risk of a crash during the 25-hour fast… The U.S. once againdeniedPalestinian PresidentMahmoud Abbasan entry visa to theUnited NationsGeneral Assembly, citing the PAs failure to reform… Pic of the Day Embassy of India Sarit Golan-Steinberg, the deputy mayor of Haifa, and Indian Ambassador to Israel J.P. Singh attend a ceremony yesterday in the northern Israeli city commemorating the Battle of Haifa in World War I, on Sept. 23, 1918, when Indian troops from the 15th Imperial Service Cavalry Brigade took control of the city from Ottoman and German forces. “Haifa has not forgotten the courage and sacrifice of the Indian soldiers,” Golan-Steinberg said in her remarks. Birthdays Noam Galai/Getty Images Rita Rudner, comedian, writer and actor, she was a frequent guest of Johnny Carson on the “Tonight Show,” turns73 Stan M. Herman, fashion designer, known worldwide for his leading-edge corporate uniforms, turns98 Ronald Aronson, U.S. Navy veteran and retired pharmacist Peter J. Solomon, investment banker who once served as a NYC deputy mayor, turns88 Gail Carson Levine, Newbery Honor-winning author of many young adult books, some with Jewish themes, turns79 Joshua Muravchik, author of 11 books and hundreds of articles on foreign policy and the Middle East, turns79 T. Alan Hurwitz, former president of the National Technical Institute for the Deaf and then president of Gallaudet University, turns79 Frank Hagelberg, Rochester, N.Y., attorney, he has held positions at the UJA-Federation of New York and the Rochester Jewish Federation Jeremy Don Fogel, retired judge on the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, turns77 Harold Solomon, former professional tennis player who achieved a world ranking of No. 5 in 1980, turns74 Daniel Fingeroth, author, comic book writer and editor, best known as group editor of theSpider-Manbooks at Marvel Comics, turns73 Mody Kidon, Israeli businessman with real estate holdings in Israel and NYC, turns72 Ellen Kahan Zager, author and graphic designer Rina Frenkel, former member of the Knesset for the Yesh Atid party, turns70 Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg, rabbi emeritus of the New North London Synagogue and senior rabbi of Masorti Judaism UK, turns69 Elliott S. Feigenbaum, former consultant at Quick Hits News Richard Wolffe, journalist, best-selling author including two books on the Obama presidency and Emmy Award-winning executive producer, turns58 Mandy Krauthamer Cohen, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for the last 18 months of the Biden administration, turns48 Adam Abrams, former regional communications director and spokesperson for former President Barack Obama, now a partner at Seven Letter Nick Melvoin, member of the Los Angeles Unified School District’s Board of Education, turns41 David Litt, former Obama White House speechwriter who has since written a best-selling comedic memoir, turns40 Adina Shatz, principal product manager for CathWorks Rachel Roubein, national healthcare reporterThe Washington Postcovering the FDA Natalie Edelstein Jarvis, editorial producer at Google Max August, founder of the Israel Summit at Harvard, now a member of the partnerships staff at OpenAI

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What makes a career in Jewish outreach last?

Contributing Author — Thu, 17 Sep 2026 09:40:00 +0000

The professionals who do Jewish outreach work are on the front lines of one of the most important efforts in Jewish life today: helping Jews of all backgrounds connect more deeply to their heritage, their community and themselves. Bringing Jews closer to Judaism is a full-time job and more, and the Mayberg Foundation’s managing director, Amanda Mizrahi, noted that the dedicated professionals who serve this important role rarely have the opportunity to do the kind of important work on themselves that they ask and help others to do. It was this gap that led her to convene the pilot cohort of the Mayberg Foundation’s Maalot Collab, bringing together four Orthodox outreach organizations — M54/Chabad, Olami, Aish and NCSY — around a structure for learning and experimentation. That structure grew out of a task force Mizrahi first convened among staffers from M54, Aish and NCSY to explore their shared challenges directly. The Association for Jewish Outreach Programs, the fields last holistic professional-development effort, had closed its doors in 2017, and while Chabad and Aish each host inspiring annual conferences, neither offers the kind of deep personal and professional support outreach professionals said they needed. Over six months in 2024 and nine months in 2025, the Maalot Collab’s pilot cohort met regularly, with Mayberg Foundation providing grants alongside space for learning and experimentation. The results were tangible. Organizations began sharing resources across prior boundaries — NCSY circulated its new skills-and-development guide to the cohort, M54 was invited in by both Aish and NCSY to speak on personal growth, and Aish, drawing on ideas from the cohort, launched its own ProDev Leadership Cohort, an intensive training program for 12 handpicked outreach professionals, with participants reporting new approaches to everything from donor engagement to team management. In October 2025, I joined the pilot program as project manager to lead its next phase: aligning stakeholders, launching pilot initiatives and building frameworks the field could scale more broadly. That work began with professionals from across these organizations coming together to ask a question the field rarely asks directly: What does a vibrant, sustained career in this work actually look like? Not a career that survived, but one that is still energized, still growing and still making a difference after 10, 20 or 30 years. To answer that question, I spent months in deep-dive interviews with 17 practitioners and organizational leaders, each nominated by their organization as a best-case example. I framed those interviews around four dimensions of a vibrant career: confidence, competence, motivation and relevance. The findings deserve the fields attention. Multiple pathways into Jewish outreach work The field tends to assume that outreach professionals arrive through a single door: ideological commitment, a personal transformation, a sense of mission that is urgent and clear from the start. What we found was a far richer set of pathways into the work. Some practitioners entered through relationships, brought in by someone they trusted. Others entered through character fit, discovering they were simply good at this kind of work. Some came through circumstance, when an opportunity appeared at the right moment. And for others it was a gradual accumulation of experience that only later crystallized into a vocation. If Jewish outreach organizations only recruit for ideological fire, it narrows the pool and misses people who have exactly what sustained outreach work requires. 3 traits that showed up again and again Across these conversations, three traits consistently showed up in thriving, long-term careers. One was practiced independence: the ability to take ownership of ones own learning and sense of purpose — to seek out the people doing the work well rather than waiting for direction. Another was a diversified relationship to competence: a knack for building skill across the many overlapping roles the work demands, from event management and fundraising to communications and the long relational labor of accompanying people through decades of life. The practitioners who thrive access competence through several channels at once: formal learning, peer relationships, mentors, direct experimentation and honest self-assessment. The final trait was the capacity to grow alongside a changing community, allowing those they serve to genuinely shape their thinking over time. Staying relevant, we found, is an active discipline, not a stable achievement. The shifting measure of success The practitioners who enter this work with urgency and visible impact as their primary measures do not stay there. Early-career practitioners measure success in individuals. Senior practitioners measure it in communities, across decades. That shift is not a loss of motivation but a deepening — from the excitement of early results toward something more patient and more rooted in a long understanding of what this work actually produces. Sustaining that shift requires two things: competence, which renews the desire to do the work as much as the ability to do it well, and a practiced ability to draw energy from several sources at once — a complementary role, a creative outlet, a family life, a spiritual practice, something that fills a practitioner up outside the work itself. This shift gives professionals a longer view of what success is and can be. Naming the profession Jewish outreach work is a demanding profession requiring a distinct skill set, years of development and a particular kind of staying power. Practitioners can develop real expertise in relationship building, community formation and walking alongside people through major life changes. That work, done well and sustained over time, is what makes it possible for more Jews to find their way to a richer, more meaningful Jewish life. This broad impact and skill development should be recognized as a field unto itself. Organizations, practitioners and the communities this work serves all stand to gain from articulating more clearly what this work actually is, what it demands and what a career in it can look like at its best. Pride, belonging and long-term sustainability in this work are not incidental to good outcomes. They are part of what produces them. What comes next These 17 interviews represent best-case careers across four organizations. They are a starting point, not a finish line. This fall, we take our next step: on Oct. 19–20, we will convene the InGathering, a small working gathering at the Mayberg Foundation bringing together a carefully selected group of practitioners and stakeholders from beyond the four founding organizations. Over a day and a half, participants will make sense of the reports findings together, examine the forces that have shaped the field and its professionals, explore creative approaches to the challenges the research surfaces and develop concrete directions for the pilot program going forward. This includes a broader survey to test these findings across a wider population, and a rethinking of how organizations invest in their people from Day One. Our goal is not just to understand the field better, but to help ensure that the people doing this vital work are equipped, supported and inspired to do it over the long term. Stephen Markowitz is the project manager of the Mayberg Foundation’s Maalot Collab, formerly known as the Jewish Outreach Professional Development pilot program.

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In JFN panel, Jewish tech thinkers warn funders can’t afford to keep out of conversations on AI

Judah Ari Gross — Thu, 17 Sep 2026 08:38:50 +0000

As business leaders, scientists, politicians and commentators debate the risks and benefits presented by artificial intelligence —and the need to restrain the emerging technology —Jewish funders and leaders cannot afford to keep out of the conversation, a group of Jewish thinkers and professionals argued yesterday at a Jewish Funders Network High Holidays Gathering. The discussion, held yesterday on Zoom, comes after weeks of ominous warnings from within the industry, with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, Elon Musk and over 1,000 artificial intelligence scientists calling for self-imposed restraints. Many view the threat posed by the technology as existential. At this moment, there is a “really important window” for Jewish religious leaders to work with AI companies, so programs can be developed with care, DZ Kalman, a fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center and a research fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America, said at the panel. Instead of sitting on the sidelines, leaders should be actively engaged in multifaith coalitions already working with AI companies. According to Sara Wolkenfeld, chief learning officer at Sefaria, the “easy,” but less consequential way for funders to target AI initiatives “is to fund on the practical side, the how-to workshops about how we can use AI better and more effectively.” While this is helpful to a certain extent, she said, the real focus should be elsewhere. “Im not saying there should be none of that,” Wolkenfeld said, “but really, where funders can make a difference is to fund thought leadership in this space.” Wolkenfeld pointed to the investment other faith communities have put into AI resources, which she said she was jealous of, including Pope Leo XIV’s May encyclical, “On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence.” “We need a group, a class of communal leaders, a diverse group of communal leaders, who look different and sound different and come from different streams of Judaism,” Wolkenfeld said, “and [funders] need to be able to give them the space and the resources to work on these questions, to work on educational initiatives, to work on convening these conversations, and doing that for the benefit of the Jewish community.” At the webinar, which was titled “Aspire 2026,” JFN President and CEO Andrés Spokoiny said that Judaism is poised to help society navigate the possibilities and perils of AI. “When we talk about AI, we oscillate between extremes: naive optimism that everything will be OK and catastrophism Judaism can offer a third way, that is the way of responsibility,” Spokoiny said. “Being a people of 4,000 years of history, this is not the first tectonic shift we’ve encountered. There have been many. Weve been there when bronze and iron were created, when the stirrup was introduced, when the telescope was invented, the steam engine, the first computer.” One panelist, Rabbi Zvika Krieger, has spent his career walking the line between technology and religion, sometimes working part-time as a congregational rabbi and in the tech world. From 2000 to 2002, he served as Meta’s first director of responsible innovation, and today he is the spiritual leader of Berkeley, Calif.’s progressive synagogue Chochmat HaLev and an advisor for several AI companies, including Anthropic. It’s the first time his work is overlapping, with Jewish community members seeking him out with existential fears about AI and AI companies wanting his input on the spiritual and existential matter at play with their work. The AI revolution comes at a time when Jewish schools are struggling to retain educators, and there is a rabbinic pipeline issue, leaving congregations without leaders, Krieger said. The use of AI to lessen the load for rabbis and teachers currently causes some problems, including some rabbis using sermons created by “AI hallucinations,” false information presented as fact, and inaccuracies then affirmed online and in the pulpit. In time, Krieger said, AI will get more accurate and be a great resource to both rabbis and teachers. As fields change and jobs shift, people are redefining how they see themselves in relationship to their work, and are yearning for spirituality to give meaning to their new lives, said Krieger. “Religion and spirituality and Judaism in particular, are being called to step up to the plate in this time when people are struggling with these fundamental and existential questions.” Yet one intervention that is not productive is talking at, but not with, tech companies, Krieger said. And just because tech leaders happen to be Jewish doesn’t mean they represent or understand Jewish values, he added. Throughout most of history, Jews were disenfranchised members of their communities, watching on the sidelines as technology was introduced, Kalman said. Still, Jews were never Luddites. The Jewish community “has not distinguished itself as being particularly resistant to technological change, nor has it really distinguished itself as being particularly excited about technological change in most of Jewish history,” Kalman said. Instead, there has been an acceptance of technology in the Jewish community — with thought-out boundaries set. Kalman gave Shabbat as the prime example. After the invention of electricity, the community formed a cautious relationship to technology, with Shabbat serving as a respite that others in society now appreciate. Israel was formed at the crossroads of technology and religion, Kalman said, pointing to Theodor Herzl, who imagined the Jewish state as both scientific and technological. Today, Israel is a global technology and innovation leader, placing third this year in a ranking of countries based on AI implementation, development and research, according to the Israeli government’s annual economy report. But unlike other technological advances, AI is by far the fastest-moving, Kalman said. As AI improves, it will force a redefinition of the roles of educators and rabbis. A study of medical students at Arak University of Medical Sciences in Iran published this month showed hopeful results that AI counseling could provide similar results to human counseling for spiritual well-being. “The question for our community is: What do we want to prioritize having humans do, and why?” Wolkenfeld said. For her, this decision doesn’t always come down to simple statistics: Even if an AI educator attained similar results in student test scoring, there will always be reasons to go with human educators. The education world needs to embrace the aspects of the AI revolution that can help, Wolkenfeld said. A decade ago, many Jewish educators tried to avoid using computers and were shaken when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. If the Jewish community does that with AI, “were going to live with those consequences,” she said. “I am still more afraid of humans than I am of machines,” Wolkenfeld said. “To the extent that I have fears around AI, they are fears of the way that these machines will amplify some of the worst of what I sometimes see in people, so Im worried about antisemitism, and Im worried about misogyny, and Im worried about other kinds of bias.” While the Jewish community has invested in AI-Torah study programs, including many “Powered by Sefaria,” there hasn’t been much investment in AI that can build community, Kreiger said, such as programs that can match people for Shabbat dinners, learn about individual’s interests and recognize when someone isn’t showing up in the community and needs to be contacted. Now is the time for funders to have “a lot of tolerance for risk and failure,” Spokoiny said. AI will continue to be a focus of JFN, including at JFN’s March conference in Tel Aviv, he noted. “Were gonna need to be trying a lot of stuff, and probably most of it wont work. In dealing with technology, we need to acquire a little bit of a startup mentality.”

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Kraft pledges $2M for Middle East aid, matching donation by Ed Sheeran, following Macklemore kerfuffle

Judah Ari Gross — Thu, 17 Sep 2026 07:04:23 +0000

New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft pledged $2 million for aid to the Middle East on Wednesday, matching a donation of the same amount by singer Ed Sheeran. The commitment followed an uproar over Kraft’s decision to block one of Sheeran’s opening acts, Macklemore, from performing at his Boston-area venue, Gillette Stadium, over the rapper’s anti-Israel remarks at previous concerts and past antisemitic incidents. “Ed called me and asked me to commit $2 million to match his donation to aid in the region to fight this humanitarian crisis. Ed now plans to reach out to other venue owners and our goal is to continue to work together to build bridges,” Kraft said in a statement. Kraft did not immediately indicate to which organizations the funds would be donated. Kraft stressed that this decision was made before and independent of a similar “challenge” by Macklemore to donate funds to aid Palestinians. While Jewish and Israeli leaders hailed Kraft’s decision to block Macklemore from performing at his stadium, the move sparked a wave of criticism against the Jewish philanthropist and Sheeran. Several other opening acts for Sheeran announced that they were dropping out over Macklemore’s departure. In his statement announcing the $2 million donation, Kraft struck back at his critics, stressing his long-standing commitment to supporting peace-building between Israelis and Palestinians. “Id like the people who are speaking in support of the Palestinian people to know that for decades, I have supported efforts that create opportunity for Palestinians and have brought young Palestinians and Israelis together to build businesses, create jobs, and forge relationships,” Kraft wrote.

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Both of my grandmothers were right

Contributing Author — Thu, 17 Sep 2026 05:30:48 +0000

My grandmothers, my two savtot, were both Holocaust survivors. They both endured enormous suffering and loss, but they responded to that trauma in vastly different ways: one optimistic, the other pessimistic. That duality always perplexed and pained me. But now, after nearly three years of devastating violence in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank, I’ve started to understand them both. My Savta Eva was fearful, anxious and glass-half-empty. She was always anticipating what could go wrong, always preparing for the next disaster — for her and her family, and for the Jewish people. Savta Margo was different. She was open, at ease and hopeful. She trusted that people could yet become their best selves. She believed that tomorrow could be better than today. The author at age 5 with Savta Eva in an undated photo. Courtesy Savta Margo on Moshav Ben Shemen, Israel, in an undated photo. Courtesy That difference between two people who survived similar horrors and yet emerged with such radically different ways of seeing the world has always fascinated me. If anything, Savta Eva’s response was the logical one. She learned, through terrible experience, that the world could turn against you without warning. Why should she trust it to behave differently? And yet it was Savta Margo’s response that made sense to me — not rationally, but emotionally. Hers was the response my heart reached for, even when my head understood Savta Eva. I shouldn’t be surprised then that the data from Israel, after years of war, creeping autocracy, and endless bloodshed, reflects primarily Savta Eva’s perspective and a glimpse of Savta Margo’s outlook. Surveys by the Israel Democracy Institute show a decline in Israelis optimism about their countrys future. Between March and July of this year, optimism continued to fall when it came to Israels national security, social cohesion, democratic governance and even the economy. In June, only 22% of Jewish Israelis said they were optimistic about the future of social cohesion, and only 42% about democratic governance. The numbers are even lower among Israel’s Palestinian citizens. Yet the Jewish People Policy Institute has repeatedly found something striking: Israelis are more optimistic about their own personal futures than they are about the future of the country. These surveys seem to be saying: I believe my children will be OK, and I believe I will find my way; I am less sure that we collectively, as Israelis, will have a good future. These statistics capture something real and important. But they don’t tell the entire story. Let us consider the peace-seeking leaders of the region, stories that offer another narrative and perhaps direct us to another future. In the aftermath of the Yom Kippur War, no one could have imagined that within four years Israel and Egypt would sign a peace treaty. Menachem Begin, Israel’s then-prime minister, came of age politically deep in the revisionist right; Anwar Sadat, then president of Egypt, was a member of the fascist, ultranationalist Young Egypt Party that openly collaborated with Nazi Germany. Sadat stunned Israel and the world when he came to Jerusalem and spoke at the Knesset. After fighting over territory, security and sovereignty, Sadat and Begin signed a historic peace deal and changed the course of history. Or in my own political memory, I think about Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. As defense minister, he called on the IDF to “break the bones” of Palestinian protesters in the intifada, yet less than 10 years later, he stood beside PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat on the White House Lawn and signed the Oslo Accords. Rabin declared: “Let me say to you, the Palestinians: We are destined to live together on the same soil, in the same land… We say to you today in a loud and clear voice: Enough of blood and tears.” These leaders — and the radical shifts in imagination that they propelled forward — show us that peace requires us to see beyond the political reality of the moment. They call on us to recognize that todays enemies do not have to be tomorrows enemies, and that our assumptions – and therefore our trajectories – can change in an instant. Or, to paraphrase a current leading visionary and strategist for peace, May Pundak, co-director of A Land for All: Being only an optimist demands further political imagination, while being only a pragmatist forces us to succumb to what we have; that is why she is committed to being both. The unlikely partnership between Maoz Inon and Aziz Abu Sarah brings this principle to life. Maoz lost his parents on Oct. 7, 2023. Aziz’s brother died after being detained and beaten by Israeli security forces during the First Intifada. Their experiences should have driven them irrevocably apart. Instead, they found connection, co-authored a book and are traveling the world to share their vision and concrete plans for a future of peace. Their friendship reminds us that what politics tells us is impossible — what logic tells us can never be — can transform into another reality altogether. Here’s what I’ve learned after all these years from my savtot, and from my own read of Israeli history and present reality: Hope does not say, Everything is going to be fine. It says, Things could be different. Hope does not ask us to ignore the evidence; rather, it asks us to understand that evidence is not destiny. This distinction matters enormously today. Israelis face innumerable reasons for despair, and yet we see that many persist despite it all with a stubborn faith that better days are still possible. My Savta Eva had very good reasons to be afraid. My Savta Margo had no more evidence of a kind future than Eva had. And they were both right. Israeli Jews and Jews around the world know this instinctively when we tell the story of our people. We tell of unimaginable suffering, improbable survival and unlikely victories. Some of us also tell the stories of our own profound and ongoing failings. We must be willing to bring all these stories into the story of peace, and we must be fueled by audacious hope as we imagine a better future. My savtot taught me, perhaps without ever intending to, that trauma does not dictate a single response. They showed me the value of audacious hope. And that kind of hope looks at everything we have lived through and still dares to say: this is not the only future available to us. Idit Klein is the vice president for public engagement at the New Israel Fund.

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Bad celebrity apologies: A Yom Kippur tradition

Contributing Author — Thu, 17 Sep 2026 03:55:31 +0000

Each Yom Kippur afternoon, after the sanctuary has quieted post-Musaf and the long day stretches on, my congregation gathers for adult learning. For several years, our session has been a community favorite: “Bad Celebrity Apologies.” It’s exactly what it sounds like, and so much more. This playful yet meaningful session explores what makes a genuine apology and how we seek forgiveness for our own missteps, all through the lens of the worst (and the rare best) celebrity apologies of the past year. It’s an energizing way to break up the long afternoon and invite laughter, learning and spiritual insight at a time when many feel low — and hangry. We begin informally, sitting in a circle, introducing ourselves and doing a light icebreaker. Even in a small congregation, people don’t know others outside of their “silos.” The structure helps build community and warmth on a day that can, otherwise, feel solitary and inward-facing. I begin with a brief teaching from Maimonides’ Hilchot Teshuvah (Laws of Repentance, part of his Mishneh Torah), a grounding in the Jewish framework for apology. We spend a few minutes discussing how Maimonides describes the process of confession and repentance, including the obligation to apologize up to three times if forgiveness isn’t granted. Participants are always fascinated by this: what it means to offer a real apology, and how difficult it can be both to apologize sincerely and to forgive fully. From there, we turn to modern wisdom: the elements of a good apology, drawn from psychiatrist Dr. Aaron Lazare. Acknowledge the offense; explain what happened (but don’t make excuses); express remorse; and offer to make amends. Research emphasizes that the most essential component of a well-received apology is the apologizer taking responsibility for their actions. “I’m sorry you were hurt!” is not it; the person must admit that their words or actions caused harm. The next, most powerful element is an offer of repair — actually doing something concrete to make amends. Then comes the fun part. We analyze a selection of celebrity apologies from the past year — some cringeworthy, some surprising and a few even worth emulating. In 2025, for instance, we examined Sen. Joni Ernst’s (R-IA) “apology” video following controversial remarks she made at a town hall. Responding to concerns about Medicaid cuts and a constituent’s exclamation that people are going to die due to the cuts, Ernst quipped, “Well, we’re all going to die!” The backlash was swift, and her follow-up apology, filmed in a graveyard, somehow managed to make things worse. Sarcastic, defensive and peppered with religious overtones, it demonstrated almost none of the four elements of a good apology. Rather, it was a textbook example of what not to do. Over the years, our gallery of “bad apologies” has included Sean “Diddy” Combs, Mario Batali, Justin Timberlake, Will Smith, Lea Michele, Harvey Weinstein, Steve Harvey and Matt Lauer. Some are laughably tone-deaf, others well-intentioned but incomplete. And once in a while, we discover a genuinely good one. 2025’s standout was Robert Irwin’s apology for leaving a restaurant without paying. He explained the situation (being mobbed by fans and distracted), took full responsibility, called the restaurant to pay, and, when they refused, offered them positive publicity on social media. He even pledged to return and pay for the original meal. Participants in my class were impressed by his sincerity and noticed that he hit all four of the elements of a good, well-received apology. The mix of humor, honesty and Jewish text creates a space that feels both light and deep — exactly what many people need during Yom Kippur afternoon. “Bad Celebrity Apologies” helps participants engage with teshuvah in a fresh way, using familiar cultural references to illuminate timeless spiritual truths. I’ve led this program five times since 2016, and it’s always a hit. There’s never a shortage of bad apologies in the news — and never a shortage of opportunities to reflect on our own capacity for growth and forgiveness. Participants can talk about how difficult it is for them to offer a sincere apology without the session feeling invasive or therapeutic.The focus is outside of ourselves, which allows deep personal insights. For anyone interested in bringing this to their community, here are a few quick tips: Keep it conversational: A circle, personal introductions, and a relaxed, humorous tone go a long way. Make space for people to be themselves.
Ground it in text: A short excerpt from Maimonides, the Machzor, or another source on apology anchors the conversation spiritually and ties it into the themes of Yom Kippur.
Curate carefully: Choose apologies that are public and recent, but not traumatizing or overly political. For example, last year I intentionally left out an “apology” from Ye (formerly Kanye West) that was graphically sexual and stayed far away from apologies around Charlie Kirk’s tragic murder.
Invite laughter and learning: People remember what they laugh about. Humor can be a profound teacher. Find ways to gently refer to how difficult it can be for participants to offer a good apology. Make space if they want to share ways that they have been disappointed by apologies that they have received.
Every Yom Kippur, we ask God — and one another — for forgiveness. “Bad Celebrity Apologies” reminds us that the art of apology is both universal and deeply personal. Throw in a little pop culture, and you have the ability to teach lessons that otherwise might seem abstract and hard to internalize. Rabbi Sarah Freidson is the rabbi of Temple Beth Shalom in Mahopac, N.Y. She is an alumna of Cohort 3 of the Clergy Leadership Incubator and a contributor to CLI’s Spiritual Innovation Blog.

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Your Daily Phil: Talmud Daily offers guided tour through the tractates

EJP — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 14:10:15 +0000

Good Wednesday morning! In today’s edition of Your Daily Phil, we examine a new study on Israeli Jews’ Yom Kippur practices. We report on Rabbi David Bashevkins Talmud Daily, a free daily video guide easing newcomers into the Talmud, and cover the Supreme Court case of Daniel Grand, an Orthodox man barred from hosting a weekly prayer service at his home. We feature an opinion piece by Rabbi Rick Jacobs reflecting on the legacy of Paul J. Reichenbach, who died over Rosh Hashanah, and a piece by Marina Rosenberg highlighting why the Jewish community should be paying attention to the upcoming elections for the next U.N. secretary-general. Also in this issue: Malcolm Hoenlein and Julie Platt, Solomon Schechter and Dan Ben-David. Today’sYour Daily Philwas curated by eJP 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 EarlyJ is hosting a “Innovation Impact Showcase” this morning at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco, highlighting the early childhood education initiative’s progress since launching as a stand-alone organization in 2023. Read eJP’s previous coverage here. What You Should Know A QUICK WORD FROM eJPS JUDAH ARI GROSS When Yom Kippur begins on Sunday evening,the majority of Israelis will mark it by fasting (74%) and attending synagogue services (57%), according to a new survey by the Israel Democracy Institute think tank. But a deeper dive into the poll shows subtle and substantial differences between demographic groups. These levels are higher than those reportedin similar, albeit older, studies conducted in the United States. The Pew Research Center’s “Jewish Americans in 2020” found that 40% of American Jews said that they fasted on Yom Kippur, and 35% said that they attend synagogue “a few times a year, such as for High Holidays.” The IDI survey offers at last a partial explanationfor this disparity between Israel and the United States: Israel has many more Mizrahi Israelis, who are far more likely to both fast on Yom Kippur and attend services. Read the rest of ‘What You Should Know’ here. News TRACTATE TUTOR Talmud Daily offers free guide to the text, offering newcomers an on-ramp for serious study To offer an easy introduction to the central text of Rabbinic law, Rabbi David Bashevkin, the founder of the religious engagement website 18Forty, recently launched Talmud Daily, a free 40-week, daily video breakdown of the Talmud, which he says he’s treating like a tour through a theme park. “A lot of times there’s a tram or a train that takes you around the park to point out where everything is,” BashevkintoldeJewishPhilanthropy’s Jay Deitcher. “This is where the bears are; this is where the giraffes are, and then after you do the train ride, you can go to each exhibit or decide [to] leave the zoo.” Toppling Talmudic misconceptions:The Talmud is often “misunderstood,” said Rabbi Gil Student, a rabbinical advisor to Talmud Daily. “The Talmud is not actually a book… It’s really a record of conversations over hundreds of years.” Because “that kind of text is so unfamiliar” to many Jews, studying the Talmud “requires a switch in your thinking, going away from reading page by page, line by line, like you read any novel, to thinking nonlinearly, and that requires certain amounts of training and certain amounts of background.” Read the full report here. Share MINYAN MATTERS Supreme Court to hear case of man blocked from holding minyan in his home The Supreme Court is set to hear a case this winter brought by a man, Daniel Grand,whose hometown sought to block him from holding a minyan in his residence, a case that Jewish community advocates argue could have profound implications for religious Jews,reports Marc RodforeJewishPhilanthropy’s sister publicationJewish Insider. Cause célèbre:Numerous Jewish organizations, primarily religious and conservcative ones, as well as groups representing a host of other religions, have filed briefs in support of Grand, including Agudath Israel of America, the National Jewish Advocacy Center, National Council of Young Israel, Coalition for Jewish Values, the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, the Orthodox Union and the American Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists (AAJLJ). Read the full report here. Share Opinion IN MEMORIAM Paul J. Reichenbach: Remembering an inspired leader of Reform youth programs In an opinion piece foreJewishPhilanthropy, Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism,celebratesPaul J. Reichenbach, who served as co-director of URJ (then the Union of American Hebrew Congregations) Kutz Camp, led the Reform movements teen Israel programs and spent 17 years overseeing the URJ’s camps across North America as director of camping and Israel programs. “The imprint of his remarkable leadership can be found in literally every corner of our movement, but more than that, there are hundreds of thousands of Jewish people whose Jewish lives were sparked by the programs that he championed.” Read the full piece here. Share TIME FOR A CHANGE The U.N. is about to choose a new leader. It can’t afford to get this wrong. In an opinion piece foreJewishPhilanthropy, Marina Rosenberg, senior vice president of international affairs at the Anti-Defamation League,drawsattention to the significance of the upcoming election for the new secretary-general of the United Nations. “Despite the U.N. being one of the preeminent institutions charged with defending human rights, it, among others, has allowed this epidemic of anti-Jewish hate and prejudice to become normalized, both globally and within its own halls. … The secretary-generals election is one of the most consequential decisions the U.N. will make this decade, and its results will reveal whether the U.N.s founding promise of equal dignity truly applies to everyone, including Jews.” Read the full piece here. Share Worthy Reads Power Players:In the latest issue ofSapir, Malcolm Hoenlein, former Conference of Presidents executive vice chairman, and philanthropist Julie Platt areinterviewedbySapirassociate publisher Ariella Saperstein about the distinction between Jewish power and Jewish influence and how communal leaders should wield both as the political ground shifts. “‘One of the misuses of influence or power is Jew against Jew. We’re not all going to agree, but we’re a small people, and to use our power effectively, we have to stop defaming one another,’ [Platt said].” Resilience Architecture:In theStanford Social Innovation Review, Lauren Sowers, Kalista Pepper, Ryan M. Eller and Andrew Crossonhighlightways in which the community response to Hurricane Helene can serve as a model of “trust-based recovery” for other underserved communities in the wake of disaster. “[A]fter generations of underinvestment and institutional neglect — on top of a legacy of ecological and economic extraction — our communities have become accustomed to building our own civic and financial infrastructure. And so, after Helene, Appalachians did what we always do in response to disaster: organize.” Paper Trail:InNational Geographic, archaeologist Jaime Aznar Auzmendirecountshow nearly 200,000 manuscripts — among them a lost Hebrew original of the Book of Sirach — emerged from thegenizahof Cairos Ben Ezra Synagogue after scholar Solomon Schechter hauled 30 sacks of them to Cambridge in 1897. “The information provided by these documents has allowed researchers to piece together evidence of the realities of daily life for the Jewish community and those around it. The genizah has turned out to be not only a library of academic interest but also a window into a social reality that has long since disappeared: the bustling streets of Cairo during the Middle Ages.” Mission Critical:InNewsweek, founder and CEO of Staffing Boutique Inc. Katie Warnockarguesthat nonprofits undercut their own anti-poverty missions by underpaying entry-level staff. “A sector devoted to expanding opportunity should not depend on workers sacrificing their own economic security to provide it. Paying people sustainably is not money diverted from the mission. The people doing the work are the mission.” Major Gifts Nikeco-founderPhil Knightand his wife,Penny, willdonate$1.1 billion to OregonsProvidence St. Vincent Medical Centerto build the states first womens hospital and expand cardiovascular care… Talia “Tali” Zuckermanhas been hiredas the next director of engagement for theJewish Federation of Broward County(Fla.) Zach Benjaminhas been named executive director ofPark Plaza Senior Living, a kosher Jewish senior living community in Chicago… Transitions TheElie Wiesel FoundationhasnamedGoldman Sachschief accounting officerSheara FredmanandPalantirexecutiveElias Davisto its board of directors… Talia “Tali” Zuckermanhas been hiredas the next director of engagement for theJewish Federation of Broward County(Fla.) Zach Benjaminhas been named executive director ofPark Plaza Senior Living, a kosher Jewish senior living community in Chicago… Word on the Street Jewish National Fundhasorderedthe evacuation of a residential compound that youths from the West Bank settlement ofTekoabuilt onJewish National Fundland inside the Arab Israeli town ofMajd al-Krum, saying the plot was leased for grazing and not housing… TheInternational Jewish Sports Hall of Famehasnamedits 2026 award winners, honoringMaccabi World Unionpresident and formerJewish AgencyChairmanMichael Siegal, Australian sports philanthropistGeoff Levy, 1972 Munich OlympianKaren James, Maccabi USA leaderStephen Berlinerand the late Mexican philanthropistMiguel Litchi… Israeli teens, wearing religious attire,threweggs at worshippers arriving at JerusalemsKol HaNeshama Reformsynagogue on Rosh Hashanah, the third attack on Israeli Reform communities in a month… Six Israeli municipalities willbanlive-chickenkapparotceremonies before Yom Kippur, animal rights groupLet the Animals Livesaid, after it appealed to local leaders nationwide to reject the ritual… InThe Economist, Israeli economistDan Ben-Davidarguesthat Israels near-bottom ranking amongOECDcountries onPISAmath, science and reading exams stems from the lack of core-subject education in Haredi schools.Read eJP’s interview with Ben-David here… HaaretzreportedanotherIDF reservists death by suicide this week, bringing the toll among active-duty soldiers to 20 so far in 2026… Earlier this week, the Jewish community in Vancouver, British Columbia,broke groundonJWest, a $234 million project — the largest in Western Canadian Jewish history — that will include a new community center and a biggerKing David High School, followed by more than 600 rental units… The House Transportation Infrastructure Committee advanced thePray Safe Actby a voice vote;Anti-Defamation LeagueCEOJonathan Greenblattsaid in a statement the move “bring[s] us one step closer to passing a bill that would ensure every house of worship, faith-based organization and nonprofit can access critical resources to protect themselves” Several musical acts set to open forEd Sheeranwithdrewfrom the singer’s remaining U.S. tour dates after the production company overseeing the tour parted ways with rapperMacklemoreover his political rhetoric during two recent performances; Sheeran and the production company hadfaced pressurefrom venue owners, includingRobert Kraft, who said the rapper’s onstage comments and displays and “broader history of antisemitic rhetoric and imagery” led to the decision… Tanchum Portnoy, the composer of the popular melody for “Eitz Chaim,”diedon Saturday at 75… Pic of the Day Mark Treyger/Facebook The Jewish Community Relations Council of New York and the Jewish Community Council of Greater Coney Island host a Rosh Hashanah celebration at the JCCGCI yesterday, marking the new year, with community leaders, elected officials and local residents, including 20 Holocaust survivors. “Rosh Hashanah reminds us, with every blast of the shofar, to choose faith, family, community, and shared joy… and to remember that hatred will never have the last word,” Mark Treyger, CEO of JCRC-NY,saidin a Facebook post after the event. Birthdays Flash90 Avishag Semberg, winner of an Olympic bronze medal for Israel in taekwondo at the 2020 Games in Tokyo, turns25 Esther Vilar, Argentine German writer and physician, author of books on gender relations, turns91 Elaine Bloom, Democratic member of the Florida House of Representatives for multiple terms, in 2015 she became the president and CEO of Plaza Health Network, turns89 Rubin Schron, NYC-based real estate investor and the founder of Cammebys International Group, turns88 Richard Perle, defense policy advisor to Presidents Reagan, Bush 41 and Bush 43 and member of a number of DC-based think tanks, turns85 Jon Olesen, Montebello, Calif., resident Shari Goldberg, Pompano Beach, Fla., resident Motti Lerner, Israeli playwright and screenwriter, turns77 Jim Perelman, sheriff of Nantucket County, Mass., turns76 Jonathan Medved, founder and former CEO of OurCrowd, an equity-crowdfunding platform focused on investing in Israeli startups, turns71 David Seth Kotkin, award-winning illusionist, who has sold tens of millions of tickets to his shows worldwide, known professionally as David Copperfield, turns70 Fern Wallach, former advertising account executive atThe Forward, now a media sales consultant Jonathan Boyarin, anthropology professor at Cornell, his work centers on Jewish communities and culture, turns70 Dan Kohl, director of stakeholder engagement at the National Council of Jewish Women, he is a nephew of former Sen. Herb Kohl (D-WI), turns61 Rabbi Dov Linzer, president and rabbinic head of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah Rabbinical School in Riverdale, N.Y., turns60 Jason Zengerle, staff writer atThe New Yorker Gal Fridman, Israeli windsurfer, he won bronze in Atlanta 1996 and gold in Athens 2004, Israels first Olympic gold medalist, turns51 Tzvi Avisar, mayor of Kiryat Motzkin, a city in the Haifa suburbs, turns48 Josh Ginsberg, VP of corporate marketing at Meta Koby Altman, president of basketball operations for the NBAs Cleveland Cavaliers, turns44 Lauren Morgan Suriel, chief field officer at the Israel on Campus Coalition Suzy Goldenkranz, VP of customer success at SimpliFed Daren Maxwell Kagasoff, actor, best known for starring in “The Secret Life of the American Teenager,” turns39 Rachel Louise Ensign, NYC-based economics reporter atThe Wall Street Journal Niv Sultan, Israeli actor who played the lead role in Apple TVs spy thriller “Tehran,” turns34 Caryn Rosen Adelman, planned giving consultant

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Most Israelis will fast, attend prayers on Yom Kippur, new survey finds

Judah Ari Gross — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 12:17:49 +0000

When Yom Kippur begins on Sunday evening, the majority of Israelis will mark it by fasting and attending synagogue services, according to a new survey by the Israel Democracy Institute think tank. But a deeper dive into the poll shows subtle and substantial differences between demographic groups, particularly the significantly higher levels of observance among Mizrahi Israelis. The survey, which was released yesterday, finds that nearly three-quarters of Jewish Israelis —74% — said that they intend to mark the holiday by fasting, either fully (63%) or partially (11%). In addition, 57% of respondents said that they planned to attend prayer services. “The findings show a strong attachment to Jewish tradition, as expressed through fasting and synagogue attendance on Yom Kippur, across broad sections of Jewish Israeli society,” wrote the researchers, Ariel Finkelstein, Yaari Padan and Shlomit Ravitsky Tur-Paz. These levels are higher than those reported in similar, albeit older, studies conducted in the United States. The Pew Research Center’s “Jewish Americans in 2020” found that 40% of American Jews said that they fasted on Yom Kippur, and 35% said that they attend synagogue “a few times a year, such as for High Holidays.” The IDI survey offers at last a partial explanation for this disparity between Israel and the United States: Israel has many more Mizrahi Israelis, who are far more likely to both fast on Yom Kippur and attend services. Based on interviews in July and August with 1,002 Jewish Israeli respondents ages 18 and over, whom IDI said constituted a representative sample of Jewish society in Israel, the researchers found that 88% of Mizrahi Jews said that they observed the fast either fully (81%) or partially (7%), compared to 64% of Ashkenazi Jews and 71% of mixed-heritage Jews. Some 68% of Mizrahi Jews said that they planned to attend services, compared to 50% of Ashkenazi Jews and 51% of mixed-heritage Jews. The IDI survey found that 51% of respondents said that they intended to pray in an Orthodox synagogue, and 6% said that they would go to a Reform or Conservative one. This largely appears to align with a recent survey commissioned by Israel’s Reform movement, which found that 6% of Israelis identified as Reform and 2% as Conservative — roughly twice the levels as in 2022. While the poll found that Mizrahi Jews are more traditional in the sense that they are more likely to observe the main elements of the holiday —fasting and prayer —this was not reflected in their choice of synagogue. Mizrahi Jews’ attendance rates for Reform and Conservative synagogues were, in fact, slightly higher —though still within the 3% margin of error — than those of Ashkenazi and mixed-heritage Jews at 6.5%, compared to 5% and 6%, respectively. Curiously, the poll did not examine the popularity of Israelis other Yom Kippur tradition: riding bicycles on the countrys empty roadways.

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The U.N. is about to choose a new leader. It can’t afford to get this wrong.

Contributing Author — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 12:08:29 +0000

This week, as Jewish leaders take part in meetings with heads of state, government and ministers of foreign affairs on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly High-level Week, we should all have a clear message: The next U.N. secretary-general who will be elected in the coming months must stand up to antisemitism and extremism. Next week, the Anti-Defamation League will join the other members of the J7 Task Force Against Antisemitism to urge U.N. member states to select a new secretary-general who will make confronting antisemitism a defining priority. Given the many problems in need of solution in our world today, it may seem to some like a small or obvious ask, but our most recent experience with the highest office at the U.N. has repeatedly shown that this isnt the standard. I am well aware of the many important issues world leaders will be discussing at this year’s High-level Week. It is also clear to me that the rampant scourge of antisemitism we’ve witnessed in the past few years around the world cannot be ignored. It’s not a narrow or secondary concern, even though it is too often treated as one. Despite the U.N. being one of the preeminent institutions charged with defending human rights, it, among others, has allowed this epidemic of anti-Jewish hate and prejudice to become normalized, both globally and within its own halls. And as we’ve come to see time and time again, when antisemitism is allowed to fester unchecked, or even encouraged, people get hurt. According to our recent J7 Annual Report on Antisemitism, last year was the deadliest year for the Jewish diaspora in over 30 years. Twenty people were murdered in antisemitic attacks, the number of reported antisemitic incidents in J7 countries exceeded 23,000, and total incidents were up 136% compared to 2022, the year before Hamas 10/7 attack on Israel. The data illustrates the urgency of our words and calls to action. Innocent people are being targeted, harassed and sometimes even killed because of who they are and what they believe. We have a global crisis on our hands, and it’s time for new leadership to finally push the U.N. to step up. The secretary-generals election is one of the most consequential decisions the U.N. will make this decade, and its results will reveal whether the world body’s founding promise of equal dignity truly applies to everyone, including Jews. That means every candidate must demonstrate a clear commitment to confronting antisemitism, both globally and within the U.N. itself, as a threshold requirement — not an afterthought or a topic that’s ignored altogether. That is why our community needs to be united in our joint demands. First, the next secretary-general must adopt and integrate the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism, already embraced by more than 40 governments and major international bodies, into how the U.N. understands and responds to antisemitism in all its forms, including its contemporary manifestations tied to Israel. Second, the next secretary-general must ensure that there is accountability for antisemitic actions and rhetoric within the U.N. itself. That means pushing for reforms and procedures that hold the system accountable. That starts with vetting officials and mandate holders based on their expertise and fairness, not political horse-trading. It means real consequences when someone violates conduct standards, not violations that get quietly ignored. And it means having a faster way to act on antisemitic rhetoric or misconduct, one that doesnt require getting every single member state to agree before anything happens. The claim that “nothing can be done” when a U.N.-affiliated official espouses antisemitism because they are “independent” is completely unacceptable. And finally, member states must make sure that no U.N. funding, staff or institutional authority is ever used to spread antisemitism, extremism or incitement, whether thats in educational materials or anywhere else carrying the U.N.s name. Antisemitism does not stay contained within one debate, one resolution or one leaders term. What happens at the U.N. shapes attitudes far beyond Geneva or New York. A secretary-general who treats confronting antisemitism as central to restoring this institutions integrity would send a signal that reaches Jewish communities from Buenos Aires to Sydney, Toronto to Cape Town and Berlin to London. We came to UNGA this year as partners, not critics. We believe in what the United Nations is supposed to be, and we must all demand that member states treat this leadership selection as the reform opportunity it genuinely is: a chance to choose a secretary-general who will make the fight against antisemitism a defining feature of their tenure. Marina Rosenberg is the senior vice president of international affairs at the Anti-Defamation League.

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Paul J. Reichenbach: Remembering an inspired leader of Reform youth programs

Contributing Author — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 11:32:12 +0000

On Rosh Hashanah, as we began a brand-new year, one of the giants of the Reform movement, Paul Reichenbach, passed from this world to worlds beyond. The imprint of his remarkable leadership can be found in literally every corner of our movement, but more than that, there are hundreds of thousands of Jewish people whose Jewish lives were sparked by the programs that he championed, from one of our 14 Jewish overnight camps to our youth programs to our many trips to Israel. Later this month, we will observe Simchat Torah and complete the reading of the Torah. In thinking about Paul, I hear these closing words from Deuteronomy: “Never again would there arise in Israel another one like him” (34:10). Deuteronomy was, of course, speaking about Moses, who had led our ancestors on a camping journey through the desert on their way to Israel. As our leader of camping and travel to Israel, Paul oversaw our camping and youth immersive programs, pouring his soul into each staff member, each camper and teen traveler. He equally had the trust of the rabbis, cantors and educators, not to mention the parents who signed their children up because of the passionate case Paul made each time he addressed one of our communities. Paul was not born into the world he oversaw, something he noted in reflections on his own journey. When he was 17, he had an experience at Jewish summer camp that changed the course of his life: “I had spent the previous eight summers worshipping Native American deities at a boys summer camp on Long Lake in Maine. I never had the opportunity to have an immersive’ Jewish experience in a camp or any other setting.” While Paul described having the good fortune to come from a comfortable family, it was a scholarship from his congregations sisterhood, Temple Israel in Boston, that allowed him to attend a two-week leadership institute at the URJ (then the Union of American Hebrew Congregations) Kutz Camp in Warwick, N.Y. While, unlike our lucky children who have the privilege of enjoying multiple summers at a URJ camp joyfully exploring and experiencing their Judaism, I had but two weeks with 200 like-minded teens from every corner of the continent. I had discovered a magical, utopian ‘sanctuary’ where being yourself, living intentionally and understanding that your contribution truly mattered was evident daily. I concluded those two weeks at camp with confidence in myself, proud of Reform Judaism, intensely connected to my peers and inspired to figure out how to make the connection from camp to congregation. Nothing was ever the same after my camp experience.” Paul’s professional life grew directly from his own transformational experience in our camp and youth programs. He understood the power of the programs he helped build and sustain. Over his 44 years with the Union for Reform Judaism, Paul devoted his life to creating meaningful Jewish experiences and communities where young people could discover connections, a sense of belonging and a lifelong love of Jewish life. He served as co-director of URJ Kutz Camp, led the Reform movements teen Israel programs and spent 17 years overseeing the URJ’s camps across North America as director of camping and Israel programs. If you knew Paul, then you loved him. He was genuine, warm, bright, kind and absolutely devoted to bringing more and more young people into the life-giving waters of Reform Jewish life. I had the great fortune of working closely with Paul during the past 14 years as the president of the URJ. In the summer of 2014, after thousands of rockets were fired by Hamas from Gaza, Israel launched Operation Protective Edge. At the time, we had teens in locations from the south to the north. Paul worked 24/7 with our team in Israel to ensure that each day, each trip’s itinerary operated in a safe part of the country. During that summer, Paul was forever on the phone talking to concerned parents. The two of us had daily check-ins. Quite remarkably, we did not cancel or bring any of our trips to Israel back early, and, crucially, each trip continued to remain uplifting. At the end of that summer, I met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who thanked us for being one of the only tour operators that did not cancel or cut short any of our immersive Israel trips. The person who deserved the most thanks was Paul Reichenbach. Everywhere Paul went, he built deep, long-lasting relationships. Nowhere was this more evident than in his decades-long relationship with Ike and Helaine Heller of Scotch Plains, N.J. Building on the existing Heller Family Scholarship Fund that provided more than 1,000 student scholarships over 40-plus years, Paul brought in the Heller family’s 2016 gift of $5 million dollars, renaming NFTY EIE (Eisendrath International Exchange) High School in Israel as URJ Heller High. Sometimes Jewish leaders worry over whether the next generation of Jews will be as involved and care as deeply about living Jewish values. Paul knew that worrying is not a plan, but building a robust network of camps and compelling youth programs is. And that’s how Paul Reichenbach spent his decades at the URJ. In 2017, Rossov Consulting surveyed the alumni of URJ’s camping and youth programs. The impact they discovered was extraordinary: Four of five — 82% — belong to a synagogue, havurah or minyan. From Paul’s vision sprang forth generations of Jews who built ties to the Jewish people, Israel, the Reform movement and one another. They, in turn, have built families, congregations and communities, carrying on Paul’s legacy the world over. His life of leadership and love for Israel and the Jewish people is a beacon of possibility to all who work in or fund this field. Our hearts go out to Paul’s children and grandchildren and all those who worked with him, learned from him, and were inspired by him. We remember him with love and know that his impact will never leave us. Rabbi Rick Jacobs is the president of the Union for Reform Judaism.

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Talmud Daily offers free guide to the text, offering newcomers an on-ramp for serious study

Jay Deitcher — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 09:12:13 +0000

Cracking open the standard Talmud — coming in at 2,711 double-sided pages — presents a daunting challenge for many Jews. To offer an easy introduction to the central text of Rabbinic law, Rabbi David Bashevkin, the founder of the religious engagement website 18Forty, recently launched Talmud Daily, a free 40-week, daily video breakdown of the Talmud, which he says he’s treating like a tour through a theme park. “A lot of times theres a tram or a train that takes you around the park to point out where everything is,” Bashevkin told eJewishPhilanthropy. “This is where the bears are; this is where the giraffes are and then after you do the train ride, you can go to each exhibit or decide [to] leave the zoo.” Bashevkin began the expedition in late August with a journey through the history and terminology of the Talmud followed by discussion of key themes, including prayer, holidays, family law, business, theology and ritual purity. Episodes are taped in Bashevkin’s Teaneck, N.J., home, with the rabbi flanked by posters of Batman and Superman. Each Monday through Thursday study session runs roughly 10 minutes, and Friday’s episodes are long-form interviews with experts chosen not only based on the guest’s knowledge, but their digital accessibility: each needs to have classes and content readily available online. As of Monday, 7,500 users have signed up for the program. The program takes inspiration from the simple and accessible way Britains former chief rabbi, the late Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, broke down the Five Books of Moses, Bashevkin said. Talmud Daily is dedicated to the former head of the Orthodox Union, Rabbi Moshe Hauer, who died of a heart attack last October and was a figure known for his empathy and ability to connect with Jews across the religious spectrum. Hauers “spirit hovers over the entirety of” Talmud Daily, Bashevkin said, and the rabbi was “constantly pushing” Bashevkin to “think about how [he] can take [his] platform and use it as a vehicle to show [people] the doorway for how they can find their place in Torah life and Torah study.” Talmud Daily is an innovative, user-friendly way to explain what the Talmud is along with the key concepts of the tractates, Raanan Agus, one of the founding sponsors, along with his wife, Nicole, told eJP. The project unlocks this fundamental book for a much larger number of people than those who study it today. Additional founding sponsors include Micah Philanthropies, Janet and Lior Hod and family, George and Pamela Rohr, and Reuven Moskowitz and family. The initiative is set to end in June alongside the conclusion of Daf Yomi, the 7 1/2-year cycle where participants study the Talmud one page per day. In recent years, Daf Yomi study has surged due to growing accessibility of texts through Sefaria and of podcasts including Tablet’s “Take One Daf Yomi.” People see the excitement of Daf Yomi and “feel left out of these celebrations” because they don’t have the background to be able to jump right into Talmud, Rabbi Gil Student, a rabbinic advisor to Talmud Daily, told eJP. “Talmud Daily is a way for [people] to participate in their own way, to expand their horizons, learn more without going to a place that they dont feel comfortable because of the lack of background,” Student said. It offers an “on-ramp” to the next cycle” of Daf Yomi, which begins immediately after the current one ends. “Daily learning is a brilliant, though sometimes difficult and often maddening approach,” Liel Leibovitz, the host of “Take One Daf Yomi,” the podcast he launched with Bashevkin’s help in 2020, told eJP. Leibovitz was also the first Talmud Daily guest. The Daf Yomi method of breaking study down to short sessions works because instead of opening the Talmud and “turn[ing] the page and get[ting] immediately overwhelmed by this ocean of knowledge and references and complications, the Daf Yomi method says, ‘You know what, heres what you have to do. Its very simple. Its just one page a day.’” Leibovitz said. The same way people around the world are studying identical pages of Talmud every day for Daf Yomi, Talmud Daily will offer a feeling of community, Student said. “Even though the Talmud Daily people are not meeting each other, the very act of listening to the same podcast and partaking the same themes every day creates a community of conversation.” The Talmud is often “misunderstood,” Student said. “The Talmud is not actually a book… Its really a record of conversations over hundreds of years.” Because “that kind of text is so unfamiliar” to many Jews, studying the Talmud “requires a switch in your thinking, going away from reading page by page, line by line, like you read any novel, to thinking non-linearly, and that requires certain amounts of training and certain amounts of background.” Just like someone can’t join “ an elite unit [of the army] without training for at least a year,” serious Talmudic learning takes training, Leibovitz said, and getting in the habit of engaging with the Talmud on a daily basis “changes your heart and your mind.” Each episode is short, to adapt to a modern lifestyle, Bashevkin said. “Ten minutes is just relating to the average attention span. Getting your day started, you can do it while sipping a cup of coffee.” The course duration has deep meaning, too, he said. “Moses got the Torah in 40 days and 40 nights on Sinai. I figured, I dont know if I could do this [initiative] in 40 days and 40 nights, but if you give me 40 weeks.” After the terrorist attacks of Oct. 7, 2023, Jews are looking for “a reset for the Jewish people to relearn our common language of thought and practice,” Bashevkin said. Recently, antisemites have started disseminating age-old propaganda about Jews using Talmudic secrets to dominate the world. “The purpose of Judaism is not to fight antisemitism,” he said. “We fight antisemitism so we can focus on the purpose of Judaism, and to me, [that is] what Talmud Daily is all about. This is what we’re fighting for.”

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Your Daily Phil: Robert Kraft raps Macklemore

EJP — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 14:35:21 +0000

Good Tuesday morning! In today’s edition of Your Daily Phil, we examine the pressure that led Macklemore to be dropped from Ed Sheeran’s tour after the rapper made anti-Israel remarks during concerts, and report on the sudden resignation of Keren Hayesod world chairman Eli Vered Hazan after sources say he sought to hire an unqualified candidate for a top position. We feature an opinion piece by Emily Kane Miller about the importance of spotlighting the Jews who respond to darkness by building, and one by Jonah Halper that makes the case for keeping the annual dinner alive. Also in this issue: Jon Polin, Marc Benioff and Charlotte Knobloch. Today’s Your Daily Phil was curated by eJP Managing Editor, Israel Editor Justin Hayet and Opinion Editor Rachel Kohn. Have a tip? Email us here. Follow us on Whatsapp Follow us on Telegram What Were Watching The three-dayEradicate Hate Global Summitbegins today in Pittsburgh. Former National Amusements PresidentShari Redstone, Holocaust survivor Dr.Alfred Garfinkle, commentatorVan Jonesand political scientistRobert Papeare slated to speak at the annual conference. The Jewish Community Relations Council of New Yorkand theJewish Community Council of Greater Coney Islandwill host a Rosh Hashanah celebration this morning with community leaders, elected officials and 20 Holocaust survivors. At noon ET,eJewishPhilanthropyand the academic consortiumCASJEwill host a panel discussion,“Who Shapes Campus Conversation? What Research Tells Us About Faculty Attitudes Toward Israel and Jews,”which will be moderated by eJP Managing Editor Judah Ari Gross and CASJEs Sasha Volodarsky, and featureLisa Armonyof Hillel International;Raeefa Shamsof the Academic Engagement Network;Leonard SaxeandGraham Wrightof Brandeis University;Yuval Avnurof The Curricular Review Council. Miriam Anzovin, known for her daily reading of Talmud through a secular, feminist and internet-culture lens, will speak at Harvard this afternoon on Jewish imagination and world-building, in a conversation moderated byHarvard Law School’s professorNoah Feldman. What You Should Know A QUICK WORD FROM eJPS JUDAH ARI GROSS In response to onstage rants accusing Israel of apartheid and committing genocide,the rapper Macklemore was dropped yesterday as the opening act for Ed Sheeran after venue owners —led by New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft —conditioned the British singer-songwriter’s concerts on his removal.More on this below. To many Jewish groups,particularly those who had been calling for his removal, this constituted a form of justice: A performer making unfounded allegations against the only Jewish state in front of massive audiences was held to account and faced repercussions for his actions. David triumphs over Goliath. Yet immediately, the headlines and articles about the developmentindicated that the issue was not Macklemore’s anti-Israel sentiments —and past antisemitic antics — but his support for Palestinians. And thus, the David vs. Goliath dynamic is reversed, and a martyris born, albeit one whose life is intact and whose fame has only grown as a result of the encounter. (Indeed, a glimpse at Google Search Trendsshowsthat the word “Macklmore” has been searched for more in the United States this month than at any time in a decade.) The latest kerfuffle highlights the Catch-22 of such incidents.On the one hand, there is an eminent need by Jewish groups and leaders to respond to figures whom they see as threatening or hurting the Jewish community. And yet, exercising that right also feeds into an antisemitic narrative of Jewish control and of persecution for supporting a disadvantaged group. Damned if you do; damned if you don’t. Read the rest of What You Should Know here. News INSTITUTIONAL CRISIS Keren Hayesod chair to step down after claims he tried to hire unqualified ally of Netanyahu’s wife In a sudden shake-up at the top of Keren Hayesod, Eli Vered Hazan, the fundraising groupsrecently electedworld chairman, will leave his post at the end of December, just a few months after assuming the role, the organizations CEO, Edna Weinstock Gabbay, told employees yesterday. The departure comes amid growing scrutiny over Hazan’s efforts at the National Institution to provide jobs and funding to figures close to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who nominated Hazan for his position, sourcestoldeJewishPhilanthropy’s Justin Hayet. Running interference:Last week, the Israeli newspaperIsrael Hayomreported that the prime minister’s wife, Sara Netanyahu, had pushed Hazan to install her ally, former Likud lawmaker Osnat Mark, as his chief of staff, despite her not having relevant experience. According to bothIsrael Hayomand a source familiar with the matter, who spoke to eJP on condition of anonymity, the proposal to hire Mark drew fierce resistance from Keren Hayesods major donors and board of trustees, who told Hazan it would not stand and pressed him to resign. The Likud party denied the reports, casting the allegations as recycled slander timed to the election cycle. Read the full report here. Share PERFORMANCE ANXIETY Macklemore dropped from Ed Sheeran tour as venues balk at anti-Israel activism Macklemore has been dropped from the remainder of singer Ed Sheeran’s U.S. tour after several venues objected to hosting the rapper, according to the tour’s promoter, following the rapper’s chants of “Free Palestine” and comments and imagery on Gaza during two recent opening sets for Sheeran,reports Haley CohenforeJewishPhilanthropy’s sister publicationJewish Insider. Crossing the line:Among the eight remaining shows on Sheeran’s tour, Macklemore was set to open for the singer at the Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Mass., which is owned by New England Patriots owner and Jewish philanthropist Robert Kraft, who confirmed that he had refused to allow the rapper to perform at his venue. “Gillette Stadium has a longstanding commitment to… ensuring that events held at our venue do not provide a platform for hate speech,” Kraft told JI in a statement. “Based on Macklemore’s recent actions… and a broader history of antisemitic rhetoric and imagery… we determined that his participation in the September 25th and 26th concerts at Gillette Stadium would cross that line.” Read the full report here. Share Opinion LIGHTS IN THE DARK In 5787, we celebrate Jewish excellence In an opinion piece foreJewishPhilanthropy, Emily Kane Miller, co-executive director of The Charles Bronfman Prize and the founder and CEO of Ethos Giving,encouragesthe Jewish community to do more to highlight its builders and believers. “By shining a light on people doing the hard work of improving the world, we remind ourselves, and everyone else, what Jewish values look like in action. Not as a response to hostility, and not as proof of our worth to skeptics, but because this is who we are — this is what we have always done.” Read the full piece here. Share CONSIDER THIS Dont cancel the ritual: The case for annual galas In an opinion piece foreJewishPhilanthropy, Altruicity founder Jonah Halperoffersa perspective on the debate over the wisdom of organizations producing annual dinners when those dollars could be spent elsewhere. “[E]specially since the COVID-19 pandemic, when so many organizations discovered they could raise real money through online campaigns without ever filling a ballroom, the temptation to cut the dinner altogether has only grown. On a spreadsheet, that decision often looks smart. But thats the wrong way to measure what an annual dinner is actually worth.” Read the full piece here. Share Worthy Reads Test of Leadership:InSapir, Jon Polin, father of slain hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin,drawson Moses, Jeremiah and Esther to argue that empathy, urgent action and unity are the leadership virtues too many world leaders lacked during the 330-day fight to free his son. “The test of leadership is not how badly one wants power but whether, once given power, one can still see the suffering of the people, hold them together, and act with necessary urgency on their behalf. The test of society is to identify and cultivate the leaders who exemplify these qualities.” A Rooted Rosh Hashanah:InThe Forward, Benyamin Cohenreportson Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, Mich., returning to its sanctuary for Rosh Hashanah six months after a gunman attacked the building — carrying its Torah scrolls home under heightened security and reading from prayer books donated by synagogues nationwide. “Near the end of their remarks, the co-presidents described teshuvah, the season’s work of return, as something that allowed room for everything the congregation had endured. ‘We return changed,’ [Temple Israel Co-President Jodi] Neff said, ‘but still rooted.’” Funding Belonging:InThe Chronicle of Philanthropy, U.S. Chamber of Connection’s Aaron Hurstarguesthat philanthropy should build social connection into a defined funding field — as it once did for causes like the environment — to counter a loneliness crisis that leaves more than half of U.S. adults at risk of disconnection. “Now philanthropy must decide whether it will take the lead in addressing the problem — and rebuilding the opportunities for connection on which a healthy, functioning democracy depends.” Major Gifts Salesforcewillgive$27 million in new education grants this year — $18 million toSan FranciscoandOaklandschools — bringing the companys 14-year total forBay Areapublic schools to $156 million, a sum CEOMarc Benioffsays exceeds any companys in history… Hackensack Meridian Health, New Jerseys largest health network, has received a $125 million anonymous gift — the biggest in its history and the largest of its kind in the states healthcare sector… TheGates Foundationhaspledgedat least $1 billion over two years to expand equitable access to artificial intelligence in health, education and agriculture… Transitions Gina Schmueling joined the Jewish Book Council as its director of development… Word on the Street A newJewish People Policy Institutepollfoundthat one-third of Israelis labeled the masked Jewish assailants in the attack on the West Bank village of Qusra as “Israeli terrorists” — the single most common description — but the split was sharply ideological: 63% of left-leaning respondents used the term, compared with 3% of those on the right… Luxury publisherAssoulinehas released “Tel Aviv Spirit,” a $105 coffee-table photo book of more than 200 images that marks the first Israeli city in itsClassics Collection, which has previously featured Riyadh, Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Beirut,Jewish Insider’sHaley Cohen reports… TheEuropean Unionfailedto renew a sanctions program freezing the assets of some 3,000 Russians and companies after Slovakia and France pushed to delist tycoonsAlisher Usmanovand formerGenesis PrizeandGenesis Philanthropy GroupfounderMikhail Fridman, forcing ambassadors to extend the expiring deadline by a week to Sept. 22… “Fauda” hastoppedNetflixs chart inLebanonand climbed the rankings inJordan, theUnited Arab EmiratesandSaudi Arabiawith its fifth season, which takes place around the Oct. 7 attacks and its aftermath… Vilchovitz Hallin Monsey, N.Y., will berenamedWerdiger Halland renovated in memoryof Rabbi Nechemia Werdiger, father ofAgudas Yisroelchairman and philanthropistRabbi Shlomo Werdiger, who is sponsoring the dedication… OpenAIacquiredIsraeli startupGlass Imaging,which uses AI to sharpen images from compact cameras in a deal valuing the company at more than $300 million… Fair Lane, the restored Dearborn, Mich., home ofHenryandClara Ford, willteachvisitors about the automakers antisemitism — including the conspiracy theories he spread through hisDearborn Independentnewspaper — when it reopens in June 2027… Columbia Universityanti-Israel protest leaderMahmoud Khaliland several of his fellow activistsfiled a federal lawsuitagainst the school, arguing that administrators failed to protect them against harassment they allege that they faced on campus due to their activism…tened to kill them… Pic of the Day Bernd von JutrczenkaBERND /Picture Alliance via Getty Images German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul meets with Charlotte Knobloch, president of the Jewish Community of Munich and Upper Bavaria, earlier today for a discussion outside the Jewish Center in Munich. Wadephul met with Knobloch, a 93-year-old Holocaust survivor and longtime Munich Jewish community leader, after graffiti was discovered that made death threats against her. German policehave launchedan investigation into the matter, which has been widely condemned by local and international Jewish groups. Birthdays Daniele Venturelli/Getty Images for WIBA Awards LLP Kira Soltanovich, comedian, writer and actor, turns53 Jac Holzman, founder and former CEO of Elektra Records, he is a member of the Rock Roll Hall of Fame, turns95 Emanuel Tov, professor emeritus at the Hebrew University and a leading scholar of the Dead Sea Scrolls, turns85 Rabbi Yitzchak Dovid Grossman, chief rabbi of Migdal HaEmek, in northern Israel, known as the “Disco Rabbi,” turns80 Diane Levin, professor emerita of counseling psychology at Boston Universitys Wheelock College, turns79 Ned Rothenberg, composer and multi-instrument musician, turns70 Michael L. Reiss, television comedy writer, he served as a showrunner, writer and producer for “The Simpsons” and co-created the animated series “The Critic,” turns67 Aron Uri Raskas, shareholder of law firm Gunster, turns64 Nina Jacobson, film executive, she produced “The Hunger Games” film series, turns61 David Magerman, managing partner and chief technology officer at Differential Ventures in Philadelphia, he is also the founder of a series of kosher restaurants, turns58 David Folkenflik, NPRs media correspondent, turns57 Josh Charles, actor, best known for his roles on “Sports Night” and “The Good Wife,” turns55 Deborah Leipzig, former VP of leadership at the Anti-Defamation League Shayla Rosen, customer success manager at Screencastify, event organizer and fundraiser Anya Kamenetz, author and longtime education correspondent at NPR, turns46 Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, data scientist, economist and author of the 2017New York TimesbestsellerEverybody Lies, turns44 Evan D. Goldberg, screenwriter, film producer and director, often in collaboration with his childhood friend Seth Rogen, turns44 Yael Markovich, model and Israeli beauty pageant winner, turns42 Jonah Raskas, CEO of Harmon Face Values Josh Gruenbaum, senior advisor to the Board of Peace, he was the commissioner of the Federal Acquisition Service, turns41 Tomer Elias Amanda Bresler, chief strategy officer at PW Communications Eliza Shapiro, reporter atThe New York Timescovering NYC affordability issues Roni Dalumi, singer and actor, she was the 2009 winner of the Israeli version of “A Star is Born,” turns35 Shani Hazan, beauty pageant titleholder, she was crowned Miss Israel 2012, turns34 Jeff Lewis, Arizona philanthropist and founder of the Froth and Bubble Foundation

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In l’affaire Macklemore, Jewish leaders find they’re damned if they do; damned if they don’t

Judah Ari Gross — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 12:39:53 +0000

In response to onstage rants accusing Israel of committing genocide and apartheid, Macklemore was dropped yesterday as the opening act for Ed Sheeran after venue owners — notably including New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft — refused to allow the rapper to take the stage. To many Jewish groups, particularly those who had been calling for his removal, this constituted a form of justice: A performer making unfounded allegations against the only Jewish state in front of massive audiences was held to account and faced repercussions for his actions. David triumphs over Goliath. “Freedom of speech is not freedom from responsibility,” the Israeli-American Council said in a statement. “Anyone who chooses to turn an 80,000-person concert into a vehicle for advancing a one-sided political agenda must stand behind that choice. A concert stage is not a platform for anti-Israel and antisemitic propaganda.” Yet immediately, the headlines and articles about the development indicated that the issue was not Macklemore’s anti-Israel sentiments but his support for Palestinians. Add to that the fact that the main figure involved, Kraft, is a billionaire owner of multiple sports franchises with personal ties to President Donald Trump. In Rolling Stone, which broke the story, the headline was, “Macklemore Dropped From Ed Sheeran Tour After Onstage ‘Free Palestine’ Statements.” In The New York Times, it was, “Macklemore Dropped From Ed Sheeran Tour After ‘Free Palestine’ Remarks.” In The Washington Post, it was, “Macklemore dropped from Ed Sheeran tour after pro-Palestine comments.” And thus, the David vs. Goliath dynamic is reversed, and a martyris born, albeit one whose life is intact and whose fame has only grown. (Indeed, a glimpse at Google Search Trends shows that the word “Macklmore” has been searched for more in the United States this month than at any time in a decade.) Surely there are those for whom “Free Palestine” is inherently anti-Israel, but to most Jewish Americans,the majority of whom support a two-state solution,the issue is not the calls for a Palestinian state but the allegations —opposed by much of the Jewish community —of genocide and apartheid and support for a protest movement that is widely believed to have antisemitic elements. There is, in this incident, the added element that this is not Macklemore’s first run-in with the Jewish community. In 2014, during a performance of his hit “Thrift Shop,” a jaunty tune about being fashionable while stingy, the rapper donned a black suit, white shirt, fake beard and large hooked nose, which was widely seen as an antisemitic caricature. Following an outcry, Macklemore said the costume selection was unintentional but recognized how it could be construed as an antisemitic stereotype. The latest kerfuffle highlights the Catch-22 of such incidents. On the one hand, there is an eminent need by Jewish groups and leaders to respond to figures whom they see as threatening or hurting the Jewish community. And yet, exercising that right also feeds into an antisemitic narrative of Jewish controland of persecution for supporting a disadvantaged group. Damned if you do; damned if you don’t.

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Keren Hayesod chair to step down after claims he tried to hire unqualified ally of Netanyahu’s wife

Justin Hayet — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 12:19:20 +0000

In a sudden shake-up at the top of Keren Hayesod, Eli Vered Hazan, the fundraising groups recently elected world chairman, will leave his post at the end of December, just a few months after assuming the role, the organizations CEO, Edna Weinstock Gabbay, told employees on Monday. The departure comes amid growing scrutiny over Hazan’s efforts to provide jobs within the organization and funding to figures close to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who had nominated Hazan for his position, sources told eJewishPhilanthropy. Last week, the Israeli newspaper Israel Hayom reported that the prime minister’s wife, Sara Netanyahu, had pushed Hazan to install her ally, former Likud lawmaker Osnat Mark, as his chief of staff, despite her not having relevant experience. On Monday, Israel’s Channel 13 reported that Sara Netanayhu had also demanded that Keren Hayesod — the foreign fundraising arm of Israels National Institutions — arrange paid speaking engagementsfor her son, Yair Netanyahu. The Likud party denied the reports. The party said Sara Netanyahu never intervened in the organizations appointments, speaking programs or anything else and had no contact — direct or indirect — with its representatives, casting the allegations as recycled slander timed to the election cycle. According to both Israel Hayom and a source familiar with the matter, who spoke to eJP on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive issue, the proposal to hire Mark drew fierce resistance from Keren Hayesods major donors and board of trustees, who told Hazan it would not stand and pressed him to resign, which he initially refused to do. Hazan, who began the job earlier this month, said in a letter to Keren Hayesod stakeholders, which was obtained by Israel’s Netanyahu-friendly Channel 14, that after reflection and out of “personal and family considerations,” he would serve only through Dec. 31, 2026. This incident comes amid persistent allegations of corruption and nepotism against many of the National Institutions —the official arms of the international Zionist movement. Speaking to eJP, multiple sources, both inside and outside Israel, described a fuller account of the period preceding Hazans decision to step down. Hazan was selected for the role under the long-standing custom in Keren Hayesod of deference to the prime ministers preferred nominee, though sources said he was not the only person being considered and that the prime minister’s approval is not technically needed for the trustees to hire a new world chairman. Speaking to eJP, another source present at Hazans interview for the chairmanship role said Hazan pledged there that he had made no promises to the prime minister in accepting his endorsement. Hazan, Israel’s ambassador to Singapore and a close Netanyahu ally who previously served as his policy advisor when Netanyahu served as opposition leader in 2021and as a spokesperson for the Likud party, was approved in July to lead Keren Hayesod, which reported raising $207.7 million in 2024. An internal Keren Hayesod document seen by eJP, dated May 2025, sets out the profile for the world chairmanship: fluent English, deep familiarity with Israels national institutions such as the World Zionist Organization, a track record in fundraising and experience in Israel-Diaspora relations. A figure involved in the hiring process said that the board was drawn to the gravitas of an Israeli ambassador, but other sources said that there were hesitations: Hazan lacked the fundraising background and Diaspora fluency to steer Keren Hayesod through a fraught moment. Netanyahu backed Hazan for the role after first supporting Ofir Akunis, Israels consul general in New York; the board then approved Hazan unanimously. Hazan took over the reins of the organization from Sam Grundwerg, a former consul general in Los Angeles who led the organization for eight years. On Hazan’s first day in office, sources said, Mark arrived at his office alongside Tsahi Dabush, a former journalist and one-time aide to Economy Minister Nir Barkat, and confronted Hazan, who initially refused to meet them. A call to the Prime Ministers Office followed, the sources said, and Hazan was given an ultimatum to proceed with hiring both of them in senior roles within Keren Hayesod. Hazan then emailed the organizations head of human resources to begin hiring Mark. What followed was what one source described as hours of shouting heard throughout the Keren Hayesod office in Jerusalem. In light of the disagreement and continued pressure by the organization’s main stakeholders, Hazan decided to step down, the sources said. This was not the first time that Marks nomination for a senior position met backlash. In 2023, the former Knesset member was tapped to serve as director-general of Israels Ministry of Innovation, Science and Technology, but later withdrew her candidacy following criticism that she lacked experience in the field. A few months later, a similar incident unfolded as she was selected to head Israels Consumer Protection Bureau and subsequently rejected on procedural grounds. Hazan’s departure leaves the future of the organization’s leadership unclear. As Keren Hayesod and the other National Institutions work closely with the Israeli government, the organization’s trustees may wait until after next month’s elections before appointing a new chair. Yet if a new chair is not selected by Jan. 1, the position will be held —in an interim capacity —by Yaakov Hagoel, the chair of the World Zionist Organization, a situation that Keren Hayesod’s trustees would look to avoid, a source within the group said.

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